Who Gets In

From Wonkette commenter divegirl:

This Might Not Be Radical Enough

Via PZ Myers at Pharyngula:




Ramen

Freakazoid "Un-Christian" Stance Not Hypocrisy; It's Standard Operating Procedure

Pete Buttigieg is getting some left-wing love for supposedly calling out Xian hypocrites for their hate-filled attacks on immigrants.

Buttigieg said that although Democrats “stand for people of any religion and no religion,” Democrats should “call out hypocrisy when we see it” when it comes to the violation of Christian principles.

“And for a party that associates itself with Christianity to say that it is ok, to suggest that God would smile on the division of families at the hands of federal agents,” he said, “that God would condone putting children in cages has lost all claim to ever use religious language again.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Stop you're killing me.

Xian freakazoids have been hypocritcal motherfuckers since the third-century ghostwriters of the new testament twisted jewish tradition and new philosophy to demonize women, glorify celibacy and create an anti-sex cult that has lasted for 1,800 years.  Aristotle just added the misogynistic cherry on top.

Hypocrisy is the essential foundation of freakazoid Xianity.  Without hypocrisy, their entire edifice of racist, xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic hate crumbles into dust.

The only reason it doesn't is because supposed "liberal christians" like Buttigieg keep giving it life by calling out its hypocrisy.  Every call-out is like a re-grouting of the brick walls.  It just make them stronger.

Faith Over Facts

From Down with Tyranny:

5,000 gods

Down with Tyranny:

Trumpie "judge" orders KY doctors to rape their patients with foreign object

Penetrating a woman with a transvaginal ultrasound wand against her will is rape.  And that's before we get to the requirement of lying.

And of course this asshole is one of the wingnut freakazoid fanatics Mitch McConnell has been forcing through the Senate against the will of the people.

Straight-up authoritarian torture.

From the Courier:

A federal appeals panel has upheld a 2017 Kentucky law requiring doctors who perform abortions to first perform an ultrasound and attempt to show and describe the image to the patient, as well as play an audible heartbeat of the fetus.

In a 2-1 vote, with Judge John Bush writing for the majority, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday struck down a lower court ruling that said the law known as House Bill 2 was unconstitutional because it violates the free speech rights of physicians.

Bush, in his opinion, rejected the opponents' argument that forcing the physician to perform an ultrasound that may not be necessary and describe in detail the results to the patient is a violation of free speech rights.

"We hold that HB 2 provides relevant information," Bush wrote. "The information conveyed by an ultrasound image, its description and the audible beating fetal heart gives a patient a greater knowledge of the unborn life inside her. This also inherently provides the patient with more knowledge about the effect of an abortion procedure: it shows her what or whom she is consenting to terminate."

Bush, of Louisville, was appointed by President Donald Trump.

But in a blistering dissent, Judge Bernice Bouie Donald, a Tennessee native appointed to the appeals court by former President Barack Obama, said she found the reasoning to be deeply flawed and a setback for the freedom of physicians and their patients.

More: Attorneys general across the US taking sides in Kentucky abortion case

"I am gravely concerned with the precedent the majority creates today," she said. "Its decision opens the floodgates to states in this Circuit to manipulate doctor-patient discourse solely for ideological reasons."

She added: "HB 2 is a restriction on speech that has no basis in the practice of medicine."

Gov. "What women?  They're just incubators" Bevin hailed the decision, of course, as "victory for life." Because the only lives that matter are white, straight, freakazoid, rich, repug men.

Trump the Savior

I have been saying for too many years now that the freakazoids are a clear and present danger to this nation and the world.

In the Pumpkin Traitor, they finally have a vessel for their power-mad fantasies.

Nancy LeTourneau at Political Animal:

All of this is cultish and disturbing on many levels—not the least of which is the fact that our foreign policy is being managed by a man who thinks he’s playing out some kind of biblical prophecy. But the most dangerous part is that cults are inherently authoritarian, which takes me back to what Stewart wrote.

I have attended dozens of Christian nationalist conferences and events over the past two years. And while I have heard plenty of comments casting doubt on the more questionable aspects of Mr. Trump’s character, the gist of the proceedings almost always comes down to the belief that he is a miracle sent straight from heaven to bring the nation back to the Lord. I have also learned that resistance to Mr. Trump is tantamount to resistance to God.

This isn’t the religious right we thought we knew. The Christian nationalist movement today is authoritarian, paranoid and patriarchal at its core. They aren’t fighting a culture war. They’re making a direct attack on democracy itself.

They want it all. And in Mr. Trump, they have found a man who does not merely serve their cause, but also satisfies their craving for a certain kind of political leadership.

The fact that Christian nationalists have anointed the most amoral man to ever occupy the White House as their savior tells us that their allegiance to him isn’t grounded in principle, but in authoritarian power that puts them above the law. That’s the kind of political leadership they’ve been looking for.

My Governor Is A Child-Abusing Anti-Vax Terrorist

Because refusing to vaccinate your children then sending them out into the community to infect defenseless infants, and cancer patients is terrorism.

From the Herald:

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said in a radio interview that he deliberately exposed his children to chickenpox so they would catch the highly contagious disease and become immune.

During a Tuesday interview on Bowling Green radio station WKCT, Bevin said his children were "miserable for a few days" after contracting chickenpox but said "they all turned out fine."

"Every single one of my kids had the chickenpox," Bevin said in the interview. "They got the chickenpox on purpose because we found a neighbor that had it and I went and made sure every one of my kids was exposed to it, and they got it. They had it as children."

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/latest-news/article228187849.html#storylink=cpy

Bevin and his wife, Glenna, have nine children, four adopted.

Public health authorities strongly discourage the practice of deliberately exposing children to chickenpox, a medical expert said Wednesday.

"It's unfortunate and not an example for any of us," said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

"We should vaccinate all our children. It's a great triumph of public health in the United States. Let's not take a step backward," he added in a phone interview.

SNIP

Kentucky requires that children entering kindergarten be vaccinated for chickenpox, but parents may seek religious exemptions or provide proof that a child already had the disease.

Bevin's comments followed reports this week of a chickenpox outbreak at a Kentucky Catholic school.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends two doses of chickenpox vaccine for children, adolescents and adults who have never had chickenpox and were never vaccinated, according to its website. Children are routinely recommended to receive the first dose at 12 through 15 months old and a second dose at 4 to 6 years old, it said.

"What the governor and other like-minded folks are unaware of is that there are potentially serious complications of chickenpox," Schaffner said.

Complications from chickenpox can include bacterial infections, pneumonia and encephalitis — inflammation of the brain, according to the CDC. Complications aren't common in healthy people with the disease, it says, but high risk groups for complications due to a serious case of chickenpox can include infants, adolescents, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems.

You read that right.  Governor "I fight for life (of tumors, not adult women)" is deliberately and with malice aforethought attempting to severely injure or kill pregnant women.

He's up for reelection THIS November. In 2019.  Donate to Democratic candidate Attorney General Andy Beshear here.

Truckload

Via Wonkette:

Protecting Babies

Via Juanita Jean:

Alabama "judge" gives excised tumor right to sue doctor

You read that right.  A dangerous* clump of cells and a non-consensual sperm donor have more rights over a woman's body than the woman herself.

Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist:

This is the logical bottom of the slippery slope created when the government says a clump of cells is a person: A judge is allowing an Alabama man and an embryo to sue the people that made it possible for a girl he impregnated to get an abortion. It’s the first time an embryo has ever been treated as a human being with legal rights in a court of law.

The lawsuit is over the “wrongful death” of the embryo (wrongly called a “fetus” in some articles and really wrongly called a “baby” in others). Ryan Magers (below) says he wanted the 16-year-old high schooler he impregnated to have “Baby Roe” (even though it’s not a baby and it doesn’t deserve a name), but she decided against it. 

Magers and The Embryo are now suing the Women’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives in Huntsville as well as a(n unknown) pharmaceutical company that made the abortion pill taken by the girl. 

Rather than toss out the absurd lawsuit altogether, Madison County Probate Judge Frank Barger gave it the green light to move forward with Magers representing the embryo’s “estate.”

Seriously, you gotta see what this guy looks like.

That means a six-week-old embryo — a clump of cells the size of a pea — is now legally going after the people who “killed” it.

Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, tweeted Tuesday that the Alabama lawsuit is a “very scary case.” It asserts that a woman’s rights are “third in line,” after the rights of a man who impregnates her and the fetus she aborts, she said.

None of this is surprising, because it’s precisely what anti-abortion legislators were hoping for when they passed the state’s “personhood” law. They want this case to be challenged so they can keep appealing until Brett Kavanaugh can force women to give birth whenever an unemployed teenager pressures them into sex. Jill Filipovic explains the potential ripple effects this case could have:

A “pro-life” victory here would give free rein to men like Ryan Magers, who allegedly coerced his teenage girlfriend into sex, allowing them even more control over those same girls’ reproductive lives and, by extension, their futures. A great many women and girls have sex with men who are abusive, controlling, or simply not men who they want to be tied to for the rest of their lives. A “pro-life” victory here would give any man jurisdiction over any woman with whom he has had sex.

In this case, the girl was pressured into sex (though her family is not calling it rape) and chose to end the pregnancy early. A judge now thinks that’s all it takes for an embryo to sue an abortion clinic.

Magers, by impregnating a girl who didn’t want his baby, now has the power to shut down methods of abortion for women everywhere, a move that would force many of them to resort to unsafe and illegal actions to procure something that’s a routine procedure in most other parts of the developed world.

Congratulations, “pro-lifers.” Your dream of ruining women’s lives is inching closer.

* the death rate for abortions is 0.6 in 100,000.  The death rate for failing to excise that tumor and suffering pregnancy is 8.8 in 100,000 - 10 times more dangerous than abortion. 

Of Course the Freakazoids Love Trump More Than Jesus

Steve M:

Many people think it's odd that evangelical Christians love a president who's a thug. But it was clear long before Trump entered politics that right-wing Christianity isn't about living by the moral code of Christ. It's about declaring that your and your allies have a monopoly on morality -- and, more important, declaring that people you don't like are immoral and despised by God, and therefore should have no influence on how we run society.
When your ethic already divides the world into good people and mortal enemies who must be destroyed because they can't be reasoned with or accommodated, of course you're going to be attracted to a leader who shares your political goals and conducts his life like a Corleone ordering a hit. To evangelicals, there's a clear line dividing the saved and the damned, the fit and the unfit -- just as, to Trump, the world is divided into loyalists who should be rewarded and traitors who must be crushed. So of course the evangelicals love Trump. He has a pure sense of right and wrong.

You Don't Get to Have Religious Freedom That Kills Children

Is it obvious yet that the original source of all the lethal stupidity in this county is religion?  Specifically white xian fundamentalist freakazoids. On everything from global warming to gay rights to public education to racial justice, they are quite simply a clear and present danger to the nation.

Robyn Pennachia at Wonkette:

Aside from abortion, the number one issue for people who don't know what the hell they are talking about is vaccines. People who don't know anything about vaccines feel very confident that they are the ones who should be going around enacting legislation based on shit they have made up themselves, which is rather inconvenient for the rest of us! Especially those who have immuno-compromised children who need to rely on herd immunity to stay alive. The entire gist of the anti-vaccine movement is "Other people need to die to protect my right to be stupid." 

SNIP

 You don't get to have a religious belief that kills people. Human sacrifices are against the law. I can't just go and start a religion that demands I rob banks. So either vaccinate your kids or keep them the hell away from other children. 

Frankly, not giving kids vaccines ought to be considered child abuse. It should not be allowed, period. If parents refuse to vaccinate their kid and that child or someone else's dies because they refused vaccinations, parents should be charged with manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide just as they would if their stupidity caused that child's death in some other way. I mean, if someone left the gas on their stove, lit a cigarette and blew up the house and killed their kids, "I thought scientists were lying to me about gas being flammable, so I made up my own science" would not be a valid excuse in a court of law. 

People can personally believe any stupid thing they want, up to and until it affects other people. That is where the line needs to be drawn. If Bill Zedler wants to believe that antibiotics cure measles, that's fine. If someone else wants to believe in werewolves? Go right ahead! But no one should be able to push or draft legislation, or put other children in danger, just because they believe their own pipe dreams over actual science.

"Prove It"

Robyn Pennachia with yet another knock-you-back jeremiad against malignant stupidity that gets people killed, concluding:

How many times do we have to learn the lesson that there are consequences to just letting people have their stupid beliefs? Damage to the environment, measles outbreaks, idiots showing up to pizza parlors with assault rifles, assholes assaulting immigrants because they think all immigrants are murderers, people opposing social welfare programs because of weird lies they have been told about the kind of people who use those programs, people opposing affirmative action while screaming about "quotas," which for the love of god have been illegal in this country since 1978 -- not to mention Fox news anchors spreading listeria, probably, because they don't believe in germs and therefore do not wash their hands. 

There are far too many problems in this country that could be solved with a simple "prove it."

Gov. I Got Mine Fuck You Stealing State Property

And I don't mean pens.  I mean a whole, entire, official STATE PARK.  Stolen in the middle of the night and handed over to a bunch of freakazoids with no notice to the public - you know, the TAXPAYERS who actually OWN that piece of property.

It's not Bevin's property.  It doesn't belong to him.  He STOLE it.  Why haven't the state police arrested the motherfucker and thrown him in the dungeons below Eddyville?

The theft and the handover to a church are also blatant violations of both the Kentucky and U.S. Constitutions.  Why are KY Dems not screaming for impeachment?

Tom Eblen at the Herald:

Boone Station State Historic Site in southeast Fayette County is no more. Gov. Matt Bevin’s administration last month closed the 46-acre park and gave it to David’s Fork Baptist Church with no public input, notice or comment.

Daniel Boone, Kentucky’s most famous pioneer and first international celebrity, helped build cabins and a stockade there in 1779 after he left nearby Fort Boonesborough. He lived at Boone Station for about four years with other settlers. Since the 1990s, the property has been a small state park.

“Since the State is willing to give away the home of Daniel Boone, are all Kentucky’s historic sites now on the chopping block?” asked Phil Gray, a former manager of Boone Station and Fort Boonesborough State Park.

“The cost to the state for Boone Station is almost nothing,” Gray added. “There is a mowing contract and a very small electric bill each month. Upkeep on the fence. But that is it. When history loses, we all lose.”

Pastor Mickey Hyder said church leaders haven’t decided what to do with Boone Station. “We’re taking our time,” he said, declining further comment.

Yeah, they're gonna lay low until the furor dies down and then sell it for a clusterfuck subdivision.  In Fayette County, that is gonna run into the millions of dollars. Tax dollars that belong to the people of Commonwealth of Kentucky, not to Billionaire Bevin and not to a nest of morons who think an invisible sky wizard runs the world.

Boone Station has two old tobacco barns and a big granite monument the Daughters of the American Revolution erected in 1967. It also contains pioneer graves, which may or may not be Boone family members.

“That historic site is very important to the history of the Commonwealth,” said Leslie Miller of Louisville, the DAR’s state leader. “We hope that whoever owns the property, now or in the future, will continue to honor the historical significance of that place and continue to share the story of those brave early patriots with the public.”

SNIP

Giving away Boone Station is part of a larger Bevin administration effort that William Landrum, secretary of the Finance and Administration Cabinet, described to legislators last fall as “reducing the footprint of state government.” He said the state is forming “partnerships” — essentially turning over operation and maintenance of some state parks, historic sites and natural areas to local governments or organizations so it doesn’t have to spend money on them.

There’s no doubt Kentucky’s state parks and historic sites have been underfunded. That’s because governors and legislators of both political parties over the past two decades have abdicated their responsibility to fix a broken tax system that doesn’t generate enough revenue to properly fund state government.

With some state parks, local officials could do a better job of developing and maintaining them than state government has. But do they have the resources and expertise to care for, preserve and interpret historic properties?

As I wrote in September, these places have been deemed Kentucky treasures. They have great educational and cultural value. Politicians shouldn’t give them away, especially under a cloak of secrecy. Anyone who cares about preserving Kentucky’s rich history should be asking questions and demanding answers.

In Re Covington Punks

The little shitheads are guilty as fuck.  Shame on the liberals who retreated at the first conservatard glance.

Charlie Pierce:

... the idea that we can have a fully functioning democracy when one side is willing to use every means, fair or foul, to defend the slightest bit of ideological ground, while the other side's conscience can be pricked with a feather, setting off a paroxysm of penitential maundering, is laughable.

Giant Step Toward Gilead

I've been saying it for years:  These "religious freedom" laws are nothing but a massive power grab by freakazoids.

And there's no place to hide, because the U.S. Supreme Court has just made xian mythology the law the of the land.

Via LGM:

The 5–4 ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby prompted a now-famous dissent by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who condemned the court’s decision to use RFRA, a law originally intended to protect religious minorities, to legalize discrimination. “No tradition,” Ginsburg noted, “and no prior decision under RFRA, allows a religion-based exemption when the accommodation would be harmful to others.” Through Hobby Lobby, the court had transformed RFRA from a shield into a sword, creating a license to discriminate with no clear limitations.

On Wednesday, the Trump administration proved Ginsburg right. In a decision of startling breadth, the Department of Health and Human Services declared that, under RFRA, a federally funded foster care agency in South Carolina has a right to discriminate against non-Christians, closing its doors to would-be parents of different faiths. As Ginsburg predicted, the administration’s interpretation of the law has no limiting principle: It all but announced that taxpayer-funded adoption and foster care agencies may now engage in flagrant discrimination without consequence, so long as they state a religious rationale for their actions. The grim future that Ginsburg foresaw in Hobby Lobby has arrived.

Need proof?  Here are the freakazoids demanding tens of millions of Kentucky tax dollars to indoctrinate children with their evil mythology

Watch the video here.

With several hundred students from private schools looking on in the cold Thursday morning outside the state Capitol, several public officials touted a proposal to offer tax deductions to provide school scholarships.

The event was a rally at the Capitol to celebrate school choice and National School Choice Week.

House Majority Leader John “Bam” Carney, R-Campbellsville, told the crowd that he will file a bill in early February that would grant a generous tax credit to those who donate money for student financial aid at private schools.

Yeah, no.  "School Choice" does not mean you get to steal money from public education.  "School Choice" does not mean you get tax dollars because your invisible sky wizard wants it.

SNIP

Vandiver said the bill is expected to generate $25 million to help about 7,000 families.

The tax credit would amount to up to 95 percent of the contribution. “You donate $10,000, you get $9,500 credit,” he said.

SNIP

The measure has never gotten out of a legislative chamber’s committee, “but we are optimistic this year,” he said. He acknowledged that the revenue bill would have to receive at least 60 percent of the vote, instead of a majority in each chamber, to pass since lawmakers are not scheduled to pass a two-year state budget this year.

Stephanie Winkler, president of the Kentucky Education Association, said her group has “a strong belief that school choice already exists in Kentucky.”

“Our organization fights hard for for the commonwealth’s constitutionally-mandated system of common schools that allow any child, no matter their abilities, to have the right to a high quality education,” Winkler said. “The local public schools of these ‘school choice’ activists would benefit greatly from the energy and financial support they give to this cause.”

No biggie, you say?  It is within the memory of people still alive when xians exercising their "religious freedom" punished homosexuality by firing you from your job, evicting you from your home and denying you civil rights.

It is within the memory of people still alive when xians exercising their "religious freedom" got away with lynching black people for the crime of getting uppity, because the bibble tells them so.

It is within the memory of people still alive when xians exercised their "religious freedom" to imprison women in abusive marriages, to beat children to death for disobedience, to force women to give birth annually until they died.

Every tyrant in history has used this kind of "religious freedom" to justify every form of oppression, torture and genocide.

Forget the Russians.  "Religious freedom" is where Democracy dies.

Caught Showing Your Racist Ass? White Privilege to the Rescue!

Fuckhead's parents wasted money on a repug PR firm; the White Male Supremacy cavalry was already on the way with free excuses.

A corrective from Stephen Robinson at Wonkette:

No white guy's life is ever going to end because he was cruel to women or minorities. The sneering Nick Sandmann will probably be on the Supreme Court shortlist in a few decades. During the Trump era, the "cruelty is the point," and a disturbing number will rush to protect those who are cruel in Trump's image.

And this, from the Root.

Fuckhead student blames Native Elder; repug rep Massie "proud" of racist assholes

What else did you expect?

Entitled little shit spews lies:

A statement has been issued by a student who said he was the youth “confronted by a Native American protestor” in a widely circulated video that provoked intense criticism of Covington Catholic High School over students’ treatment of the elder American Indian.

The backlash against the school was severe and continued Sunday. The Covington Diocese and the school have condemned the students’ behavior, apologized to the Native American and said they were investigating. The incident occurred in Washington D.C. where the students had traveled for a rally.

Nathan Phillips, the Native American standing opposite Sandmann in the video, gave his own account of the events in an interview with the Associated Press. 

The following is the complete statement issued by Nick Sandmann, a junior at Covington Catholic:

I am providing this factual account of what happened on Friday afternoon at the Lincoln Memorial to correct misinformation and outright lies being spread about my family and me. 

I am the student in the video who was confronted by the Native American protestor.

And it gets worse.  Definitely auditioning for the Pumpkin Traitor's next Supreme Court appointment.

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/state/article224846990.html#storylink=cpy

Billionaire shit shows own racist ass:

Rep. Thomas Massie came to the defense Sunday evening of the students from Covington Catholic High School who were involved in a confrontation with a Native American man this weekend in Washington, D.C.

The Kentucky's 4th District representative, which includes Northern Kentucky where Covington Catholic is located, tweeted that after watching "over an hour" of video on the incident, he believed the students were there participate in the March for Life and got a "brutal lesson in the unjust court of public opinion and social media mobs."

"I urge everyone to watch the other videos before passing judgement. Would you have remained that composed at that age under those circumstances?" he said on Twitter.

Massie added that it was his honor "to represent them."

Of course the MAGA bully was "composed"; he was the one committing the intimidation.

Catlick Pieces of Shit From KY Show Their Racist Asses in D.C.

UPDATE Below.

Yeah, tell me again what a positive force in the world is religion. 

From Crooks and Liars:

So yesterday this happened at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. MAGA-wearing prep school boys taunting a Native Elder is pretty much symbolic of this entire disgusting era of Trump.

(Also the continuation of 500 years of Catlick abuse of Native people worldwide.)

Shameful.

Details are unclear, but it appears that an entire class from a private, all male boys school (Covington Catholic High School in Covington, Kentucky) were the culprits. Apparently they were bussed in to attend the March for Life event, the same thing the Pences attended.

Source: Indian Country Today

Native Twitter has gone ablaze as a Native American elder singing the AIM Song in Washington DC during the Indigenous Peoples March was ridiculed, taunted and mocked by a group of non-Native youth.

The video, which was posted by YouTube account holder KC NOLAND, was also screen captured and shared on other social media accounts with views shortly gaining tens of thousands of views.

The elder is Nathan Phillips, an Omaha elder who is also a Vietnam Veteran and former director of the Native Youth Alliance. He is also a keeper of a sacred pipe and holds an annual ceremony honoring Native American veterans in the Arlington National Cemetery.

 Click over to watch the disgusting videos.

UPDATE: Apologies and expulsions, my ass.  This is nowhere near enough.

“the behavior is opposed to the Church’s teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person.”

Are you FUCKING kidding me?  Those kids were there for the "March for Life."  You know, the one that advocates forced birth because uterine tumors are more important than the adult women who want to be free of them. The school took them there to teach them that women are just incubators.  Not really fully human.

Just like the Native they abused.

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/article224806590.html#storylink=cpy