GOP Will Shit Itself

[Thad]

Plus, Hayley can afford it if Koch is footing the bills, and Koch can certainly afford it

Koch network stops spending on Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign

Notably:

In an email to staff obtained by POLITICO, Americans For Prosperity CEO Emily Seidel said Sunday that the group’s political arm, AFP Action, had to “take stock” of its spending priorities after Haley’s loss in the South Carolina primary. The Koch-aligned group, Seidel said, will now focus its efforts on competitive Senate and House races.

So that money's still not going to the party, it's going directly to individual campaigns.

Haley's still got money coming in, for now:

Mark Harris, lead adviser with the primary super PAC supporting Haley’s bid, SFA Fund, Inc., told POLITICO ahead of the South Carolina primary that his group would continue to support her as long as she remains in the race. The pro-Haley super PAC, which has spent more on advertisements in the Republican presidential primary than any other group, is expected to make additional ad buys in Super Tuesday states in the coming days.

It bears repeating that, while Trump has the primary in the bag, this is still a pretty poor showing for a guy who's effectively running as an incumbent. Haley's doing better than Buchanan in '92.

I don't want to read too much into primary results, but I think they're probably a better predictor of enthusiasm than polls at this point in the race. We'll see.

[Crick]

Any truth to the idea that Trump is about to hostile takeover the GOP to plunder what money they have, so the various real morbidly wealthy ghouls are just gonna skip the party altogether and donate to specific people going forward?

[Thad]

Any truth to the idea that Trump is about to hostile takeover the GOP to plunder what money they have,

He's going to try. There seem to still be people there who are trying to stop him; we'll see how long they last.

Republican seeks to bar party from paying Trump's legal bills

so the various real morbidly wealthy ghouls are just gonna skip the party altogether and donate to specific people going forward?

That's more or less already happened; it was well underway before Trump ever ran for office, but he's accelerated it (both from his supporters and his detractors). It's not just the national party; state parties are in big trouble too. Here in Arizona, donations have dried up because the inmates are running the asylum and waste them on stupid shit like the phony audit.

The Democrats have a similar problem, post-Citizens United, but it's not nearly as bad on their side.

[Thad]

+1 Dem in Congress also helps out with current obstructionist bullshit. I mean, obviously it doesn't tip the scales, but cuts the GOP's majority even slimmer.

GOP Rep. Ken Buck to leave Congress at end of next week

Buck’s decision to step down before the end of his term will trim Republicans’ slim edge to 218 seats over 213 for Democrats, with three vacancies. With that breakdown, Republicans could only afford to lose two votes to pass legislation on a party-line vote.

[Thad]

Indiana appeals court uses Mike Pence’s religious liberty law to block abortion ban

Somebody forgot that there are religions besides evangelical Christianity again.

[Friday]

I've had discussions with (former) friends about freedom of religion and if they agreed with it. "You're free to practice Christianity, because this is a Christian nation. If you want to practice some other religion, there are other countries."

"So freedom of religion, to you, means freedom to practice Christianity only, and no other religions?"

"Well yeah, this is a christian nation. You're free to be Christian here."

Have any of you guys had the lovely experience of watching a lifelong friend just sliiiiide right into being a full on christo-fascist theocrat? I know it's not an uncommon experience by the internet's standards, I see comments all the time illustrating as such. But I do feel like maybe here I'm the only person who has gone through that and had to cut those friends out of my life. And I'm not talking about family, having a family member turn out to be a right wing nutjob who won't stop intentionally deadnaming every single trans person up to and including yourself is a 100% universal experience to all people, everywhere. I'm talking about a peer in your same age group that is not related to you by blood that you have a lot of cool, fun memories with. Like someone you can remember playing Mario Kart for SNES with, or making sand castles on the beach with, and then bam, 30 years later they are thirsty for more kids in cages.

It's not fun! I would say that in terms of what life has to offer you, it's a 1/10.

[atog]

I've had discussions with (former) friends about freedom of religion and if they agreed with it. "You're free to practice Christianity, because this is a Christian nation. If you want to practice some other religion, there are other countries."

"So freedom of religion, to you, means freedom to practice Christianity only, and no other religions?"

"Well yeah, this is a christian nation. You're free to be Christian here."

Have any of you guys had the lovely experience of watching a lifelong friend just sliiiiide right into being a full on christo-fascist theocrat? I know it's not an uncommon experience by the internet's standards, I see comments all the time illustrating as such. But I do feel like maybe here I'm the only person who has gone through that and had to cut those friends out of my life. And I'm not talking about family, having a family member turn out to be a right wing nutjob who won't stop intentionally deadnaming every single trans person up to and including yourself is a 100% universal experience to all people, everywhere. I'm talking about a peer in your same age group that is not related to you by blood that you have a lot of cool, fun memories with. Like someone you can remember playing Mario Kart for SNES with, or making sand castles on the beach with, and then bam, 30 years later they are thirsty for more kids in cages.

It's not fun! I would say that in terms of what life has to offer you, it's a 1/10.

I would argue it sucks a bit worse when there are no fun memories because they were already fundie psychos when they were in grade 1, where they collectively and aggressively shamed, assaulted, and abused you, doxxed you, came to your shitty trailer house in bands and vandalized your pine tree and your door and stomped your cat to death and threw its remains in the toilet, and smashed your toys while one boy held you down with your face to the ground, snarling "Why don't y'all go to hell where you came from, cuz the Devil is in yore hart" and having to explain St Christopher to Christian children while they have you cornered on the swing set with your St Christopher medal on a metal chain pulled so tight behind your neck it's yanked out half your hair and left a bloody saw mark on your throat.

And they all went on to have Mario Kart and SNES and trips to Disneyland and we had food bank cheese and a creased, gray deck of cards and an incomplete set of poker chips. Gospel of prosperity indeed.

[Friday]

Well, yeah. I didn't say 0/10.

Christians! What a crowd.

A friend of mine was made to stick his face in a sink full of boiling hot water by his mormon father because he talked back and had to be purged of sin. The argument that religion makes people better people because they will be afraid of going to hell or whatever is absurdly laughable. I don't know if there's a correlation between shitty people and religion, but I sure as hell know there isn't a correlation between cool people and religion. My father was an abusive drunk who hit his family, but his crimes pale in comparison to the shit I routinely hear coming from religious parents.

Personally, I think religion basically just exists as a sort of "carte blanche" mental bypass magic spell to justify any and all behavior. Whatever you're doing, no matter how horrible and immoral it is, it's fine because God told you to do it.

[Mongrel]

I do know a couple deeply religious people who are in fact very cool and extremely upstanding people.

But just a couple; they're damn rare, that's for sure.

Two of the major ways you can take religion are as a top-level challenge to do good works, or as a crutch to shut your brain off and save yourself the terrible and troublesome effort of actually thinking about or your actions, much less reflecting on them afterwards. Water flows downhill, so I think we know which one is more popular.

It's also no coincidence that the first group tend to be by far the more knowledgeable about their scriptures.

[Friday]

An alien race comes to earth. They begin the systematic slaughter of children. Frequently, they rape them first. Each week, they kill and rape 500 children. In addition to this action, each week, they pick 10 children and feed and clothe them, but at the cost of making them swear to the Alien's diety.

"These aliens are pretty fucking horrible," says a guy. "We should consider them the enemy."

"Ah," says another guy. "But they save ten children a week."

Later, the aliens forbid using any kind of birth control in Africa, further killing thousands by the spread of AIDS.

"Seriously, these aliens," says the first guy.

"But you must consider the ten children they save a week," says the second guy.

The aliens begin demanding all their followers give them obscene amounts of money.

"These aliens are a fucking scam," says the first guy.

"But," says the second guy, "those ten children per week."

The aliens make a golden throne and sit their head alien guy on it. The head alien tells humans that their natural sexual practices that have been a part of the human species since the very beginning are illegal under alien law, and all who have sex in a way that is not explicitly proscribed as acceptable by this alien law are going to hell when they die.

"Holy jesus fuck --"

"And yet the ten kids a week,"

The aliens are mostly made up of complete assholes. They are judgmental, violent, insane, and frequently lethal, and inspire such behavior in others.

"These guys are fucking monsters," says the first guy.

"I know a few good ones," says the second guy.

tl;dr, I am deeply unmoved by any and all "but they're not all bad" arguments. I'm not saying you're making that argument, Mongrel, I know you're not. But others basically constantly do when the subject of religion is brought up. It's tiresome and serves only to waste my fucking time. The horrors of religion as visited upon the human race cannot somehow be "balanced" by soup kitchens. And yes, to answer the fucking inevitable follow up question. It would be. If you believe that religion is not blameless, then you cannot logically also believe that the world would be "just as bad" without it.

[Mongrel]

I wasn't making a comment on religion itself, it was a comment about individual proclivities in interacting with religion.

Those folks who would do good would almost certainly do good without their particular religion, they just find faith in something to be strengthening. Just as most awful people would likely be awful without religion.

We don't have a ton of examples of doctrinally atheist societies, or ones which heavily repressed organized religion, but we do have some, and the ones we do have weren't exactly bastions of moral progress or anything all that different, really.

The direct negative aspects of religion is in acting as an organized force to promulgate itself for its own sake, which is de-facto evil, and is made worse by pretension to good. These need not necessarily be the traits of a faith-based social organization, but they're also typically designed as top-down organizations which should not be questioned, and that's just poison.

Basically, my view is that focusing on fixing religion in any general sense is a waste of time. This does NOT mean we should not prosecute specific crimes or that religions ought to be immune to criticism, just that I think we need to fix people first and improved religion or a lessened dependence on religion will follow from that. Kind of like the way education naturally reduces the birth rate to one more sustainable for the planet.

[Friday]

Yeah, I know. I edited my reply to clarify.

Shrug. This conversation inevitably leads to hypothetical scenarios that cannot be empirically tested. My opinion, informed by history (both ancient and modern and recent) is that religion (not faith, religion) makes the world a far, far worse place, has always done so, and will continue to do so until the last king is strangled with the last priest's entrails.

This kind of talk makes people uncomfortable because either they're nice people who believe in god, or they know a nice person who believes in god. That's fine, and understandable, and it's normal for humans to want to minimize harm because realizing the full extent of that harm is... hard. It makes you angry, and sad. That sucks. I don't like feeling angry and sad either. But you know what I like even less than that? Making excuses for abusers.

[Mongrel]

I edited my post too, also for clarity.

Like, religion is just a byproduct in my view. It's easy to think that getting rid of it will improve things, but I'm not sure of that and I'd rather go with something easier to achieve.

EDIT: You might not be advocating for abolition of religion, in which case we're probably just talking past each other. As I mentioned in my edit above, I certainly agree the full power of the state should be used to prosecute clergy or adherents for committing crimes. Membership in a religious org is no excuse or reprieve for being a shit person.

[Friday]

I'm not really advocating for anything. I don't think it's feasible/possible to abolish religion. I do however think religion, or more specifically, religious institutions, are poison.

It's a personal pet peeve of mine when people say stuff like "if you got rid of religion, people would be just as shitty, but for different reasons" because I believe this is basically sort of letting religion "off the hook" if you will. I know humans are justification-for-shitty-actions machines, but I find it incredibly hard to believe that religion does not amplify/encourage that tendency in human psychology. Either religion is a powerful excuse for bad behavior or it isn't, and if it is, then by removing it it would logically be harder for humans to justify horrible shit. I of course in no way think that by magically Thanos snapping religion out of reality you would be able to eliminate all the bad things humans do.

In any case, I decided long ago to direct/aim my anger toward the institutions rather than faith/religion itself. We can argue forever if the world would be better off with or without religion as a concept, it's agreed upon by all that the world would be a better place if the Catholic Church stopped playing musical chairs with its child rapists.

In summary, I believe in god and pray every night. I do this because it makes me feel good. I occasionally say hi to dead family and friends that I liked and loved, including Kazz. If I was to say "people should abolish religion and faith from their hearts" I would be a pretty gigantic hypocrite. I do it to feel better, they do it to feel better. It's fine. Faith is fine. Belief in an afterlife is fine.

The bullshit churches and other religious institutions get up to? Not fine. And people should be made to confront the fact that their donations toward these institutions are in some small part supporting that bullshit. I don't care how sad it makes you to think about Catholic Priests molesting children. I don't care how angry it makes you to think about how the upper echelons of the Catholic Church knew about it and covered it up while moving the priests around over and over. Stop sending them your fucking money.

[Mongrel]

Yeah, I don't disagree with any of that.

[Büge]

It's a personal pet peeve of mine when people say stuff like "if you got rid of religion, people would be just as shitty, but for different reasons" because I believe this is basically sort of letting religion "off the hook" if you will.

Then there's the people who admit that they'd be stealing/raping/murdering if not for their belief that their God is watching them

Like, they say it out loud

Which, admittedly, isn't as bad as the ones who use religion as an excuse for stealing/raping/murdering, but still

[Yoji]

I've had discussions with (former) friends about freedom of religion and if they agreed with it. "You're free to practice Christianity, because this is a Christian nation. If you want to practice some other religion, there are other countries."

"So freedom of religion, to you, means freedom to practice Christianity only, and no other religions?"

"Well yeah, this is a christian nation. You're free to be Christian here."

I'm old enough to remember when it was mostly just implied by Tea Party asshats, but they're really saying it out loud now? Not sure if that's better or worse.

I'm talking about a peer in your same age group that is not related to you by blood that you have a lot of cool, fun memories with. Like someone you can remember playing Mario Kart for SNES with, or making sand castles on the beach with, and then bam, 30 years later they are thirsty for more kids in cages.

I don't think I have anyone quite like that. My older brother was born in the 70s and had totally different influences, so no wonder he's deeper into rightwing shithead stuff. My (barely) younger brother... I know he's been a pro-life dork before, but I'm not sure nowadays. He's a weird one; he's otherwise a chill and agreeable weirdo, quite a bit like me.

But it's the MAGA weirdos I read about in the news- your Steven Crowders, Stephen Millers, Andrew Tates, etc.- that really fry my CPU trying to figure them out. We're so very close in age, but they're so much more fucked up. I've said it before, but how did we grow up in the same generational span and end up so horribly different? How did THOSE freaks get so evil?

[Classic]

Maybe it is reductive, but my feels is this:

All the precarity you feel is caused by those Other, Lesser people not behaving as they need to to ensure prosperity for everyone.

Cruel emphasis on "Lesser". The kindest feeling you can have in the voice is a "Noblesse Oblige". The feeling where as someone somehow responsible for them it is your obligation to discipline and chasten them.

It is evil, sure, but to someone living in it, it's at best necessary kind of evil to preserve some kind of greater good. And some folks simply don't emotionally reckon their lessers as fully formed people.

[Friday]

I refuse to believe that people who want to put latinos/mexicans in cages and then rape them are doing real-time moral calculations about the greater good. They're doing what their bigotry demands and then post-hoc rationalizing. It's an incredible skill (that every human has) because it allows you to do whatever the fuck you want at any time, no matter how heinous.

"Kids have to go in cages to protect the american job market" isn't some kind of carefully considered "lesser of two evils" debate that they agonized over. The cruelty itself is the point. They want latinos to suffer because latinos are sub-human animals. Rapists and scum. And I'm sure some of them are good people.

(The irony of calling latinos/mexicans rapists and then putting them in cages and raping them is, I'm sure, completely lost on them. Even Geothermal himself could get how that might be ironic.)

[Friday]

As far as your "Noblesse Oblige" theory, that is true for some liberals, absolutely. The kind who live in Ivory Towers and do not have any skin in the game whatsoever.