Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

We still have time to mess this up!

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Nothing worth doing is easy.

No one could have predicted…

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

After roe, women are no longer free.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Now This Is How You Prayer-Shame!

Now This Is How You Prayer-Shame!

by | 113 Comments

This post is in: ,

Mike Lukovich:

Lukovich prayer

And I’ll note that the good Dr. Pierce still has his fastball:

​Have you noticed? There’s a new thing that progressives should not do, because it will scare the horses and frighten the children, and harsh the holy mellows of the various tent-show evangelicals currently at work in Republican politics. It is called “prayer-shaming.”  It became a thing in the wake of the San Bernardino massacre, when Republican candidates immediately leaped onto Twitter to send “thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families.” This time, however, a  great number of people, most notably Senator Chris Murphy and the editors of the New York Daily News, decided that up with this pious swill was something that they no longer would put.*

Jean_Béraud_The_Magdalen_at_the_House_of_the_Pharisees

Well, Charles.  Tell me what you really think:

I am heartily fed up with this nonsense. I am heartily fed up with people whose personal relationships with their personal Lords And Saviors lead them to knuckle the poor, subjugate women, brag about their gunmanship, and topple inconvenient regimes that happen to be sitting on an ocean of oil. I am heartily fed up with people whose support for Israel is based on a couple of misunderstood passages from the craziest book in the Bible in which Jesus comes back to Earth as an X Man and gets into some enthusiastic disemboweling. …

There’s more stupid out there today on this heinous sin of identifying ostentatious piety as the gun-murder-enabling horse hockey it is. But we are none of us surprised, are we?  Channelling my inner (and likely apocryphal) Abe L., if the [insert favorite conception of the deity here] were to exist, we’d know s/he’d love hypocrites, ’cause s/he made so damn many of them.

So let’s just chat among ourselves, shall we.  Today’s prompt:  which ethnic or racial group do you think Trump will insult next?  Bonus points for the most authentic sounding Trumpismo gibe.

 *Not to go all style police or anything (FSM knows, glass houses and all that), but my Brit mum used to attribute that construction to Winston Churchill in the original form “This is the kind of chicken shit up with which I shall not put,” and that’s how I think it ought to read here.

Image:  Jean Béraud, The Magdalen at the House of the Pharisees, 1891

Reader Interactions

113Comments

  1. 1.

    trollhattan

    Like many a Twain quote that probably wasn’t, this one’s supposed source was Churchill bristling at an editor foolish enough to “correct” his ending a sentence with a preposition. True? Who knows, but at least it sounds like him.

    As to Trump, it’s a target-rich country so there’s no upper bound I fear.

  3. 3.

    Jerzy Russian

    The image of the painting is not showing up.

    I love that cartoon, as well as the Post headline. As for prayer shaming, I am waiting for the time when people actually are ashamed to pray, but I am not holding my breath.

  4. 4.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    I look forward to the fictional which would top “Like you, I’m a great negotiator”, but won’t hold my breath that it can be topped.

    Maybe, to the Native Peoples, “Like you, I keep my promises”. Shows perfect unknowledge of history and the distasteful terms “Indian giver”.

  5. 5.

    BGinCHI

    Do you want the pilot of your plane to pray it onto the runway or put his hands on the controls and steer it safely to the ground?

    Right.

    Then shut the fuck up you ignorant assholes.

  7. 7.

    Betty Cracker

    @scav: Darn — that was going to be my guess, that Trump would say something dumb in a Charlie Chan accent. Once again, my cynicism was outpaced by reality!

  8. 8.

    scav

    Also, can we assume they’ve been doing a really shitty, insufficient and shoddy job of praying if there’s still this amount of violence in the world? Or will they shift the blame to their deity, with the standard “mysterious ways teaching moment” clause. In which case, why are they bothering their deity with their fervent prayers to send them fewer opportunities to learn?

  10. 10.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @trollhattan:

    As antidote to the putative Churchillism, I’ve always liked the perfectly grammatical and understandable line from the little kid to his mother, at bedtime:

    “What did you bring that book I didn’t want to be read to out of up for!?”

  12. 12.

    bemused

    Interesting game. Did Trump miss Native Americans? It’s not easy to keep track. I’m trying to imagine how he would offend senior citizens on Medicare but he may be just smart enough not to go there.

  16. 16.

    Mike J

    @bemused:

    Did Trump miss Native Americans?

    Likes the name “Washington Redskins”. Massive business squabbles in NYS over gaming establishments. They aren’t fans.

  20. 20.

    mai naem mobile

    Has Trumpy insulted Native Americans yet? I am thinking he’s probably called them looozers for letting in white people like him? Or maybe he’s called them out on stealing his kaysino business by not ‘competing on a level field?’

  22. 22.

    NotMax

    Pissing on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier?

    “If you were a real soldier, we wouldn’t have had to pay for this hunk of stone. Now here’s a great idea – I’ll negotiate the BEST deal to put the CLASSIEST ads on it to pay for it instead of fleecing true-blue hard-working Americans to store a bunch of old bones. By the way – and no other candidate has the backbone to tell you this (have you ever seen such a bunch of wimpy scaredy-cats?) – do we even know for sure there’s an American in there? I’ve put together a team of crack investigators to find out the truth! “

  23. 23.

    goblue72

    “Let me tell you, and I’m just saying, and what you know, is that these disrespectful kids, their rap music and pants around their ankles and showing their underwear, when I’m President, we won’t be seeing any that anymore, you know what I’m saying?”

  24. 24.

    mai naem mobile

    Has Trumpy insulted Native Americans yet? I am thinking he’s probably called them looozers for letting in white people like him? Or maybe he’s called them out on stealing his kaysino business by not ‘competing on a level field?’

  27. 27.

    Liberal

    @Peale: speaking of teh gay, one nice thing I saw in the wake of the shooting was an interview with a man on the loss of his boyfriend. The fact they weren’t straight didn’t color the interview at all. It goes to show how much progress we’ve made.

  28. 28.

    Roger Moore

    Today’s prompt: which ethnic or racial group do you think Trump will insult next?

    I think he’ll go right back to insulting poor whites, since that’s who he loves to insult the most. I figure there’s plenty more talk about losers and failures yet to come.

  29. 29.

    Anoniminous

    I find by replacing “pray” with “prey” and changing “for” to “on” everything RW Fundie-Con God-Botherers say makes a lot more sense.

  32. 32.

    goblue72

    “The Mexicans, the Guatemalans, the Brazilians, they love me. (And who doesn’t love a Brazilian? *wink wink*) Heck, I got some Mexicans who work for me, landscape my golf course, the legal kind. Hard working those Mexicans, they waited in line. They love me. But we aren’t talking, you know we aren’t talking, the media loves to say I do, but you know I’m not, about those Mexicans. But its the ones that don’t wanna wait in line, that want to cheat, sneaking in here, with their drugs and gangs and stealing jobs. That’s what a wall is for.”

  34. 34.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Protestants. Mainline ones. They need classier churches and their Volvos and Saabs aren’t yoooge enough?

  36. 36.

    jl

    Now that cordial expressions of condolence to victims is a standard gesture of politicians and GOP presidential contestants, I guess next will be a little place in the greeting and holiday cards section for mass shooting condolences. It is becoming that common, seems like.

    Interesting to me that these murderers were found to have an arsenal that doesn’t seem to be that different from what is often found in the houses of white reactionary sovereign citizen racist types when they are arrested. But in the latter case it doesn’t seem to be a big deal. People seem to think ‘Well, some people do that, it’s kind of hobby’. But in this case it is a big deal.

    Not clear to me yet how much of this is motivated by Daesh style terrorism, how much by a long standing workplace grudge or mental instability. But I have the same question. Find evidence that a white reactionary sovereign citizen racist shooter has ‘pledged allegiance’ to, or had exchanges with like minded people, or read white racist BS, and people are all worried about rashly jumping to conclusions.

    There is a bogyman factor at work in how the media is thinking about this, I think.

  37. 37.

    Roger Moore

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    “What did you bring that book I didn’t want to be read to out of up for!?”

    I had heard it as “What did you bring that book I didn’t want to be read to out of about Down Under up for?”, though the “Down Under” is a bit of a cheat.

  38. 38.

    JPL

    I keep asking god why he let the assault weapon ban expire? Bush did some terrible things during his presidency, but that one has to be in the top five.

  41. 41.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    @goblue72: Missing one touch: Confuse Puerto Ricans, American citizens, with immigrants. Perhhaps in a “or you can go back to your own country” spiel.

  42. 42.

    Michael Bersin

    Yeah, there was that one time when the IT guys at the institution where I work sent an e-mail telling us all that the e-mail system was down while it was down…

  43. 43.

    geg6

    @jl:

    Not clear to me yet how much of this is motivated by Daesh style terrorism, how much by a long standing workplace grudge or mental instability.

    I caught a clip on, I think, MSNBC of the wife of one of the managers of the agency (not sure if he was killed or not). I just caught a small bit of it, but I keep remembering that she said her husband had lots of derogatory posts about Muslims on his FB page. But she said she couldn’t imagine how the killer would have known about that. SMH.

  44. 44.

    catclub

    @jl:

    from what is often found in the houses of white reactionary sovereign citizen racist types when they are arrested. But in the latter case it doesn’t seem to be a big deal. People seem to think ‘Well, some people do that, it’s kind of hobby’. But in this case it is a big deal.

    Exactly my thoughts.

  45. 45.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    Is there an ethnic group left for Trump to insult? He’s already done Asians, Latinos, Jews, Black people, and anyone of Arabic/Persian descent and/or anyone who worships Islam. I guess he hasn’t gone after the Swedes yet, so I’ll go with them.

  46. 46.

    catclub

    @geg6:

    But she said she couldn’t imagine how the killer would have known about that.

    Facebook is totally secret. Another mystery.

  47. 47.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    So where are we at on Islamic Terrorism? It is, according to the GOP, an existential threat to our nation that must be destroyed…but we have to make sure the terrorists have ready access to guns and ammo. I think that sums up their current position in an incoherent sentence. Actually, scratch that, the sentence is coherent, it’s the position that’s not.

  48. 48.

    Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi)

    Crashing the open thread to get set up for another episode of Sky-High Wi-Fi. Wheels up at 1:35 PST, nonstop to Dulles. United 487 for disaster/status tracking.

  50. 50.

    Elie

    @NotMax:

    Y’all noticed that CNN told him to take a hike on his $5 million attempted extorsion… turned out he needed them more than they need him and he saw that pretty clearly. Dude is all glass jaw and thin skin that no one has really sailed into. Like all bullies he would whine and scream but slink off. Problem is, again, the Republicans have no one who is any better, has any better approach or any integrity or spine of their own, so there they are. You can bet your sweet bipee though that either Democrat won’t be as easy to placated and will take him on without hesitation, or fear.

  53. 53.

    joel hanes

    ostentatious piety

    A salient feature of American Christianist practice.

    That long-haired sandal-wearing radical non-conformist Jeshua ben Josef, however, had some harsh things to say about it.

    Curiously but apparently, no televangelist has ever read the sixth chapter of the gospel of Matthew.

  56. 56.

    Garrick

    “You people in New Hampshire, you get these socialist ideas up here because you don’t understand the ethnics. Come down to New York sometime and see what it’s like for the rest of us. If our blacks don’t rob you when you step off the bus, our Jews will take all your money in the stores. And I love it. Nowhere like it. It’s where I learned how to be a businessman. That’s why I’m the winner that I am.”

    My Trump attempt– yep it’s nowhere near as good as goblue72’s

  57. 57.

    Capri

    I think he goes after Canadians. It will be his first swipe at Cruz, who is getting more popular.

  58. 58.

    Iowa Old Lady

    He’s already called Iowa voters “stupid,” so I’m out of the running here.

    The sad thing is, nobody cares what he says as long as he’s obnoxious when he says it.

  59. 59.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @jl:

    When it comes to “lone wolf” type terrorist actions, it can be a very fine line between political action and mental illness. There was a guy here in Los Angeles about 10 years ago who decided to go to LAX and shoot up the El Al counter. He was officially judged to have been a terrorist, but it came out that his wife had recently left him and taken the kids back to Egypt and that the day he chose for the attack was his birthday. So how do you decide if that was “really” a terrorist attack or a suicide by cop?

    There apparently is some research that terrorist groups prey on people who are already suicidal and convince them to be suicide bombers. After all, if they just kill themselves, they’ll go to Hell, but if they say it was jihad, then they won’t.

  60. 60.

    Cacti

    Something awful potentially averted in New York.

    Police arrest 49 year old Long Island man for flashing fake Federal Air Marshal badge and ID during a traffic stop.

    Search of home turns up assault rifle, body armor, and 8,300 rounds of ammo.

  61. 61.

    Momus

    @goblue72: Guatemalans love him? I have a friend in Guatemala (living in a town some 45 minutes NE of Guatemala City) who has assured me that the populace thereabouts is quite freaked about a possible Trump presidency. They seem have quite a bit of knowledge about Trump’s employment practices, either through personal experience, or that of a friend or relative, and what kind of exploition he is capable of.

  62. 62.

    Mike in NC

    Local rag had another letter to the editor — presumably from an old white guy — lauding Trump because “we’ve become a nation of sissies”.

  64. 64.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Tom Levenson: I suspect it is a cache issue or something similar. The image is there in firefox, but it refuses to load in safari for some reason.

  65. 65.

    Hungry Joe

    The whole prayer thing leaves me mystified. Although I’m a hard-core, dyed-in-the-wool, fundamentalist, foot-washing* atheist, I identify as Jewish (not a contradiction!), and as a child learned to repeat a number of prayers in Hebrew. But I was just mouthing words. When I was about ten my mother got the flu or something, and since she never got sick I freaked out: What if she dies???? So I decided to pray. And I tried. Felt like a damn fool. Haven’t tried it since.

    * My own feet.

  66. 66.

    Jager

    A friend who is UU and I were discussing “prayer shaming” he mentioned the only time he can remember Jesus Christ being mentioned in their church was when the janitor fell down the basement stairs.

  67. 67.

    Ryan

    Has he insulted the developmentally disabled by imitating them and berating them for not charging the gunmen yet? Apparently he’s in Raleigh (near my neck of the woods) later today, I’m half tempted to go to find out..

  68. 68.

    Mike J

    @Ryan:

    Has he insulted the developmentally disabled by imitating them and berating them for not charging the gunmen yet?

    He already covered the physically disabled with his imitation of that reporter.

  71. 71.

    NotMax

    @Jager

    fell down the basement stairs

    Heh.

    That’s how one great-grandmother kicked the bucket.

    At age 112.

    Gotta watch that first step, it’s a doozy.

  72. 72.

    Hoodie

    @Mnemosyne (tablet): It’s interesting that the jump to “terrorism” came the moment that this had anything to do with Islam. Many on the right have an obsession about categorizing one of these things as “terrorism” based on the motivation of the killers, not whether there was some sort of concerted multi-actor conspiracy a la the 9/11 attack.

    Stuff like this makes you think that the underlying theme of modern wingnuttery is pathological narcissism. They hope that a mass shooting can be described as terrorism based on motivation rather than logistics, because then they get to obsess about being engaged in a world historical struggle, e.g., the West vs. “radical Islam,” rather than a police matter involving targeting a relatively small group of conspirators, which is much more mundane and offers fewer opportunities for self-aggrandizement. If the act can’t be defined in the preferred apocalyptic manner, it’s just a lone nut, i.e., nobody like them, so they don’t have to do anything (“shit happens”) about practical issues, such as gun control. The victims of the slaughter — and actual solutions to prevent further slaughter — don’t matter. All that matters is the wingnuts’ own “thoughts and prayers” about the victims.

    Trump is the perfect vessel for such people, a narcissist-in-chief.

  73. 73.

    philpm

    Can we somehow convince the Donald that Daleks are an offshoot of Daesh and have them rain their destruction on his head only?

  75. 75.

    gelfling545

    I have to wonder if any of these folks have ever actually prayed for any of these people. It seems like if any of them were actually trying to cultivate a deep & meaningful spirituality it would show in their actions. As for their thoughts, they seem to be mostly along the lines of “How can I use this to my advantage?”

  77. 77.

    Jager

    My guess, since Trump’s done Mexicans, Central Americans, Asians, Native Americans and “The Blacks”, is older women. It will go something like this:

    “Hillary is old, have you ever seen a picture of her from the back? She’s wide, like real wide. You know what I’m talking about, I know Hillary, I like her and she loves me. But she’s carrying a lot of weight back there. Get that pants suit off her and it would be frightening, know what I’m talking about? You older girls in the audience know exactly what I mean don’t you? You look in the mirror am I right? Old asses get yoouge. My first wife Ivana was a beautiful woman, but now, she’s carrying some weight back there, same with Marla, beautiful woman, but now she’s older her ass isn’t what it used to be. You girls know what I mean. You can’t vote for an ass like that, I mean what would the other countries think if a fat ass like Hillary’s was in the White House? They’d think you were stupid losers.”

  78. 78.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    Because I’m tired of talking about bad people, can I just say that, for a celebrity, Sandra Bullock seems to be a genuinely nice person? She just completed the adoption of a second child from foster care. It was apparently quite an ordeal to keep it secret through the evaluation period while the social workers made sure the placement was working out for everyone.

    I’m still a little uneasy about transracial adoptions sometimes, but it seems to me that adopting a toddler out of foster care is more difficult than adopting out a baby, so if the adoptive parent is aware of the difficulties of raising a child of another race and respectful of the differences, I think sometimes necessity has to come first.

    (Yes, it’s purposeful that you’re not getting a good look at the kids’ faces in those pictures. Placement of a toddler usually means there are some bad adults in her background who would love to know where she is now.)

  79. 79.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne (tablet):

    There apparently is some research that terrorist groups prey on people who are already suicidal and convince them to be suicide bombers. After all, if they just kill themselves, they’ll go to Hell, but if they say it was jihad, then they won’t.

    Isn’t this kinda tough to verify since, successful bombers are not around to be interviewed about motive?

    Also, the Tamils, who brought this tactic fully into the modern era, looked at this group as an elite:

    And the Black Tigers, the suicide attackers for the Tamil Tigers, have been recruited essentially as elite members of the ordinary cadre. That is they’re essentially promoted from within the ranks of the ordinary Tamil Tigers. A way to think about it is, they’re sort of the same relationship our Rangers, you know, have to the Army. In order to get into the Rangers, our elite – some of our elite special forces, you have to first be in the Army. And then you have to pass some rather rigorous tests, rigorous tests of skill, rigorous tests of emotional stability. And that’s what’s happening for the Black Tigers. Those that are -volunteer and then are selected to become Black Tigers, for them, it’s actually quite an honor.

    Now, of course, our Rangers aren’t doing suicide attacks. But the Black Tigers are specially an elite unit where they’re being selected because they’re viewed as having both the skill and strength of nerve in order to not just so much kill themselves. That’s really not what the point of the attack is, as much as to kill others. And to attack especially difficult targets such as, as I just mentioned, you know, assassinations of high-level political figures that would be probably pretty difficult to achieve any other way.

    Americans seem to want to under-estimate the political aims of terror and instead focus on individuals and psychology.

  80. 80.

    scav

    @Jager: Obvious bit missing is “You see my duaghter’s tight ass? We’d totally do that, wouldn’t we? Exactly the ass all America needs.”

  82. 82.

    Kass

    Trollhattan:
    This meme needs distribution:
    “Trump is the mean girl version of Reagan”.
    The Donald will love being called mean, not sure how he’d react to the other. Would be fun to watch…

  84. 84.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Brachiator:

    I’m pretty sure these mopes in San Berdoo were not dedicated freedom fighters, so psychology seems like a far more rational lens to look at them through.

    You do have other examples in history of people who have been convinced to do suicide attacks, with the kamikaze bombers of Japan being the most famous, but their numbers are usually fairly small and their dedication exaggerated.

    And if you don’t look at the psychology of terrorism, how do you plan to stop it? Trying to kill them one by one is pointless.

  85. 85.

    JustRuss

    I have a relative who’s a bit of a fundamentalist, and recently he got into a tight spot financially. Oddly enough, he’s more interested in getting money from me than prayers.

  86. 86.

    Gin & Tonic

    Lunch at In n Out burger followed by dinner at a Michelin 3-star. California in a nutshell.

  87. 87.

    JGabriel

    Tom Levenson:

    Not to go all style police or anything (FSM knows, glass houses and all that), but my Brit mum used to attribute that construction to Winston Churchill in the original form “This is the kind of chicken shit up with which I shall not put,” and that’s how I think it ought to read here.

    It’s Shaw, not Churchill. He was using it as an example of why importing the Latin rule of not of ending sentences with a preposition was pedantic, led to awkward sentences, and should be discarded.

    It’s from the preface/postscript of one of his plays – Misalliance, I think, though it might be Man and Superman, or Pygmalion. I only know this because (Geek Confession!) when I was 20, I realized I had read about 2/3 of Shaw’s 50-some plays, and decided to make it a project to finish them all before I turned 21.

    It’s possible Shaw got it from someone else, but either way, I’m pretty sure it precedes Churchill.

  88. 88.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    I’m pretty sure these mopes in San Berdoo were not dedicated freedom fighters, so psychology seems like a far more rational lens to look at them through.

    I’m always cautious when it comes to analyzing people who are dead. And the investigation of this tragedy is just beginning, so to my earlier caution I add a desire to try to avoid as much speculation as possible.

    You do have other examples in history of people who have been convinced to do suicide attacks, with the kamikaze bombers of Japan being the most famous, but their numbers are usually fairly small and their dedication exaggerated.

    And yet forces in the Middle East and elsewhere are able to get a steady number of suicide bombers, at times with impressive results (e.g. staggered attacks designed to pull people from one area of attack into the path of another suicide bomber). Also, as an aside, with the kamikaze bombers, you also have to factor in the role of suicide in Japanese warrior culture.

    And if you don’t look at the psychology of terrorism, how do you plan to stop it? Trying to kill them one by one is pointless.

    The Tamils were ruthlessly suppressed in the civil war in Sri Lanka. Negotiation has worked to some degree with the IRA and with Basque separatists. Here, of course, we are talking about groups that have used terror as part of their larger political goals, not solely suicide bombers.

    ISIS, Al Qaeda and other groups, have political and territorial and religious goals. They are just not trying to get attention from the West, or “acting out” and hurting people because they are angry.

  89. 89.

    Mike J

    @Brachiator:

    ISIS, Al Qaeda and other groups, have political and territorial and religious goals. They are just not trying to get attention from the West, or “acting out” and hurting people because they are angry

    And if their goal is Armageddon?

  90. 90.

    GxB

    Since Tom mentioned Churchill, I’ll pull out another beauty he said so long ago.

    “Americans will do the right thing… after they have exhausted all other options.”

    As I see it, there IS a change in the tide on this matter, but there’s a long way to go, and the worst is far from over.

  97. 97.

    Redshift

    The Very Serious Paul Ryan, yesterday:

    And while he presented himself Thursday as a man of serious ideas, Mr. Ryan made no pretense of cooperating with President Obama, saying that he would push proposals aimed at molding a government to his conservative vision, even if the White House was opposed.

    I’m sure we’ll hear a chorus of our betters in Washington telling is that the reason things aren’t getting done is that Speaker Ryan isn’t reaching out to the White House and being cooperative, right?

  98. 98.

    Brachiator

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    They have a similar philosophy, just a different location. I think it’s close to the border of Turkey and Syria.

    Christian fundamentalists and ISIS? Not really. ISIS has taken over territory in their quest to restore the caliphate. Christian fundamentalists are still stuck on the idea that a universal war will presage the arrival of the baby Jebus and the end of times. In some ways, I guess, the fundies might be theoretically more dangerous, but what terrorists acts committed in the US do you want to ascribe to them?

  99. 99.

    Redshift

    @Jager: He already made a similar comment about Fiorina (though about her face in that case); it’s just a matter of time.

    Though honestly, I think there are a lot of national Republicans who will get into hot water in the coming year with similar remarks. I expect it to be a secret weapon for the Dems — they spend so much time ensconced in the Bubble that they have no idea how incredibly offensive they’re being when they have to try to appeal to people who aren’t hard core Republicans.

  100. 100.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Brachiator: Daesh is a doomsday cult as well, just as much as the fundies. Have you missed the terrorism directed at abortion clinics?

  101. 101.

    bystander

    @scav: That’s something Trump has in common with Rosie O’Donnell. Remember “wing wong wing wong” on The View? With chopstick fingers?

    Seems last week’s terrorist attack on a women’s health clinic has been swept under the media rug. I’m still waiting for calls for Carly Fiorina and the Family Research Council to denounce the attack.

    Just saw a group on the Toddler’s show all complaining that President Obama has not said that he realizes everyone is very skeered and he is the Big Daddy. Every single one of them on the panel, an idiot.

  102. 102.

    Brachiator

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    Daesh is a doomsday cult as well, just as much as the fundies.

    I disagree with you about the significance of this and am not sure that there is much to support this view.

    Have you missed the terrorism directed at abortion clinics?

    No.

    And I used to live very, very near to some Planned Parenthood offices. I did not obsess over it, but I had a real concern tucked away that I might end up as the collateral damage of some fool.

  103. 103.

    Steeplejack (sky-high wi-fi)

    Just got connected aloft. Signed up half an hour ago, but we were in some bogus-sounding “dead zone.” Grr. Well, I knocked out the crossword in Hemispheres magazine—in ink. And I’ve got my gin ’n’ juice working.

    P.S. Over Kansas already. Airspeed 546 mph, altitude 37,003 feet.

  104. 104.

    Seanly

    I think Trump will show up to an NAACP meeting in blackface toting a watermelon. But it really goes off the rails when he starts talking.

  106. 106.

    bluefoot

    @jl: I completely agree with this. A friend of a friend of mine owns many guns of many types, always has at least four loaded weapons stashed around his house for easy access, and literally has boxes of ammunition stacked up in hallways, etc. Nobody (as far as I know) in his circle of friends etc has ever thought this at all strange. It freaks me out, though everyone tells me he’s harmless. He is, maybe not surprisingly, white.

  108. 108.

    WaterGirl

    @BillinGlendaleCA: I read that first as running out of gas this time. I did a double-take, then saw “gin” and remembered the story. Hoping that by the time I make it to the bottom of the thread that Steep will have checked in to say that the eagle has landed.

  109. 109.

    WaterGirl

    @MomSense: Are you still here?

    edit: as in I have something I want to ask you if you’re still here, not the rude version implying that I wish you weren’t still here.

  110. 110.

    sempronia

    @JGabriel:

    yeah, and that rule comes from John Donne or John Dryden, can never remember which one. Whichever John it was adopted Latin rules when he was translating Latin into English. Supposedly this is where the splitting-infinitives no-no comes from too – an imposition of the Latin rules onto English. There is no reason in English not to split infinitives.

  111. 111.

    seaboogie

    @Betty Cracker: Bonus points if he says the Asians make great cars but can’t drive for shit.

    I once had a cabbie go on a rant like that in Toronto (which has a large Asian population), claiming that the shape of their eyes gives Asians limited peripheral vision – which may be true for all I know – but the cabbie was wearing coke-bottle thick glasses. Which I found amusing.

  112. 112.

    Cpl. Cam

    @Brachiator: You’re wrong. Isis at least believes very strongly in a final war of armmegeddon between them and the forces of “Rome” at Dabiq.

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