It’s been a relatively quiet week for IQ45. But here’s the problem with that: If you didn’t hear anything major from Obama for a week, it didn’t matter. You just figured he was doing his job. If a week goes by for IQ45 and you don’t hear anything major, you leap to the conclusion that he managed to cover up whatever evil he undertook this week.
1). Maybe we should all start saying prayers.. Trump appeared at the national prayer breakfast this year. You may well remember his appearance a year ago where he gave a freewheeling speech in which he promised to do away with the Johnson Amendment, a law that prohibits religious organizations from endorsing political figures, and trashed Arnold Schwarzenegger for the lousy ratings of “The Apprentice.” A year later, the law is still on the books and “The Apprentice” is off the air, so he had nothing major to discuss, it seems. He did still manage to say something stupid: “Our founders invoked the creator four times in the Declaration of Independence. Our currency declares, ‘In God we trust.’”
Uh, no. I know this for a fact because I’ve been in three productions of “1776” and at one point the Reverend Jonathan Witherspoon points out the complete lack of mention of God. So one reference is put in to make the New Jersey representative happy. I double checked the final document and I found just the single mention. Not four.
As for “In God we trust,” that was added formally to the money in 1956 for a very specific reason: to differentiate the USA from the Godless commies. You remember the godless commies: the ones who managed to rig the election to get their boy Trump into office. If Trump had been around in 1956 he would undoubtedly have endorsed the move to show that we’re different from the Russians, rather than now when they undermine our elections and national actions.
2). Let’s rain on his parade.. Trump wants this country, which apparently is running out of money to help Puerto Rico, to waste millions of dollars on a parade displaying our military might. He claims that he got the idea from watching the Bastille Day parade in France.
Let us put aside for a moment that Bastille Day is a celebration of a massive internal war in which nobility was publicly executed by the guillotine. Let us put aside that, fair or not, the French, going all the way to “Encounter on Farpoint” where the French starship captain surrendered, have a reputation for giving up.
Putting all that aside, I do not believe for one second that this was inspired by Bastille Day. It was unquestionably inspired by Kim Jong un’s display of the North Korean army. Without question. Kim Jong un, between proving North Korea’s strength with his army demonstrations while simultaneously attending the Olympics and talking about achieving peace with their neighbors, is perfectly playing the role of national leader. He displays his strength while coming across as someone who can be reasoned with. He’s got the might but doesn’t want to have to use it. This is as opposed to the idiot-in-chief, because I can tell you seriously, there have been nights where I have lost sleep cogitating on the fact that this lunatic could conceivably start World War III if “Fox and Friends” tell him that he should.
Trump wants to show Kim Jong un that the US has a powerful military. Because to this numb nut, the simple fact that we could annihilate the entire world something like ten times over is insufficient. In terms of nuclear weapons, the only ones who have more are the Russians. So if they can annihilate the world fifteen times over, we’re supposed to compete with that? Isn’t having enough nukes to obliterate the world once over enough? But no, not Trump. Whereas previous presidents have, since the 1970s, supported the concept of reducing the world’s nuclear weapons, Trump wants to “update” it. Because apparently the weapons that annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki are out of date.
3). Screw it, just shut it down.. Trump is totally fine with the concept of the government shutting down. Why? Because he undoubtedly plans to blame it entirely on the Democrats. He figures that he can spend his entire days tweeting about how the GOP was willing to play ball but the Democrats want to protect the rights of foreigners to stay in this country. Yet as of Thursday night, who was singlehandedly delaying up the vote? Rand Paul. Wonder how he’ll spin it if one of his own screws things up for him.
Did he do anything right? Do you even have to ask?
PAD
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Don’t forget his open support for the wife-beater that just left his administration, childishly insulting former staffer Omarosa, continuing to tout the Nunes memo as completely exonerating, and my personal favorite, calling some of our laws stupid.
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And I agree on that last one. If we had smarter laws, he wouldn’t be president.
Oh yes, I almost forgot about him accusing the Dems of treason because they didn’t clap for him. And now I’m sad that I remember.
The whole wife-beater thing is just awful. But compounding it is the new knowledge that apparently there are MANY white house staffers whose background checks have not been completed, like Porter’s. The immediate inference is that they are all being held up because they can’t pass. (In Porter’s case, spousal abuse is bad enough on its own, but could also be a national security issue if used to blackmail him).
So apparently dozens of people are in the white house with no permanent clearance. And the whole scandal goes from awful to terrifying.
I don’t know how much more trump news I can take. I need a 3 month vacation away from the USA. Like to the Caribbean or Alaska.
…You DO know Alaska’s still part of the USA, right?
Spent a week there. It’s in its own universe.
Trump may make up a lot, but (at least this time) he’s successfully counted to four accurately.
“the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”
“endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”
“appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world”
“with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence”
If I remember right, most of these references were added to Jefferson’s draft, perhaps underlying the faux history you performed in.
(Also, Franklin couldn’t carry a tune.)
You mean the same Jefferson who produced his own Bible that excised ALL supernatural/mystical references pertaining to Jesus?
It’s worth noting that the Freemasons also use those terms in reference to God but during the first century after the Declaration of Independence was written, Freemasons were persecuted as “not Christians.” I wonder why? Maybe because they refused to something OTHER than “the one true God” the current crop of Evangelical Dominionists want to foist on everyone?
To the shock of absolutely no one, Trump’s chosen to NOT release the Dems’ memo. It’s almost like he’s a hypocritically cowardly sack of crap or something.
I still can’t believe that he said Democrats not clapping for his speech was un-American and treason (that part I believe) and the brainless dipshits in the audience applauded that idea. The was a quote floating around last year about how America waking up to the reality (as Germany once did) that 1/3 or Americans would happily kill another 1/3 of Americans while the other 1/3 just watches. Trump supporters are absolutely proving they’ll happily be in the first camp or the third camp.
>I still can’t believe that he said Democrats not clapping for his speech was un-American and treason
I seem to remember similar claims by Republicans when anyone disagreed with George W. Bush. Not supporting the Republican President is apparently treason while actively opposing the Democratic Presidents isn’t. Go figure.
“It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegone, my home town…”
“It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my home town…”
Peter David: Uh, no. I know this for a fact because I’ve been in three productions of “1776” and at one point the Reverend Jonathan Witherspoon points out the complete lack of mention of God.
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Luigi: Peter, isn’t this a source of ongoing debate?
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Aren’t there four passages in the Declaration — two in the first paragraph, one in the middle, and two in the last paragraph — that some sources argue are references to Deist belief, and others argue are references to God?
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Of those passages — “endowed by their Creator”, “Nature’s God”, “the Supreme Judge of the world”, “the protection of divine Providence” — do you think that none of them are references to God, particular the last two?
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In your opinion, is it a settled historical fact that all four of these (or three, as you say) are specifically Deist?
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Apart from partisan sources, is there agreement in the scholarly community on this point?
I would tend to think so. There’s no shortage of evidence that when politicians and rulers of that era wanted to site the God of the Christian Bible they did so clearly and in ways not open to wide interpretation.
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All of those references open the floor to multiple interpretations. I don’t think that’s through careless wording or at all by chance.
Well… cite…
I saw that
It’s pretty hard to get many christians (let alone right-wing evangelical/prosperity/end-times nutsos) to acknowledge that most of the “founding fathers” were deists rather than the most devout followers of Jesus ever. Even when those same founders call themselves such in their own writings.
Any passage that they can potentially claim, even if obviously and provably not, they will. And they’ll argue it until the sun-explodes.
See, that’s one of the things I’m talking about.
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Were most of them deists, or just some of them? Weren’t many of them Christians?