A dear friend's appeal on behalf of Trump. I still love him never the less.

He's my childhood friend.   Fifty-five years we've known each other - caroused, hunted, camped, fished, and almost died canoeing and driving while under various influences. I love him like a brother.

But, alas, he has never quite shaken off the "Guns and taxes  is all I give a shit about, and fuck them welfare niggers, ragheads and queers who hate America!" mentality. A mentality that I must confess I once shared, a long time ago in another life.  I oft received obscene and racist mass email mailings replete with gross cartoons or photograph meme's from him, evidently part of the stuff he regularly receives from his similarly racist and right wing New York friends. Happily he respected my request to be removed from that distribution.
 
Today I received this email from him:
  "Pal the next president will be appointing at least one probably 2 supreme court justices.. I don’t think even you will like Clinton’s choices.. You gotta vote Trump."

My response:

"Thanks... but I don't vote for infantile, hateful, narcissistic, sociopath, misogynistic, xenophobic, racist, fascistic, inveterate liar reality stars for president. If I did it would be Charlie Sheen ... a coke head who always thought he was "WINNING" too.

And I'll settle for any Supreme Court justice who isn't 'in the mold of' Scalia or Thomas.  

No... I'll stick with the hideously elitist phony woman with international experience and a modicum of mental stability who doesn't fuck her own daughter. But..,I do appreciate your advice...as always."
I don't expect a reply.  I hope there isn't one since I have exactly no interest in engaging in debate on this.  I'll always love him, I'll always be there for him ...but I mourn the passing of time that has left him so many years behind the evolutionary progress of civility and reasoned thought.  

FLASH: The Catholic Church Steps Up to the Plate on Ending Clergy Child Abuse. LOL ... Just Kidding!!!

In case you didn't hear, the Catholic Church's commission and advisory board to the pope on ending clergy sexual abuse of children has made a major stride in fixing the problem that has plagued this cabal of sex perverts and hypocrites for centuries. The whole story here.

This intensive plan that will no doubt flush the child molesting priests and bishops out of their ranks once and for all is pretty much summarized in this one sentence:
"Following a week of meetings in Rome, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors announced several new initiatives, including a training program for bishops and a day of prayer for victims of sex abuse."Hey, don't scoff. At least it's better than the all too telling quote by Bishop Robert Cunningham last year as shown under his photo above.

Bishop Robert Cunningham

Bishop Robert Cunningham

Bishop Robert Cunningham

Yup... it's been a long time coming, but there it is: training and prayer. Bam!  Why didn't I think of that?  I'm sure this will come as a welcome sea change to the tens of thousands of victims left in wake of the deaf, dumb, blind, sick, and utterly ludicrous Catholic Church. I for one am glad THAT's over.

Behold... Born Unto You This Day, the Holy Potato. Let us pray.

So... they slice open a potato, and lo and behold an execution device appears, placed there evidently by their God of Potato Messages. It's immediately declared a "divine presence" by this group of aging and obviously senile Catholics.   Read all about it here.


Seriously? A signal from God? And he sends it inside a fricking tuber, because he's what... Irish? or maybe because he yearns for some tater tots?

Never mind that it's a commonly recognized disease that causes the death and thus darkening of cells inside of the potato.  Never mind all that normal reasonable scientific fact of freekin agriculture, it's a sign from Gawd! It's a "Miracle"!

I fully expect that potato to be canonized.  It would be just as deserved of that nonsensical mumbo jumbo as is Mother Teresa. In fact...maybe even more so.  At least the potato didn't prolong, and take satisfaction in, the suffering of dying patients. Catholics. Ya just gotta shake your head. . 

Dissent: UnAmerican, or a Patriotic Duty?

I consider myself patriotic. But not blindly so. I love this country, with all its faults and inequities. I'd rather live nowhere else. If called upon to genuinely defend this nation ... I mean for real this time ... I'd do so without hesitation.

But those who see San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick's act of dissent by refusing to stand for the anthem out of protest over how this nation treats people of color, as being worthy of punishment or worse, are false patriots.

I'm seeing it from the "LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT!" crowd; whites who have never known prejudice; people to whom the concept of "something is amiss in this nation, let's try and make it better, more fair for everyone" is just plain unpatriotic. They are the ones who spit on the very Constitution they claim to love. They are blind patriots ... and ignorant.
When I got back from Vietnam I wasn't exactly grateful for the fact the US had lied to me and sent me there under a false premise. I was young and angry. 

Soon after my return home I went to a movie with the future Mrs. Hump. Back in '69  they played the National Anthem before the film. I refused to stand for the anthem. An old guy behind me growls: "Show some respect for your country."  I almost lost it but I didn't . I said seething through my clinched teeth. "I got back from Nam two months ago fighting for a lie this country sold us; so unless you're man enough to make me stand go fuck yourself."

I don't regret it.  Neither my act of dissent, nor my retort.

And that's about all I have to say about that football player's right to express his dissent and his dissatisfaction with how people of color are treated in this nation.  Other than to say I support his action of conscience ... and his courage. 

France: Making Secularism Look Idiotic One Moronic Law at a Time

Look, I've never held myself up as a bastion of tolerance and brotherly love.  I  have no patience for religionists who wear their foolishness as a badge of honor.  I look at Hasidim attire as patently idiotic; I don't want a waitress' "dead Jew on a stick" necklace dangling in my food at a restaurant; and I find Muslim head scarves and burkas ridiculous.

But I acknowledge that how I feel has exactly nothing to do with people's right to wear what they please as long as it doesn't interfere with my rights or exceed the bounds of good taste (i.e. wearing only an athletic supporter while teaching a class on thermodynamics in a publicly funded college would be an example).  As a secularist it's simply a matter of live and let  live ... their goofy garb not withstanding.

Evidently the French don't share this mentality.  Their laws involving religious garb or symbols have become so draconian as to actually embarrass me as an atheist / secularist.

If you haven't read about it, the police in France forced a Muslim woman to remove more of her covering at a beach than her religion and modesty permits. It's the law!  It's part of the law that also says one cannot wear yarmulkes, or any distinctive religious garb publicly that falls outside the "norm" of French culture.  It is a law so beyond the pale that when I first learned of it I thought it was an article from the satirical site The Onion.  It isn't. It's quite real. Read the whole story here.
It smacks of a bizarre reversal of what was done to the non-religious or to Jews during the Spanish inquisition:  "You damn well better start eating that pork, or we'll arrest you for being a Jew!". 

What the heck has happened here?  How can a nation whose motto is  "Liberté,  égalité,  fraternité"  speak of liberty and equality and brotherhood on one hand, while the other hand holds a baton ready to punish those less deserved of liberty or equal treatment because of what they wear?

I wonder how it got to that point. 
I wonder how much worse it will get there.
I wonder if it can happen here. 
I'm disgusted.

The Product of Religious and Political Stupidity

What do you get when you combine devotion to an imaginary supernatural being, with the worship of a narcissistic sociopath, congenital liar, and purveyor of hate?  This guy.

The Pew Research center reports that Evangelicals have come out strong for Donald Trump. Seventy-eight percent would vote for him for president today.  Here's a link to the story and poll data.

I'm unsurprised. Why wouldn't Evangelicals support a man who has been divorced twice; lusts after his own daughter's "figure";  is a fake Christian who misquotes biblical verse, and panders to the religiously stupid; makes fun of the disabled, is an inveterate liar, and has a wife who poses nude?
After all, Christians in general, and Evangelicals in particular are utter hypocrites. Hypocrisy is a veritable sacrament to them. Let them be damned.