The Church Rears Up

Teach a Baptist to read, and you get a Methodist.
Send a Methodist to high school, and you get an Episcopalian.
Put an Episcopalian through Seminary, and you get an atheist, which means you've come full circle.

Because religious doctrine is an after-market accessory. Nobody's delivered with a factory-installed belief in spooks and pixies.

But anyway - at least the Methodists have been on the right side of history for a while.

Sam Hodges, UMC.org:

More than 600 United Methodist clergy and laity say they are bringing church law charges against U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a fellow United Methodist, over a zero tolerance U.S. immigration policy — a policy that includes separating children from parents apprehended for crossing into the U.S. illegally.

However, an authority on church history and polity said he’s unaware of a complaint against a lay person ever moving past the district level.

The group claimed in a June 18 statement that Sessions, a member of a Mobile, Alabama, church, violated Paragraph 2702.3 of the denomination’s Book of Discipline.

Specifically, the group accuses him of child abuse in reference to separating young children from their parents and holding them in mass incarceration facilities; immorality; racial discrimination and “dissemination of doctrines contrary to the established standards of doctrines” of The United Methodist Church.

All are categories listed in 2702.3 as chargeable offenses for a professing member of a local church.
- and -

The Book of Discipline allows for a church trial and even expulsion of a lay member, but the first step in a long process would be for the member’s pastor and district superintendent to solve the complaint through “pastoral steps,” Lawrence said.

“I’m not aware of any circumstance in the 50-year history of The United Methodist Church when a complaint against a lay person moved beyond the stage of its resolution by a district superintendent or a pastor,” he added.

Wright said the group’s goal in filing charges was to prompt such discussions.

“I hope his pastor can have a good conversation with him and come to a good resolution that helps him reclaim his values that many of us feel he’s violated as a Methodist,” Wright said.

He added: “I would look upon his being taken out of the denomination or leaving as a tragedy. That’s not what I would want from this.”

Wright said the complaint has been emailed to Sessions’ home church in Alabama, and to a Northern Virginia church that Wright said he understands Sessions regularly attends.

Sessions’ pastor at the Alabama church did not return calls.

Today's GIF

Today's Pix

Trae Crowder

"...death rays that don't work on white people."

Today's Tweet - The Sequel

Shit gets worse

U.S Border Patrol ran over an O’odham man today on the Tohono O’odham Nation.
This is an example of the fear O’odham have to face everyday because BP ravage our communities & are careless with our lives. pic.twitter.com/ZEbVlIe5cl

— Indivisible Tohono (@Indivisible_TO) June 15, 2018

 

The Tohono O'odham Nation, or Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation, is a major reservation located in southern Arizona, encompassing portions of Pima County, Pinal County, and -  wait for it - Maricopa County.

Would anybody with a living thinking brain be at all surprised if we find out Joe Arpaio had a hand in formulating this bullshit policy?

Fuck It - Let's Drown Some Worms

That's why I always wear my golf shoes when I go fishing.

Today's GIF

Weirdness is a time-honored American tradition.

I Fucking Love The InterToobz

This just might be the best example of Poe's Law ever - which is very high praise considering we're stuck here in the time of Cult45.

"I hate to see children separated from their parents like this, but we can hardly blame Adolf," Eva Braun, 1939 pic.twitter.com/uAgS6x7uEq

— The Daily Edge (@TheDailyEdge) June 17, 2018

 Poe's law

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to navigationJump to search

Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture stating that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the parodied views.^[1][2][3]

One Small Bit

...of good news (a guy can hope anyway).

The Pluralist:

Breitbart's online traffic declined in May for a seventh consecutive month, marking a rapid fall from grace for the one-time right-wing darling.

Politico reported the traffic numbers Saturday, citing comScore. Over the past year, Breitbart's readership has nearly halved, from 12.1 million unique users in May 2017 to just 6.4 million last month.

Conservative commentator Matt Lewis told Politico that Bannon's departure is indeed part of the reason for Breitbart's decline.

And the big take-away:

“Nationalism and populism always requires a charismatic leader,” he said. “The ideas are not persuasive enough to work without a cult of personality.”

(Sweeping Generalization Alert)

Rubes follow. That's what they do - they're joiners and they're followers. As adamant as they can sound when denouncing everything they construe as political, eg: "the stoopid gubmint"; and as much as they insist on being perceived as fiercely independent-minded, they vote for leaders who do their thinking for them - who can provide them bumper-stickers and t-shirts and simple 10-word answers for every gnarly complicated problem.

Because thinking can be very difficult. And a political discussion can spoil the groove, and ruin your whole picnic.

So they're really not all that dumb, but they can be intellectually lazy in the extreme.

They just want to spend their free time playing with their toys &/or hangin' with their buds &/or just straight-up loafing.

And none of that is necessarily a bad thing. The problem is that you can get real good at not thinking.

Today's Tweet

"...an excuse not to think, for people who did not want to think anyway."

"The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway." - They Thought They Were Free. The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayerhttps://t.co/2l7l0bQV1e@crookedmedia

— driftglass (@Mr_Electrico) June 18, 2018

 

The Shit Show

It's emerging now that Stephen Miller (to the surprise of absolutely no one) is the guy behind the Zero Tolerance bullshit being "enforced" at our borders, giving rise to a new generation of Koncentration Kamp Kids.

There's some value to the humanitarian appeals, and the fully justified scolding of chickenshit Republicans who won't even say they're somehow mildly bothered by some of this.

The problem there is that we're trying to appeal to a sense of honor that doesn't exist in the GOP anymore. 

And still, it's hard to get with the thought that they're really so callous as to ignore the plight of children altogether.

So I think I'm left with this: 

Republican policy causes pain. Not so much because they enjoy watching people suffer (although there's an element of that), but because they intend to demonstrate just how bad they're willing to make it for all of us if we step out of line and resist their Daddy State plans.

This shit has to be stopped and we do that by putting constant pressure on legislators everywhere, and then by showing up and voting these assholes out of office come November.

Today's Today

Enjoy your day, fellas.

Black Sites For Babies

First they came for the libruls, but I wasn't a liberal...
Then they came for the moderate Republicans, but I wasn't...
etc
etc
etc
Then - black sites for babies. Concentration camps for kids.  What the fuck, America?

The Professional Left Podcast

Throw a coupla bucks in the tip jar, subscribe at Patreon, or grab some swag - support the efforts of independent media.

Or do it the old-fashioned way. Send a check - or nice bottle of bourbon - or some good yarn for Blue Gal to make shawls for cancer patients:

The Professional Left Podcast

PO Box 9133

Springfield, IL 62791-9133

Today's Tweet

Saluting with a little twist 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/46AExT1OBc

— Maggie Resists Trump (@Stop_Trump20) June 16, 2018

A Judge Who Gets It

I have to think it's unlikely because all kinds of weird shit can happen for people who're really close to the top of the power pyramid, but there's a real probability that Paul Manfort will spend the rest of his life in prison, starting today.

WaPo:

A federal judge ordered Paul Manafort to jail Friday over charges he tampered with witnesses while out on bail — a major blow for President Trump’s former campaign chairman as he awaits trial on federal conspiracy and money-laundering charges next month.

“You have abused the trust placed in you six months ago,’’ U.S. District Court judge Amy Berman Jackson told Manafort. “The government motion will be granted and the defendant will be detained.”

The judge said sending Manafort to a cell was “an extraordinarily difficult decision,” but added his conduct left her little choice, because he had allegedly contacted witnesses in the case in an effort to get them to lie to investigators.

“This is not middle school. I can’t take away his cell phone,” she said. “If I tell him not to call 56 witnesses, will he call the 57th?” She said she should not have to draft a court order spelling out the entire criminal code for him to avoid violations.

“This hearing is not about politics. It is not about the conduct of the office of special counsel. It is about the defendant’s conduct,” Jackson said. “I’m concerned you seem to treat these proceedings as another marketing exercise.”

And we still have a "president" who's going to keep pretending for the rubes. It's not that he doesn't get it. And it's not that he's pretending not to get it. He intentionally creates a different "reality", and the rubes pretend it's the way things are.

Trump added that Manafort “worked for me for a very short period of time.”