Sleepy Time Thought: The Bleak Future of the GOP

______________________________

I know that people worry about the midterms and what’d happen if the GOP takes the Senate. For those people, I have the following message:

Calm down!

You have to remember a very important thing… time isn’t on the side of Republicans… at all. Republicans don’t fare well in presidential elections, and, eventually, one of the conservative judges on the Supreme Court is going to retire/die. We’d almost certainly have a Democrat in the White House to select the new Justice. Even a centre-left moderate would be far to the left of where the current conservative wing of the Court now is. It’d completely screw the GOP for a very long time once the right loses the power of the Court to enforce their insane voter suppression schemes. The more people that get to vote, the better Democrats do. That’s pretty much a political law and that’s why Republicans work so hard to keep people away from the polls. Add to that the fact that the Court can also undo extreme gerrymandering; the GOP’s entire electoral strategy collapses. They’d either have to attract minority voters, which would utterly alienate their indisputably racist base, or they’d have to settle for becoming a regional White Power party and hope that the Libertarian movement could attract enough suckers to form a coalition party.

Good luck with that.

30 September 2014

Justin Rosario

Proud To Be A Filthy Liberal Scum

http://proudtobeafilthyliberalscum.com/2014/09/30/sleepy-time-thought-future-gop-edition/

Advertisement

13 July 2014. A Point to Ponder… The Hobby Lobby Case Made “Evangelicals” a Class of Superior Citizens… Do You Want That?

******

Here’s the Christ that I believe in… David Green worships “Jayzuss”, the false idol of the American Radical Sectarians

______________________________

I took John Marshall Harlan’s famous dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson and changed the word “colour” to “religion”. It comes out as a ringing denunciation of the judicial travesty just committed by the Roberts Court:

In view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is colour-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his [religion] when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.

That is, everyone is equal before the law, regardless of their beliefs… that’s fundamental in the USA. However, Hobby Lobby ripped that to shreds. It says that people can weasel out of the law by blubbering about “freedom of religion”. We should fight such evil with all our talents and strength. For instance, people who belong to the “peace churches” must pay federal income taxes, even though much of that money goes to warmongering, which is against their religious beliefs. In like manner, their young men are liable to the draft (with special exemptions against combatant duty or with the option of doing vital civilian service). The peace churches didn’t do what the Greens did… they didn’t use shyster lawyers to wrangle an “exemption” from the law; they worked with the government to fulfil their obligations within the law.

You see, the US Constitution guarantees the rights of PEOPLE, not corporations. Under the US Constitution, Hobby Lobby as a corporation has no rights, for it isn’t a person… it’s only a legal construct fabricated to do business. It doesn’t go bump in the night. David Green certainly has a right to constitutionally protected religious expression and belief, but Hobby Lobby doesn’t, as it isn’t alive, it doesn’t have a soul, and so, it can’t have a religious faith. Hobby Lobby doesn’t attend mass… it doesn’t go to liturgy… it can’t go to services… it can’t go to shul on Shabbos or to the masjid for Friday prayers. To assert that Hobby Lobby has an exemption against a law because of religious faith is absurd, Kafkaesque, and downright weird.

It’s one thing to allow religious groups to “discriminate” in the ordination of their ministers… that’s an internal affair; it only affects members of that faith. However, many, if not most, of David Green’s employees don’t share his faith, so, for him to withhold a benefit on the grounds that it offends his conscience makes him an obstructer of the law… that means that he belongs in the slam. No one is limiting Mr Green’s free exercise of his religion. However, Mr Green is obstructing the free exercise rights of his employees, which means that he shits on the US Constitution and expects applause for so doing. What’s even shoddier is that he cloaks his nastiness in religious vesture, which makes it even worse. Let me reiterate, Mr Green, by vetoing contraceptives for his employees, engages in an illegal pressure tactic to ram his beliefs down his employees’ throats, and he expects the full backing of the state in so doing. That makes “Evangelicals” a privileged class, a situation that Mr Justice Harlan found repugnant. We should take equal outrage… no one should have the right to ram their personal religious notions down another’s throat… full stop.

I’m a believer… no doubt on that score. However, I have no right to ram my beliefs down another’s throat. That’s what David Green is doing. He deserves a Cossack horsewhip across his face for such evil. He brings shame and obloquy on all believers. He can rest easy… his money buys him “respect” and the legal muscle to silence his opponents. Nevertheless, it doesn’t make it right… Our Lord Christ said, Woe those who call good “evil” and evil “good”… don’t forget, the David Greens of His time tacked Him up to a cross for that…

BMD

12 July 2014. My Comment in Another Forum on the Hobby Lobby Abomination

THIS is David Green’s attitude to the rights of others… only his count, dontcha know! “I’ve got mine and you have NO say at all!” Any questions?

______________________________

Corporations aren’t people… ergo, they can’t have religious beliefs. Even the slow learners know that. Therefore, the decision is crank from the git-go. It’s a dodge by the owners to use religion as an excuse to impose their values on others. It’s clear… you may hold whatever belief that you wish, but you may not use the police power of the state to impose it on others. That goes for the Catholic Church, too… many of its employees aren’t Catholics, so, they can’t impose Catholic teachings on them via birth-control restrictions. By the way, I’m not a secularist, I’m an Orthodox Christian… we do allow artificial birth control via oikonomia.

The stipulation is clear… no one may use the law to push their religion or to coerce others to follow this-or-that tenet of their faith. That’s the long and the short of it.

******

Let’s give you a little detail that wasn’t in the original comment. The owner of Hobby Lobby, David Green, is a religious nutter (an anti-Christian Pentecostalist) who attributes his success to “my faith in God” (he’s one of the “elect” because he’s “successful”… that idea has bedevilled the Prods ever since the time of Calvin). He takes half of his pre-tax profits and uses it to finance crackbrained “Evangelical” projects such as the so-called “Liberty University” (it’s neither free nor a university in the best sense of the word). If you can avoid it, DON’T patronise Hobby Lobby. Burwell v. Hobby Lobby is bad law… it’s a new Plessy v. Ferguson… it deserves the same fate. It creates a “separate but (in)equal” situation… the rich can use “religious belief” as a cudgel to avoid whatever law they wish to. No real Christian supports this decision… reflect on that… Christ would NOT have used such a tactic, no siree!

BMD

2 July 2014. Some Takes on the Hobby Lobby Brouhaha

______________________________

A friend wrote this:

This country has truly gone MAD. We have gone down the rabbit hole, through the looking-glass. The solution is get health insurance OUT of employers’ hands… INDIVIDUAL Healthcare coverage. YOU decide what coverage you want, it has nothing to do with your employer, except to arrange for payroll deductions… like they do with parking permits, bus passes, etc. No “in network”, “out of network”, etc. Those who want coverage for contraception, abortion, other reproductive care, etc., could arrange for it. Your employer would have NO role/decision in what you select. It’s YOUR body, YOUR decision.

The Forward wrote this (the full article is here):

Earlier this month, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) cornered Mat Staver of the US Liberty Council into admitting that a photographer could object to photographing a Jewish wedding on “religious liberty” grounds. In May, Houston TX Pastor Betty Riggle admitted under questioning by City Councilwoman Ellen Cohen that stores could turn away Jews on religious reasons as well. Two separate incidents… both instigated by Jewish leaders at legislative hearings… but with the same result. The “slippery slope” of Hobby Lobby includes discrimination against Jews. Both of these processes were Talmudic in tone. In each case, the conservative Christian activist protested that she or he wasn’t talking about Jews… in each case, the Jewish interlocutor insisted that they could equally apply the logic applied to gays and women to Jews, could they not? Finally, the conservative activists caved. In the words of the aptly named Pastor Riggle, “No. No, I’m not saying… yes, I’m saying that, but that isn’t the issue that we’re talking about”.

…

In Hobby Lobby, the court decided that closely held corporations are “persons” for the purposes of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. This means that corporations, like human beings, may have religious beliefs that the government must respect. To many of us, this seems patently absurd. As a lower court wrote, corporations “do not pray, worship, observe sacraments, or take other religiously motivated actions”. Yet, Justice Alito proceeded along highly Talmudic… even Pharisaic… lines. He noted that corporations are “persons” in other laws, like the Dictionary Act. He called a corporation “simply a form of organisation used by human beings to achieve desired ends”. He observed that religious non-profit organisations are already granted religious exemptions… so, why not for-profit businesses?

I can see where this is going. Hobby Lobby’s owners are extremist “Evangelicals”… the next thing is that they’ll demand an abstinence declaration from their employees based on “religious liberty”. The “Evangelicals” are in no way Traditional Christians, they have little (if anything) in common with us, and this case points that up. Look at what the Church teaches… V A Chaplin reiterated it here… and look at what the Hobby Lobby pukes demand. There’s nothing that we hold in common with these godless and god-denying sectarians (they deny the sacraments, the liturgy, the whole canon of Holy Scripture, the priesthood, and Tserkovnost, after all). This legal case is just another illustration of that. Single-payer is the way to go, as Vermont showed with Dr Dynasaur. All the parents in Vermont love it. These Affluent Effluent greedsters simply wish to treat their employees like marionettes, and we shouldn’t allow them to do that. Their so-called “Religious Liberty” is a licence for religious persecution… I’ll say that loud n’ proud. I’m on the other side of the barricades from the theomachistic “Evangelicals” and I’m handin’ out the AKs, RPGs, flamethrowers, coshes, and axe handles out back… hey, we lefties know how to use ‘em too. Have a care… there be evil people out there… and most of ‘em dress up in “religious vesture”… the ones with the biggest smiles are the biggest assholes. Keep your wits about you…

BMD