The Whole Banana

No man in the whole world can change the truth. One can only look for the truth, find it, and serve it. The truth is in all places.

-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Sojourner, Jim Wallis  (all of it - cuz I couldn't pare it down and still do it justice):

Two years ago, Sojourners magazine released our February 2018 cover story, asking the question, “Is This a Bonhoeffer Moment?” This week, the board of directors of the International Bonhoeffer Society — an organization dedicated to research and scholarship on the life and writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer — issued an answer from their discernment.

Here is how the statement, obtained exclusively by Sojourners, begins:

As grateful recipients, and now custodians, of the theological, ethical, and political legacy of the German pastor-theologian and Nazi resister Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we believe all persons of faith and conscience should prayerfully consider whether our democracy can endure a second term under the presidency of Donald Trump. We believe it cannot. In 2017, we issued a statement expressing our grave concerns about the rise in hateful rhetoric and violence, the rise in deep divisions and distrust in our country, and the weakening of respectful public discourse ushered in by the election of Donald Trump. We articulated the need for Christians to engage in honest and courageous theological reflection in the face of the threat posed by his leadership. Over the last three years, the need for such discernment has grown more urgent.

The statement starts where any Christian statement in a time like this should — by evaluating a political regime by the standards of the gospel — how their governance affects those on the margins of society. They say:

A hallmark of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s legacy is his insistence that we see the great events of world history from “the view from below” (1942). That is, he urges us to see from the perspective of those who suffer. The policies of the Trump administration both threaten and disempower the most vulnerable members of our society, including people of color, members of the LGBTQ communities, Muslims and other religious minorities, immigrants, refugees, the poor, the marginally employed, and the unemployed. Moreover, Donald Trump has now taken ill-advised military action that raises the specter of war. One of the greatest lessons learned from the history of the Christian churches during Germany’s Third Reich is that it is crucial to respond to threats to human life, integrity, and community when they first appear, and to continue to challenge them.

The signers of this statement are not megachurch pastors, powerful leaders of religious institutions, or influential figures to whom the media typically pays attention. Rather they identify themselves, “As Bonhoeffer scholars, religious leaders, and confessing Christians,” who have “a special responsibility to name crises and discern responsible actions of resistance and healing.”

And this is the significant and sobering conclusion the Bonhoeffer Society leaders have reached:

We believe that one crucial step in this reckoning is ending Donald Trump’s presidency. We do not make this statement lightly. Bonhoeffer’s writings have been influential for Christians from a wide range of churches and political views, but we feel called to address the grave moral concerns we have outlined here that call every one of us to account. During this new year, debates and discussion will continue to be held concerning the best way for America to move forward. We believe that the United States has the human resources to provide capable and willing leaders, and that together a more just and respectful future can be forged. Acknowledging that all human community and leadership is a mixture of blessing and brokenness, health and dysfunction, we stand with all those who believe this country deserves and needs a constitutional and peaceful change in leadership. And we commit ourselves to listen to the call and obey the commands of Jesus as we enter the year 2020.

My position on the presidency of Donald Trump continues to be that the issues involved take us deeper than legitimate political differences or partisan divides. The issues that the corrupt and immoral leadership of the president has raised are deeply theological and Christological. They are not just differences in political ideology; rather, they are matters of blasphemy and heresy.

A example of the theological offenses committed by President Trump and his white evangelical supporters came at recent rally in Miami, which served as the official launch of “Evangelicals for Trump.”

At King Jesus International Ministry, several prosperity gospel pastors and leaders hosted the president for a political rally and prayed publicly on stage beforehand. After the prosperity pastors laid their hands on Trump in prayer and political support, the president of the United States openly said this: “I really do believe that God is on our side. I believe that. I believe that ... or there would have been no way we could have won, right? People said, how do you win? You don't have the media, you have so many things against you, and we win. So, there has to be something, has to be something."

Apparently, Trump does believe that. And, apparently, so do the “leaders” who were with Trump on stage or are part of the new evangelical coalition.

It is blasphemy for Donald Trump — or any political leader — to suggest that God is on his side or favors his candidacy or political party. That blasphemy must be named for what it is. To imply that Trump won his election because of divine intervention — as some of his court evangelicals have said — is to essentially bestow on Trump the divine right of kings, an idea that is antithetical to the principles upon which the United States was founded and to the gospel of Jesus Christ. It also shows again that Trump thinks of himself as a monarch, as so many of his words and actions prove.

Abraham Lincoln spoke words of wisdom that are as timely today as they have ever been: "Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right." Donald Trump and his supporters would like to believe that God is on his (or their) side. But every one of them must now ask, "Are we on God's side?” Are Trump’s statements and policies of racial bigotry and division on God’s side? Are his policies that dehumanize immigrants and separate migrant families at the border on God’s side? Is Trump’s lifelong demeaning, exploiting, and betrayal of women, including his own three wives, on God’s side?

How about his persistent and pathological lying, or using foreign leaders to assist his elections, or blocking other branches of government, thus undermining democracy? Are those behaviors all on God’s side? We must ask Trump’s uncritical “chaplains” whether they support Trump’s blasphemy of saying that God is on his side, or do they have the courage to engage in a public debate with other Christian leaders about the proper relationship of faith and politics in this presidential election campaign.

In the same Miami speech, Trump said: "This election is about the survival of our nation. With your help, your prayers, and your tireless effort to mobilize Christian communities across our land, on Nov. 3, 2020 ... We're going to win another monumental victory for faith and family, God and country, flag and freedom."

It is very alarming to hear Donald Trump speak of his re-election in the absolutist terms of national survival when so many of us firmly believe that his conduct as a candidate, and now as president, undermines the nation's survival as a representative democracy. It's also blasphemous to equate his victory in an election with a victory for God. God's reign and God's kingdom do not depend on the political fortunes of any human being, period.

A friend recently recommended to me a new book by Mary M. Solberg called A Church Undone: Documents from the German Christian Faith Movement 1932-1940. In its pages, Solberg has translated (in some cases for the first time) primary sources that reveal how pro-Nazi Protestants in Germany at the time — they called themselves “German Christians” — talked about Adolf Hitler and Nazism. In reviewing how these Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, who called themselves Christian, spoke of Hitler and his place in history, it was impossible to escape how it compares to some of the most servile white evangelical boosters for Donald Trump.

Here’s a sample of what pro-Nazi Protestants wrote at the time:

“God fashioned for himself a man … and gave him the greatest mission in our history: to pull the German people up out of despair and to restore their faith in life” (147); “… Adolf Hitler, with his faith in Germany, as the instrument of our God became the framer of German destiny and the liberator of our people from their spiritual misery and division” (197) …“in the person of the Führer we see the one God has sent, who sets Germany before the Lord of history ...” (346); “… in the pitch-black night of Christian church history, Hitler became like a wonderful transparency for our time, a window through which light fell upon the history of Christianity” (347); “…the Third Reich has grasped the German mission that God has set before us” (373)

Compare this with some of the things we routinely hear from right-wing white evangelical leaders about Donald Trump.

• David Lane, an evangelical leader who organizes pastors, told the Washington Post, “For whatever reason, in my opinion, God raised Donald Trump. Everything he said he’s going to do, he’s done from an evangelical standpoint. None of the other candidates in 2016 would have done what Donald Trump has done.”
• Matt Moore, a former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, explained it like this: “A lot of evangelicals believe the current culture war is a zero sum game and their side has to win … They see Trump as sort of a Moses figure who is leading them out of the wilderness.”
• Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said in a Fox News interview that he told Trump he was the “chosen one.”
• Franklin Graham has suggested Trump’s 2016 victory showed “God’s hand was at work.”
• Ralph Reed is set to release a book in April called For God and Country: The Christian Case for Trump. The book's original title was reportedly Render to God and Trump.
• Robert Jeffress, one of the fiercest and most unequivocal defenders of President Trump, said in 2016: “Mr. Trump, I believe you’re going to be the next president of the United States. And if that happens, it’s because God has a great purpose for you and for our nation.” Jeffress even went so far as to bring a 200-person choir and orchestra to Washington, D.C., to perform a hymn called “Make America Great Again.”

What we are facing now in America is a faith emergency, and that is how we must now respond to it. In their statement, the Bonhoeffer Society board offers the following theological lessons from Dietrich Bonhoeffer that resonate in these times:

• He spoke of God’s freedom and human freedom as “freedom for others” not “freedom from others.” (1932)
• He preached that the gospel is “the good news of the dawning of the new world, the new order … God’s order,” and therefore it is good news for the poor. (1932)
• He warned that leaders become “misleaders” when they are interested only in their own power and neglect their responsibilities to serve those whom they govern. (1933)
• He warned that when a government persecutes its minorities, it has ceased to govern legitimately. (1933)
• He reminded Christians that the church has an “unconditional obligation toward the victims of any societal order, even if they do not belong to the Christian community.” (1933)
• He wrote, “For peace must be dared. It is the great venture. … The hour is late. The world is choking with weapons. … The trumpets of war may blow tomorrow. For what are we waiting?” (1934)
• He believed that Jesus’s commands in the Gospels - like love your neighbor as you love yourself, welcome the stranger, and love your enemies - are to be obeyed in the social and political realm. He wrote: “From the human point of view there are countless possibilities of understanding and interpreting the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus knows only one possibility: simply go and obey.” (1936)
• He wrote, “Behold God become human … God loves human beings. …Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are. … What we find repulsive … namely, real human beings … this is for God the ground of unfathomable love.” (1941)
• He wrote from prison, “… one only learns to have faith by living in the full this-worldliness of life. ...then one takes seriously no longer one’s own sufferings but rather the suffering of God in the world. Then one stays awake with Christ in Gethsemane. And I think this is faith; this is [metanoia/repentance]. And this is how one becomes a human being, a Christian. ... How should one become arrogant over successes or shaken by one’s failures when one shares in God’s suffering in the life of this world?” (1944)
• He wrote from prison, “How do we go about being ‘religionless-worldly’ Christians, how can we be [ecclesia/church], those who are called out, without understanding ourselves religiously as privileged, but instead seeing ourselves as belonging wholly to the world?” (1944)

Read the full statement here.

Today's Tweet

Swarm the Senate 01-18-2020

TRUMP IS GUILTY.pic.twitter.com/yINJX55VOD

— Ryan Knight #Warren2020 🗽 (@ProudResister) January 18, 2020

The Root Principles

I'm a Capitalist because god's a Capitalist.

Capitalism is a close analog for how the world actually operates.

I have to establish a cycle of spending and profit and investment in order to stay alive.

I have to take in a quantity of calories sufficient to fuel the work I have to do as I go out and get my next meal.

That's the basic premise, and it works very well, but that's not all there is to it.

Unfortunately, way too any of us believe that is, in fact, all there is to it.

I'll forego most of the weird permutations and complicating factors, and just stick to me as an individual self-contained unit.

I think that part of my analogy makes perfect sense, but it lacks one vital consideration: Recognition of the absolute need for appropriate regulation - cuz god built regulation into everything.

Like I said before, I need fuel. Blood Sugar is a pretty basic fuel, and it's one thing I get plenty of from the food I eat. I have to have it so I can do the work.

So blood sugar is a mighty good thing, unless I get too much of it. So god gave me a pancreas to regulate my Blood Sugar levels. Without that regulation, I die.

I need a way to regulate my body temperature, so I have a hypothalamus.

I need to regulate my circadian rhythms, so I have a pineal gland.

I need to regulate my breathing and my heartbeat and my eye-blink and a whole metric shit-ton of other things so that all my different systems are functioning in a way that fits all the pieces together so I can go out and do the fucking work and sustain not only myself but everything else I need to sustain myself.

OK. So all of that micro thing leads in to all of this macro thing -

From Scott Galloway - Professor Of Marketing, NYU Stern:

Yet most successful capitalist systems acknowledge that without rule of law, empathy, and redistribution of income, we lose the script. The purpose of an economy is to build a robust middle class. We have, traditionally, elected leaders who cut the lower branches off trees to ensure other saplings get sunlight. There is less and less sunlight. It’s never been easier to become a billionaire, or harder to become a millionaire.

The uber-wealthy paid a tax rate of 70% in the fifties, 47% in the eighties, and 23% at present — a lower tax rate than the middle class. Taxes on the poor and middle class have largely stayed the same. We’ve exploded the debt so rich people pay less tax. If money is the transfer of work and time, we’ve decided our kids will need to work more in the future, and spend less time with their families, so wealthy people can pay lower taxes today. If that sounds immoral, trust your instincts.

It feels as if something has changed. Gerrymandering, money in politics, lack of a shared experience among Americans, social-media-fueled rage, and an idolatry of innovators have led to a faustian bargain: the innovators (lords) capture the majority of the gains, and the 99% (serfs) get an awesome phone, a $4,000 TV, great original scripted television, and Mandalorian action figures delivered within 24 hours. Everybody gets a taste of the innovators’ nose candy and can buy shares in Amazon. Everyone has heard about someone whose daughter works at Google and bought her parents a house.

The biggest losers of the decade are the unremarkables. Our society used to give remarkable opportunities to unremarkable kids and young adults. Some of the crowding out of unremarkable white males, including myself, is a good thing. More women are going to college, and remarkable kids from low-income neighborhoods get opportunities. But a middle-class kid who doesn’t learn to code Python or speak Mandarin can soon find she is not “tracking” and can’t catch up.

• I have intimate experience with being unremarkable:
• Graduated public high school with a 3.2 GPA and 1130 SAT (85%).
• Admitted, on appeal, to UCLA, academic probation 4 times, subject to dismissal twice, 2.27 GPA. 
• Landed a job at Morgan Stanley in Fixed Income Group. (How? I interview well and lied about my grades.)
• Admitted to UC Berkeley Haas (yes, with a 2.27 undergrad GPA).
• Have started several businesses since graduation; most have gone sideways or failed.

My wins were businesses that sold for between $28 million (Prophet) and $160 million (L2). The firm that was sold for $160 million, my VCs didn’t want to sell, as they felt there was an opportunity to go “bigger.” This is emblematic of our lottery / Hunger Games economy, where the gestalt is to go big or die trying. This creates a small class of uber-winners and many more people who wake up at 40 with no economic security or prospects. It’s “go big or go home.” Deaths of despair are skyrocketing, and the innovation ecosystem feeds it.

We have to understand - and never fucking forget - that once in a while we have to step in and rescue Capitalism from the Capitalists.

Here It Comes

I don't remember this kind of pomp and circumstance with the Clinton impeachment.

And I don't remember this level of fuckery:

Dana Milbank, WaPo:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his team — the Senate sergeant-at-arms and Rules Committee make the decisions, but McConnell (R-Ky.) is the driving force behind the restrictions, people involved tell me — further decreed that journalists would be confined during the entire trial to roped-off pens, forbidden from approaching senators in Capitol corridors.

They also required journalists to clear a newly installed metal detector before entering the media seats above the chamber. Why? Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) suggested to PBS’s Lisa Desjardins, The Post’s Paul Kane and others that journalists might bug the chamber with surveillance equipment.

The GOP leadership likewise rejected a request from the Standing Committee of Correspondents to allow journalists to bring laptops or silenced phones into the chamber so they could write (the House allows this) or to allow cameras in to capture the history of the moment (the House allowed this during the impeachment process).

- and -

It’s obvious what the restrictions are about, because they mirror McConnell’s general approach to the trial. He had signed on to a proposal to dismiss the House impeachment articles without a trial. He has resisted allowing documentary or testimonial evidence to surface during the trial. And now he’s doing everything in his power to shield senators from reporters — and from the public.

Because still and TV cameras aren’t allowed in the chamber, the only images will be C-SPAN-style footage from fixed TV cameras operated by government employees. The public won’t be able to see which senators are sleeping, talking or missing entirely.

McConnell’s team also decided to claw back seats typically reserved for the general public, to “augment” seating for their own friends and family; they’ll have at least 134 such seats. They offered no such augmentation for the media, which has 107 seats, only about 20 of which provide a full view of the Senate floor.

Nor can the senators be observed outside the chamber. At a private luncheon of Republican senators this week, Blunt showed where the media would be penned in and reportedly “joked” that the senators could now avoid reporters.

- and the kicker:

It’s a curious attempt at fortress-building after House Republicans noisily objected to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) taking depositions in his “basement bunker.” They can’t quash the trial itself, but McConnell’s restrictions will go a long way toward restricting what the American public sees of this historic moment.

The Big Four

Biden:
Obama redux, and a bigger heaping-er helping of "Repubs will come around if we just give 'em everything they want..."

This time for sure

Bernie:

"It's gonna take a revolution!"

Pete:

"We need new blood in Washington"

Warren:

"I'll put political pressure on McConnell, but I'll use executive action if necessary."

I don't know what will work. I don't know who will win it.

But it has to be very clear that every one of 'em would make a better POTUS than what we've got now, even if they took it as a part-time gig on weekends and holidays.

And I know that every one of the Dems can beat 45* like a dirty rug if we THE VOTERS don't get stoopid.

If we show up, we win. We've proved that 3 years in a row now. We win when we show up.

SO SHOW UP OR SHUT UP

Into The Mix

Another reminder who we're dealing with:

BBC World News:

A Russian journalist who campaigned against government corruption and suffered brain damage from an attack in 2008, has died aged 55. 

Mikhail Beketov, founder and editor of the Khimki newspaper, campaigned heavily against the construction of a highway through the Khimki forest near Moscow.

Mr Beketov died on Monday from cardiac arrest, said his lawyer Stalina Gurevich.

His attackers were never identified.

Mr Beketov wrote several articles criticising the planned destruction of the Khimki forest to make way for the Moscow-Saint Petersburg motorway.

He also raised suspicions that local officials were profiting from the project.

Mr Beketov continued campaigning, even after his dog was left dead on his doorstep and his car was set on fire.

Soon after, on November 13th 2008, Mr Beketov was attacked outside his home by two men using an iron bar. They smashed his hands and legs, and fractured his skull.

Mr Beketov's right leg had to be amputated, he lost most of the fingers on his left hand and he was left severely brain-damaged. The attack also left him unable to speak.

Ms Gurevich said Mr Beketov never fully recovered.

"The culprits have not been found and now we can honestly say these people were murderers," said Yevgenia Chirikova, an activist who campaigned alongside Mr Beketov.

Several other journalists and environmentalists who campaigned against the project were also attacked.

In 2010, Mr Beketov was found guilty of libelling the local mayor but was subsequently acquitted.

Some 54 journalists have been killed in Russia since 1992, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The CPJ states that Russia has the ninth worst record for solving murders against journalists.

Mr Beketov, who said he had received threats to stop writing, was given a government print media award in 2011.

What A Revoltin' Development

So now, there's just no way for anyone to be unclear as to what 45* meant when he told Zelensky that Marie Yovanovich would be "going through some things".

Business Insider:

• Newly-released texts show discussions by Rudy Giuliani's associate Lev Parnas that talk about stalking former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
• The texts, one of which refers to Yovanovitch as 'that b---h', were made public by the House Intelligence Committee as part of a cache of evidence linking Parnas to President Donald Trump's efforts to put pressure on Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.
• Yovanovitch, who testified during President Donald Trump's impeachment inquiry, was abruptly recalled from her position in May after what she described as a smear campaign.
• Upon the release of the documents, Yovanovitch demanded an investigation to look into the extent of surveillance that was conducted by Parnas and his associates.

Newly-published text exchanges involving Rudy Giuliani's associate Lev Parnas show him discussing efforts to stalk former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, and refer to her bluntly as 'that b---h'.

The conversations were made public by the House Intelligence Committee, along with letters and handwritten notes that illustrate Parnas' role in President Donald Trump's pressure campaign in Ukraine.

Yovanovitch, who testified during President Donald Trump's impeachment inquiry, was abruptly recalled from her position in May after she what she characterized as a smear campaign.

The conversations back up Yovanovitch's testimony, showing Parnas and his associates plotting to "get rid" of her.

Parnas texted his associate Robert Hyde, a Republican running for Congress in Connecticut, in which Hyde called Yovanovitch a "b---h" for being anti-Trump.

- and -

Hyde later sent several texts suggesting he was keeping tabs on Yovanovitch in Ukraine, adding, "They are willing to help if we/you would like a price."

Afterward, Hyde wrote, "Guess you can do anything in the Ukraine with money."

At the end of March, Hyde texted Parnas updating him on Yovanovitch's location and the state of her security.

He followed up saying how they "have a person inside."

Robert F Hyde is just another GOP Rat-Fucker - who, of course, 45* has never met, doesn't remember, is off doing something maybe for Rudy, maybe not, I'm not sure if Rudy is blah blah fucking blah.

Daily Beast:

Before Tuesday, he was best known as a little-known, scandal-scarred Republican congressional candidate who tweeted an obscene joke at Kamala Harris. But new documents from the House Intelligence Committee have put a completely different kind of spotlight on Robert F. Hyde, the Trump donor who appears to have tracked U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s movements in Ukraine.

In WhatsApp messages exchanged in March 2019 with Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, who provided the committee with the files, Hyde and Parnas discussed Yovanovitch’s location. Hyde, a retired Marine, appeared to have associates in Ukraine monitoring her.

A Divided America

...that isn't really.

1. Legalize weed
2. Corruption in politics
3. Family leave
4. Predatory lending
5. Red Flag gun laws
6. Ending wars
7. Regulating Pharma
8. Keep abortion legal

Weirdly, the constant pimping of Both Sides is a manifestation of the Divide-n-Conquer approach of the would-be plutocrats.

They throw the contradiction shit at us all the time, and it's no wonder we're all a little - or a lot - confused.

"You citizens are divided. You can't agree on anything because your politicians are all alike and they agree on everything."

What seems even weirder (but isn't) is that there's a grain of truth in that. Which is what good little propagandists can do.

If people are at the point where they start to get hip to your tricks, you don't just stop trying to trick them - your paycheck depends on keeping your benefactors in power, so you fucking well better come up with some better tricks.

And the best tricks have to be aimed at people who're suspicious that you've been tricking them, so you can get another shot at convincing them it wasn't you at all, but those other guys, or that they're not being as smart and sophisticated as they should be, or whatever.

Or (and this has been the basic pitch for quite a while)  "Hey, that's how the game is played - they all do it - you're too nice a person to get mixed up in such a dirty thing - you should just stay out of it... ... ..."

In case you're tempted to fall back into it, just remember that the GOP are the ones who want to:

• Eliminate your healthcare coverage and protections for pre-existing conditions
• Make cuts in Medicare and Social Security
• Privatize public schools and make education the exclusive province of a ruling class
• Criminalize abortion
• Bomb Iran
• Block climate change action
• Continue stripping away EPA regulations
• and
• and
• and

Everything that benefits us - everything that empowers people to do more than subsist, suffer and then die - all of it is supported by the Dems and opposed by the GOP.

Today's Tweet

New products!

With the launch of Gwyneth Paltrow's vagina smelling candle,
I am rolling out a limited time offer of old deflated Bicycle tubes that I assume smell like Trump's junk.

DM me for details.

— Jason (@sparky347v) January 11, 2020

Today's Pix

click

The "Trial"

If 45*'s not guilty, we'd see Bolton and Pompeo and Mulvaney and dozens of other witnesses standing in line waiting to testify, and ready to tell all.

And the courier services in DC would be busting their humps delivering mountains of exculpatory documentation.

To be fair, the simple fact that those witnesses and that documentary evidence aren't forthcoming does not necessarily mean he's guilty, but c'mon.

And his claim that he's just trying to protect the integrity of the office of the presidency in the best interests of future presidents and for the good of the nation?

cuz we all know:

George Conway & Neal Katyal in WaPo:

How can one conduct a “trial” without knowing this evidence? As lawyers, we have never heard of a trial without witnesses. Both past impeachment trials of presidents featured witnesses — including 41 in the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. And the lack of witnesses is particularly striking given the shell game Trump and his Republican colleagues have played. In the House, Trump prevented executive branch employees from testifying, but said some of them would be able to testify in the Senate. Now that we are in the Senate, Republicans say these folks should have testified in the House. Lewis Carroll would be pleased.

Today's Tweet

A leak in the stovepipe.

Martha: This is a completely filled to capacity stadium in Toledo tonight

*camera switches... oops pic.twitter.com/7KhQCJpgr4

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) January 10, 2020

Today's Tweet

Cult45

Trump supporter was asked a question by reporter in Toledo, Ohio: “What is something that you believe the president has done well?” Response? Wait for it... pic.twitter.com/2ktNSbUi5S

— Max Howroute▫️ (@howroute) January 10, 2020

Today's GIF

Rich man's war - poor man's fight.

Today's Quote

One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war propaganda - all the screaming and lies and hatred - comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

-- George Orwell

This New Thing

...isn't new at all.

The Doomed
A Perfect Circle

Behold a new Christ
Behold the same old horde
Gather at the altering
New beginning, new word

And the word was death
And the word was without light
The new beatitude
"Good luck, you're on your own"

Blessed are the fornicates
May we bend down to be their whores
Blessed are the rich
May we labor, deliver them more

Blessed are the envious
Bless the slothful, the wrathful, the vain
Blessed are the gluttonous
May they feast us to famine and war

What of the pious, the pure of heart, the peaceful?
What of the meek, the mourning, and the merciful?
All doomed
All doomed

Behold a new Christ
Behold the same old horde
Gather at the altering
New beginning, new word

And the word was death
And the word was without light
The new beatitude: "Good luck"

What of the pious, the pure of heart, the peaceful?
What of the meek, the mourning, and the merciful?
What of the righteous? What of the charitable?
What of the truthful, the dutiful, the decent?

Source: LyricFind

A Perfect Circle