.
Jeb Lund, at Rolling Stone, “GOP to LGBT: “OMG, You’re Still Here?“:
… While even the most principled candidate waffles eventually, we’ve been gifted a real brace of chickenshits in the GOP primary. And nothing’s thrown them into the spotlight quite like Republican Indiana Governor Mike Pence’s chickenshit volte-face on his own economic smear-the-queers bill. All that’s left is for you to wonder who has the most potential for blundering numbskullery, but, in a pinch, let’s say it’s Scott Walker…
Here’s the problem: Almost all the 2016 GOP presidential candidates ran onto the bridge to defend Pence and Indiana Republicans loud enough to be heard in Iowa — then Pence dynamited the thing, sending them crashing to the canyon floor like Wile E. Coyote after holding up two signs reading “I ♥ Jesus” and “Eep.” Each championed the Indiana bill not as discriminatory toward LGBT citizens, which it transparently was, but rather some last desperate bulwark between universally oppressed Christians and predatory gay customers backed up by big gay government. Pence fucked it up.
Certainly some of the conservative bodies down in the canyon are happy to remain at such a low level. Mike Huckabee doesn’t care. Ted Cruz, who has calculated that his only chance is somehow running as even more of a religious fundamentalist than a former preacher like Mike Huckabee, is just fine. Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum is fiiiiiiine… This good for them and immaterial for us, because none of them stands a fucking chance unless Foster Freiss starts dropping eight figure donations on Rick again. Meanwhile, everyone else is stuck holding the bag for Mike Pence, while he scampers off and a fellow traveler like Republican Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson knuckles under to Wal-Mart, pins his change of heart on his son’s activism and refuses to sign an RFRA like Indiana’s.
The guys left holding the bag are the ones to watch…
Which brings us to the really interesting candidate to watch, Scott Walker… He’s already fully or partially flip-flopped on a pathway to citizenship, political donations from gaming companies, abortion rights, ethanol mandates, right-to-work laws and Common Core. But while previously seeing no need for an RFRA law in Wisconsin because of “a healthy balance” between an anti-discrimination statute and defense-of-marriage legislation, a Walker spokesperson supported the Indiana RFRA. By Wednesday, the night before Pence’s signed, legally binding flip-flop, Walker was trying to downplay the backlash to the Indiana legislation as the product of “people who are chronically looking for ways to be upset about things instead of really looking at what it is.”…
Scott Walker is so regularly clueless that he’d tell voters that he’s gay if someone put that on the schedule. Then, if his aides put it on the schedule, he’d vote against himself…
NotMax
So he (wait for it) recalled his initial idiocy to bring out fresher, greater idiocy.
Omnes Omnibus
Walker can play his games in a mid-sized state – and, god knows, he has – but he will not stand up to top level oppo research. He isn’t that nimble.
jl
Funny summary of the GOP ‘deep bench’ for 2016. I guess Christie’s 2016 ambition has been floating dead in the water for so long that it is ready to sink now and he is not even worth mentioning anymore.
The local news items i heard and saw about Jeb!’s Silicon Valley trip did not emphasize his speech where he ‘seems’ to have shifted his stance. They emphasized his private meetings with Silicon Valley gazillionaires, after which they said they had convinced him to definitely oppose these religious discrimination bills, and that after these very meetings Jeb! avoided the press and scampered out of town without speaking to anyone. That is sure brave leaderering.
Jeb! may be the smart one compared to his brother, but he does not seem to be the straight talking or resolute one.
So, the local news media seemed to make it clear that Jeb! did not impress in this little test of leadership and that made me slightly happier today.
Villago Delenda Est
I’m enjoying Walker’s utter cluelessness about what it takes to win the general Presidential election. It’s the classic Rethug dilemma…you have to be a raving wingtard to be competitive for the nomination, then you have to tack back to the center at warp speed to stand the slightest chance in the general.
Tripod
I drove I-65 today, it was straight up Mad Max shit out there. What is it with these dumb GOP peckers? Spend some money you cheap, God bothering fucks. Two lanes between Louisville and Gary isn’t because Obama, it’s because you’re idiots.
Team Hillary needs to go in big in this state, If Obama can win it, she can, bring Barron Hill to DC and boot Pence back to wherever he slithered out from.
P.S. Spend some money on your cheap ass Amtrak train to Chicago, so it runs more than once a day, and not the long way around.
.
jl
I’ve noticed frequent mention of how homosexuality goes against Jesus, or Jesus’ teachings, or Jesus’ gospel. Which I find odd, because one place you find not one word about sexual orientation at all is in the Gospels. You hear about greed, anger, lying, cheating, cruelty, indifference, violence, exploitation of fellow humans, pride are bad. But not the gay.
New Testament talks about how the gay is a sin in the epistles, which Jesus’ disciples and apostles wrote, not Jesus. But to be honest, hard to say since the meanings of the terms they use are obscure, and may refer to all sorts of sexual exploitation for money. And in the most famous passage, Paul makes clear that it is just the same level of sin as all those other sin things like greed, anger, lying, cheating, cruelty, indifference, violence, exploitation of fellow humans, pride. And then Paul goes on to say that the sin of spiritual pride in Christians who think they are better than those other sinners is a worse sin.
So, makes me think that a lot of people who consider themselves good Christians, or savvy pundits who understand the importance of Christian tradition in this country, would not be able to tell the Bible from a dead tree stump. But whatever. As long as you believe in some comic book action movie Endtimes violence, it’s all good: that is ye real ole tymey religion.
Tripod
Correction: Baron Hill.
Violet
@jl:
I saw some article this week that mentioned Christie and included something like, “It seems Chris Christie still thinks he’s still got a chance at winning the Republican nomination. Ha ha ha ha.” Seriously. It was pretty much laughing at Christie’s presidential ambitions and it was in a more serious article. Caught me off guard. Wish I could find it to link.
Tripod
@efgoldman:
I did a butternut grand tour. Seven states in seven days. Indiana has the worst roads by an order of magnitude.
Major Major Major Major
@jl: I like to point to the story of Christ and the Centurion, where the bashful Roman asks him to heal his boyfriend from afar, and Jesus is like OK, he’s healed even though he’s miles away, and by the way, everybody present, this gay guy’s faith in me right here, that he thinks I can do that? That’s the sort of faith y’all should have. So good for you, gay Roman dude.
(Often translated as “slave” but the Greek word in question more or less means servant-boyfriend)
Original Lee
@Tripod: Co-sign.
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
“Hi, this is Closetus Maximus at the centurion barracks and I’d like to order-”
“No pizza for you! *click*“
Violet
@efgoldman: Yeah, but I really want a huge array of klowns up on the stage for the Republican primary debates.
Tree With Water
“people who are chronically looking for ways to be upset about things instead of really looking at what it is.”…
I suspect that was Walker’s lame attempt to echo Jeanne Kirpatrick’s pithy remark about domestic critics of U.S. foreign policy, i.e., it was a startlingly unintelligible attempt to shift blame for the republican party’s Indiana train wreck onto the same old “blame America first crowd”, i.e., Barack Obama and the democratic party. If that’s not it, it beats me what he’s talking about.
And talk about projection: “chronically looking for ways to be upset about things”. Today’s GOP lurches from one demented attack to the other without pausing to draw a breath, and it has for years. Remember color coded terrorist alerts? (Boo!!). Remember when we we’re all going to die in an ebola plague, until the first Wednesday in November 2014 when we no longer were? The GOP is a party of rule or ruin, run by hysterics. They’re also more dangerous than arsonists with matches and gasoline.
jl
@Major Major Major Major: I never heard that the centurian’s slave was also his boyfriend. I will try to check out that angle.
Only bad sexy time sin i think is mentioned in the gospels is adultery, which of course, Jesus forgives.
Oh, and I forgot about marrying after a divorce, except for a divorce because the spouse cheated. But no one does anything like that, it is so horrible. And Jesus explicitly condemned it, too. Can’t be clearer than that.
Funny that in so many of Jesus’ parables, street harlots end up going to heaven while cold nasty prideful right minded assholes end up left out. I wonder how these Xtianists can read them and not get a clue that they have truly lost the plot. But then, I guess they don’t read them, or at least are capable of reading them and not thinking about it at all.
But then,in the very ornate and complicated Xtianist approach to interpreting Jesus’ parables, the good people in the parables are always really the Xtianists themselves in deep disguise, if you put a fancy enough interpretation on everything, and have an elaborate system of hidden symbols and signifiers So that might be part of it too.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Nothing like the classics.
jl
The world’s largest stick insect, long thought extinct, is rediscovered living on a rock off the coast of Australia. A very sweet and touching tale.
Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/02/24/147367644/six-legged-giant-finds-secret-hideaway-hides-for-80-years
Mike J
@jl:
The book of Numbers requires a chemical abortion if a cheating wife becomes pregnant.
jl
@Mike J: I guess that is why chemical abortions are OK with the reactionary Christian forced birthers in certain circumstances. Right? I guess I missed that.
Mike J
@jl: It’s does call for a priest to administer it.
If we opened an abortion church in Indiana, could the state regulate it?
jl
@Mike J: Damn, someone will get on that idea I bet.
But me, when I visit, I am heading to the cannabis church.
Tree With Water
This trial was conducted in California, but today’s sentencing hearing is the first I’ve heard of it. I saw the headline and wondered, “what did the guy do online to get so badly jammed up?”. It turned out his behavior was sick and twisted, and the idiot was bound to be busted for it, and no two ways about it.. It’s a wonder he can tie his own shoes, much less read and write.
“In a first-of-its-kind prosecution, the convicted operator of a “revenge porn” website was sentenced to nearly 18 years in prison, officials announced Friday….Kevin Christopher Bollaert, 28, of San Diego, was found guilty in February on six counts of extortion and 21 counts of identity theft for running a website that posted nude photos of individuals, as well as identifying information, without their consent, according to Attorney General Kamala Harris”.
mclaren
@Tripod:
BZZZT! WRONG!
Obama has charisma and he’s a dynamite campaigner. Hillary has anti-charisma and she’s a fucking horrible campaigner. Team Hillary will need to put all their resources into explaining away Hillary’s non-stop flubs and mis-statements and gaffes.
At this juncture, the big question for 2016 is:
Will Hillary’s incompetent campaigning and total anti-charisma nevertheless be able to overcome the radioactive toxicity of the Bush name and Jeb’s dark cesspool Bush-crime-family past?
Time will tell…
Howard Beale IV
@Tree With Water: Note that this was a conviction/sentencing under state laws, not federal laws. The Feds are too busy trying to create terrorists out of whole cloth, rather than dealing with the crooks ensconced in our too-big-to-fail financial institutions who launder money for Mexican drug cartels, ad naseum….
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@jl:
Everything I’ve read says that it’s really a stretch to read it this way. The Greek word “pais” has a lot of possible meanings and is used numerous times in the Bible, almost all of which are unambiguously something other than a homosexual lover. So it’s textually possible but not at all likely unless you’re determined to interpret it thus.
sm*t cl*de
@jl:
Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/02/24/147367644/six-legged-giant-finds-secret-hideaway-hides-for-80-years
Three-year-old news but still worth celebrating.
Major Major Major Major
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: my recollection, this is years ago in linguistics class now, is that pais in conjunction with the roman-ness of the roman and the century in question gives strong evidence towards the (not boyfriend, more of a pederasty thing) angle.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Major Major Major Major: The century in question isn’t really going to differentiate the usage here from that elsewhere in the Bible; it’s a Greek word, so even when it’s used in the Old Testament, it dates from the Christian era, not when the Old Testament was written in Hebrew. And I’m really skeptical that it takes on a different meaning the centurion is Roman than it does when it is used with some other master in mind.
MattF
The Devil is making them do it. And also those libtards who have the gall to suggest that humility, compassion, and turning the other cheek has anything to do with anything. Whereever those devil-worshiping perverts got that idea, G-d only knows.
Keith G
@jl: Indeed.
A few months ago I remember several very serious talking heads opining that the GOP was so lucky to have this crop of governors and political leaders, this deep bench, who would lead a spirited debate on the direction of the Republican Party.
Speculative Fiction.
Zinsky
Thanks for the Rolling Stone article link – I plan to read the whole thing today. I keep saying that Scott Walker has absolutely no chance because he is such a dullard. The man is just downright fucking stupid. But then, I also thought there was no way George W. Bush could become president! Scott Walker doesn’t have a brother who is governor of a key swing state, does he?
Keith G
@Major Major Major Major: That story seems to indicate he left his slaves behind.
::rimshot::
Major Major Major Major
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: your point seems pretty well considered. Like I said, college, decades ago, one of multiple interpretations. Not a Hellenic expert alas, if it was latin we could spar.
Besides my story is better :D
BillinGlendaleCA
Moon’s looking a bit funny.
satby
BillinGlendaleCA beat me to it, but the eclipse is on, and for once it’s clear here and I can see it. It’s also almost dawn.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: Total Lunar Eclipse On Saturday Will Last For Just 5 Minutes
Major Major Major Major
@BillinGlendaleCA: I can’t believe my honeymoon has had two eclipses I can see.
Although with the air in Taipei being what it is I’m not sure “see” is the operative verb.
satby
@raven: then I have a chance before the sun rises!
raven
@satby: It got cloudy here.
satby
@raven: they’re doing a live blog on Slooh if you want to watch, or is it almost bakery time?
OzarkHillbilly
A tale of two killings: what happened when Idaho police shot a dog and a pregnant woman in one day
raven
@satby: Yep, we gone. The farmers market opens to day and I have to go hang at the Normal hardware store for while too!
satby
@raven: enjoy. Race is on here, Sun coming up in the east as the eclipse sinks behind my neighbors house in the west :(
But I saw most of it.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: I always hang at the Abnormal hardware store.
BillinGlendaleCA
@satby: Still got another hour until it’s total, hopefully it won’t be too low.
BillinGlendaleCA
Going, going…
OzarkHillbilly
Once again, Republicans line up against smaller governments: Arizona legislature passes ban on bans on plastic bags
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: The passed a law here at the state level denying local governments from banning plastic bags.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: They’re just trying to steal bidnes from CA where plastic bags are banned statewide.
BillinGlendaleCA
OMG, the moon is red! Thanks Obama.
satby
@BillinGlendaleCA: I was able to see it fade out, but it’s too low and the sun is up here. Darn.
Matt McIrvin
“…so we CAST that first mutha!” –Bloom County
BillinGlendaleCA
@satby: It’s almost total, I had to move the camera to avoid some powerlines. I’ll post pics after 5am PDT.
max
@efgoldman: Lots of places have bad roads, but only we have MA and RI drivers.
Tripod is right – Indiana has amazingly shitty roads.
max
[‘Welcome to Indiana – The Dead Tire State!’]
OzarkHillbilly
@Raven: If they haven’t done it yet, I am sure it is pending in our veto proof Republican majority state legislature.
@BillinGlendaleCA: MO is on the fast track to steal back all the jobs those thievin’ Kansas redlegs stole from us with their repeal of state income taxes, much higher sales taxes, much lower public school funding, and much much lower “Right to Work” for less and less wages.
Also they are hard at work to nullify the recently passed by overwhelming majority statewide referendum minimum wage hike, because…. They care.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: Ah, a workers paradise; at least that’s what Republicans call it.
max
@Major Major Major Major: your point seems pretty well considered. Like I said, college, decades ago, one of multiple interpretations. Not a Hellenic expert alas, if it was latin we could spar.
Hinging a story on one ambigious word used once in the Gospels is probably a bad idea.
max
[‘But thanks for reminding me of a book I have to buy.’]
OzarkHillbilly
@max: The MO state legislature in all their righteous anti-tax wisdom has decided that the best way to make up for the shortfall in DOT funding for road and bridge maintenance, is to reclassify 2/3 of the state roads as secondary roads so they would not be responsible for maintaining them. Problem solved.
Major Major Major Major
@max:
The difference being that I’m not trying to legislate anything. Big big biiiiiiiiiig difference.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: Not only did MI do that, but they started ripping up asphalt roads and turning them back into dirt roads. That’ll save some money!
OzarkHillbilly
How the mighty have fallen: From multi-million dollar deals in the Goldman Sachs boardroom to pimping her husband In Iowa restrooms, the story of Heidi Cruz.
(the jokes, they write themselves)
BillinGlendaleCA
Just about there.
Gone.
germy shoemangler
@OzarkHillbilly: She’ll be back to work pretty soon
BillinGlendaleCA
@germy shoemangler: And her hubby can get rid of that horrid Obamacare.
germy shoemangler
@BillinGlendaleCA: Meanwhile, are those pizza bigots millionaires yet? Last I heard, they had about 200,000.00 to go. Shouldn’t take more than a few hours.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: I fully expect that to be the end result.
Baud
I blame Jesus.
OzarkHillbilly
@germy shoemangler: There’s a sucker born every minute and every other minute somebody takes them for a ride.
Elizabelle
Wishing you all a wonderful weekend. Will check in with you later.
Missed the blood moon. Ahhh.
debbie
@Violet:
The competition for the Bombast Crown alone would be something to see.
Germy Shoemangler
@OzarkHillbilly: I hope they send a “thank you” card to the local reporter who was sent out to get reaction to the law. But I’m sure they believe it’s all the doings of baby Jesus. “We were barely scraping by, but I knew our prayers would be answered!”
All the people who sent donations makes me wonder if we’ll get JEB! or someone for our next POTUS
…. because they’re motivated, and they sure as hell won’t stay home on election day.
debbie
@BillinGlendaleCA:
And then get a terrible illness like Arizona’s Sheriff Mack.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle: I posted pics a bit upwards.
Gin & Tonic
@Germy Shoemangler: Somebody pointed out in a thread yesterday, that they now have interesting tax liabilities.
germy shoemangler
@Gin & Tonic: How does that work? They declare it as donations, I suppose. I wonder how much the gubmint will take? An outrage!
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Raven: Republicans love local governments so long as they do as they’re told.
OzarkHillbilly
@germy shoemangler: YEAH!!! They stole it fair and square! How dare the gov’t want a cut of the take!!
SectionH
@BillinGlendaleCA: Nice pix. Thanks for posting them. I’ve had a great view of the eclipse, but have no camera worth bothering to take photos like that.
sm*t cl*de
We have managed to chase away the sky dragon that was eating the moon, with all our drumming and fireworks. I don’t know why the neighbours are complaining. They should be grateful.
germy shoemangler
There’s a RW troll on another blog who posts under different names as well as names he steals from other commenters. Here’s his latest:
I wish the GOP Senators and our traitor Menendez would just STFU about Obama’s Iranian Treaty.
We just need to pass the Treaty so that we all can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.
He signed it “Nancy Pelosi”
Matt McIrvin
@efgoldman: Looks familiar:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/nov/18/philae-lander-comet-surface-detects-organic-molecules
Gin & Tonic
@germy shoemangler: From the extensive research I’ve done over the last five minutes, it appears the IRS hasn’t issued definitive guidelines. But it seems the payment processors (i.e. PayPal, WePay and the like) *are* in the habit of sending you a 1099 for the money they send you. Then it becomes your problem.
BillinGlendaleCA
@SectionH: You’re welcome. The air was pretty dry tonight, so I think they came out better than last year. I maxed out the zoom(x21) on my camera.
germy shoemangler
@Gin & Tonic: I hope after paying off the gubmint they tithe a good percentage to their church and local soup kitchen.
I know, I’m being silly.
ms_canadada
@BillinGlendaleCA: Thanks for the pics I slept through the ding-ding-ding, and missed it.
Chris
@jl:
No, they read them. They just have a fantastic ability to project themselves onto the good guys of every story, and their enemies onto the bad guys.
Most of the fundiegelicals I know love “Les Miserables,” too, as IIRC did Robert E. Lee’s army (“Lee’s Miserables”), and somehow manage to miss… well, everything… about it.
MattF
@BillinGlendaleCA: We had a total lunar eclipse over the neighborhood about a decade ago. I enjoyed explaining to people that a dragon was eating the moon and then ejecting it out the opposite end.
Patrick
@germy shoemangler:
Didn’t the Wall Street Journal have an article that said Israel had spied on the US and the negotiations of this treaty? And didn’t Israel then share their findings with the GOP in Congress? So what is there for the right-wingers to find out? They already know what’s in the bill.
Frankensteinbeck
@jl:
The thing about the centurion, the woman in the ‘begging for scraps’ parable, and the Samaritan is that they’re not Christians (technically, not Jews, but let’s take one point at a time). A Roman centurion is a pagan representative of an occupying power. A Samaritan is a despised non-Jewish minority. The woman, ditto. And Christ tells the apostles that the centurion believes in God’s power better than they do, the woman believes in God’s mercy better than they do, and the Samaritan doesn’t believe in God at all, but who cares because God prefers kindness to faith.
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Neither culture saw much difference between adult or child homosexual partners, but if it doesn’t imply a lover at all, then it’s extra moot.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
To the Roman centurion question, Fred Clark points out that the word used for the relationship is ambiguous even in the original Greek, but the message is not, and as usual the conservatives get the message as ass-backwards as Ted Cruz got “Green Eggs and Ham”:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/05/02/jesus-clobber-texts-and-the-centurions-companion/
Chris
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Thanks for this. Just for those who haven’t clicked, the key part –
I checked out one of those “Christian health care plans” that a cousin of mine was praising on Facebook a couple years back and it went like this; you pay for all of your expenses up front, and then you ask all the people in the network to send you money to help you pay for it, but in exchange you have to make all your medical records available and public so that they can verify for themselves that you’re not on birth control, you’ve never taken drugs, and you’re otherwise being totally consistent with the Christian lifestyle. In other words, even if you take it for granted that they’ll open their wallets to help you, that help is conditional on you living 100% within the rigidly codified rules of their lifestyles, and if not, you may not join the “insurance” plan or count on their help. You’re Unworthy.
The contrast with Jesus’ approach couldn’t be more striking.
And while I hesitate to tell other people that they’re doing their religion wrong… making your assistance conditional on other people not committing X, Y and Z sins seems to me to be completely failing at Christianity 101. Christian doctrine is crystal-clear that everybody is a sinner – “original sin” and all that – and a huge part of the point of Jesus coming down and dying for your sins is that even people who don’t “deserve” your help or their salvation can still get it.
jl
@Mnemosyne (tablet): @Chris:
Thanks Mnemosyne that was a very informative column by Clark. I’m going to remind myself to check his blog regularly.
drkrick
@germy shoemangler:
Tithe is on the gross, not the net. Those suits don’t pay for themselves.
drkrick
@Frankensteinbeck: A Samaritan is a despised non-Jewish minority … the Samaritan doesn’t believe in God at all …