Today in "Christian" Hypocrisy

From none other than frootlooop Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress:

Even paying off porn stars with whom he's had an affair is fine. Just fine:

A member of President Trump’s evangelical advisory board defended Trump over the controversy surrounding his alleged relationship with adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, saying the allegations were “totally irrelevant” to evangelicals who support Trump.

Now, most normal people see this as screaming hypocrisy, but to someone as conceptually challenged as Jeffress, it makes perfect sense. They have an out:

The pastor, who oversees the First Baptist Church in Dallas, said evangelicals understand “the concept of sin and forgiveness.”

“We are all sinners, we all need forgiveness, [and] that forgiveness is available through Christ for anyone who asks,” he said. “And whether the president needs that forgiveness for this particular allegation, whether he’s asked for it, is between him, his family and his god.”

You see? You can be an absolute walking, talking piece of shit your whole life, but if you say on your deathbed "Forgive me, Jesus!" it's all good. You get a Get Out of Hell Free card.

(In my own tradition, if you wrong someone, you make it up to the person you've wronged, you don't ask a third party to forgive you. And no, we're not born sinners -- new souls are pure.)

Digby has a section here on how the Department of Health and Human Services is putting "right to life" policies in its guidelines for family planning services -- small tweaks that they hope no one will notice. You should read it to get the full take on how underhanded these assholes are.

Digby sums up the attitude nicely:

And if you think this means that they can never attack their political rivals on personal or sexual indiscretions, think again. They will shake their fists at the depraved infidel proclaiming that his (or her's) sexual dalliance means they have no moral authority to lead the nation. And we will rend our garments about what hypocrites they are and they will look at us through dead eyes and continue on without missing a beat.

There is literally nothing their Dear Leader can do that isn't fine --- except lose.

I'm more and more coming to understand that these kinds of "Christians" are people who really, really want someone to tell them what to do -- keep in mind that they worship a god that they typify as their "lord and master." They admire someone like Trump, who in turn admires people like Putin, Duterte, and Xi -- strongmen who don't even bother with the facade of democratic processes.

Like I said, normal people see this as hypocrisy. To "Christians" like Jeffress, it's part of the catechism.

The Evolution of a Terrorist Organization

Specifically, the National Rifle Association. It's long -- almost 17 minutes -- but it's fascinating, sort of like watching a building collapse.

This was posted by commenter KnownDonorDad in the comments to this post.

USA Today reports:

The National Rifle Association filed a federal lawsuit this afternoon against the state to block a law that had just been signed by Gov. Rick Scott that prohibits gun sales to anyone between the ages of 18 and 21.

“We filed a lawsuit against the state for violating the constitutional rights of 18 to 21 year olds,” said Marion Hammer, lobbyist for the NRA in Florida. NRA lawyers in Tallahassee and Washington D.C. were working on the complaint this afternoon, and filed the complaint moments before the court’s deadline.

It'll be interesting to see how that works out. You know the NRA will go all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

Antidote: Parker Curry

You may have seen a news story on Parker Curry, the little girl whose mom took her to the National Portrait Gallery to see Michelle Obama's official portrait.

Hey @MichelleObama! Parker, the little girl who loves your portrait, has an important message for you and we promised her we'd deliver it! 👸🏾 pic.twitter.com/m60f6zhLkc

— AM to DM by BuzzFeed News (@AM2DM) March 5, 2018

Michelle got the message and responded as one might expect:

Parker, I'm so glad I had the chance to meet you today (and for the dance party)! Keep on dreaming big for yourself...and maybe one day I'll proudly look up at a portrait of you! pic.twitter.com/faUVTsYWun

— Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) March 6, 2018

Via Balloon Juice.

Today's Must-Read: #savetheelephants

I guess his Hemingway wannabe offspring prevailed on our so-called president to grant them more elephant tails:

Trump has done one single decent thing since he took office and it was defy his murdering neanderthal heirs and uphold the ban on imports of elephant trophies. I guess Uday and Qusay were the last people in the room on this one:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has quietly begun allowing more trophy hunting of African elephants, despite President Donald Trump’s pledge last year to uphold a ban on importing parts of animals killed by big-game hunters.

That's bad enough. (Yes, I am in favor of a total ban on hunting endangered species, and you won't want to hear my opinion on "trophy hunters".)

But this is what really pisses me off:

“Our biggest concern is there’s been too much back and forth by the U.S. government to the point of really confusing the public,” Jimmiel Mandima, the director of program design at the African Wildlife Foundation, said. “Why does the decision keep flopping, are we hunting or are we not hunting?”

Mandima, who noted that his group has long opposed the hunting of threatened, vulnerable or endangered species, said such confusion makes it difficult for the public to voice opinions about the issue, and harder for environmental groups to craft conservation recommendations.

(Emphasis added.)

That's the whole point.

Several environmentalists on Monday pointed out that the new import guidelines haven’t been made public, and Freedom of Information Act requests to determine what “case-by-case” actually means will likely take months. In that time, an unknown number of applications could be approved.

“We saw the public outcry last fall when [the trophy decision] was announced … not just from people who are traditionally Democrats,” Sanerib said. “The agency is really playing hide the ball. It’s incredibly disappointing.”

That's the way the Republicans "govern": don't tell the public what's going on.

Remember the "tax reform" bill? The one that was rushed through with no public hearings and no debate?

Footnote: This is what we should be doing:

In Kenya, the last male northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) in the world isn't faring well - the animal is past its prime and in declining health. With time running out, a global team of scientists and conservationists are trying to save the subspecies from extinction with help from the last two surviving females.

It's called "cooperation," and it's something we as a species are supposed to be good at:

Efforts to pull the species from the jaws of extinction have brought together institutions from around the world, such as the San Diego Zoo Global in the United States, the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, and Embryo Plus, a South African company specializing in IVF procedures.

Read this one, too -- it's fairly detailed, and pretty informative.

About That "President for Life" Joke

Does anyone really think he was joking?

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough ripped Republicans who tolerate President Donald Trump’s not-so-funny jokes about becoming president for life.

The “Morning Joe” host and his guests reacted to Trump’s comments about Chinese President Xi Jinping consolidating power to remain in office indefinitely, and he told guests at his Mar-A-Lago club that “maybe we’ll give that a shot some day.”
ADVERTISING

“When Republicans are just saying, it’s just a joke, or when Republicans ignore the fact that this man is talking about being president for life, if they think that Donald Trump is joking, then they’re fools,” Scarborough said. “I don’t think they’re fools, I think they know exactly what he’s saying.”

Look, he's already demonstrated that not only does he know nothing about democratic norms or our system of checks and balances, he doesn't care; and when he has noticed them, he hates them.

I think the Republicans are on board with the idea: as long as he's a willing tool who will enact their agenda and turn the U.S. into an oligarchy, they'll back him. That's what the Republican party has become.

Today's Must-Read: Whither America?

A thought-provoking and strangely reassuring piece from Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo:

America is forever reinventing itself. Synthesizing today and yesterday and turning them into tomorrow. It was folly to believe a reality TV star could turn back time and recapture some halcyon yesterday. Yet many did.

They really believed they could turn back the clock to the halcyon days of Ozzie and Harriet. Key quote:

Instead of making America great again, Donald Trump is instead hastening "the very decline his supporters so feared," Reid concurs. There will be no return to a world where white men rule and all others know their places and remain in them[.]

That's the thing about history: it's a function of time, and no matter how hard you try to stop it, time keeps marching on.

Needless to say, read the whole thing: it's a good analysis of demographics and where they are taking us.

Today in Just Plain Stupid

From none of than that man of staunch, steadfast principle (depending on which way the wind is blowing), Sen. Lindsay Graham:

I don't know what's in the water in Washington but it's making people insane:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said this week that a war with North Korea would be “worth it” in the long term.

Graham made the comments in an interview with CNN.

"All the damage that would come from a war would be worth it in terms of long-term stability and national security," the senator told CNN.

The only one who would come out of a war with North Korea with anything intact would be Vladimir Putin. And "long-term stability"? Yeah, I guess piles of smoking radioactive rubble are stable.

It's worth reading the whole post -- a completely unsettling outline of what would be involved and what the likely result would be. For starters, just forget South Korea as a viable entity.

Today in Stupid Comparisons

From none other than Pastor-Governor Mike Huckabee, apologist for all that's deplorable:

"People call it an 'assault weapon,'" Huckabee, frustrated, concluded. "Maria, if I take a pencil and stick it in your neck, that's an assault weapon."

Excuse me -- how many mass pencil stabbings have there been in this country?

Review: Jim Grimsley: Kirith Kirin

Originally published at Epinions.com. A more in-depth, more polished review appears today at Green Man Review.

Jim Grimsley is a successful playwright and novelist who has produced, in Kirith Kirin, a singular work of fantasy. The story revolves around Jessex, a boy of fourteen when the story opens, who narrates the tale of his entry into the service of Kirith Kirin, the Prince who lives in Arthen Forest, awaiting the call from the Queen, Athryn Ardfalla, to fulfill the next round of the Cycle and succeed her as King. The call is somewhat more than 100 years overdue, because the Queen’s wizard, Drudaen Keerfax, has convinced her that she can maintain her youth and vitality without returning to Arthen, and so remain in power forever. Kirith Kirin has in turn exiled Drudaen and Athryn from Arthen.

Jessex’ long-lost uncle Sivisal comes to bring him into Arthen on the basis of a dream and a prophecy. During his time as kyyvi (the acolyte who sings the morning and evening prayers in the ceremony of the lamps), Jessex is also being taught, secretly, by the Diamysaar, the Three Sisters who are ancient powers in the world and have bestowed the second name on the Twice-Named, who are, if not immortal, extremely long-lived. Jessex’s education, he is told, is being undertaken to prepare him to be assisant for a powerful wizard, Yron, who will come to free the world form Keerfax and his Shadow; under no circumstances must he discuss it outside of the place where he is being taught, nor may he use magic except during his lessons. The story of Jessex’s education is fascinating because Grimsley has a unique view of magic and its workings, and Jessex is a personable and very intelligent, if somewhat reticent, narrator. Needless to say, circumstances force Jessex to break his promise to the Sisters; since this happens halfway through the book, it really gives nothing away to say that, contrary to his expectations, Jessex is neither killed nor taken away from the world. With the gift of a cloak woven and sewn by the Sisters, Jessex becomes Kirith Kirin’s wizard and, very soon, his lover. Since this is a work of fantasy, eventual victory is assured, but there are some surprizing plot developments.

This is not a book for those who want a nice clean exposition that lays everything out right up front. Jessex, as narrator, is quite consciously telling a history to an audience who will be familiar with most of the background. He does explain what needs to be explained as he tells the narrative, but the picture of the lives of the Jisraegen (Jessex’ people) and the context of their world unfold slowly – their history, for example, which is a real, living tradition for them, is revealed as a series of asides that flesh out events that are being related. Jessex assumes that his audience knows who and what the Nivri and Finru are, and who the Orloc and Tervan and Venladrii are, and we learn enough by inference to satisfy. (Grimsley is not one, in this book at least, to clutter things up with useless detail. Fortunately for those whose curiosity burns, he does publish a glossary as one of the appendices.)

As a narrator, Jessex is very matter-of fact, and sometimes almost laconic. While there is no doubt that Jessex and Kirith Kirin love each other deeply and passionately, in the best romantic tradition, Jessex’ understatement and humor only make it less graphic and more real; likewise his references to the development of his powers as a wizard, which are again very straightforward and unapologetic. Not only is it refreshing to have a story told with this combination of circumspection and frankness, it also serves to build Jessex as a real person.

Music plays a huge role in this book: singing is how one makes magic, singing is how one worships YY-Mother, the Jisraegen god, music is how the Jisraegen entertain themselves in the evenings. Do not, however, expect Tolkien-style “The Road goes ever on” lyrics – songs are rendered freely, in verse forms that make me believe that Grimsley may also be a very talented poet. And speech is very direct, almost jarringly so in the beginning, until the reader begins to understand that these people are very direct and sometimes almost terse, and that the dialogue fits the flow of the narrative beautifully.

Grimsley is a talented writer, and this is a beautifully crafted book.

What's New at Green Man Review

Lots and lots of goodies this week. Just a sample:

Willow Wilson’s Cairo, Chinese magic, a first from the Archives, Frigg’s Frost on Fiddles, gamelan complete with dancer, and Other Matters

Lots of books this week, and the "other matters" are really worth checking out. So do it.

Remember Scott Pruitt?

Trump's EPA head who wants to hand over our national parks and national monuments to Big Oil? It turns out he's even worse than we thought:

Environmental Protection Chief Scott Pruitt believes the “most grievous threat” facing America are the courts, which he called the “imperialistic judiciary” and the “judicial monarchy,” claiming their objective is to create “religious sterility.”

Spoken like a true monarchist. And what, do you suppose, is "religious sterility," exactly?

This is so divorced from reality it's almost comedy:

“There aren’t sufficient scientific facts to establish the theory of evolution, and it deals with the origins of man, which is more from a philosophical standpoint than a scientific standpoint,” Pruitt said in 2005.

What the hell does that even mean?

It's a short post. It's amazing how much unhinged bullshit they manage to pack in, courtesy of Mr. Pruitt.

But don't worry -- he's promised to stop wasting our money on first class airline tickets and military planes. Maybe.

"What I've told them going forward is this: There's a change occurring. You're going to accommodate the security threats as they exist. You're going to accommodate those in all ways — alternate ways — up to and including flying coach, and that's going to happen on my very next flight," he said.

The post doesn't explain who "them" is -- his security team? If that's the case, this sounds rather ominous to me.

Today's Must-Read: The Kind of Citizens We Need

Tom Sullivan has a really good post at Hullabaloo on why the survivors of the Parkland shooting are turning into such a major force in the debate over gun control. (And it says something about the pathetic state of America that we have a debate on gun control.) I found his first paragraph more than a little humorous:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) suggested in a tweet Wednesday, "We claim a Judea-Christian heritage but celebrate arrogance & boasting. & worst of all we have infected the next generation with the same disease." That last barb seemed aimed at students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. They returned to school for the first time Wednesday after a mass shooting on Valentine's Day claimed 17 of their classmates.

First off, Senator NRA's $3 million water boy, your "Judea-Christian" [sic] heritage celebrates arrogance and boasting. Read your Bible.

Sullivan quotes extensively from an article by Dahlia Lithwick that's also a must-read.

Sullivan's conclusion is right on the mark:

What upsets Rubio and the Examiner is that Stoneman Douglas students don't know their places. Schools that are preparing students to serve their country rather than the economy are not fulfilling their mission. Their issue with Stoneman Douglas is it is not turning out sheep.

It seems that despite Betsy DeVos' efforts to turn public schools into trade schools, some kids are getting the kind of education I had. We had art, we had music appreciation classes, we had debate (what they called "speech classes" when I was in high school, where we learned how to actually think about what we were saying), we had literature, we had foreign languages (which were a state requirement). And please note that I didn't go to elite private schools -- I went to public schools in a very Republican (back when that meant something besides "fascist") small town.

And Sullivan's right -- that kind of education does not turn out corporate cogs. It turns out trouble-makers -- you know, people like the founders of this country.

For Sure, We Should Arm Teachers

One of Trump's (actually, the NRA's) more insane ideas: let's arm the teachers so they can . . . what? Well, here's one scenario:

A Georgia high school teacher is facing a number of charges after he barricaded himself inside an empty classroom and fired a handgun while students stood outside the door, authorities said Wednesday.

The shooting, which took place around 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, led to a frantic lockdown at Dalton High School. One student suffered a minor ankle injury while running down the halls, police said at a press conference.

Dalton police spokesman Bruce Frazier said the teacher, identified as social studies teacher Jesse Randal Davidson, 53, locked himself inside of the room and refused to allow students inside.

“When the principal put a key in the door to try to unlock the classroom, Mr. Davidson apparently fired a shot from a handgun through an exterior window of the classroom. It does not appear that it was aimed at anybody,” Frazier said at a press conference.

It doesn't take much imagination to transpose the teacher's actions to a classroom full of students.

Needless to say, teachers are vehemently opposed to the idea, as are school administrators and just about everyone else who has any experience with, for example, being in a combat situation. It's not a popular idea -- except, of course, with the NRA and their wholly-owned subsidiaries in Congress and various state governments.

Via Hullabaloo.

Grrasping at Straws

Gregory T. Angelo, the head of Log Cabin Republicans, thinks that Trump is the most LGBT-friendly president ever. Seriously. You want to know why?

“This president is the first president to enter the White House who believes that marriage equality is settled law of the land,” Angelo said, referring to a “60 Minutes” interview from over a year ago in which Trump was asked about his views on same-sex marriage. He didn’t actually state his own position on the matter, but said that the issue was “settled law.”

“Barack Obama didn’t believe that when he entered the White House,” Angelo said. “Hillary Clinton only came around to that position in 2013.”

But Trump never changed his stated position from the presidential campaign, and he doesn’t actually support marriage equality. Obama and Clinton both have supported same-sex marriage for several years.

Now, Angelo isn't the brightest porch light on the block, but really -- how desperate to you have to be? Yes, he's phrasing it very carefully, but really.

Via Joe.My.God.

Image du Jour

Thanks to commenter Avenger280 at Joe.My.God.:

 

So Who's More Backward?

This article stopped me on this morning's browsing:

A Muslim country is about the last place you’d expect to be at the forefront of transgender rights. Yet Pakistan has been taking steps to recognize its transgender citizens that would be considered far too radical for a supposedly tolerant nation like the U.S.

Pakistan’s latest move is especially bold: sending transgender youth to serve as volunteers for this year’s Hajj, the annual trek to Mecca, Islam’s holiest site. The decision is a de facto challenge to conservative Muslims who vociferously oppose any form of LGBT rights.

In fact, the decision by Pakistan is just the latest in a line that undermines widely held notions about Muslim attitudes toward transgender people. As an added sign of just how far advanced Pakistan is relative to the U.S., the Hajj volunteers are being drawn from the Pakistani equivalent of the Boy Scouts. Some 40 transgender Scouts took their oath to the organization last week.

We're still fighting over who gets to pee where.

The article cites a couple of other countries that have, by our standards, very advanced policies in place regarding their transgender citizens: India and Nepal.

Just on a wild guess, I'd say it has a lot to do with their cultural histories, but I don't know enough to make a definitive statement. I do know that, given the age of the civilizations of these countries, Islam is a late add-on, in the case of Pakistan; Hinduism doesn't have the same attitude about non-binary identities as the desert religions. In America, Christianity came with the first settlers. (It's worth noting here how Americans magnified some of the less admirable qualities of European culture; for example, the male dominance so prevalent in Europe was largely show. In fact, psychologists call it "mythical male dominance": women not only had their own spheres of authority, but had a fairly substantial amount of behind-the-scenes input into decisions made by men. In America, this mythical dominance became real.) Given the spatial dislocation of the early settlers, and in some cases the conscious rejection of the culture they had left*, it's not really very surprising that America is, socially, backward, especially in areas having to do with sex and sexuality.

At any rate, this is a pretty good take on where we rank in terms of dealing with our trans citizens -- nowhere near the top.

* Think about the Puritans, who by all reports were fairly awful people; sadly, they've been idealized as part of the American mythos, with a concomitant effect on our cultural attitudes.

Stray Thought for the Day

From this article by Peter Baker at the New York Times on Mueller, Manafort, Gates, et al.:

In a fiery speech to supporters on Friday, President Trump went after his vanquished opponent from 2016. “We had a crooked candidate,” he declared.

We had a crooked candidate, and he got elected.

Via Bark Bar Woof Woof.

What's New at Green Man Review

It's Sunday again at Green Man Review, with something old, something new, and everything interesting:

Aaron Copland’s ‘Hoe Down’, Wild China, identity in science fiction, ‘hedgehog highways’ and other neat stuff

Off you go -- enjoy!

Review: Kenny Fries: The Healing Notebooks

First, a note: I'm trying to kick myself into doing some substantial writing again, and found myself going through the review pages and found a number of reviews that were originally published at Epinions and are no longer available there. I may re-use some of them at other sites, but they will have to be re-worked first (different audiences need different approaches). So I thought I'd revive the Sunday reviews department here and republish some of them, which may help me start writing original pieces. This is the first, originally published in 2003. If you have a reaction, leave a comment.

I first read The Healing Notebooks several years ago, when the second wave of friends was dying around me. Like so many of the literary works produced by gay men in this period, these poems are about loss, but they are much more than that.

What keeps me coming back to these poems, what has kept me coming back to them for ten years, is their incredible simplicity, which opens to amazing depth and strength. My long-time favorite of these twenty brief works, a sketch made at the dinner table, starts “Not the way they hold me,/but the way they hold/the cup . . .” In fourteen short lines Fries paints a picture of love that may have been matched, but never exceeded, and he does it through a spare, distilled observation of the commonplace, ending “of all hands/your hands/of all men/you.”

And perhaps I’ve already said too much. These are fragile-seeming works, small, quiet poems that keep resonating long after you have put the book back on the shelf, slight songs that do not really speak to intellect. (How much magic is there in a spectral analysis of sunrise?) There is something almost Japanese about them in their serenity, their fine distillation of the mundane into a potent, numinous draught that takes us far from the everyday events that they describe. There is a particular vision in this collection, perhaps born of the necessity of making every second matter, measured against the reality of time that suddenly has a limit: “Watch the moment./It is nothing complacent.”

What makes us human? Scientists, theologians, everyone has tried to answer this question, and the answers come up lacking. Kenny Fries provides an answer that I don’t think will have to be revised: We make our art as our common humanity, a memory that is much more than history. Our paintings, our dances, our music, our poetry are all guardians of the moments from our lives that have meaning far beyond the mere events. “. . . It is the leaf I am/holding, the orange burning/the heat of summer into my hand./How else can I remember this orange/in the winter gray?” Poetry like that of Kenny Fries, in its elegance and simplicity, peels away the layers of irrelevance and makes our souls tangible.

Trump Toadie Outrage #732

I sort of blipped on this one when I first saw it, but fortunately a post at Mock Paper Scissors reminded me. From The Intercept, which first reported the story:

The lead U.S. agency tasked with granting citizenship to would-be Americans is making a major change to its mission statement, removing a passage that describes the United States as a nation of immigrants. In an email sent to staff members Thursday and shared with The Intercept, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director L. Francis Cissna announced the agency’s new mission statement.

It reads:

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services administers the nation’s lawful immigration system, safeguarding its integrity and promise by efficiently and fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits while protecting Americans, securing the homeland, and honoring our values.

USCIS’s previous mission statement, still available on the agency’s website Thursday, read:

USCIS secures America’s promise as a nation of immigrants by providing accurate and useful information to our customers, granting immigration and citizenship benefits, promoting an awareness and understanding of citizenship, and ensuring the integrity of our immigration system.

My first question, in reaction to the new statement, is "Just whose values? Trump's?"

And then "securing the homeland"? Don't you mean "Vaterland"?

And of course -- stop me if you've heard this -- when it comes right down to it, the only place that people are really native to is East Africa. So basically, we're all descended from immigrants.