This is a sick, twisted, blatant lie. Abortion at the time of birth is called murder and no Democrats support this. Stop telling us what Joe Biden believes. He’s a pro-life Catholic. He just doesn’t force his views on everyone.
Donald J. Trump tweeted yesterday: “Biden and Democrats just clarified the fact that they are fully in favor of (very) LATE TERM ABORTION, right up until the time of birth, and beyond – which would be execution. Biden even endorsed the Governor of Virginia, who stated this clearly for all to hear. GET OUT & VOTE!!!”
If I didn’t hear that this talking point that democrats and Joe Biden, a devote Catholic, is for something called “Late-term Abortion,” being spread by thinking/breathing Republicans, I wouldn’t believe that anyone actually fell for the idea.
But they do. Gullible people fall for simple lies. It’s not that difficult to understand.
Close friends have repeated it. And it’s just sickening. It’s a super malignant method to demonize one’s enemies. And despite all evidence to the contrary, people are saying they’re going to vote for Trump solely on this point alone.
One friend even said that abortion due to rape was wrong, because that baby wasn’t necessarily conceived from evil. A 15 year old or younger girl should have to live with being raped by her uncle for the rest of her life?
I. was. dumbstruck.
I’m not for abortion, but there are clearly more issues at stake and there are CLEAR methods to avoid the abortion all together.
This is bullshit.
What really needs to happen is we should implement Low cost, safe, reversible vasectomies for all coming-of-age boys. Make it religious ritual like in most other cultures. Women unable to impregnate themselves. Only men make unwanted pregnancy.
“But “partial-birth” is not a medical term. It’s a political one, and a highly confusing one at that, with both sides disagreeing even on how many procedures take place, at what point in pregnancy, and exactly which procedures the law actually bans.“
Year after year, we get the benefit of a “free” social media site. I use Facebook to advertise my photography and filmmaking, but otherwise would be as far away from it as possible.
Facebook doesn’t have a constitution, nor promise first amendment rights. They have a TOS. A Terms of Service. They own the country and they set the rules.
They also burgle you of as much personal information and sell it to advertisers behind your back. So, yeah, you pay dearly for the site … with your LIFE!
The masses of misinformation on Facebook are clearly a cesspool of frightening ignorance.
During the pandemic, the crazies have filled the virtual streets with signs loaded with apocryphal taunts. Memes abound. Biases are confirmed en masse. People who never had a voice before, seemingly have one. Unlikely cults find and recruit members quickly and easily.
Today I saw a post from a friend on this meme :
The first response was from the guy who posted the meme’s father. It read:
Is he saying that the USA doesn’t help the poor or Christians don’t help the poor? I wonder what he bases that statement on?
My response – which seems to be getting legs – as my friends are screen capping it and sending it to others:
I think many of the faithful think they are benevolent based on their involvement in their churches. Or by proxy because their churches have outreach programs.
Having spent many hours with my very conservative friends over the last year, I have seen first hand how much some believers LOATH the poor. They complain about them incessantly given the topic in conversation. Helping them means telling them they shouldn’t be in full view at their stop lights holding signs. They shouldn’t be visible, because it plagues their green pastures and blue skies.
I agree with you and Mr. Colbert here. It appears that Jesus’ mission of helping and curing the poor and the sick is a willfully forgotten pastime. The only thing selfish people of faith care about is the “next life” where everything will be solved in harmonious cloud life. Here? That’s Satan’s land. There, that’s where all are healed. All are safe. All our happy. All are well fed in a magical economy of what would appear to be socialism to the max. 🙂
I don’t necessarily enjoy being critical of believers. I don’t think all believers are bad or evil, per se. Nor do I think that they — in their minds — are doing something wrong. I believe many people have enough self awareness to see their own hypocrisies. Including myself.
I have two best friends in the south who LOVE their faith and love Donald Trump. One is a guy I grew up with and the other is my dad. Given this info, and I still love them dearly, might indicate my level of consideration, I would hope.
I think the world is a huge landscape to navigate. In theory, we’re all doing and living exactly the way we are in our minds, not remembering that others perceptions of us are usually negative as well as positive. Each one of us is a hypocrite. Each one of us fails and succeeds.
Each one of us mistakenly views our perspective as truth. Some more than others.
Sometimes it’s our inability to identify personal weaknesses and be thoughtful about them.
Yesterday, a friend of mine, a very lovely person I met here on this blog and also in REAL LIFE tagged me on Facebook hoping hear my thoughts on Facebook censoring certain ideas. This person, Julie Ferwerda, author and nurse, entered my purview after I read a post ±10 years ago that she wrote about “dating Jesus.” She wrote that she must make time to spend with her personal savior because it helps cultivate their intimacy. Make him cards! Record His answers. Make time for one another! Read my post here.
I’m sure I was critical of it, because a relationship with Jesus is one-directional. I found it laughable that anyone would “date” the so-called creator of the universe.
While some believe we have His Word to communicate to us. There’s no way to have a “real” conversation with someone who has no tangible voice. So we talk all we want through prayer, to a voice in our heads that many attribute to that of God himself.
At the time, she laughed it off. And I thought that she showed showed enough personal awareness of her foibles and idiosyncratic approach to relationships with invisible friends.
Since then, she wrote a book called Raising Hell, Christianity’s Most Controversial Doctrine Put Under Fire. The book is a verbose meandering of her decision to leave the fold of hell believers. At the time, we had become friends, and I had written a few times here on this blog that hell is the easiest Christian doctrine to research and dispel as fiction. I’d like to think it was the foundation for her book, but I love to think highly of myself. 🤣
She’s recently displaced her views of fervent evangelicalism to replace it with proselytizing the religion of vaccination awareness.
She didn’t write the following. But I did. Her view, in my opinion, is this:
Mark Zuckerberg totally admitted — out loud! — that Facebook tries to prevent anti-vaccine information. This is CENSORSHIP! How can they censor helpful information about the EVILS of vaccination. It’s all a sham scam, perpetuated by Bill Gates and Big Pharma!!!
So here’s this LONG ass thread discussing vaccinations with all her likeminded darlings. It’s not being taken down. There are links in the thread to Bill Gates. To the evils of vaccines. And it hasn’t been censored.
But they’re complaining about censorship.
Does anyone with a pulse not see the irony?
So she tags me and says, “Thoughts?”
I looked at the thread and rolled my eyes. After pointing out the irony that her controversial post was yet to be censored, I responded a few times. Given the opportunity and “welcome” into their house to give my “opinion”:
I believe that it’s inappropriate to discuss controversial issues on Facebook. For instance, I don’t discuss my lack of belief, my political stance, my thoughts against people like you with views like yours … I am now, because it’s on topic.
Why? Because it’s dumb as dirt. I don’t think we would have these arguments if we were in person. We’d be much more delicate — at least in theory. There are better things to talk about than vaccines. And there are better uses of my brain space than to try and convince against something you’re already convinced of.
Just like you changing your mind about hell … these changes happen organically. I could care less about your stance otherwise. I do come from the camp that you’re very misinformed. As do you toward me. Surprise!!!
I believe you have moved your beliefs of hell to that of vaccines. You believe that you’re loving your fellow humans with the gospel of “don’t vaccinate.” So you go on proselytizing rants and raves for a giant conspiracy of censorship. That you’re being marginalized like Christians. Oh the martyrdom of promoting your beliefs!!!
It’s like your brains need so badly to get the world to see the unseen that you latch on to crappy arguments like these and scream, “LISTEN TO ME!!!! I — and I alone — am speaking the truth.”
Only this time it’s not hell and heaven and Jesus … it’s a damn scientific doubt founded on a bunch of hooey capluey.
The Anti-vaccination crew blab about their absent rights and their censored truths. They throw around how they all eschew mainstream media. While claiming that their peripheral media sources are solid, and grounded — no steeped — in research and amazing information! Read them and you, too, will open your eyes to the pit of evils instituted by Bill Gates.
When did Bill Gates get demonized? I can’t really figure it out, but it seems like it’s gained popularity in the last couple years. Check these articles here, here and here.
Bill Gates. He’s the formidable enemy of the anti-vax cult. With his pointy ears, horns, red skin and trident held high with hundreds of dead babies on each spear.
This guy:
Who publishes a summer reading list so thoughtfully curated and reviewed.
While his blog is a diverse gathering of educational material, the anti-vaxxers are posting endless memes about how evil he is. They’ve taken his words out of context to render him a monster of vaccinations at the peril of you, your loved ones and your fellow neighbors.
Mainstream Media — and all you un-woke people — have fallen into Gate’s hypnotic gaze.
I asked myself recently, “Who do I not like in the world?”
And I answered, “Well, I don’t like Donald Trump.”
Then I asked, “Do I not like him so much that I have demonized him, reveled in his awfulness both on and off the social media court.”
And I responded, “I spend a fair share of time, energy and mental real estate thinking about this guy. Yes.”
And then I asked, “Do you do it ALL the time?”
My response, “Not really. There are good thoughts I have of him. I remember a roast between him and Hillary Clinton before the election in which I saw this one glimmer of kindness toward Hillary in which he tried to pull her seat out for her as she was sitting down. She, in that moment, was a cunt. She was the one who acted the asshole.”
I’ve asked myself a hundred times if I adored Barack Obama as much as Trump supporters adore him. I don’t believe I do. But Trump’s cult of personality is different. Obama was a boring president in comparison. We all got earfuls of how awful he was. How he wasn’t a Christian. Sympathetic toward Muslims. But besides wearing a tan suit and “um-ing” more than the average bear, he was largely flying under a radar. Fox News tended to air their grievances daily. But I never owned a poster. I never thought he was worth adoring. He was just another president doing his best to do the job he was voted in to do.
I look back at my disdain toward George W Bush. I changed my mind about him even though I thought he was a war-mongering prick. But once I heard him talk to his daughters getting interviewed on Ellen. He was on the phone and the girls were in the studio. Hearing his humanity and kindness toward his daughters softened my heart and I totally saw him as a man.
There are plenty of things I wish Donald Trump did differently. But I don’t believe deep down that he’s trying to ruin the world. His views of the world are living out in his day to day life. And while they aren’t my ideals, apparently there are many who adore him.
Because I get more chances lately to spend time with those Donald Trump fans — including my best friends — when I’m in the south at my second home, I get to see first hand that they comprehend his foibles and they overlook them. They think highly of him.
And while it’s like they want me to like their favorite band or love their favorite TV shows … you can’t convince me that I should completely love them or him, too.
It’s like demonizing the devil. Everyone paints him as evil, but he was responsible for opening Adam and Eve’s minds to the so-called truth. He didn’t condemn people to eternal torment, God did. He’s kinda just a bystander with a huge pool of incessantly burning embers. He’s apparently easily defeat-able, but God lets him stick around causing havoc, casting doubt, tempting you with sex, lies and drugs. But God sent the flood as punishment. God kills. Satan seems to just sport cool tattoos and wait for his kingdom to be filled with people who commit the thought crime of not accepting Jesus as the savior of the World.
Bill Gates. That Satan-loving, child murderer and vaccine profiteer. I don’t love him. I could care less. But I do see a tendency for groups to scapegoat someone without merit. And the more I read about him, the more I’m not convinced that he’s going out of his way to benefit off of the world by having it vaccinated.
Like you perhaps, I’m trying to make sense of this vaccination crowd. I ask myself, “Why don’t I make the same connections as they do? I’ve read the same material. I’ve watched the same videos. What am I missing?” Am I sold-out? Am I stuck in a loop of ignorance?
I recently read that in the DSM-5, there’s a term apophenia – the tendency to perceive connections where none exist.
And maybe this is where the issue lies. Humans are pattern seekers. One cannot look into a cloudy sky without identifying forms as representations to a living being or inanimate object. Patterns are everywhere. We tend to connect two points of interest automatically, and if this pattern repeats, we latch and do not let go. I got a cold after I walked outside in a cold rain. Every time I wear this shirt, my team wins. When I put my car in the shop, ten more issues crop up … the mechanic must be sabotaging me. When I test for the coronavirus, more people test positive … so let’s not test.
Almost every group claims their sources of media are the right ones and everyone else’s is the wrong ones. I call bullshit.
When people finally cast a critical eye on all media as being part lie, part truth, part bias, then, and only then, will I listen to anyone preaching a message of “truth.”
At 29, Brown works approximately 40 hours a week, splitting her time between a McDonald’s in Durham, North Carolina, and a food-service gig a local hospital. “It’s still not enough,” she said. Both jobs are part-time, and she doesn’t receive health insurance through either employer. She can’t afford insurance on her own, either. That’s a problem since Brown is diabetic, and she has to pay for her medical expenses out of pocket. She’s trying to do all she can on her own—she receives no food stamps or other assistance, she notes—but it rarely feels like she’s doing enough.
Here's Donald Trump Jr mocking Joe Biden last night for vowing to try to cure cancer … followed by President Trump promising hours later, at the same rally, to cure cancer, AIDS, and "lay the foundation" for a Mars landing — all in his second term pic.twitter.com/VjU5E5A4N1
In this single clip, Trump promises to cure cancer, AIDS, and "lay the foundation" for a Mars landing — all in his second term pic.twitter.com/aLZqbx2p3N
Holy shit, some people are assholes. Thank goodness these people won the legal battle to plant produce in their front yard. Jebus forbid!
Okra. Bell peppers. Cherry tomatoes. Jalapeños and squash.
Those are some of the vegetables that Hermine Ricketts and her husband, Tom Carroll, planted in front of their home in Miami Shores, Fla., on Monday.
That’s the day a Florida law went into effect that nullifies local bans on vegetable gardens at residential properties. It was one of those ordinances that had forced the couple to uproot a garden that Ricketts had tended for 17 years.
Ricketts had her vegetable garden in front of her home because that’s where the sun is, as NPR’s Greg Allen reported in 2013: “[H]er house faces south and her backyard is mostly in the shade. A retired architect, originally from Jamaica, Ricketts says she gardens for the food and for the peace it brings her.”
“This is a peach tree that I put in, and around it, I had kale, and in between the kales, I had some Chinese cabbage,” Ricketts said then. “And I also had Swiss chard, yellow Swiss chard.”
“Not everyone believes the Holocaust happened,” he wrote, according to email records obtained by The Palm Beach Post through a public records request. “And you have your thoughts, but we are a public school and not all of our parents have the same beliefs.”
He went on to say that as an educator he had “the role to be politically neutral but support all groups in the school.”
“I can’t say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event because I am not in a position to do so as a school district employee,” Latson wrote.
That response led the mother to launch a yearlong effort to address what she called a school leader’s failure to separate truth from myth regarding the genocide of an estimated 6 million Jews under Germany’s Nazi regime in the 1940s.
Principal regrets comments
She didn’t doubt that Latson knew the Holocaust was real, she said in an interview, but she feared his reluctance to say so stemmed from a desire to avoid confronting parents who deny the Holocaust’s reality.
I read somewhere that this principal wonders the same thing about whether slavery happened or not.
One question I have, is he religious (likelihood is probable) and if so, does he hold religion to the same level of scrutiny …
The other day I posted about the rise in people claiming “no religion” in America. Reader perdebytjie commented about gullibility in South Africa and how pastors left and right are doing outrageous things to claim a magical superiority in order to gain followers. He cited a few stories about pastors claiming to raise the dead, encouraging their congregations to eat grass to cure disease or to get closer to god, and even feeding them crazy things like dog meat and blood …
I think any religious person in America would agree that these pastors are grifters. They are false prophets. They are preying on the gullible, the weak, and the ignorant.
This is where talking about “those pastors” gets tricky. I remember these kinds of stories from as far back as I can remember. I remember being told that people who speak in tongues aren’t “real” believers. Or that TV pastors claiming to faith heal their congregants … those are false.
But that area is quickly grayed when believers of all ilk claim to have a direct line to the creator of the universe, who can somehow defy science and reality by issuing prayers in exchange for earlier healing, or respite from cancers or disease. I’ve been in many situations where someone asks to pray, calls out to God for early healing, and it’s viewed as completely fine. It’s not like those faith healers on TV. It’s different somehow. It’s “realer”. It’s more legit.
It can’t be questioned. It can’t be scrutinized. And if you doubt it, one would be asked to be quiet. Or expected to remain quiet.
I remember being told clearly that healing from God is not magic. Magic is reserved for trickery. Magic is reserved for something that’s not real. But what happens when a person is mysteriously cured of something, that’s providential. It’s supernatural. If it cannot be directly explained, it must be a power invisible to the natural world.
It’s like being told what’s written in a report without reading the actual report. It’s like thinking something is completely true, because, say, a book makes a claim that it was written by an eye witness, but you never met the eye witness or cannot verity the veracity of that claim … yet one would believe the eye witness claim without question.
These topics are difficult to approach. Because most people are skeptical enough of almost everything, except when it comes to their own deeply held beliefs. Then it’s full-on belief train and there’s no inkling of skeptical prowess.
Here are a few links to more of what perdebytjie is talking about: here. here. here.
Thanks for reading. I know there aren’t too many readers right now, but drop a link in the comments for your favorite hoax-y, miracle, bullshit-y articles … would love to read them.
I often joke that I grew up at Krispie Kreme, a donut shop that originated out of North Carolina and gained national popularity in the 2000s. My parents took us to KK almost every day after school. They loved a cup of coffee and something sweet, I think. It was something to do. Something to break up the day. A place to meet others. A place to gossip and share stories.
Like the TV show cheers, when we walked in to KK, the whole place would call out to my dad or mom. We knew the staff and almost everyone who frequented there.
It was also a social thing for them. My folks never went to bars that I know of. And at the time, they didn’t smoke cigarettes. But the seating at this KK was circular bar stools anchored to the ground right up against a counter and almost everyone in North Carolina smoked. It was the Paris of its day.
My dad loved going to KK every day for a cup of coffee or two to talk politics, local and world events. When we left KK, we wreaked of cigarette smoke and deep fried glaze.
I joke with Tina that after every cavity I ever had filled at the dentist, my mom made sure to stop by KK afterwards for a cup of coffee. My siblings and I would get two donuts a piece. My donut of choice was chocolate glazed.
Inadvertently, I invested a lot of time into bellying up to the counter at Krispie Kreme Donuts.
You can imagine my surprise today when I read a storyfrom Slate.comrevealing that the family that owns KK, as well as Panara Bread, Caribou Coffee & Pret a Manger, recently discovered that its owners family supported Adolf Hitler and extensively used forced labor.
One of Germany’s richest families is coming to terms with a disturbing past. The family that owns a controlling stake in Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and Panera Bread, among others, will donate $11 million to charity after learning that their ancestors were staunch supporters of Adolf Hitler and extensively used force labor.
The family announced its planned charitable donation after Bild newspaper published a report showing how Albert Reimann Sr. and Albert Reimann Jr. used Russian civilians and French prisoners of war as forced laborers during World War II. The Reimann family, which has an estimated wealth of 33 billion euros, or $37 billion, did not dispute the findings of the newspaper’s report. “It is all correct,” spokesman Peter Harf, told the newspaper. “Reimann senior and Reimann junior were guilty … they belonged in jail.”
I must admit. I always got a bad feeling when I left KK. At the time, I thought it was only the stomach ache from stomaching two chocolate glazed donuts every day of my childhood.
But this makes so much more sense. My Nazi-o-meter was trying to tell me that our hard-earned money was supporting a family responsible for destroying so many Jews, as well as so many families and people that the Nazis deemed inferior.
But the family is trying to make good by donating a whole $11,000,000 to an undisclosed charity. Donating $11M — when the family is worth $37 billion — is like finding change in the crevices of your couch and putting into the cup of a guy begging in front of a Dunkin’ Donuts.
And look, Panara Bread is also under this company’s umbrella. So now I understand why I don’t feel well spending my money there either.
We’ll probably find out that the Reimann’s donated their $11M to a company called RWSDT, also known as … Russians Who Support Donald Trump.
Le Café Wittypoots 