Category Archives: news

Dirty Deeds Coming Home to Roost, or, What’s Happening with those Evangelical Pool Boy Chasing Devils?

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I’ve decided to just embrace that fact that because I have blogged a lot about the bigotry and hypocrisy of so-called Christians in general, and one anti-gay grifter in particular, that it is okay to just embrace the fact that as long as this story is in the news, people are going to be clicking on a lot of those old posts.

I laughed out loud when I saw this headline, because (particularly if you read in aloud with a lot of dread in your voice) it sums up how I’ve been feeling: And Now For Your Daily Update On Jerry Falwell’s Dick. This article was from earlier in the week, but I love his summary of the scandal:

Sometimes when a man and a woman love each other, and the man is the president of an evangelical Christian clown college and is friends with the pussy-grabbing authoritarian president of America, they get married and then they meet a 20-year-old pool boy named “Giancarlo” and they are like “Oh hey, Giancarlo, is that the Holy Bible in your pocket, or is it your boner?” and he is like “Oh it’s just my boner” and they are like “Good, we really aren’t into that Holy Bible shit when we aren’t profiting financially from it” and the pool boy is like “cool” and they are like “cool” and so they start having a sexual affair with the pool boy for years and years, where the lady does nakeds with the pool boy while the clown college Christian leader husband plays shadows puppets with his weener and watches in the corner, and they end up giving the pool boy SWEET business deals that kinda sorta look like payoffs, and fly him all over the country in their jet, and maybe there’s a similar arrangement with the hot jacked personal trainer, but we’re not sure yet, but anyway then everybody finds out and the man has to quit being a clown college Christian leader, WOMP WOMP.

The story quotes heavily from this interview: Falwell sought to cut financial ties to pool attendant before Trump’s campaign – Giancarlo Granda, who met Jerry Falwell Jr. and his wife at a Miami Beach hotel, offers new details on his relationship with the couple.

Note that Granda’s account in the Politico interview appears to change the timeline of events I and others have put together. But also note that some of it contradicts that photo of Falwell introducing Granda to Donald Trump at the rally at Liberty University 10 months after when Granda claims Falwell tried to cut all ties with him. On the other hand, if what the former pool boy says there is true, it’s possible that Falwell was trying to get out of the deal without actually coughing up the promised money, and since Granda wanted the promised money, while Mrs Falwell apparently didn’t want to give up the Pool Boy… well, it sounds like it was messy for months.

And, as many people have expected, a couple more guys are coming forward with their stories: ‘She was the aggressor’: Former Liberty student alleges sexual encounter with Becki Falwell – A former student at the evangelical university opens up about a 2008 incident with the wife of the school’s president. Warning! This story has a lot of creepy details about multiple instances of Mrs Falwell coming onto (and much more) a young man (in his 20s) who at the time was a bandmate of her son. That sentence alone may have already put too many bad images in your head. Sorry…

There are a few aspects of this story that I do want to comment. The young man was a student at Liberty University at the time, and he was a member of a band that had recruited the Falwell’s oldest son, Trey (who was also a student at the university, though a few years younger than they) as their lead guitarist. One of the stories the young man talks about he and Trey hanging out at the Falwell’s home drinking whiskey and jamming, and because he’d been drinking he stayed in the guest room, where things later happened.

I want to point out, however, that this is a violation of the Liberty University Code of Conduct: “Liberty University’s code of conduct, known as the Liberty Way, prohibits the consumption of alcohol for all students living on or off campus. This policy applies not only to those under the age of 21, but also those who are 21 and older… This policy not only applies for students during school, but also while they are on breaks or trips.”

At the time of this incident, Trey Falwell was both a student at the University and underage. The other young man was 22 at the time, but was still a student at the university, yet it seems that they were partaking of whiskey at the Falwells’ home with the knowledge of at least Mrs. Falwell… who was an employee of the University at the time, as well.

I mean, we shouldn’t be surprised at the hypocrisy and double standards are in play, but… well…

The young man who has now came forward says that part of the reason he kept the story to himself for over 10 years is because his mother has always admired the late Jerry Falwell, Sr, and that the young man himself didn’t want to detract from all the supposed good that Falwell, Sr accomplished.

Falwell, Sr accomplished no good in his entire life. He was a liar, a grifter, a proven-in-court chiseler, who promoted racial and anti-gay hate for many decades. He was one of the leaders of an evangelical conference in the mid-70s that met for the express purpose of trying to figure out how to get donations flowing in again like they used to be able to by preaching against racial de-segregation and women’s rights. He was one of the people who made the cynical decision to change their doctrine regarding abortion (which before hadn’t been exactly pro-choice, but had been this complicated ‘the old Testament says clearly that unborn babies are not yet people, so this prove Catholics aren’t real Christians because they insist they are, but we’re not saying the we approve of abortion, but…’) and to make Abortion and The Gays their new focus to see if that would fire up people to send in donations. He then formed the so-called Moral Majority and dragged the Evangelicals into the Republican base and amped up the bigotry on all levels.

The gospel was a tool Falwell, Sr distorted to manipulate people into giving him money and influence. It shouldn’t surprise us that his son is a grifter and abuser, too.

Falwell, Jr has tried to wiggle out of this scandal by throwing all the blame on his wife and claiming the Pool Boy was blackmailing him. Mrs Falwell has joined in, saying it was all her fault for being weak and sinning and bringing the Pool Boy into their lives. That doesn’t really Falwell sharing nudes and such of his wife with all sorts of people who didn’t want to see them, as well as the Pool Boy, Personal Trainer, and apparently several others. It doesn’t explain grooming college students as additional sex toys. It might possibly explain some of the multi-million dollar deals, but doesn’t really explain sending the jet for the Pool Boy again and again after the deal, nor enthusiastically introducing him to Trump (which we have not just photos, but Fox News video of).

Sorry, the Falwells are both predators and jerks. A pox upon them!

And now, I’m going to let Stephen Colbert have the final word:

Stephen Colbert Unloads on Jerry Falwell’s Cuck Affair, Shares Photo of Trump Shaking Hands with Pool Boy – “Jerry Falwell Jr.’s Link To Trump Is Far More Troubling Than His Sex Scandal”:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Weekend Update 8/29/2020: The virus and the fascism are the enemy, not the masks

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This is going to be a slightly different Weekend Update than usual. There is a lot of news that I came across after I finished this week’s Friday Five post on Thursday night, but as is often the case, a lot of it is either salacious or outrage-inducing of otherwise bad news. It’s also all over the map with various topics and sometimes the scatter shot of “and that’s f-ed up too!” can multiply the outrage. So I’m going to focus on only a couple of topics, and a certain amount of it is good, scientific information that you can actually use.

I’ll start with that. If you don’t want to be outraged, don’t read past the bold “Meanwhile” below.

COVID-19 Is Transmitted Through Aerosols. We Have Enough Evidence, Now It Is Time to Act.

When it comes to COVID-19, the evidence overwhelmingly supports aerosol transmission, and there are no strong arguments against it. For example, contact tracing has found that much COVID-19 transmission occurs in close proximity, but that many people who share the same home with an infected person do not get the disease. To understand why, it is useful to use cigarette or vaping smoke (which is also an aerosol) as an analog. Imagine sharing a home with a smoker: if you stood close to the smoker while talking, you would inhale a great deal of smoke. Replace the smoke with virus-containing aerosols, which behave very similarly, and the impact is similar: the closer you are to someone releasing virus-carrying aerosols, the more likely you are to breathe in larger amounts of virus. We know from detailed, rigorous studies that when individuals talk in close proximity, aerosols dominate transmission and droplets are nearly negligible.

If you are standing on the other side of the room, you would inhale significantly less smoke. But in a poorly ventilated room, the smoke will accumulate, and people in the room may end up inhaling a lot of smoke over time. Talking, and especially singing and shouting increase aerosol exhalation by factors of 10 and 50, respectively. Indeed, we are finding that outbreaks often occur when people gather in crowded, insufficiently ventilated indoor spaces, such as singing at karaoke parties, cheering at clubs, having conversations in bars, and exercising in gyms. Superspreading events, where one person infects many, occur almost exclusively in indoor locations and are driving the pandemic. These observations are easily explained by aerosols, and are very difficult or impossible to explain by droplets or fomites.
—Jose-Luis Jimeez, Professor of Chemistry and a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado-Boulde

The killer phrase is here: “many people who share the same home with an infected person do not get the disease.” (emphasis added)

There’s more: We Need to Talk About Ventilation – How is it that six months into a respiratory pandemic, we are still doing so little to mitigate airborne transmission?

And: Hygiene Theater Is a Huge Waste of Time – People are power scrubbing their way to a false sense of security.

Basically, masks are a big help if you have to go out and be around people, washing your hands frequently is also good, but ventilation is more important that scrubbing every inanimate object in sight. Dr. Jimenez sums it up as: Avoid Crowding, Indoors, low Ventilation, Close proximity, long Duration, Unmasked, Talking/singing/Yelling.

So, don’t go to bars, don’t hang out in church, don’t got to concerts, don’t go to theatres… and wear the mask correctly!

Meanwhile…

More Portlanders Share Experiences of Being Snatched—and Detained—by Federal Police.

Feds in Portland Now Unrestrained in Removing Journalists at Protests.

‘Horrifying Situation’: ACLU Condemns Arrest Of Protesters By Officers In Unmarked Vehicles.

If you don’t understand that this is full fascism, direct attacks on the fundamental idea of freedom, I don’t know what to say.

Pharisee says being held to his own standards is unfair

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Apparently I’m writing about Jerry Falwell, Jr some more…

Joe Jervis at JoeMyGod.Com has a really good collection of stories summing up yesterday’s churn on this issue, as Falwell said he was resigning, then retracted it while issuing a legal threat to the university trustees, and then supposedly resigned for real this time. Maybe: Jerry Falwell Jr. Re-Resigns From Liberty University.

While talking to Fox News in the middle of all that churn, at the point when he was still threatening to sue the board he said: “The board put me on leave, took away my duties as prez, and that’s not permitted by my contract. And they put me on leave because of pressure from self-righteous people.”

Pressure from self-righteous people, which he thinks is unfair. Really? This from a man who has campaigned to keep queer people from getting various civil rights. A man who has campaigned to prevent trans people from getting medical care, among other things. Has campaigned for the rights of medical personnel to refuse to treat queer people if they claim a religious objection. He has publicly condemned abortion, pre-marital sex among straight people—has even called for laws criminalizing not just gay people having sex, but also straight people having sex with people they aren’t married to be reinstated.

And he’s complaining about pressure from self-righteous people?

Wow! Talk about having your head shoved so far up your own hypocrisy you can lick your own tonsils!

I should explain the title of this post. The Pharisees were an ancient Jewish sect, distinguished by strict observance of the traditional and written law, and commonly held to have pretensions to superior sanctity. They appear in the Gospels on several occasions, usually being in opposition to Jesus. In many modern Christian circles that word Pharisee is often used to refer to any self-righteous person or hypocrite.

I already pointed out in yesterday’s post that Falwell’s claim that he wasn’t a willing participant in the sex going on between his wife and Giancarlo Granda is contradicted by Falwell’s actions during Donald Trumps visit to Liberty University in 2016. You don’t enthusiastically introduce your blackmailer to the candidate for President that you’ve just endorsed… I’m glad other people are pointing this out. I’m also glad people are pointing out that Falwell sent naughty pictures of his wife to Personal Trainer (the guy I have often called the Other Pool Boy)… and accidentally cc-ed a ton of staff members at the university. Again, not something one would do if they weren’t a willing participant in the sexual shenanigans.

I hope, I really hope, that some state tax examiners are going to look into these transfers of million-dollar-properties to the Pool Boy and the Personal Trainer. Because I can’t believe those don’t violate some laws governing how non-profits handle their assets. And if the anti-guy, anti-feminist, pro-racial segregations non-profit entity takes a big financial hit because of it, I won’t be complaining.

Tuesday Tidbits 8/25/2020: Acceptable deaths continue while stock market soars

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“Dear Seniors who Support Trump, we get it, it's a hard call. On one hand he's underfunding your Social Security, jeopardizing your mailed prescriptions, and eradicating your Medicare. But on the other hand he did also advocate kill you in a pandemic to keep the Dow strong.”
It’s a lose-lose situation for everyone but him…

Trump Wants to Do the 1 Thing That Could Kill Social Security.

Trump promises permanent cut to payroll tax funding Social Security and Medicare if he’s reelected.

More than 176,000 in US have died of COVID-19; 57% of Republicans polled say that is ‘acceptable.

The stock market isn’t the success story Trump thinks it is – A surging Nasdaq and Dow doesn’t indicate a healthy economy.

“If Black Lives Matter bothers you because it doesn't say All Lives Matter, but Blue Lives Matter doesn't bother you, then what really bothers you is the word BLACK.”
Besides, there are no such things as Blue Lives… being a cop is a career choice, being Black is not.

We need Black Lives Matter. The police who shot Jacob Blake prove it.

‘Black Lives Matter’ messages washed away after protest groups clash over Allendale Civil War statue.

“This machine kills fascists”
The postal service may be our last hope against the fascist takeover of America.

Rep. Katie Porter Grills Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on Basic Facts About the Post Office.

Don’t reconnect mailing machines, Postal Service tells plants. Tacoma does it anyway.

How to Save the Post Office.

“Btw 'systemic racism' doesn't mean 'lots of racists in the system.' It means that even if there were *zero* 'racists' present, the system would still disproportionately harm people of certain races. It's baffling that lots of educated folks don't understand this concept.”
Important to know this concept.

Systemic racism has consequences for all life in cities.

The lack of Black leaders in New England college sports is ‘what institutional and systemic racism look like’.

How does systemic racism affect Black Americans’ access to capital?

“So when Trump decided to sabotage the USPS to slow down mail delivery, did he just decide that the millions of Americans who rely on the Post Office for the timely delivery of medication and drugs were a necessary sacrifice?”
Trump cares for no one but himself.

Postal Service delays of prescription drugs put thousands of American lives at risk – “Without it, people are going to die,” said a retired nurse in Michigan whose pain medication arrived late.

82-year-old Houston-area man left without heart medicine for a week due to USPS delays.

US Postal Service delays force Department of Veterans Affairs to shift prescription delivery methods.

Oh you cuckolded devil—or, the Evangelical Power Couple and the Pool Boy

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Let me begin by saying, I told you so.

Business partner of Falwells says affair with evangelical power couple spanned seven years.

Giancarlo Granda says his sexual relationship with the Falwells began when he was 20. He says he had sex with Becki Falwell while Jerry Falwell Jr, head of Liberty University and a staunch supporter of President Trump, looked on…

Giancarlo Granda, who says he had a years-long sexual relationship with the Falwells that began when he was 20, said he now believes the Falwells preyed upon him. “Whether it was immaturity, naïveté, instability, or a combination thereof, it was this ‘mindset’ that the Falwells likely detected in deciding that I was the ideal target for their sexual escapades,” he said.

The Falwells have a particular kink, and it involves younger, hunky men having sex with Mrs Falwell while Mr Falwell watches and takes pictures. I called it!

In previous posts I’ve talked about how the relationship seemed to begin when Granda was 20 years old, working as a poolboy at a very expensive Miami hotel the Falwells were vacationing at. He was a young man working his way through school, they were an extremely wealthy couple staying in one of the most expensive suites, were known for tipping lavishly, and owned their own jet.

And we know the discovery process of a lawsuit filed by the real estate mogul father of one of the former pool boy’s classmates, who helped the Falwell’s find a suitable property, that as the relationship continued, the Falwells spent more than $1.8 million buying a youth hostel, refurbishing it, and gifted half ownership to the pool boy.

And then, of course, there is the second pool boy…

I’ve said before that hot-wifing, threeways, and cuckold fantasies are all perfectly healthy sexual things that a committed couple who are into ethical non-monogamy should be able to engage in without shame. The problem comes in when millions of dollars of money extracted from two tax exempt non-profits are used to finance particularly elaborate versions of those sexual relationships. That means tax payers subsidized this. And those two non-profits are actively engaged in trying to criminalize queer relationship, and restrict the sexual freedoms of straight people, too. And then there is that apparent fact that Falwell endorsed Trump on the eve of the Iowa Caucuses, effectively swinging the evangelical vote to the pussy grabber in chief, to pay Trump back for helping make a blackmailer who had photos of the sexual shenanigans go away.

Falwell is now trying to blame it all on his wife, Jerry Falwell Jr. Says His Wife Had an Affair With the Miami Pool Boy They Befriended and the pool boy blackmailing him. However, we already know Falwell bought the 1.8 million dollar business for the pool boy long before the blackmail. We also know from the Trump’s ex-lawyer who brokered the deal that it wasn’t the pool boy who attempted the blackmail. We also know that Falwell sent his jet to pick up the pool boy and bring him to Virginia for a week of “play” and actually introduced the pool boy to Donald Trump more than a month after the blackmailer had been paid off. And we know that Falwell accidentally texted photos of his wife in fetish gear to the staff of Liberty U, and he later admitted the pictures were meant for the guy I call The Other Pool Boy.

Yeah, this lie isn’t going to hold up, Jerry.

Weekend Update 8/22/2020: At least justice for some…

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“It appears we have some breaking news.” “Good lord, what the fuck now?”
“It appears we have some breaking news.” “Good lord, what the fuck now?”
After making an effort to shake up the this week’s Friday Five with a new section called “This Week in I Need a Break from Bad News” I’m skipping over a lot of news I read last night and this morning that might normally go into one of my round up of news that broke after I queued the Friday Five or updates to stories I’m commented on before. Which doesn’t mean that there is no bad news below, just that I’ve tried to keep things focused a bit. And some of the following is actually good news! So, let’s begin!

A couple of updates on my least favorite evangelical hypocrit:

50 pastors who graduated from Liberty University demand Falwell be ‘permanently removed’, though I prefer the headline Joe Jervis of JoeMyGod.com gave it: “50 Liberty U Pastors: Permanently Shitcan Jerry Falwell.” I’ve written way too much about that jerk. He’s a grifter, a fraud, he’s used the so-called Christian University as his personal piggy bank to finance multi-million dollar gifts the hunky young men in exchange for sexual escapades involving his wife, and he repaid Donald Trump for helping him get rid of a blackmailer by endorsing Trump at a crucial stage of the 2016 election and effectively delivering the evangelical vote to the Pussy Grabber in Chief. I’m glad that he’s finally paying some price, but I don’t have much hope he’ll face real consequences: Liberty Board confirms Falwell’s leave, Prevo as acting president. Again, I prefer Joe Jervis’ headline: “Liberty U Asks God To Decide On Shitcanning Falwell.” Except we all know that most of the decision-makers haven’t actually talked to god in decades. If ever…

Moving on!

Golden State Killer Joseph DeAngelo sentenced to life in prison . Not just life in prison, 11 consecutive life in prison without parole, plus additional sentence. He pled guilty to over 50 rapes and 13 murders, so doesn’t seem like an overly harsh sentence. In case you don’t recognize him, the Golden State killer was a former police officer who committed at least 13 murders, more than 50 rapes, and over 120 burglaries in California between 1973 and 1986. He operated in different parts of the state (different areas he lived in) from 1973 until 1986. It took years for police agencies to figure out the that Visalia Ransacker, East Area Rapist, and the Original Night Stalker were one and the same. It wasn’t until April, 2018, that police were able to identify the killer thanks in part to DNA evidence.

One of the reasons I have followed this case is I have a friend who lived in one of the areas where he operated back at the time who has talked about how scary it was to hear and read those stories at the time.

Anyway, I really do hope that he dies in prison.

Tropical Storms Laura, Marco form potential double threat to Gulf Coast: What we know. As I said on twitter, who was it that had double hurricanes on their Apocalypse 2020 Bingo Card? If they storms continue to track as predicted, both will be crossing the Gulf of Mexico at the same time, something that has never happened since we started keeping storm records in 1851. We’ve had two hurricanes stike the U.S. within a day of each other before (back in 1933), but they didn’t both strike the Gulf coast.

Batten down the hatches and stay safe!

Now, here are some court cases that have all gone right:

Court orders Donald Trump to pay legal fees in Stormy Daniels suit.

Haters Lose Chick-Fil-A Lawsuit – Texas appeals court rejects ‘Save Chick-fil-a’ lawsuit, hands San Antonio a victory.

Republicans Lose Court Battle Against Michigan Lockdown – Michigan Court of Appeals upholds Gov. Whitmer’s emergency actions.

Speaking of Govenor Whitmer: It’s Shark Week, MF’ers: The Internet Loves Gretchen Whitmer’s Sassy Mouth. There’s even not a t-shirt!

Finally

Guess how I’ll be spending the rest of my weekend: ‘Lucifer’ Season 5 Instantly Rockets To #1 On Netflix?

We have the ticket, now get out and vote!

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Before I talk about anything, please watch this video — Flashback to when Kamala Harris ordered same-sex marriage licenses to be issued after Prop 8 was overturned:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Matt Baum talks about the times Kamala Harris fought to bring Marriage Equality back to California after Prop 8, including what it was like to be standing with the two guys who were trying to get the license that you see in the video above: The Two Times I Watched Kamala Harris Make History.

I have previously said that sometimes you have to vote for the candidate that won’t make things worse. And in this year’s presidential election your choice is to either vote for Biden/Harris or you let the fascist win. It’s just math at this point. A vote for a third-party candidate is a vote for Trump.

When I was explaining this one a few months ago to someone, I included the metaphor that, because society is big and you’ll never find a single candidate who a majority agrees with 100%, you have to think of it as transit. You get on the bus that is going in the right direction (or as close to the right direction as feasible). Someone who thought he was being clever came back with “What happens if neither bus is going in the right direction, hmmmm?” I’ll say then what I tried to say to him: not enabling fascist is never the wrong direction.

My first choice back when the debates were happening was Warren. By the time my state’s Democratic Primary happened, Warren had withdrawn. As had my second, third, and fourth choices. Warren was still technically on the ballot, because they had been printed early, but because she had already withdrawn, she would not be awarded any delegates even if she won our state. A vote for Warren at that point wouldn’t send a message to anyone. So I voted for my fifth choice, Bernie Sanders.

Before Bernie suspended his campaign a month later, for sixth, seventh, and eighth, choices had already dropped out (a couple of those dropped out long before my state’s primary, actually). So now the nominee is my ninth choice, Joe Biden.

But once he became the presumptive nominee, he became my candidate.

In my personal ranking for president, I had Kamala above Joe. But once we were in the Veep-stakes, where choices aren’t limited to other folks who sought the nomination, once the list of people being vetted was known, Harris wasn’t my first choice for Vice President, either. And my ranking was based on the question, “Of the people being considered, which one do I think is most equipped to take over the office of President, if goddess forbid, something happens to Joe—and keep us moving away from the alt-right mess and toward a more progressive future.”

I know people have their lists of all the policies Biden or Harris have supported that are “wrong” or “too timid,” et cetera. But whoever your favorite candidate is, I guarantee if you name them and give me a few minutes, I can come up with just as many things that that person is wrong about, et cetera. No one is going to match any single vote 100%.

Anyway, the choice has been made. The ticket has to be formalized at the virtual convention, yet, but we have the ticket. Now it’s our job to vote. It’s our job to register if we aren’t already registered, to confirm that we are registered even if we are certain we are, to plan to vote, and to vote all the way down the ballot. Swapping out the president isn’t going to be sufficient to get us out of the mess.

And the best way you can push the country further to the left than you think Biden or Harris can, is to elect progressive candidates in all the down-ballot offices. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

I’ve going to close by quoting from Matt Baum’s article I linked above.

Kamala Harris isn’t 100% there on every issue that’s important to me. She never will be. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get over how she denied medical care to trans inmates.

But I also saw first-hand that at a crucial moment, she was ready to ensure that justice would be done.

Tuesday Tidbits 8/11/2020: It’s a death cult

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“You'd think that the BUT MUH FREEDOMS crowd would be shitting bricks over heavily-armed government goos disappearing people into unmarked vans and them them god knows where, I guess it's only tyranny when a black president tries to give you healthcare.”
Sad but true

Oregon Sues Federal Agencies For Grabbing Up Protesters Off The Streets.

Facts about voting: Trump can't ban mail-in voting through executive order. States run elections. Absentee & mail-in voting are the same thing. Only 143 criminal conviction for mail ballot fraud over 20 years. 16 top Trump officials voted by mail.
Facts

Trump Lied for Five Uninterrupted Minutes About Mail-in Voting During Virus Briefing – After being teed-up by a question from the president’s favorite propaganda network, Trump gave an incoherent, lie-filled answer that seemingly went on for days.

CNN Anchor Drags Trump Campaign Adviser: ‘You’re Just Saying a Bunch of Crap!’.

CNN Anchor Roasts Trump Campaign Flack For Lying About Her Husband: “Don’t You Mess With My Family”.

I say "Black Lives Matter" because "All" Did n't cover Black when they said "all men are created equal." I say "Black Lives Matter" because "all" didn't cover black when they said "with liberty and justice for all." I say "Black Lives Matter" because they're still struggling with the definition of "all."
Truth!

Black Lives Matter movement sparks ‘collective awakening’ on marijuana policies – As racial justice protests swept the nation in June and July, some states and cities changed their cannabis regulations.

Black Lives Matter protesters beaten by pro-police group at ‘Blue’ rally – Video of BLM demonstrator being stabbed with an American flag at the rally goes viral.

Self-proclaimed KKK leader who plowed into a group of Black Lives Matter protesters found guilty – Authorities found KKK memorabilia, patches and guns in his truck.

“Let he who HASN'T raw-dogged a porn star just after the birth of his fifth child with his third wife cast the first stone.”
That means a whole lot of us can start throwing stones…

After Delivering Invocation at KKK Event, Rep. Will Dismukes resigns from position as Alabama pastor.

KKK-Loving Alabama State Rep and Pastor Arrested For Allegedly Forgetting Thou Shalt Not Steal.

Attorney: Dismukes has not considered resigning in wake of theft charge.

Jared Kushner encouraged the president to let the pandemic rage because he thought it would only kill people in blue states.
This is a crime against humanity…

Trump killed plans for a national testing strategy, because COVID-19 ‘hit blue states hardest’.

The Deaths of 150,000 Americans Are on Trump’s Hands – Trump and his lackeys are guilty of criminal negligence, if not far worse. Who will hold them accountable?.

Donald Trump, Jared Kushner Guilty of Mass Murder of Americans.

Trump’s presidency is a death cult – The fact that Trump and his supporters want us to tolerate preventable deaths from COVID reveals their true nature.

“'our' government did almost nothing to protect us while a pandemic was spreading and our economy crumbled--but mobilized everywhere overnight to beat us in the streets and militarize our cities. if their priorities weren't clear to you before, they should be crystal clear now.”
Priorities

More Portlanders Share Experiences of Being Snatched—and Detained—by Federal Police.

Freelance journalists and live streamers face crowd control munitions, arrests to cover Portland Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

Weekend Update 8/9/2020: It’s not booze, it’s just black water(?)

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“It appears we have some breaking news.” “Good lord, what the fuck now?”
“It appears we have some breaking news.” “Good lord, what the fuck now?”
Once more it is time for a post in which I share news stories that either didn’t make the cut for this week’s Friday Five, or broke after I composed said Friday Five post, or provide updated information to a story I’ve linked in a previous post or otherwise feel compelled on the weekend to rant talk about. As usual, this is going to have a more commentary than I usually make in a Friday Five post—this time, a lot more.

To begin with, I hadn’t planned to say any more about the most recent Jerry Falwell, Jr. scandal than to include the link in the last Friday Five to the story about him calling in drunk to a conservative radio show to try to explain away the scandal. I thought, of all the corrupt, greedy, grifting, manipulating things Falwell has done over the last several years, that this was fairly minor. Except nearly every day all week, whenever I logged into WordPress, I saw that a lot of people were coming in to click on a few of the previous posts where I went into details about his scandals and why they matter. This always happens when news stories about one of Falwell’s scandals are published. Half the time the way I find out about a new scandal is that I see lots of people clicking on my blog post Oh, you dirty devil—or The preacher and the pool boy… or my other post The Dark Domain, or a queer ex-evangelical looks at an agent of intolerance and his scandalous heirs, which prompts me to google news stories with Falwell’s name in the headline to find out what he’s done this time.

But I didn’t expect to read this on Saturday: Jerry Falwell Jr to take leave of absence after racy photo.

So Falwell was having a big party on his yacht. That’s right, the guy who leads a super conservative religious university and a massive evangelical ministry also owns a large yacht. And not only does he pose in a slightly racy photo—with his pants unzipped, holding a glass of what looks like maybe bourbon or wine, and his arm around a woman who is not his wife wearing unzipped daisy duke shorts and what appears to be a wig—and post said picture to his own Instagram, but also one of his son’s friends posts a video on Instagram or walking around the party where everyone is dressed kind or weird and trashy, lot of people are holding what appear to be cigarettes, lots holding drinks. Falwell, Jr appears in part of the video apparently drunkenly hanging on yet another young woman and slurring his speech.

Both posts are taken down within a day or so, and Falwell issues several explanations:

  • It’s supposedly a “Trailer Park Boys” themed party, which I guess is a thing? So everyone is supposed to look kind of like characters from this comedy series, and they’re all holding candy cigarettes, not real ones. Oh, and no one was holding drinks, those glasses were just full of black water. Whatever that is.
  • The unnamed woman’s pants were unzipped because she’s pregnant and couldn’t get the zipper up. By some bizarre coincidence, Falwell was wearing a very old pair of jeans that he no long fits into, and also couldn’t get his zipper up, and thought that in solidarity he should pull up his shirt and push his belly out while standing beside her for a picture.
  • He’s on vacation, not at the University, so it doesn’t matter.

Liberty University, founded by Falwell’s racist, homophobic, misogynist televangelist father, is extremely conservative with an even more extremely strict set of codes of conduct for students and faculty. No smoking (tobacco, marijuana, or anything else), no drinking, no premarital sex, no being gay (you not only can get expelled for being caught having gay sex, if you admit your gay but swear you’ve never actually had sex you’re still in trouble), no interracial dating… the list goes on and on. Students can’t date without permission from the school administration, for goodness sake!

So that’s why these photos are scandalous. Now, I don’t know how they are more scandalous (from the point of view of the University’s evangelical base) than the earlier photos of Falwell, his wife, son, and daughter-in-law at a big Miami nightclub drinking comically large margaritas, but apparently they are.

Or the time he accidentally texted photos of his wife in fetish gear to the entire staff of the university… which is how the world found out about the second pool boy. See, Falwell’s explanation was that he meant to send to to this former student and now personal trainer because said trainer had helped his wife lose a lot of weight. For which (subsequent investigation found out) Falwell had repaid the trainer by forcing the university to cut the trainer a multiple million dollar real estate deal

Before I list off a bunch of other reasons that the organization should have probably canned him a while ago, I want to remind you why this matters to folks like you and me: his million+ dollars salaries come from being the head of two nonprofit organizations. A lot of the questionable real estate deals are financed by said organizations. Those organizations are exempted from lots of taxes. That means that all of the rest of us who aren’t exempt from those taxes are subsidizing these shenanigans with our tax dollars.

Then there is the fact that just before the Iowa Caucuses in 2016, Falwell surprised everyone to endorse Trump instead of Ted Cruz, who was the darling of the Evangelicals until then. And it appears Falwell did that because Trump’s fixer and former lawyer, Mike Cohen, made some blackmail photos involving Falwell’s wife and the first Pool Boy go away. Falwell’s endorsement swung the evangelical vote to Trump and (among other things) four years later we have tens of thousands of COVID-19 deaths that probably wouldn’t have happened if we had a competent president.

Any previous Falwell scandals: tried to sue reporters who wrote stories about the university refusing to refund tuition for students afraid to return to campus during a pandemic, he claimed that local politicians were begging him to force students to return to the campus (the politicians all denied it), he ordered a campus security guard to write up an arrest warrant for the reporters mentioned above and then lied on several news shows about how it was a magistrate that swore out the warrant, then local prosecutors dismissed the warrant, fired the entire Philosophy department teaching staff to make up for the cash flow drop off as students stopped enrolling during the pandemic, subjecting university staff members to frequent bragging about the size of his penis and the sexual antics he and his wife get up to, transferring millions of dollars to the pool boy (helping him buy a gay flophouse in Miami Beach) after the very young man started spending a lot of time with the Falwells—including numerous times when they sent their private jet to Miami to bring up back to stay at their mansion in Virginia…

It’s just so weird that this one stupid Instagram photo might be the thing that finally does him in.

Fingers crossed…

Shadows are gathering, or, a queer ex-evangelical talks about the guns & god crowd

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That’s what they think it says, but that’s not what those words mean…

First, big news today out of New York: New York attorney general seeks to dissolve NRA in suit accusing gun rights group of wide-ranging fraud and self-dealing .

The chief executive of the National Rifle Association and several top lieutenants engaged in a decades-long pattern of fraud to raid the coffers of the powerful gun rights group for personal gain, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday by the New York attorney general, draining $64 million from the nonprofit in just three years.

In her lawsuit, Attorney General Letitia James called for the dissolution of the NRA and the removal of CEO Wayne LaPierre from the leadership post he has held for the past 39 years, saying he and others used the group’s funds to finance a luxury lifestyle.

She also asked a New York court to force LaPierre and three key deputies to repay NRA members for the ill-gotten funds and inflated salaries that her investigation found they took.

Lots of headlines are going to focus on the ‘dissolve the NRA’ part, but note that if she proves the executives in question of unlawfully pilfered the NRAs coffers for personal gain and gets any of it back, it will go to the contributors who will be free to use it to immediately form a new organization if they want.

But because I have already seen some people distort and over-react to this news story, I realized this was a good opportunity to finish and post about a related topic: How is it that people who claim to follow the Prince of Peace are so enamored with guns and unwilling to take any reasonable efforts to stop mass shootings in schools.

Before we get to the meat of the answer, one digression: the phrase “God, guns, and gays” is frequently (and falsely) attributed to various Democratic politicians as a disparaging description of the values of conservatives. Wrong. It actually came from the 1994 campaign of Republican Senator Jim Inhofe. He didn’t mean it disparagingly. It repeated the phrase again and again to enflame the fears of his Oklahoma constituents that the libruhls were going to take away their guns, outlaw their religion, and force them to live next to and work with gay people—all so they would ignore the economic and environmental polices of the Republicans that were destroying their livelihoods. And it’s the same kind of reasoning that has Trump claiming the Biden is going to “hurt the Bible.”

But back to the guns and why a certain type of Bible-thumper thirsts for weapons that can massacre dozens of people in short periods of time.

An important component of the evangelical fundamentalist self-identity is being under siege. In their worldview they are constantly under attack from the forces of evil in the form of depraved sinful people (who they generally define as anyone who doesn’t believe exactly as they do). Even they have control of an entire political party and often the entire government of their home state, they see themselves as the victims or a vast and powerful empire of evil. An empire they believe will eventually literally take over the world under the leadership of the anti-Christ. They interpret several verses of the Bible as a specific call to arms for them to resist that looming evil.

And because they insist that every word in the Bible is literally factual and also the inerrant word of god, those cherry-picked verses mean they believe it is their duty to be prepared to literally go to war.

Then there’s the eternity issue. Because they see our mundane mortal life as nothing but an entrance exam to try to qualify for an eternity in heaven, they don’t see suffering and death in this world as being anything more than a test. This gets further complicated because many of them also adhere to one of the variants of the Just World Fallacy. Because god controls the world, see, bad things happen to people either because they are being punished by god, or because they are being tested by god. I’ve written previously that one aspect of this before that often plays out as, “Bad things happen to you because you’re bad. Bad things happen to me because god is testing me.”

This contradicts their other belief that the devil is alive and well and causing a lot of evil, but that doesn’t bother them, because it just gives them another reason to rationalize their decisions about which things to take action about, and which to just let happen. “Bad things are happening to some people I care about because the forces of evil are attacking us,” or “This bad thing has happened to me and/or people I care about because other people under the influence of evil are causing it.”

Besides, all the deserving people who die are just going to heaven, so if they happen to have been hurried along because someone which a semi-automatic rifle shot up their school, it’s not really a tragedy. True, some of the teachers and kids might be godless atheists or otherwise bound for hell, and that is sad, but it’s really their own fault for not inviting Jesus into their heart before someone decided to massacre half the school.

Some of them will even come out and say it!

They ultimate truth, as far as they are concerned, is that all the right-thinking “good” people will get to spend eternity in mansions in heaven built especially for them by Christ himself. And this imperfect world is eventually going to be destroyed in that great and glorious war, which they may get to fight in, and if they have stockpiled enough weapons so that they can kill more of the unrighteous people than anyone else, maybe god will give them a special medal. Or a better mansion.

None of that is official theology of any of the denominations I’ve familiar with, and most of them won’t say all of that bluntly out loud, but it’s what many of them believe.

So to sum up, in their minds Jesus is the Prince of Peace only in the sense that there will be peace for eternity for those who are in heaven, after all the rest of humanity is purged and thrown into hell. And the sooner that war to end the world happens and they all get their to the heavenly reward, the better.

Note:

(Part of the title of this post comes from the hymn, “Softly and Tenderly (Jesus is Calling),” by William L. Thompson. It was hymn number 236 in the 1956 Baptist Hymnal. The lyric occurs in verse three, “Shadows are gathering, Deathbeds are coming. Coming for you and for me.”)