Pence is a prod. He will say, do, think, and believe in ANYTHING! (depending on the circumstanes.)

The truth is the Orange Menace is a babyeater and always has been. Pence is a Repansycan, which means he will always pay lip service to saving kids, but when push comes to shove, he'll do what he's told,.



American Catholics Have an Ally in Trump, VP Says - Roll Call


Vice President Mike Pence denounced terrorism in the Middle East and championed President Donald Trump’s early anti-abortion initiatives in an address Tuesday at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington.

In his remarks, the vice president affirmed Trump’s commitment to a socially conservative policy agenda.

“American Catholics have an ally in President Donald Trump,” Pence said, in a staccato rhythm, to a crowd of more than a thousand, chowing down on chive-sprinkled eggs and fried sausage links.

“I couldn’t be more proud to serve as vice president to a president who stands without apology for the sanctity of human life,” he said.

That's a lie.

Pence cited Trump’s January executive order cutting off U.S. aid to overseas health centers that provide abortions and a March bill (for which Pence cast the tiebreaking vote in the Senate) that scrapped an Obama-era regulation preventing states from denying Title X federal family planning funds to abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood.

He also pointed to Trump’s Supreme Court appointment of Justice Neil Gorsuch, whom Pence described as “a man in the mold of the late and great Justice Antonin Scalia.”

Pence also used the platform to condemn Islamic terrorists in the Middle East, asserting that they “harbor a special hatred for the followers of Christ.”

He described the Islamic State terrorist group as a brutal regime that has unleashed “a savagery unseen in the Middle East since the Middle Ages.”


Pence’s comments at the Catholic gathering come on the heels of Trump’s first foreign trip, which included a stop at the Vatican to visit Pope Francis, who has sometimes bucked conventional thinking among the Catholic Church’s upper clergy and the conservative Catholic base in the U.S.

During Trump’s visit, the pope tried to persuade the president to keep the U.S. in the 195-nation Paris climate agreement that was negotiated under former President Barack Obama. On Thursday, the president announced that the U.S. would be leaving the pact.

And Trump memorably clashed with the pope during the former’s rough-and-tumble presidential campaign over Trump’s proposed border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Francis told reporters last year that a politician who seeks to build walls instead of bridges was “not Christian.”

Just a few decades ago, many considered an affiliation with the Catholic Church a political liability; it nearly cost John F. Kennedy the 1960 presidential election.

No longer.

The 115th Congress includes 170 Catholics, by far the largest number of any religious denomination in both chambers.

How many kids have they saved?

Twenty-eight percent of Republican members of Congress affiliate themselves with the church, compared to 37 percent of Democrats.

Catholic In Name Only and Cathoilic From the Waist Up!

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi identify as Catholics, as does Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee.

If they weren't blood-soaked ghouls, that would be funny. But I'll bet they treat their pets well.

Attending the breakfast Tuesday were two lawmakers, Reps. Lou Correa, D-Calif., and Christopher H. Smith, R-N.J., who both cited their Catholic faith as influential in their policymaking.

Smith cited the 25th chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew as especially important to his work in Congress.

“Whatever you do for the least of these, you do to me,” Smith said, paraphrasing the biblical verse. “And that has been my motivating scripture for all of the work on human trafficking … all the human rights work, every bit of it.”

As the co-chairman of the Bipartisan Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, Smith said he wholeheartedly agreed with Pence’s comment Tuesday that “life is winning in America.” Pointing to young people as the reason for this shift, Smith talked about a recent discussion with high schoolers in his district.

“They asked me about the life issue and several came up after to me and said, ‘I’m with you on that,’” Smith recalled. “Thirty years ago, I would have been booed, so I have seen a transformation that is very profound among young people and their support for life.”

Correa couldn’t be reached for comment. A spokesman later said his Catholic faith is “something that’s very important to him.”

The National Catholic Prayer Breakfast bills itself as a nonpartisan event, though the mood of the audience trended conservative.

Pence received a lengthy standing ovation as he addressed his vote to overturn the Obama administration’s regulation shielding federal funding for Planned Parenthood from state interference.

“I think he hit a home run,” Gerry Giblin, a prayer breakfast board member, said of the vice president’s speech. “He shares all the values of the Catholic Church and religious liberty. … I think he really solidified himself as a leader of the conservative religious group.”

Other members of the audience agreed, indicating they were particularly happy with Trump’s executive order in May, which sought to undermine the Johnson Amendment, a 1954 law which bans nontaxpaying groups, including churches, from political activity. That same Trump order also calls on the departments of Labor, Treasury, and Health and Human Services to amend Obama-era regulations barring companies from denying their employees free contraception as part of their health care benefits packages.

“[Pence’s] comments on religious freedom, I think that’s very important,” said Kevin Francis, a Catholic for more than 45 years, who attended the breakfast.

“I think that’s the No. 1 right you have as an American and as a human being,” he said. “Hopefully, that’s heartfelt — it seemed to be really heartfelt.”


TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

LOOK OUT, BABYEATERS! THERE ARE WITNESSES!

Of course, the whole baby-chopping exercise is designed to wipe out those witnesses...


It Turns Out Fetuses Can Recognize Faces - Inverse

Scientists have long known that babies tend to turn their attention toward faces (or objects shaped like faces), but research suggests that fetuses in the third trimester of development could be able to recognize faces from inside the uterus.

In a study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, researchers in the United Kingdom explain that fetuses prefer looking at face-like shapes, even through the uterus. Vincent Reid, a psychology researcher at Lancaster University and lead author of the study, says this research supports the idea that babies develop a preference for faces before they ever have any direct experience with them. This may sound strange, but it’s not far-fetched. After all, humans develop the skills to do many things long before we actually need to use those skills.

Reid likens this developmental pattern to the period when babies learn to crawl. Balance is required for crawling, but we learn how to balance before we learn how to crawl. The same, it seems, is true for recognizing people’s faces.

Research on infant facial recognition preferences suggests that babies respond to the general shape of the face, which is top-heavy, Reid tells Inverse.

Reid and his colleagues used techniques similar to those that would be used for tracking vision in infants but adapted them to the special conditions of the uterus.

“I’m actually not a fetus person,” says Reid, explaining that he usually works with infants.

To track fetal vision, the researchers shined a fairly dim light on the abdomens of 39 pregnant women in their third trimesters. They used 2D ultrasounds to identify where the fetuses’ faces were, to ensure that the light was being placed within their visual fields. Researchers presented the light stimulus as a triangle of dots, either pointing up or down, and each subject received both orientations of light. The researchers moved the trio of lights across each mother’s abdomen at the same speed that infants have been shown to track movement.

Researchers shined small triangles of light (A and C) on the abdomens of pregnant women. Once the light filtered through the mother's tissues and into the uterus, it looked more like B and D.
Using 4D ultrasound, the researchers found that fetuses turned their heads toward the top-heavy, face-like light stimulus much more often than the inverted one. This suggests that infants and late-term fetuses share a preference for top-heavy shapes over the same shapes when they’re inverted. Not only that, but it also shows that the uterus lets in much more light than previously suspected.

Researchers used 4D ultrasound technology to track fetuses' head motions as they shined lights through the uterus.

Reid suspects that the facial shape preference has to do with the uterine environment. In a 2013 study of fetal mice, researchers found that pregnant female mice who lived in the dark gave birth to offspring with malformed eyes. This showed that light is required for the eye to fully develop, and he suspects that something similar could be happening with humans.

His second hypothesis is that the facial shape preference comes from the broken light pattern shining through the mother’s ribcage and the unbroken pattern shining through the uterus, a non-uniform pattern that is top-heavy.

“This is conjecture here,” Reid warns. And of course, both of these suspicions require further research to confirm. But with this research, scientists now know that fetuses toward the end of gestation already exhibit facial recognition habits similar to newborns. And it may go without saying, but Reid asks that you please don’t try using a flashlight to perform this experiment at home.

Abstract: In the third trimester of pregnancy, the human fetus has the capacity to process perceptual information. With advances in 4D ultrasound technology, detailed assessment of fetal behavior is now possible. Furthermore, modeling of intrauterine conditions has indicated a substantially greater luminance within the uterus than previously thought. Consequently, light conveying perceptual content could be projected through the uterine wall and perceived by the fetus, dependent on how light inter- faces with maternal tissue. We do know that human infants at birth show a preference to engage with a top-heavy, face-like stimulus when contrasted with all other forms of stimuli.

However, the viability of performing such an experiment based on visual stimuli projected through the uterine wall with fetal participants is not currently known. We examined fetal head turns to visually presented upright and inverted face-like stimuli. Here we show that the fetus in the third trimester of pregnancy is more likely to engage with upright configural stimuli when contrasted to inverted visual stimuli, in a manner similar to results with newborn participants. The current study suggests that postnatal experience is not required for this preference. In addition, we describe a new method whereby it is possible to deliver specific visual stimuli to the fetus. This new technique provides an important new pathway for the assessment of prenatal visual perceptual capacities.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

2 tales of 2 guys who refuse to GET IT, or The reason we are doomed.

From The Washington Examiner comes the story of a Democrass who may be humble and nice and even pro-life, yet NEVER fails to vote LEFT-FASCIST:

In small town Iowa, a humble model for Democratic politicians


WEST POINT, Iowa — It takes less than five minutes of visiting with Ron Fedler to understand that family, public service, and community are the true treasures in his life.

"They are what mean the most to me — and, of course, my love and respect for country," he says, sitting in his living room in this Lee County town, home to 966 people and the state's largest sweet-corn festival.

In a state where corn is the driving commodity, having the largest festival is a pretty big deal.

It takes not much longer to understand that Ron Fedler should be a true treasure for the Democratic Party. His living room walls are a kaleidoscope of family photos. Large and small frames are filled with children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, all dotting the walls of the modest red-brick home he built himself. To the left of his easy chair is a framed black-and-white print of his parents and 11 of his 12 siblings: "My older brother had already left for Vietnam and missed the family photo."

Across the room from his overstuffed lazy chair, an 11-by-14 framed color photo of former President John F. Kennedy sits atop a coffee table; it's a copy of the iconic 1961 official photograph by Fabian Bachrach, showing Kennedy seated at his desk in the White House — frozen in that innocent moment at the start of "Camelot." A moment of promise — before the Bay of Pigs, before the Cuban missile crisis, before his assassination.

"He is my hero; he will always be my hero," Fedler says, smiling broadly.

Dumbass. Of course, compared to what has followed him, JFK appears to be freakin' Plato.

Fedler is not one of those Democrats who fled his party in this last election to vote for President Trump; he thinks the commander-in-chief is off-putting, without promise, erratic. Yet, despite his misgivings, he understands, at least partially, why fellow Lee County Democrats voted for him.

"This goes beyond frustration and anger; it really does," he explains. "Experts fundamentally misread the voters' motives who went from happily supporting former President Barack Obama to equally happily supporting Trump on election night. They liked Obama, but many of his policies hurt them and their communities, and they wanted someone who they felt listened to them."

Trump, he says, filled that void.

What concerns Fedler is that political reporters and his party still don't recognize that "Trump's support here is very strong." In 2012, Lee County cast 9,428 votes for Obama and 6,787 for Republican Mitt Romney. Four years later the numbers nearly reversed, with 8,762 votes going to Trump and 6,195 to Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Trump carried every voting precinct in Lee, a county long dominated by Democratic registration, activism and elected officials and by unions.

In 2016 you had people who normally voted Democratic but stopped believing in the more-progressive policies of Washington Democrats — which are very different than Lee County Democrats — and went the other way.

Ron Fedler is not one of those Democrats who fled his party in this last election to vote for President Trump; he thinks the commander in chief is off-putting, without promise, erratic. Yet, despite his misgivings, he understands, at least partially, why fellow Lee County Democrats voted for him. (Photo by Frank Craig for the Washington Examiner)

Fedler is the perfect example of what a Lee County Democrat represents: The West Point native was born, raised and graduated from high school here; drafted at age 19, he served as a radio Teletype operator with a secret crypto clearance.

His clearances were so top-secret that he never told his wife where he was stationed, what he did or what his orders were: "That information goes to the grave with me. I made a pledge to my country not to divulge that information, and I will forever honor that."

The military brass were so impressed with the young Fedler that they offered him a prestigious appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., he says, and a life as a career Army officer. But Fedler wanted to return to West Point, Iowa, so he respectfully declined.

His commanders "thought I was crazy, but all I wanted to do was go home, be with my family in my hometown. It is the best place in this country to live, the greatest hometown in the world, you know," he says, eyes twinkling.

Not only did Fedler never leave, but he also became an integral part of his community. He also became an integral and respected steward of the local Democratic Party.

After attending the local community college, he worked as a mason for four years and then for an energy company, saving all of his money until he could afford to buy Dugan's Corner Convenience Store and eventually build a new one, which he ran for 30 years. After selling the store, he worked as a correctional officer at the Iowa State Penitentiary.

But that is only part of his story: Fedler ran for and won a seat on the City Council, then served three terms as West Point's mayor — two consecutively, then once again several years later.

When he retired, he decided to run for the Iowa statehouse as a Democrat, a race he lost. He ran again, lost again.

Today he is in his second term as a county supervisor. In all of his roles in government, he has had a history of compromise, consensus-building, attracting jobs and accomplishing projects; he is tireless, well-liked and, more importantly, respected.

When he discusses the opening of the Iowa Fertilizer Company plant last month in Lee County, there's no "I" mentioned, no grandstanding over one of the largest private-sector construction projects in the state's history and the first world-class greenfield nitrogen fertilizer facility built in the United States in more than 25 years.

Of the elections he lost, he sounds sensible; of the ones he won, he sounds humble: "What I do is not for me. It's for the community — we don't want our people to fade away; we don't want our communities to fade away. That's why I serve."

In short, Fedler is the perfect example of what the Democratic Party's leadership should covet — of how the party's candidates should model themselves.

This is not because Republicans are perfect; it's just that they are in power and still ascending, and Democrats up and down the ballot are divided, struggling and still in search of a unified message.
The folks at the top of the party aren't exactly role models for how to reach out to those Middle America voters who fled the party in droves during the past eight years. You do not lose 1,100 down-ballot offices — state legislative seats, U.S. House and Senate seats, governor's seats — in that time because you are connecting with working-class voters.

In reality, the party has lost those voters not only politically but culturally.

According to Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Ron Fedler has no place in the Democratic Party. Is that because he's white, or male, or older than 60? Thankfully not — but it is because Fedler is pro-life.

In April, Perez drew a line in the sand for Democrats supporting any candidates who oppose abortion rights. This is not the only reason that Democrats have lost public offices, but it is a large part of their problem: It is a position that is elitist, tone deaf, and shuts out a great amount of support that should naturally come their way.

The problem with Perez is that he is too ambitious; he allows his personal motivations to get in the way of his real job — raising money (his efforts have been awful) and building infrastructure (a weak effort, so far).

And, then, there is Hillary Clinton.

As one Democratic strategist said to me in an anguished email, "Won't she please go away?" This is from someone who supported her.

Last week, in yet another speech, Clinton vaguely admitted to some mistakes on her part in losing the election but spent the bulk of her time talking and talking and talking about the sly attempts to move support away from her and the party's alleged failure to raise money, provide campaign logistics, or back her in any meaningful manner.

Democrats have history on their side in the midterm elections of 2018: About 90 percent of the time, a president's party loses congressional seats in the midterms. The times that hasn't happened occurred during crises — Reconstruction, the Great Depression, after the Sept. 11 attacks.

What Democrats don't have on their sides are the right people in the limelight: Clinton needs to stop blaming everyone else, Perez should be more tolerant of different viewpoints, and the party needs to adopt a simple bread-and-butter jobs message.

Go on a field trip to West Point, Iowa, and learn from the Ron Fedlers of the party. He is not on Twitter, he is not that snarky, he works hard, and he compromises and gets things done.

And when he loses? He takes the blame.



From the Times of the City of Our Lady of the Angels comes the story of a Repansycan who no doubt sees himself as a stalwart foe of some totalitarian forces that threaten his freedom while also inexplicably supporting other totalitarian forces that threaten his freedom: (He is also probably humble, nice, pro-life, et cetera.)


Meet the Trump backer leading the resistance to the resistance


The crowd in the Inglewood High School auditorium had lost its patience with the loud white man in the sweat-stained Make America Great Again hat.

Arthur Christopher Schaper sat among a mostly African American crowd at Rep. Maxine Waters’ town hall meeting last month, calling the Los Angeles Democrat “the crazy black lady” and heckling her for his Facebook Live audience. People begged him to stop talking over “Auntie Maxine.” He said he was being discriminated against.

“God bless Donald Trump!” he shouted.

“Shut up, Arthur, you Nazi!” someone retorted.

As the police escorted him out with the crowd cheering, Schaper held up his phone, video rolling.

The next day, he blogged about it, saying Trump supporters in California were “behind enemy lines.” His ejection was quickly chronicled as heroic by the far-right website InfoWars and by Sarah Palin on her Facebook page.

California is the symbolic home of the resistance to Trump, a blue state where politicians are fighting his moves on issues like immigration, climate change and healthcare, and where thousands have taken to the streets in protest.

Schaper is part of the resistance to the resistance, a Californian who delights in upending city council meetings in so-called sanctuary cities and shouting down Democratic politicians.

Schaper is so abrasive that the local Republican Party has disavowed him. But he is indicative of the growing extremism of debate in the Trump era, when the president’s supporters and detractors in California have waged violent, vitriolic protests in Berkeley, Huntington Beach and elsewhere.

“People are afraid to put Trump bumper stickers on their car,” Schaper said. “I’m going, ‘I’ve had enough of this.’ We’re going to fight right back. We’re going to defend our right to stand with our president, to stand for our values.”

Who is Arthur Christopher Schaper?

Schaper, a 36-year-old unemployed Torrance resident and blogger, usually shows up at public meetings in his red Make America Great Again cap, wearing a Trump flag as a cape. He records his escapades on cellphone video, narrating in real time as he trolls in real life.

Schaper's style — which includes showing up to Waters' office with a sign reading, "Maxine Waters Go to Hell" — caused the Republican Party of Los Angeles County to pull the charter from the Beach Cities Republicans club of which he is president.

Schaper is involved with numerous right-wing groups, including MassResistance, an anti-LGBTQ organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled a hate group. He said financial support from MassResistance helps fund his activism.

To the SPLC, everybody to the right of Che Guevara is a hater, so that counts as editorializing.

He and roughly a dozen supporters and anti-illegal immigration activists have become a particularly unwelcome presence at city council meetings in places with large Latino immigrant populations such as Cudahy, El Monte and Huntington Park.

In recent weeks, they have shouted down a Riverside speech by state Senate leader Kevin de León (screaming “Anchor baby!”) and a Redondo Beach town hall by Democratic U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu.
They temporarily stopped an immigration town hall led by Rep. Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) on May 30, interrupting his speech. Schaper got in Correa’s face, recording video as he screamed about “illegal aliens.” Three people — including a man who hit a Trump supporter over the head with a flagpole bearing an anti-fascism banner — were detained or arrested.

More fake anti-fascists, no doubt.

In March, they cut short an Ontario meeting led by California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra, then gathered at a Coco’s Bakery afterward, vowing over dinner to “take California back.” The fracas was gleefully covered by Breitbart.

“Trump’s election has energized people on a side of the spectrum that has been relatively quiet in California in recent years,” said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles.

Although anti-immigration hardliners feel as if they have a friend in the White House and are more in line with Republican views nationally, in California they are more of a throwback to an earlier era, he said.

Schaper and his allies often plot their next moves at chain restaurants like Sizzler, Coco's, Denny's and McDonald's. In an interview at a Sizzler in Torrance — during which he propped up his cellphone on a bottle of steak sauce to videorecord a Times reporter — Schaper said his provocations are payback for the raucous town halls Republican lawmakers have faced since Trump took office.

“Being nice doesn’t work,” he said.

The day before the election, Trump tweeted a link to a column from the conservative website Townhall.com headlined, “What I Like About Trump … and Why You Need to Vote for Him.”

It was written by Schaper, whose voice swells with pride when he mentions the tweet.

“Because of his lead on attacking and diminishing establishment media, it’s encouraged more of us to come out,” Schaper said of Trump. “The media narrative isn’t going to be dominant. We get to be the media now.”

Schaper was raised in the South Bay in a “churchgoing, Bible-believing, evangelical” family, he said. He doesn’t currently attend a church, saying “compromising liberalism” is causing churches to shy away from the Bible.

He worked for several years as a substitute teacher but said students mocked him and threw things at him. After he was laid off in 2012, Schaper, who complains of “welfare for illegals,” collected unemployment and got financial help from his father before going to work at a Vons grocery store.

Schaper is currently unemployed and uninsured, and was exempt from paying a fine for failing to sign up for coverage because his income was so low, he said. Yet, at Waters’ town hall he shouted about the Affordable Care Act: “I can afford my own healthcare! I don’t want to live off Mommy!"

Trump wasn’t his first choice for president, Schaper said. But he was swayed by the way Trump spoke about illegal immigration. He believes all people in the U.S. illegally, including those brought as young children, should be deported.

In May, Schaper went to an El Monte City Council meeting with fellow members of the Claremont-based anti-illegal immigration group We the People Rising, led by Robin Hvidston, who was previously associated with the Minuteman Project that led vigilante border patrols.

A few weeks earlier, they disrupted an immigrants’ “know your rights” forum in El Monte. Schaper — who said he contacted U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions to report the event — was escorted out by police.

At the council meeting, Schaper and his group complained about illegal immigration.

“They hate brown people!” someone shouted.

“Racists, go home!” others hollered.

Chanell Temple, a black Trump supporter who said she lost a bookkeeping job because she couldn’t speak Spanish, said during public comments that immigrants in the country illegally are “riding off the backs of blacks,” usurping their hard-fought civil rights movement.

Schaper held a sign asking El Monte Mayor Andre Quintero: “Who do you work for?? Americans or illegals!!!”

“Verguenza!” Schaper shouted in Spanish, pointing at Quintero. Shame on you!

As the group filed out, someone yelled, “You’re the KKK!” Another person hissed, “vendida!” (sellout) at Trump supporter Loretta Sanchez, from Hesperia.

El Monte resident Veronica Tomas stood near the door, taking video as Temple walked toward her.

“Get that phone out of my face,” Temple said, walking into her. Tomas shrieked and dropped her phone. Police held the women apart as Schaper and the others rushed to the parking lot, whispering their next meeting place that night: a Denny’s in Temple City.

Quintero said the group is a familiar, if annoying, presence. As he was recently reading an article about them disrupting de León’s town hall, the mayor saw a photo of Schaper and another man sitting next to him, making a face.

"There was a picture of a guy sticking his tongue out, and it was like, ‘Hey, I know that guy!’ “ Quintero said, laughing.

A few weeks later, Schaper and crew went to the City Council meeting in Cudahy, a so-called sanctuary city, holding signs with messages like “ICE Hotline Call Now!” They were greeted by a sign that read: “Deport all white supremacists back to Europe!”

After the meeting abruptly ended because there were not enough council members to form a quorum, the scene devolved into screaming between the Trump supporters and dozens of livid protesters, some holding a Mexican flag.

Sheriff’s deputies pleaded with Schaper, by name, to walk away and escorted him to his car as a sheriff’s helicopter flew overhead.


On a warm May evening, the Beach Cities Republicans club gathered at the Sizzler in Torrance, members filling their plates from the salad and taco bar.

And they wonder why these dumbasses hate the AmeriKKKaLast media!

Oops! I mean that's quite a telling point there, you staunch defender of only your own First Amendment rights.

Schaper was elected to a second term as the group’s president in the fall — which caused the L.A. County GOP to revoke its charter. Schaper says the party turned on him because he takes his cues from Trump and is willing to confront.

“They want to have a full social calendar, have a bunch of nice titles, eat, burp, and that’s it,” he said. “It’s almost like the Republicans have all but given up.”

In a statement, the county GOP cited Schaper’s “inappropriate activities” — disrupting meetings, intimidating elected officials and citizens — as a major reason for pulling the charter.

“Complaints about his activities from elected officials and everyday citizens reflect badly on the Republican Party,” the party said.

At the Sizzler, Beach Cities member Claude Todoroff, of Torrance, lamented the rift between the club and the party.

“We should be kicking Democratic ass, not our own!” he said.

One of Schaper’s guests was Joseph Turner, whose group American Children First unsuccessfully tried to ban children who came to the U.S. illegally from some Inland Empire public schools and to force the American-born children of parents here illegally to pay tuition.

“Us Southern Californians wear our anti-illegal immigration activism like a badge of courage,” Turner said. “We know ... we are the toughest and most effective activists in the nation.”

Schaper shed his abrasive persona as he led the meeting. When people spoke, he asked the crowd to please be respectful and quiet or leave.


TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

The blood-soaked legacy of The Community Organizer From The High-Yellow Lagoon marches on unopposed.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Hell freezes over as Your Humble Narrator rushes to the defense of your tweet-for-brains Mess-iahdent. (Sort of.)

Well, I'm pretty sure this is as close as I will ever get.

Twitter is a cesspool, and not just because of Orange Clump. Do you really think a sociopath with skin as thin as an onion will tolerate criticism? This is a non-story intended to distract the Clumpentariat from the horrorshow nobody in power gives a damn about.


Twitter users, blocked by Trump, cry censorship | McClatchy ...


President Donald Trump may be the nation's tweeter-in-chief, but some Twitter users say he's violating the First Amendment by blocking people from his feed after they posted scornful comments.

Lawyers for two Twitter users sent the White House a letter Tuesday demanding they be un-blocked from the Republican president's @realDonaldTrump account.

"The viewpoint-based blocking of our clients is unconstitutional," wrote attorneys at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University in New York.

The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The tweeters — one a liberal activist, the other a cyclist who says he's a registered Republican — have posted and retweeted plenty of complaints and jokes about Trump.

They say they found themselves blocked after replying to a couple of his recent tweets. The activist, Holly O'Reilly, posted a video of Pope Francis casting a sidelong look at Trump and suggested this was "how the whole world sees you." The cyclist, Joe Papp, responded to the president's weekly address by asking why he hadn't attended a rally by supporters and adding, with a hashtag, "fakeleader."

Blocking people on Twitter means they can't easily see or reply to the blocker's tweets.

Although Trump started @realDonaldTrump as a private citizen and Twitter isn't government-run, the Knight institute lawyers argue that he's made it a government-designated public forum by using it to discuss policies and engage with citizens. Indeed, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday that Trump's tweets are "considered official statements by the president."

The institute's executive director, Jameel Jaffer, compares Trump's Twitter account to a politician renting a privately-owned hall and inviting the public to a meeting.

"The crucial question is whether a government official has opened up some space, whether public or private, for expressive activity, and there's no question that Trump has done that here," Jaffer said. "The consequence of that is that he can't exclude people based solely on his disagreement with them."

The users weren't told why they were blocked. Their lawyers maintain that the connection between their criticisms and the cutoff was plain.

Still, there's scant law on free speech and social media blocking, legal scholars note.

"This is an emerging issue," says Helen Norton, a University of Colorado Law School professor who specializes in First Amendment law.

Morgan Weiland, an affiliate scholar with Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, says the blocked tweeters' complaint could air key questions if it ends up in court. Does the public forum concept apply in privately run social media? Does it matter if an account is a politician's personal account, not an official one?

San Francisco-based Twitter Inc. declined to comment. The tweeters aren't raising complaints about the company.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article154660469.html#storylink=cpy

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

If you think the "soulless ginger orangutan" will try to have this traitorous cow executed for treason, you just might be a dumbass.

It will probably have her vajayjay sewn shut and an armadillo dick glued on.


Reality Leigh Winner Criticized President Trump on Facebook | Time ...

"Reality"? Really?

Before she was charged with leaking U.S. government secrets to a reporter, Reality Leigh Winner shared sometimes scathing opinions on President Donald Trump and his policies for the whole world to see.

The 25-year-old U.S. government contractor has worked since February in Augusta, Georgia, for a federal agency that neither prosecutors nor her defense lawyer will name and where she had access to sensitive documents. But the secretive nature of her job didn't stop Winner from speaking freely on politics and other topics on social media accounts accessible to anyone.

She posted on Facebook three months ago that climate change is a more important issue than health care "since not poisoning an entire population seems to be more in line with 'health' care, and not the disease care system that people voted for a soulless ginger orangutan to 'fix.'"

Winner remained locked up Tuesday on federal charges that she made copies of classified documents containing top-secret material and mailed them to an online news organization. She was scheduled to appear before a federal judge Thursday for a detention hearing.

In her spare time, Winner lifted weights and taught the occasional yoga class. She served six years in the Air Force before she moved to Georgia early this year, according to her mother, Billie Winner-Davis. Reporters gathered Tuesday outside Winner's small, red-brick home in a neighborhood dotted with overgrown yards and houses in disrepair.

"She's got a good heart," Winner-Davis said. "She serves her community, she served her country. She believes in always doing what's right."

Gary Davis, Winner's stepfather, said she turned down a full college scholarship to join the Air Force. Court records say Winner held a top-secret security clearance.

"I know my daughter. She's a patriot," Davis said. "She served with distinction in one of the highest classified jobs in the Air Force."

Like I always ask of Senator John War Hero, "What have you done lately?"

Winner's mother said she was stunned when her daughter called over the weekend, saying the FBI had come to her home and she was being arrested. Winner asked if her mother and stepfather, who live in Texas, would travel to Georgia to help feed her cat.

"Mainly she was concerned about her cat," Winner-Davis said.

It is always the innocent who suffer the most.

Court documents accuse Winner of mailing a classified report written on or about May 5 to an unnamed news organization. The website The Intercept reported Monday it had obtained a classified National Security Agency report dated May 5 suggesting Russian hackers attacked at least one U.S. voting software supplier days before last year's presidential election.

Winner's defense attorney, Titus Thomas Nichols, would not confirm whether she was being charged with leaking the NSA report cited by The Intercept.

On social media, Winner mostly shared glimpses into her life far removed from politics — such as watching Dr. Who with her cat and serving her family a vegetarian meal of barbecued jackfruit.

Watching Dr. Who with her cat? Has PETA heard about this?

"I just know she cares about her world and taking care of people and animals," Winner-Davis said. "I never termed her as a political activist at all, ever."

But Winner's Facebook page does mention reaching out to Sen. David Perdue, a Georgia Republican, after Trump nominated Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

And in an angry reply to a report that Trump said he wasn't hearing complaints about building the Dakota Access oil pipeline, Winner wrote on Facebook: "I'm losing my mind. If you voted for this piece of (expletive), explain this. He's lying."

In the legal case, authorities say Winner admitted to leaking the classified report once government officials traced her as the source.

An affidavit by FBI agent Justin Garrick said the government found out about the leaked documents from the news outlet that received them. He said the agency that housed the report was able to identify six people — including Winner — who had made copies of the report.

A pattern of tiny yellow dots on the leaked documents themselves would also have offered the government a way to track down the alleged leaker, security blog Errata noted late Monday. At the request of the government, recent model color printers automatically leave a unique stamp on the documents they produce.

Asked if Winner had confessed, Nichols said, "If there is a confession, the government has not shown it to me."

You heard it here first, kiddies. She will get off easy, because the fix is always in.

Perhaps there's a better way to put it... "No matter who you vote for, the government always gets in."

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

I hear Loki and Pan open a (more or less) kosher deli while Fortuna runs a bookmaking operation out of the back room.

What a great idea for a show!

Ain't creative folks grand? I can't wait for them to tell me how to run my life and whom to vote for!


From the Times of The City of Our Lady of the Angels:


Ian McShane relishes playing an ancient god as a charismatic scamp ...


I really should know better than to read stuff about entertainers I like. I've been a fan of Mr. McShane since he was Lovejoy, an art dealer or antique dealer (or something like that) who solved crimes.

I know this new gig is just a job to him and he has bills to pay, but this thing sounds like pure dumbassery on a cracker.


In the Starz series “American Gods,” Ian McShane plays an ancient deity who walks the Earth in human form. But don’t expect an ethereal, larger than life figure in a crisp three-piece suit.

Mr. Wednesday is a charming but slick con man with questionable scruples and fashion sense. He traverses America in an old black Cadillac, pulling small scams from city to city for cash. Clearly, the gods aren’t as powerful as they once were.

His peers — ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman and African gods — have also fallen on lean times. Like Wednesday, they were once worshiped by the immigrant cultures that brought them to America. Today? Mortals would rather watch TV or stare at their smart phones.

Based on Neil Gaiman’s novel of the same name, McShane’s Mr. Wednesday is at the heart of the series adaptation as he convinces his fellow gods to unite against such modern-day threats as technology and media.

If Ian's character burns Twitter to the ground, I will apologize for everything and buy a box set of Deadwood dvds on EBay.

McShane costars with Ricky Whittle, who plays ex-convict Shadow Moon, an unwitting mortal that Mr. Wednesday has hired as a bodyguard. The odd couple embark on a road trip that potentially changes the course of humankind.

McShane dropped by The Envelope’s video studio to chat about the series from executive producers Bryan Fuller and Michael Green.


The great thing about “American Gods” is that you don’t have to be a fan of the books to understand the series.

I don’t think so. (He has to say that, kiddies. Everybody knows nobody can read anymore and if folks think they have to actually read a book to understand something on their little screens, mayhem and poor ratings would certainly ensue. - F.G.) The book is all an interior monologue in Shadow’s head, so Green and Fuller have created this rather fantastic visual world as well. It was written 16 years ago and it’s more apt now than it probably was then. It’s a story of immigrants coming to America and they bring their gods with them. The demons, they didn’t. They were too scared to cross the ocean. But Gaiman believes the gods came with them as protection; it goes back to Roman times. This is not to say this is an irreligious show or it’s an anti-faith show. It’s very much a faith show. It’s just saying, have we forgotten now where we were anytime in the past, you know, 500 years? If you don’t remember what the past is then you’ll be forced to repeat it.

I love that the old gods are really fallible. They have these sort of conflicts between them, like your character is making money on the side as a con man —

Oh, he’s just as capricious and as willful as any of the new gods that he’s raving against. It’s just you’ll have a better time with him. You’ll also get steeped in the history of humanity rather than in the world of nothingness, like what [new god] Mr. World represents or the media. But he’s looking forward to the battle. He wants a fight.

What you bring to that character in the series, he’s kind of part used-car salesman but then he’s also really charismatic. Did you see that in Mr. Wednesday when you read the novel?

The great thing I loved about Wednesday when I read him and then as I got to know him as we worked on the show is he’s up for anything. And he enjoys everything — be it food, drink, women, conversation, laughter. And he’s also a bit of a know-it-all.

You have also been known for playing characters that are not the typical bad guys. There’s something...
 Complicated people.

There you go. Complicated people.

That started back in the end of the ’90s, beginning of the 2000s with HBO, with the shows about — well, when I was involved with “Deadwood” but also I remember “Oz,” which since has been forgotten a little, but shouldn’t. It’s a great show, a phenomenal show.

“Oz,” “The Wire,” “The Sopranos” — Tony Soprano was your classic complicated character. I mean, he’s a family guy. It’s just a family business. It’s just something that most of us, you know, would never be involved with, but that’s the dynamic and brilliantly done. I can compare that to Al Swearengen in “Deadwood,” he became a rounded person. But I think Wednesday is imbued with that from the beginning because he’s an old god, so he comes fully formed. You meet more gods as we go on. They get filled out. You get more stand-alone stories.

Here’s a question from our Facebook audience. “How do you create your understanding of how to play a character when that character is an ancient Norse god?”

You think like an old Norse god. Haven’t you ever done that? You know, I called myself Olaf for a week, wore a beard, dressed in rags and ate live birds and chanted to the old gods of Norse, went to an island and drank water from a well. Isn’t that what everybody does when you prepare for a part? Very easy to do.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

I don't care what anyone thinks. Bob Dylan is a real mensch.

Why? Because he gets it, kiddies.






May God bless you and those you love, Mr. Dylan.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Guess what happens when you elect a low-grade moron with the patience of a three year-old, the morals of a $10 street whore, and the attention span of a moth?

TA-DA!

The orange power-mad clown always gets its way, no matter what the hell happens to others.

It knows that when things go wrong, it must be somebody else's fault, for it can do no wrong. The travel ban is a perfect example. US presidents have always had the power to limit the types of immigrants entering the country. But it was (and is) too stupid to know it shouldn't have campaigned on keeping mohammedans out. That turned into an easy excuse for left-fascist judges to void the ban.

Let us hope it leaves office before it comes to the inevitable conclusion of EVERY power-mad motherfucker thwarted by reality: "If I start shooting people, the ones left will let me do what I want."


Trump Grows Discontented With Attorney General Jeff Sessions - The Old Gray Whore...



Few Republicans were quicker to embrace President Trump’s campaign last year than Jeff Sessions, and his reward was one of the most prestigious jobs in America. But more than four months into his presidency, Mr. Trump has grown sour on Mr. Sessions, now his attorney general, blaming him for various troubles that have plagued the White House.

The discontent was on display on Monday in a series of stark early-morning postings on Twitter in which the president faulted his own Justice Department for its defense of his travel ban on visitors from certain predominantly Muslim countries. Mr. Trump accused Mr. Sessions’s department of devising a “politically correct” version of the ban — as if the president had nothing to do with it.

In private, the president’s exasperation has been even sharper. He has intermittently fumed for months over Mr. Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election, according to people close to Mr. Trump who insisted on anonymity to describe internal conversations. In Mr. Trump’s view, they said, it was that recusal that eventually led to the appointment of a special counsel who took over the investigation.

Behind-the-scenes frustration would not be unprecedented in the Oval Office. Other presidents have become estranged from the Justice Department over time, notably President Bill Clinton, who bristled at Attorney General Janet Reno’s decisions to authorize investigations into him and his administration, among other things. But Mr. Trump’s tweets on Monday made his feelings evident for all to see and raised questions about how he is managing his own administration.

“They wholly undercut the idea that there is some rational process behind the president’s decisions,” said Walter E. Dellinger, who served as acting solicitor general under Mr. Clinton. “I believe it is unprecedented for a president to publicly chastise his own Justice Department.”

In his Twitter posts, Mr. Trump complained that his original executive order barring visitors from select Muslim-majority nations and refugees from around the world was revised in hopes of passing legal muster after it was struck down by multiple federal courts. The second version, however, has also been blocked, and last week the Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court.

“The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.,” Mr. Trump wrote.

Then he added, “The Justice Dept. should ask for an expedited hearing of the watered down Travel Ban before the Supreme Court — & seek much tougher version!”

But the messages caused considerable head scratching around Washington since it was Mr. Trump who signed the revised executive order and, presumably, agreed to the legal strategy in the first place. His posts made it sound like the Justice Department was not part of his administration.


The White House had little to add to the president’s messages on Monday. Asked why Mr. Trump signed the revised order if he did not support it, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a White House spokeswoman, said he did it only to convince a California-based appeals court. “He was looking to, again, match the demands laid out by the Ninth Circuit and, for the purpose of expediency, to start looking at the best way possible to move that process forward,” she said.
 
Alan M. Dershowitz, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School who, throughout the 2016 election, defended the civil liberties of Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton, said the president was clearly voicing frustration with Mr. Sessions. But he said it was not clear to him that it was a personal issue as opposed to an institutional one with the office.

“What he’s saying is, ‘I’m the president, I’m the tough guy, I wanted a very tough travel ban and the damn lawyers are weakening it’ — and clients complain about lawyers all the time,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “I see this more as a client complaining about his lawyer. The lawyer in this case happens to be Jeff Sessions.”

David B. Rivkin Jr., a lawyer who served in the White House and Justice Department under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, said Mr. Trump clearly looked at the case from the lens of a businessman who did not get his money’s worth.

“He’s unhappy when the results don’t come in,” Mr. Rivkin said. “I’m sure he was convinced to try the second version, and the second iteration did not do better than the first iteration, so the lawyers in his book did not do a good job. It’s understandable for a businessman.”


Mr. Sessions and the Justice Department remained silent on Monday. But at least one lawyer close to the administration suggested that there was consternation in the department over the president’s messages. George T. Conway III, who until last week was Mr. Trump’s choice for assistant attorney general for the civil division and whose wife, Kellyanne Conway, is the president’s counselor, posted a Twitter message suggesting that Mr. Trump’s tweets “certainly won’t help” persuade five justices on the Supreme Court — the majority needed — to uphold the travel ban.

In subsequent posts, Mr. Conway said that “every sensible lawyer” in the White House Counsel’s Office and “every political appointee” at the Justice Department would “agree with me (as some have already told me).” Mr. Conway stressed that he strongly supports Mr. Trump — “and, of course, my wonderful wife” — and was making his points because the president’s supporters “should not be shy about it.”

The frustration over the travel ban might be a momentary episode were it not for the deeper resentment Mr. Trump feels toward Mr. Sessions, according to people close to the president. When Mr. Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation, Mr. Trump learned about it only when he was in the middle of another event, and he publicly questioned the decision.

A senior administration official said Mr. Trump has not stopped burning about the decision, in occasional spurts, toward Mr. Sessions. Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who was selected by Mr. Sessions and filled in when it came to the Russia investigation, ultimately appointed Robert S. Mueller III, a former F.B.I. director, as special counsel to lead the probe.

In fact, much of the past two months of discomfort and self-inflicted pain for Mr. Trump can be tied in some way back to that recusal. Mr. Trump felt blindsided by Mr. Sessions’s decision and unleashed his fury at aides in the Oval Office the next day, according to four people familiar with the event. The next day was his fateful tweet about President Barack Obama conducting a wiretap of Trump Tower during the campaign, an allegation that was widely debunked.

However, Mr. Trump is said to be aware that firing people now, on the heels of dismissing James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, would be risky. He has invested care and meticulous attention to the next choice of an F.B.I. director in part because he will not have the option of firing another one. The same goes for Mr. Sessions, these people said.

Mr. Dershowitz said he thought any frustration over Mr. Sessions’s recusal, like the travel ban, was probably not personal. “I think that’s also institutional,” he said. “Almost any A.G. would recuse himself. I think he’s railing against lawyers.”


TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Dumbass prods must keep trying to square their heretical circles.

From the paper without a name:


How 2 19th century professors changed the way Protestants think about the reformation 


In the mid-19th century, two professors at Mercersburg Seminary arrived at a radical conclusion:

The Protestant Reformation rose out of the Roman Catholic tradition, which rose out the early church. And the Protestant celebration of grace was a response to the Catholic focus on law.

Do you mean God's Law?

The Mercersburg Theology, as it became known, was largely the work of Philip Schaff and John Williamson Nevin, of the German Reformed Church.

Differing with the predominant Protestant view at the time — that the early church was good but had to be almost reborn in the Reformation — they contended God continued to work on the church throughout the medieval centuries.

How nice of them...and (literally) damnably condescending.

“In the 1840s, many Protestants had trouble seeing Catholics as Christians,” said Anne Thayer, professor of church history at Lancaster Theological Seminary, “so it was a distinctive theology then, born within the German Reform Church, and (it) created controversy within the German Reform Church. But that has shaped the kind of worship-centered ecumenical ethos that has characterized Lancaster Seminary up until the present.”

Thayer said Schaff and Nevin believed there was a thread tying together Protestants and Catholics, and they wanted to reclaim that heritage.

Seriously? It isn't a "heritage", it is sacred tradition.

This Monday through Wednesday, Lancaster Theological Seminary will host The Mercersburg Convocation. Titled “Trajectories of Grace (Re)Formation today,” it features three speakers: William Evans, professor of Bible and religion at Erskine College; Douglas Ottati, professor of Reformed theology and justice at Davidson College; and Marcia Robinson, assistant professor of religion at Syracuse University.

Try inviting an orthodox Catholic, boys...if you dare!

Although the convocation is held annually, this year’s event is especially poignant because it is tied to the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s posting of the 95 theses that led to the establishment of Protestantism.

Who?

Oh, right. The heretic priest who just HAD to get laid.

Lancaster Seminary was founded in 1825 by members of the German Reformed Church in the United States. In 1836-37, it moved from Lancaster to Mercersburg under the charter of Marshall College. In 1871, it returned to Lancaster 18 years after the consolidation of the Franklin and Marshall colleges.

It was during the seminary’s time  in Mercersburg that Schaff and Nevin presented their views and initiated a lively debate within the church. So, lively, in fact, that Schaff, whose inaugural address was titled “Principle of Protestantism,” was tried for — and acquitted of — heresy.

Can a heretic be accused of heresy by heretics who are worried that his heresy threatens their heresy?

My poor head...

They argued for an ecumenism within Protestant churches, which were splintered at the time.

Do you think they aren't now? 33,000 "denominations" can't be right.

“They stressed the importance of liturgy and sacraments, in contrast to 19th-century American Revivalism, which was dominant in this area,” Thayer said.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

"Liturgy and sacraments"??????

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

You're killing me! (And your souls!)


“So instead of expecting the preacher to be the sole actor in a worship service, there was a liturgy that included the congregation. They had prayers to say; the sermon wasn’t the sole focus of the worship service.”

Wow.

Today, such arguments are much more accepted among Protestant churches and denominations.

“It was far more radical in the 19th century than it is today,” Thayer said.

The Mercersburg Theology is often seen as the early beginnings of the ecumenical impulse in American Protestantism.

“A hallmark is that it reached across all denominations,” said the Rev. Chris Rankin, administrative vice president for the Mercersburg Society and pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ, 2340 State St., East Petersburg.

The focus, Rankin said, is on the Eucharist. His church offers the Eucharist every Sunday at the early service and every other Sunday during the late service.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

Like HELL you offer the Eucharist, you poor benighted bastard.

Please forgive me Lord, and help them all find their way home to the One True Faith in Thee.


The society, founded in 1983, upholds the concept of the church as the “Body of Christ, Evangelical, Reformed, Catholic, Apostolic, organic, developmental and connectional.”

Uh..."connectional"? Which Gospel contains that word?

Two of Trinity’s previous pastors — the Rev. George Geisler and the Rev. Harry Royer — were instrumental in forming The Mercersburg Society.

Rankin said The Mercersburg Theology holds that the church is a living organism that continues to evolve. (JUST LIKE THE FREAKIN' CONSTITUTION! - F.G.) In spite of the decline of the church in today’s climate, Rankin said, “What the Mercersburg Theology offers us is hope.”

Thayer said Schaff and Nevin  stressed God’s ongoing work through the history of the church.

What they believed, she said, is, “that is our heritage — all of it.”

How radical.

May God have mercy on all souls.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.