Praise the Lord And Put More Money In The Slot

 

I shouldn't be surprised. After all televangelism is all about putting money in the slot...sorry...collection plate to get the jackpot of salvation from your "big imaginary friend in the sky"©*. The other night I was watching a movie that someone else had put on the television when a Caesar's Casino ad blared forth (blare is a modest term for what they do) with the news of the...I am not making this up "The Jesus Slots". Now we have one-armed bandits to match the two-armed bandits like Creflo Dollar, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, Greg Locke, and their Simoniac ilk.

I thought that I had seen the ultimate when I saw the Jesus on the cross flicker picture that Cheech and Chong so effectively satirized. I also, years before that, saw at Easter season a chocolate-marshmallow crucifix, your sweet, chewy way to consume the body and the blood together. Yet "The Jesus Slots" bring us to a whole new level of religiose absurdity, I fear.

I have said before that Evangelicals have given Christianity a bad name what with their incessant money grubbing, not to mention their using religion as a pretext for tax avoidance and expounding and encouraging neo-fascist politics. Evangelicalism is the untreated sewage of Christianity. In fact, the marriage of Evangelical CHRISTIANS and the neo-Nazi Republiscum Party is a match...dare I say it?...made in heaven (the one that's only a myth like Santa Claus). Evangelicals will swallow whole and in amazing quantities any bullshit that the con artists posing as pastors and prophets feed them. The Rapture? Sure! Qanon? You betcha! Then there are the old standards like anti-Semitism, white supremacy, religious bigotry and hate of anyone who doesn't adhere to a lifestyle that they find glancingly referred to in some passage of the inerrant Bible that Jim Bakker or some other charlatan has just edited for his own flock of bleating sheep. The Republiscum Party is for "the little guy"! Sure!! That's why so many million and billionaires fork over a chunk of their quarterly dividend payments to keep the sheep thinking that nonsense.

But wait, you might say, most of these "bleating sheep" are simply good people, good, simple people. There's no need to insult and denigrate them. To which I say, your standards of "good" and mine differ widely. I exclude from "good people" the racists, the xenophobes, the hate-filled fools who rail against the gay or lesbian or transgendered, the religious bigots who insist that only their religion worships their particular and special, one and only "big imaginary friend in the sky"©* properly and that all others must be converted or destroyed, any "good people" who insist on following a "prophet" none of whose predictions come true, who insist that demons possess anyone not playing a part in a movie, who insist that women do not have a right to choose what happens within their own bodies or an education or work outside the home or refuse to have sexual relations with their husbands ever or report their husbands to police when the husbands abuse either the women themselves or their children. Such folks are not ever included in my definition of "good people".

These same insane people who insist that women have no individual right to choose abortion now rally to insist that they have the individual right to go maskless and infect others as well as refuse to take a safe and effective vaccine which could save their lives, the lives of those in their families, their neighbors, fellow congregants and also prevent the Covid-19 virus from mutating into more dangerous and deadly forms. To call these people insane and imbeciles is not hyperbolic. They can't discern that their refusal to get vaccinated and masked is as inimical to human life as they claim abortion to be. If they can't figure that out they are either insane, imbeciles or insane imbeciles or, worse yet, insane imbeciles who credit Fox News, Newsmax, Sinclair or OANN.

Too harsh?

Let me put it to you this way: vaccines made by Pfizer, Moderna, and several other companies, including Johnson & Johnson, have proven safe, effective and have reduced both infection and death rates in the United States and around the world. Those vaccines have allowed many areas' businesses to reopen, sometimes fully, and encouraged economic growth but that doesn't matter to the insane, the imbeciles, insane imbeciles and, to be redundant, Evangelicals among us whose latest snake oil cure-all is horse dewormer. The con men selling Ivermectin to their audience of fools will tell you that the Covid vaccines can make men sterile. They can't and don't but when have the facts ever stopped a con man? In place of the actual effective vaccine, they tout a veterinary medicine that actually can sterilize humans. When the con men know they have the attention of the insane, the imbecilic, the insane imbecilic and, to again be redundant, the Evangelicals their villainy knows no bounds. Yet a part of me thinks that sterilizing these fools is a thing devoutly to be wished.

We should not be surprised at this. Evangelicals are so steeped in the idea that this life is a "world of sin", "a veil of tears", a world so deeply flawed that their "big, imaginary friend in the sky"©* has decreed that it should be destroyed and that we are thus in "The End Times", that their great joy is the total destruction of their "big, imaginary friend's" handiwork. It never occurs to these fools that planning your life for the destruction of your god's creation might be offensive to that very god they claim to worship.

The bleating sheep who trust that their "big, imaginary friend in the sky"©* will protect them from a world-wide pandemic are dying like flies. In states run by the Republiscum Party, the infection and death rates soar while their preachers and radio blabbers tell them that their god is angry at the United States for allowing (take your pick from the following list):

• Abortion
• LGBTQ rights
• Black Lives Matter
• The Anti-Fascist Movement known as antifa
• Eliminating prayer in schools
• Feminism
• Not reelecting The Failed Orange Führer
• Rigging the 2020 election to defeat The Failed Orange Führer
• Allowing anyone to even think about Critical Race Theory
• Teaching Evolution 
• Liberalism
• Communism
• Any "ism" that your preacher says is bad
• Some cabal of politicians, celebrities and folks they don't like that are actually reptiles who steal the essence, blood, pheromones, something from babies and children and wear red, high-heeled shoes
  
• All of the above

They never seem to wonder why their "big, imaginary friend in the sky"©* is taking it out on his worshipers of the "one, true faith" and not killing off the nasty people included in the list above. Could it be that the disasters inflicted on these "good people" happen randomly, or because of climate change (oops! I almost forgot. It's not climate change it's Chinese weather machines and Jewish Space Lasers!") or maybe, just maybe, if their is a god looking out for his special planet, those disasters get visited upon the "good people" because their god is pissed off that they are so utterly stupid and wants to sift the Evangelical chaff from the Liberal grain so that creation, with all it's nasty flaws, can continue to chug along without their bullshit?

We'll just have to wait and see who gets the jackpot from the "Jesus Slots" of life.

To close, let me quote Maxwell Anderson's lyrics for the title song of the musical Lost in the Stars:

Before the Lord God made the sea and the land

He held all the stars in the palm of his hand

And they ran through his fingers like grains of sand

And one little star fell alone.

Then the Lord God hunted through the white, night air

For the little dark star on the winds down there

And he stated and promised he'd take special care

So it wouldn't get lost any more.

Now a man doesn't mind if the stars grow dim

Or the clouds roll over and darken him

As long as the Lord God's watching over them

Keeping track how it all goes on.

But I've been walking through the night and the day

'Til my eyes get weary and my head turns grey

And sometimes it seems maybe God's gone away

Forgetting the promise that we heard him say

And we're lost out here in the stars.

Little stars, big stars blowing through the night

And we're lost out here in the stars.

Little stars, big stars

Blowing through the night

And we're lost out here in the stars!

*©George Carlin

REPUBLISCUM - APPARENTLY THERE IS NO LIMIT TO LOW

 

So now 43 Republiscum Senators have ignored their oaths to support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. These 43 Republiscum have endorsed the January 6th attack on the U. S. Capitol, defended the criminal who incited that attempted putsch and allowed an attack meant to do away with American democracy to spawn further attacks.

T. S. Eliot had it correct:

This is the way the world ends    

This is the way the world ends   

This is the way the world ends   

Not with a bang but a whimper.  

 

American democracy didn't entirely die today with the whimpering, simpering Republiscum of the Senate but we are picking up speed on the downhill roll toward Fascist Dictatorship. The brakes are not only off, the lines have been cut. There is nearly nothing to halt the rush toward Fascist Dictatorship. If not The Orange Führer it will be some other Republiscum Führer in waiting. Perhaps the Führer will be Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley or some as yet unknown craven villain who wishes nothing but power and has no regard for decency or law.

To return to Eliot's Gerontion once more, the Republiscum who acquitted The Orange Führer, they...

...are the hollow men    

 ...are the stuffed men 

 Leaning together 

 Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

 

The 43 Republiscum, the hollow men and women voted alphabetically as follows:

1. John Barrasso (WY) 
2. Marsha Blackburn (TN) 
3. Roy Blunt (MO) 
4. John Boozman (AR) 
5. Mike Braun (IN) 
6. Shelley Moore Capito (WV)
7. John Cornyn (TX) 
8. Tom Cotton (AR) 
9. Kevin Cramer (ND)
10. Mike Crapo (ID) 
11. Ted Cruz (TX)
12. Steve Daines (MT)
13. Joni Ernst (IA)
14. Deb Fischer (NE)
15. Lindsey Graham (SC) 
16. Chuck Grassley (IA)
17. Bill Hagerty (TN)
18. Josh Hawley (MO)
19. John Hoeven (ND) 
20. Cindy Hyde-Smith (MS)
21. James M. Inhofe (OK)
22. Ron Johnson (WI)
23. John Kennedy (LA)
24. James Lankford (OK)
25. Mike Lee (UT) 
26. Cynthia M. Lummis (WY)
27. Roger Marshall (KS)
28. Mitch McConnell (KY)
29. Jerry Moran (KS) 
30. Rand Paul (KY)
31. Rob Portman (OH) 
32. James E. Risch (ID)
33. Mike Rounds (SD)
34. Marco Rubio (FL)
35. Rick Scott (FL)
36. Tim Scott (SC) 
37. Richard C. Shelby (AL)
38. Dan Sullivan (AK)
39. John Thune (SD) 
40. Thom Tillis (NC)
41. Tommy Tuberville (AL)
42. Roger F. Wicker (MS)
43. Todd Young (IN)

Following his vote to acquit The Failed Orange Führer of the high crime of trying to invalidate a free and fair election by sponsoring and inciting an armed insurrection at the U. S. Capitol, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gave a speech excoriating The Failed Orange Führer for exactly those crimes. Some might be willing to gloss over McConnell's reaction as "cognitive dissonance". Some, less kind and more psychologically oriented, might say that McConnell is "bipolar". His attack on The Failed Orange Führer is neither of those facile things. The attack was simply McConnell's baying at the Republiscum electorate that he's now the pack leader of these curs. (My apologies to dogs, even the worst of them, for the insult to all canines that a comparison to Mitch McConnell entails. Then again, I'd have to apologize to reptiles had I compared him to some particularly obnoxious reptile.)

Some neo-Nazis speak of "taking over the Republican Party". Those idiots are 60+ years too late. As late as 1974 there were remnants of a "Republican Party" but that ceased to exist by the time we had reached 1996. The old money, Republiscum Old Guard (now asking themselves what happened in meetings of The Lincoln Project) that had been bankrolling the Tea Party and Birther loonies convinced themselves that they, and their sock puppets like Mitch McConnell, still controlled the Republiscum Party that they had lovingly built out of racists, bigots, neo-Nazis and other scum over decades. They stitched together the Evangelicals, anti-abortionists, gun nuts and conspiracy cultists into a large minority and then committed themselves to suppressing voters in the good, old fashioned way that Strom Thurmond, John Stennis, George Smathers, Richard Russell, William Rhenquist and George Wallace had done in the 1950s and 60s. Keeping legitimate, mostly minority voters out of polling places gave the look and tallies of a majority to their minority party.

What the Republiscum Old Guard in their wealth and entitlement hadn't foreseen was that this Frankenstein monster they had built would go off on its own to lay waste the countryside and, incidentally, the Capitol building, at the behest of one they considered a loud-mouthed one of their own, The Failed Orange Führer.

The Old Guard Republiscum and Mitch McConnell are no more in control of the Republiscum Party than I am. They, like the Krupps, Mengeles, von Witzlebens and Hugenbergs in the Germany of 1933 sit in, let's call it a skybox, overseeing the chaos below and thinking that they control the monster they've unleashed. Down in the field of retail politics they are not in control of their monster's rampage. They will find out how little control they have only when the monster breaks down the door to their "skybox" and defenestrates the lot of them. Let's hope, for our own sakes even though it save the Kochs, Mercers and Mellon-Scaifes among others, that we have our own Nürnberg Trials before the monster does yet more damage.

SPEAKING ILL OF THE DEAD I

On Friday, November 30, 2018 George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st President of the United States, died and has been graciously and effusively eulogized since. Some of those attempts at hagiography have been genuine and valid but they ignore the gross weight of the negatives justly heaped upon Bush 41 for the great evil that he did.

First, George H. W. Bush carried on a tradition of questionable heroism in war. His father, Prescott Sheldon Bush, served in the American Expeditionary Force in World War I. He claimed in a letter to his parents that he had batted away from General John J. Pershing an artillery shell and thereby saving the life of the A.E.F. commander. Prescott's proud parents made the letter and his alleged act of heroism public. However, once out in public Prescott's great heroic act came under scrutiny which quickly determined that his baseball skill, let alone that of Babe Ruth, could not have altered the course of an artillery shell. Prescott's claim of heroism was utterly false and physically impossible. Faced with public derision, Prescott was forced to admit that his purported saving of General Pershing was a complete fiction. Whether Prescott ever intended it to become public or not isn't and cannot be known. There is no doubt that Prescott's son, George H. W. Bush was a Navy pilot in the Pacific Theatre during World War II. On one of his last missions, George H. W.'s plane was hit by Japanese fire. He was able to bail out but his two crewmen died in the crash of the plane. George H. W. was quickly rescued by a submarine that happened to be conveniently on the ocean surface nearby. During the 1988 presidential campaign some serious questions arose as to whether George H. W. had bailed out of his torpedo plane early leaving his crewmen to their death and, much like his father's heroism, his serendipitous salvation by that submarine wasn't as serendipitous as it's said to be. The question that has never been answered was did George H. W., piloting a damaged plane, see the submarine and parachute out leaving his crew to die. We don't know but it would carry on a less than savory family tradition.

Prescott Bush became a protege of W. Averell Harriman and Harriman's investment banking firm in the 1920s and took up residence in the Connecticut commuter suburbs of New York City. In the explicitly Liberal 1930s and 40s Prescott became an officer of the the Connecticut chapter of the United Negro College Fund and of the American Birth Control League in Catholic dominated Connecticut where all forms of birth control were illegal. In a period in which such things were not anomalous, Prescott was also the finance chairman of the Connecticut Republican Party. The long connection to support for birth control and abortion became a millstone around George H. W.'s neck when he sought the presidency in 1980.

During World War II Prescott set another family tradition of making loyalty secondary to business. Prescott was a director, along with his mentor Harriman, of the Union Banking Corporation, a bank that held significant assets for German steel magnate Fritz Thyssen. Thyssen's Vereinigte Stahlwereke AG controlled about 75% of Germany's iron ore reserves and made much of the steel that went into Hitler's planes, tanks and other armaments. Thyssen was a Nazi supporter from 1923 onward. He was one of the signers of the letter to German president Paul von Hindenberg that convinced von Hindenberg to appoint Adolph Hitler as German Chancellor in 1933.  He was in complete agreement with the Nazi expulsion of Jews from jobs and industry but demurred in the mid-1930s when Hitler turned on the Roman Catholic Church. Shortly after Germany began World War II by invading Poland, Thyssen, believing that war was not appropriate at the time, fled to Switzerland. He was subsequently condemned by the Nazi Party and government. However, Thyssen continued to profit from his steel industry. Rumors were flying that Union Banking Corp. was holding gold for high ranking Nazis including Thyssen and in October, 1942 the U. S. Government seized the assets of Union Banking under the Trading with the Enemy Act, retaining those assets for the duration of the war. Though there is no reason to believe that Prescott Bush was a Nazi sympathizer, it is impossible to believe that he was unaware of Thyssen's Nazi sympathies, anti-Semitism and involvement in the German armaments industry. Thus, Prescott Bush established his son, George H. W.'s belief that loyalty to country is one thing that's all well and good but loyalty to money is forever.

In 1950 Prescott made his first run for senator from Connecticut against Sen. William Burnett Benton as a Liberal Republican, something that was then not the imaginary, fantastical beast it is today. He lost by 1,000 votes. Prescott planned a run again in 1952. As part of that planning W. Averell Harriman advised Prescott that he could not be elected if he did not take a vigorous anti-communist stance in line with Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy and California Senator Richard Nixon. Prescott won election as senator from Connecticut in 1952 riding the wave of Dwight David Eisenhower's presidential campaign and anti-communist fearmongering. Thus Prescott set another tradition that George H. W. followed in 1980 and 1988 of jettisoning all personal beliefs and ethics in favor of claiming power.

Following his military service George H. W. moved to Texas where his family wealth and prominence gave him entree into the oil industry and even greater wealth and influence.

Prescott Bush retired from the senate in 1962. His second son, George H. W., ran for Congress unsuccessfully in 1964 when Barry Goldwater led the Republican's to near universal defeat. George H. W. ran again in 1966 and won the election to represent Texas' 7th District where he served for 2 terms. During George H. W.'s 2 terms in the House of Representatives the Vietnam War was at it height as was opposition to it in America. Coincidentally, his son George W., hereinafter referred to as "Shrub" (the late Milly Ivins' delightful nickname for "Dubya" graduated from an undistinguished 4 years at Yale University and needed both a military "career" and to stay alive. George H. W. got Dubya a position in the Texas Air National Guard far from even the faint prospect of actual combat. Dubya managed to be accepted for pilot training despite low scores on the pilot aptitude tests, irregular attendance at pilot training and frequent drunkenness. In 1971 Dubya miraculously got transferred to the 187th Fighter Wing of the Alabama Air National Guard but really so that he could work on the senatorial campaign of Winton Blount. Shrub's pilot career ended when he refused to appear for a required physical leaving him with a military career less distinguished though less public than his grandfather's.

Once George H. W. lost his seat in Congress, his father's friend, and our first overtly criminal president, Richard Milhous Nixon appointed him U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations, a cabinet level position. In January, 1973 as the Watergate Break-In began to develop into the Watergate Scandal, George H. W. became chairman of the Republican National Committee. He held that post until September, 1974 when newly anointed President Gerald R. Ford shipped him off to be chief of the new liaison office in China, effectively making Poppy Bush our ambassador to Beijing. That job lasted about 16 months until Ford brought Poppy back to Washington, actually Langley, Virginia, to head the CIA. Ford acted in the shadow of the investigations of the Church Committee (Senate) and Pike Committee (House) into CIA operations many of which flagrantly violated U. S. and International Law and treaties. Poppy came in to the CIA as someone ostensibly untainted by the questionable operations and bizarre policies of the Intelligence Community.

Once Jimmy Carter became president on January 20, 1977, Poppy retired to investment banking in Houston, Texas, joined the Trilateral Commission and prepared himself for a run at the presidency in 1980. That year the ultra-right wing of the Republiscum Party made it's comeback from the Goldwater debacle of 1964 with Ronald Reagan as their front man. Reagan, who was probably showing signs of Alzheimer's Disease, needed a reliable vice-president. Poppy put himself forward as not only that reliable man but as the representative of entrenched oligarchical power within the Republiscum Party. Carter's inept handling of first the Shah of Iran and then the subsequent Iranian Hostage Crisis doomed his bid for reelection and Poppy became the 43rd Vice-President of the United States.

When Reagan was clearly losing mental capacity during the 1984 campaign, Poppy Bush became an increasingly important part of the Administration. Though he claimed to have "gone to the bathroom" during the time that Reagan authorized the illegal actions that became known as the Iran-Contra Affair there is plenty of reason to believe that Poppy was deeply involved in the illegal acts in Iran and Nicaragua with Col. Oliver North and Admiral John Poindexter. Poppy Bush's involvement in Iran-Contra is the most likely reason that his son, Shrub, immediately on taking office, changed the availability of presidential papers to scholars from 25 to 50 years following the end of an Administration. The Reagan Administration papers would have become available after January 20, 2014 while his father's papers would have been open to scholars after January 20, 2018. Now the Reagan papers are locked up until 2039 and the Bush 41 papers won't become available for critical review until 2043. Justice delayed is justice denied and history delayed is truth denied. We won't know all of the crimes of the Shrub-Cheney Administration until 2058 far too late for the American people to know and understand how they have been misled and ill-served by Ronald Reagan, Poppy Bush, his feckless son.

So belatedly I am here to speak ill of the dead who deserve to be spoken ill of. I am sure that there are good things to be said of George Herbert Walker Bush but as a public man, I cannot think of any and can think of more than I've listed above that are ill.

As far as that goes, for more speaking ill of the dead I eagerly await the obituaries for the following:
Richard (Dick) Cheney
Donald Rumsfeld
Oliver North
John Poindexter
William Barr
Donald J. Trump
Michael Pence

None of those obituaries can come too soon.