I've been keeping track of the Boston "Free Speech" rally, and have been deeply moved by the people's reaction to the Fascists who wanted to repeat their putrid behaviour exibited in Charlottesville. According to reports, around 100 Nazis showed up to face around 40,000 pissed off Bostonians. This is beyond my cynical comprehension. And it occurred to me: Perhaps Donald Trump is actually making America great again. His reprehensible platform and those who stand with him have finally woken decent Americans from their long dystopian sleep. I still feel like it's too late to stop the Hard Right Train to Hell, but I am deeply heartened by the swell of souls rising up to oppose this horror. When the rally comes to my area, I'll be doing the same thing, trust me. I shall resist until change comes, or I shall die trying! Maybe, just maybe, if we can turn this bullshit around, America will be better than ever. And all because of Donald Trump. So yeah, let's make America great again! Get out and punch motherfucking Nazis until they run home to their basements crying!

If I am correct in my forecast of the final eradication of the republic of the United States, those of us who are, have very little time left to truly speak out against the current atrocities and the coming abominations.

After I am finally settled in the new pad, I plan on getting more involved, hands-on, locally.  Until that's possible, I'm doing what I can online. That means telling people as often as I can what the true nature of these fake Christians is, how they can fight it (while they still can), and what resources they need to research my dire warnings for themselves.  It also means standing up to Donald Drumpf and his fascist regime, using the same weapon he uses to disseminate his vile propaganda:  Twitter.

I try to troll him at least once a day.  I'm hoping everyone who reads this and see the examples of my efforts, decides to do the same thing. Maybe if he's trolled enough, he'll shut his tweeting pie-hole.  Maybe his insecurity from reading such responses to his activities will cause his blood pressure to shoot up and give him a fatal stroke. Better yet, maybe he'll finally lose his mind from all the pressure, and take out his entire administration and family before he offs himself.  I don't see a more ideal way of draining the fucking swamp in Washington DC.

But the pushback has to start now because, as I said, I doubt we have much time to freely express ourselves in this country.  The clock has been ticking since the evangelicals began blurring the line between church and state, beginning in 1980.  That clock is running out of time.

In late December, I requested an Uber ride up to the store. A handsome, middle-aged gentleman named Moises picked me up. I began a conversation with him, because I loved his accent, but couldn't quite pinpoint the origin. He told me that he was from Iran and that he was a movie director who made a film that that government did not like. For his trouble, he spent a year in jail and, afterward, it was hard to make a living doing anything.

So he legally immigrated to America and is now essentially a taxi driver, after being a creator and visionary. He told me he missed his family and that most of his money goes to them and to save enough to bring them over to him, hopefully next year.

I advised him to go to Mexico or Canada before it was too late. His optimism and faith in the way the United States is supposed to work was heartbreaking.

Ever since I heard the news on the Muslim ban, I can't stop thinking of Moises. It's much more personal when you see the soul-rending results of the decision of an extremist mad man sitting pretty in the White House, ruining lives with the flick of a pen.

According to the writer of this article, Christians Are to Blame for the War on Christianity. That's the name of the article. Personally, I would have made a distinct difference between the two groups, and there are two groups - true followers of Christ and extremists who slander him for their own gain. This is perhaps the best article I've ever read on the matter, though.  The issue is spelled out under no uncertain terms, and it should be a wake up call to the Christians who suffer the tyranny of these horrible people almost as much as the rest of us. Eventually, though, the xtians, as I call them, will turn on the Christians as well, just as we've seen in the Muslim world. It's all the same, just with different names, and its driving force is power and insanity.

I am pasting the entire piece here, in the event it disappears from Huffington Post, or anywhere else it may be featured. The link to the article itself is in the title below.

Christians to Blame for the 'War on Christianity'

Some Christians believe that being anti-Christian is the only acceptable form of bigotry left in America. Outside of the absurdity of the vast majority of the claims offered as "proof" of this fallacy the hypocrisy necessary to make such a claim is phenomenal.

For example, noted conservative pundit Ann Coulter once stated, "liberals always play the victim in order to advance, win advantages and oppress others". While such tactics are hardly exclusive to liberals the supposed "War on Christianity" represents the pinnacle of all self ascribed pity parties.

Christians comprise just over 78% of the U.S. population, which is a significantly higher percentage of the population than the "angry atheists" who only account for 1.6%. What are these poor Christians to do when faced with such overwhelming odds against them?

The problem is that Christians have spent so much time pretending to be victims that they have become oblivious to their own indiscretions.

Spurned HGTV stars David and Jason Benham offer and excellent illustration of this point. The brothers took to Fox News to pen an article discussing how they were dropped from the station for standing by their "Biblical beliefs". Of course the problem wasn't that they were against marriage equality. The problem was that they funded and organized an anti-gay rally because ironically they felt that these "militant gay activists" shouldn't be given the opportunity to express their view that there is nothing "demonic," "veil," or "destructive" about being gay.

- Dale Hansen for The Huffington Post

• If you are a Republican, Neocon, Dominionist, or Redneck who gives your vote to the conservatives, you're getting exactly what you deserve.


• If you voted for George W. Bush either time he stole the White House, you're getting exactly what you deserve.


• If you carry even the tiniest notion that John McCain will be any different than any other Right-Wing Fascist Pig, you're getting exactly what you deserve.


• If you've been living the high life at the expense of others in this pro-Fascist economy to which we've all been subjected, but suddenly find yourself without your financial safety net, you're getting exactly what you deserve.


• If you purchased a Sports Utility Vehicle for social status purposes within the past 8 years, you're getting exactly what you deserve.


• If you support the war in Iraq, you're getting exactly what you deserve.


• If you could vote, but couldn't be bothered to do so, you may not be getting what you deserve, but you sure as hell have no right to bitch about whatever you have gotten


• If you've willingly participated in Big Business' sacking of this nation, you're getting exactly what you deserve

My friend Kathleen sent this to me and I wanted to keep it here in my journal. I wish there was a way I could make certain I could send it to the Shrub, that is, if he's even literate enough to read and understand it. feh..
( Peace )

President seems unable to bear the sight or sound of dissent

By ROBYN E. BLUMNER

© St. Petersburg Times, published October 13, 2002

President Bush seems to think bullying is the only way to deal with dissent. Bush has so much trouble articulating a defense for his own policies, so little capacity to formulate a reasoned response, that he resorts to shibboleths, name-calling or worse, using authorities to shut down his critics.

Classic Bush was his attack on Senate Democrats who refused to go along with his plan to strip workers at the new Department of Homeland Security of civil service rights. He quipped that senators were "not interested in the security of the American people."

Of course, U.S. senators can take care of themselves. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle made quick work of Bush's scurrilous claims, pointing out to the former Texas National Guardsman that a number of Senate Democrats were actually injured fighting for the security of our country.

But there are plenty of regular Joes out there who don't have access to the halls of power or C-Span, whose criticism of the administration has been sidelined by law enforcement.

In town after town where Bush has come to raise money or make a speech, his venue and the route leading up to it have been purged of protesters. This is accomplished through the combined efforts of local policing agencies and the secret service, which scour the crowd for any hint of opposition. Anyone with an anti-Bush sign is relegated into what is euphemistically called a Free Speech or Demonstration Zone -- a swath of land usually off the main thoroughfare and chained off so as to make it virtually impossible for the targets of the protest to read the signs or hear the chants. Those with pro-Bush signs are often treated very differently. They are free to cheerlead the president as he rides toward his engagement, which typically is further sanitized by being invitation-only.

This kind of censorship is indicative of a leader who lacks confidence in his own powers of persuasion and the legitimacy of his course. Why else would Bush be so interested in hiding evidence of dissent within the American populace?

The Secret Service claims that security concerns justify the use of segregated zones for protesters. That's a lot of bunk. As long as demonstrators do not impede the flow of traffic they have a right to be anywhere the general public is invited. Think about the freedom we would be giving up if police could cage anyone who wants to exercise his or her First Amendment rights.

As Bill Neel of Butler, Penn., says, "(Under the Constitution,) the whole country is a free speech zone." Neel, 65, a retired steelworker, was arrested on Labor Day for stepping outside the fence where he and a small group of protesters were cordoned off as the president made his way by motorcade for a speech to union carpenters. His sign read: "The Bushes must truly love the poor -- they've made so many of us." Bush supporters waving signs and flags were allowed to freely line the route.

Neel was charged with disorderly conduct and has a hearing on Oct. 31 at which he intends to fight the charge with the help of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. His story is part of a disturbing national pattern.

Peter Buckley, a 45-year-old Democratic candidate for Congress in Oregon, expressed his frustration with the Free Speech Zones in a commentary for the Oregonian. In August, Buckley was part of a group of people who had turned out to protest Bush's economic policies among other things. They were herded into a dirt compound surrounded by a six-foot cyclone fence, 200 yards from the arena where Bush spoke to 5,000 invited guests.

"We were not allowed anywhere near any kind of position where the president, or the media which follows him, would see or hear us," Buckley wrote. "What is happening everywhere Mr. Bush goes is wrong. The effort being made to hide political opposition in this country is more than cowardly. It's un-American."

In Tampa, three people, including two grandmothers, were arrested last year at a Bush rally when they held up opposition signs outside the far-flung demonstration zone. Once again, people with supportive signs went unmolested. The charges against the three were later dropped as baseless, and a civil rights suit is expected to be filed within weeks against the Tampa Police Department.

In the past, courts have ruled protest pens invalid. Americans have a right to address grievances to their president when he appears in public, even if that ruins a particular "photo op."

My advice to Bush is to thicken his skin and work on the sagacity of his arguments.

© Copyright 2001 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved

408/253-8852

FAX 408/253-8825

Jay Grimstead, a Christian counselor educated at Fuller
Theological Seminary, founded the Coalition on Revival (COR)
in 1984 as a non-profit front for fundamentalist political
activism. The stated mission of COR is "To affect with the
Biblical message of reality, and justice, and truth, law,
government, economics, education, obedience, science, the
arts, and general culture." COR Steering Committee members
must take an oath promising to work toward a Christian
America and to live by Biblical precepts until death. The
COR magazine, Crosswinds, is published twice a
year; a subscription costs $25. The significance of this
organization is that it brings the more mainstream elements
of the Christian right in contact with the lunatic fringe.
However, the influence of Christian Reconstructionist
extremists is prevalent enough to have caused such former
Steering Committee members as
Donald Wildmon and Tim and
Beverly
LaHaye to disassociate themselves from COR. The
Institute for First Amendment studies notes that "Gary
DeMar, a leading Christian Reconstructionist author and
lecturer, is a member of COR's Steering Committee and the
executive committee of Crosswinds magazine.
Reconstructionists advocate, among other things, the death
penalty for abortionists and practicing homosexuals. While
they believe and teach this, they often try to obscure this
when speaking to general audiences. When questioned about
this, Gary DeMar said, `The Bible doesn't say that
homosexuals should be executed. What it says is this: If
two men lie together like a man and woman lie together, they
are to be put to death.'"

Phone and FAX 703/440-9419

Church FAX: 703/425-0205

Though Family Friendly Libraries (FFL) publicly portrays its mission as broadly altruistic and concerned with all aspects of children's education and development, its motivating force and unifying obsession is the fear that public libraries are a vehicle for homosexual indoctrination. Now in its infancy as a national organization, FFL grew out of battles in Fairfax County, Virginia over free distribution of the Washington Blade, a D.C. gay weekly, and the presence of "pro-homosexual" literature in local libraries. During this struggle, which began in about 1992, Karen Jo Gounaud rose quickly to prominence as a fierce and tenacious opponent of the so-called gay agenda. The wife of a retired Air Force officer and mother of two grown children, Gounaud is an evangelical Christian who holds a degree in education from the University of Nebraska. It was she who mobilized Christian parents of Fairfax county in an effort to end the availability of the Blade in the lobbies of branch libraries; led a drive to drop or sequester books she considers harmful to children; and pressured the Fairfax library system into spending a chunk of its budget on obscure and in some cases self-published books with titles like Steps Out of Homosexuality and You Don't Have to Be Gay. Her influence, long felt throughout northern Virginia, is beginning to have national impact. Her statements on the evils of spending taxpayers' money on "the type of books people don't want" bear depressing similarities to pronouncements that have badly eroded public support for the National Endowment for the Arts. Her campaign to demonize the American Library Association is beginning to see results, with some local library systems rewriting the Library Bill of Rights to eliminate all provisions that condemn censorship and uphold freedom of expression. While much of Gounaud's dogma can be traced to Focus on the Family and the rabidly homophobic Family Research Council, she has received major tactical and (we think) financial support from the Christian Coalition. The event that launched Family Friendly Libraries as a national entity was a conference held in Cincinnati on October 21, 1995 at the invitation of Phil Burress, founder of the militantly anti-gay, pro-censorship Citizens for Community Values (CCV), the Christian Coalition's Cincinnati affiliate. A newsletter is promised; write for literature.

804/534-8502

"I just can't stay on the sidelines any longer!" Falwell,
host of the "Old Time Gospel Hour" and founder of Liberty
University, emerged from temporary retirement in 1991,
announcing that he might reactivate the Moral Majority, the
now-defunct organization that first brought him fame outside
the Bible Belt. While this threat has failed to
materialize, he has put together a relatively small-scale
operation called Liberty Alliance. Falwell remains a
visible presence, continuing to crank out inspirational
books, anti-gay hate videos, and other fundraising
paraphernalia. His greatest recent hit is the video
Clinton Chronicles, which accuses President Clinton
of skullduggery of preternatural proportions. At $44.95,
which includes membership in Liberty Alliance, the Clinton
video is no bargain. Ask to be placed on the Liberty
Alliance mailing list.

719/531-3400

Focus on the Family (FOF) is called "perhaps the largest and
most dangerous censorship group today" in Dave Marsh's book
50 Ways to Fight Censorship. Dobson is a Christian
fundamentalist family counselor who promotes "traditional
values." In his best-known book, Dare to
Discipline, Dobson advocates beating children with
switches, beginning at the age of 18 months. In 1985-86 he
served on the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography
(the Meese Commission). He claims to have extracted a
confession from mass murderer Ted Bundy saying that porn
made him do it. Dobson actively opposes blasphemy, the
teaching of evolution, and the "homosexual agenda." In
1991, FOF relocated its 700-employee national headquarters
from Pomona, California to Colorado Springs, in time to
promote and help pass Colorado's anti-gay Amendment 2. The
organization is active throughout the country, operating
through such loose affiliates as the Massachusetts Family
Institute, and disseminating propaganda through its
syndicated radio shows and more than a dozen periodicals.
Ask for a complimentary copy of the slick monthly Focus on
the Family magazine.

703/683-9733

Brent Bozell, a zealot of impeccable right-wing pedigree, is
the nephew of columnist William F. Buckley and the son of L.
Brent Bozell, Jr., who assisted Barry Goldwater with the
writing of Conscience of a Conservative. A close
associate of the late Terry Dolan, the closeted gay founder
of the National Conservative Political Action Committee,
Bozell served for several years as the Dolan organization's
finance chairman and president. In 1991, he helped
orchestrate a smear campaign directed at the opposition to
Clarence Thomas's appointment to the Supreme Court; in 1992,
he was the chief fund-raiser behind
Pat Buchanan's
unsuccessful bid for the Republican Presidential nomination.
The Media Research Center provides Bozell with a platform
from which to bash the arts and popular culture. Recently
Bozell has been part of the drive to eradicate PBS.
TV, etc., "the Media Research Center's review of
the politics of the entertainment industry," is a monthly
newsletter that is oddly enamored of celebrity for a
publication whose relentless theme is the abject rottenness
of Hollywood. (Some celebrities, like Robert Redford, are
ridiculed for their liberalism; others, like Tom Selleck,
are congratulated for their conservatism or, as in the case
of Mel Gibson, their homophobia.) The garish inaccuracies
of TV, etc., like the claim that the film version
of Last Temptation of Christ shows Jesus "engaging in sex
acts and committing adultery," are sometimes entertaining,
but the accretion of drivel it contains can be wearing. A
subscription can be yours for $35 a year.

214/907-2280

Operation Rescue (OR), the notorious anti-abortion group
begun in 1988 by evangelical ex-used car salesman Rev.
Randall Terry, specializes in blocking access to targeted
clinics and subjecting patients, physicians and staff to
intimidation and harassment. A queasy mixture of far-right
fundamentalist Protestants and reactionary Catholics, the
membership includes many who would criminalize all forms of
contraception and suppress all family planning information
other than exhortations to abstinence. During the 1992
election, Randall Terry warned his followers that "to vote
for Bill Clinton is to sin against God." With Clinton in
office, Operation Rescue has shifted its focus to include
opposition to civil rights for gays and lesbians. OR has
also been known to launch attacks on the arts. In 1990
Boston-area members tried to block access to Serrano's "Piss
Christ" at the Klein Gallery, and threatened to blockade
Boston University's Photographic Resource Center. In
February 1994, Rev. Flip Benham of the Free Methodist
Church took over the directorship of the organization from
Keith Tucci, who left to found a separate ministry, the Life
Coalition, in Melbourne, Florida. Call or write for a copy
of OR's National Rescue Update.

800/462-4700

Ty Beeson, pastor of the Pentecostal Springs of Life
Ministry, joined his wife Jeannette in establishing The
Report as a production center and clearinghouse for
propaganda intended to stop gay rights legislation in
California. Their most famous product, a 17-minute hate
video called The Gay Agenda, has been compared to
Nazi anti-Semitic films like The Eternal Jew. The
video was originally created for use by the Oregon Citizens
Alliance, the Oregon chapter of the Christian Coalition,
which had obtained a grant from its parent organization to
develop educational materials. The educational content of
The Gay Agenda consists mainly of militant
homophobe
Paul Cameron's bizarre, discredited statistics on
the sexual habits of gay men, as portentously interpreted by
John Birch Society/Christian Coalition activist Stanley
Monteith. Other segments offer atrocity footage from Gay
Pride marches, as well as testimony from "ex-gays" who claim
to have been cured by a Pentecostal program called Love in
Action. The video was an instant success, selling tens of
thousands of copies at $13.95. It has also received
widespread free distribution in states and cities facing
anti-gay ballot initiatives. Scores of copies were sent to
Pentagon officials and members of Congress during the 1993
debate over lesbian and gay military personnel. The
Beesons' other videos include The Gay Agenda in Public
Education, Inside the March on Washington, and
Sexual Orientation or Sexual Deviation, You Decide.
They also market jeremiads about AIDS by such "experts" as
Stanley Monteith. Recently they have paid special attention
to keeping homosexual materials out of schools, fighting sex
education, and stamping out AIDS awareness programs. During
1993, the Beesons permitted Peter LaBarbera, former editor
of Concerned Women for America's Family Voice, to
publish his anti-gay monthly, The Lambda Report,
under their aegis. They have since parted company with
LaBarbera and offer their own homophobic monthly journal,
The Beeson Report, for $30 a year.