Thursday, January 18, 2024

News bits: Christian nationalism attacks; Senate Democrats retreat; Etc.

Rolling Stone reports about an apparently illegal CN (Christian nationalist) effort to get MAGA churches in to support DJT’s planned kleptocratic, theocratic, plutocratic dictatorship: 

Christian Nationalists Team Up on Illicit Push 
to Get Churches to Campaign for Trump

Far-right “apostle” Lance Wallnau and Turning Point USA are partnering on a campaign to turn swing-state churches into Trump turnout machines
CHRISTIAN NATIONALISTS ARE joining forces to recruit swing-state, MAGA-leaning churches to help elect Donald Trump in 2024. It’s a brazen effort to transform religious congregations — which are technically supposed to keep electoral politics out of the pulpit — into a campaign powerhouse for the former president.

During a weekend broadcast of his podcast, the influential Christian nationalistapostleLance Wallnau unveiled a new collaboration with Turning Point USA that aims to get “civically enlightened” pastors to turn out their faithful for the “America First agenda.” The effort will be primarily focused, Wallnau said, in the purple states of Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia.

For weeks, Wallnau has been dropping hints about a swing-state effort to turn out coreligionists for Trump. And during the Saturday broadcast of the Lance Wallnau Show, he announced that he’s joined forces with Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, a powerful conservative group that has recently embraced Christian nationalism, including by promoting a 50-state prayer tour at the nation’s state houses.  
The partnership — which Wallnau is referring to as a “Courage Tour” — seeks to spur conservative churches directly into the political arena. This is risky business: Under a 1954 law known as the Johnson Amendment, churches and other nonprofits are banned from “engaging in any political campaign activity.”

The law is rarely enforced, and has been skirted by churches of all political orientations — whether by pastors who make their personal endorsements public or by congregations organizing turnout-boosting efforts like “souls to the polls.”
As one can see from the two highlighted paragraphs, our pants and our defenses are down. The law protecting us is not enforced. 

We left to the mercy of merciless, bigoted Christian Taliban zealots working to impose Christian Sharia law on all Americans, other than CN elites of course.  

Christian Taliban elites Charlie Kirk (left)
and Lance Wallnau (right)
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The New Republic raises a great question about Senate Democrats:
Trump Pocketed Millions in Foreign Payments. 
Why Won’t Senate Democrats Investigate?

Jamie Raskin and House Democrats unearthed dynamite. But they can’t subpoena. Senate Democrats can. So—will they?

Earlier this month, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released an explosive report documenting that Donald Trump’s businesses pocketed at least $7.8 million in payments from foreign governments during his presidency. Disturbingly, the report noted that Democrats could have uncovered far more such foreign booty but were thwarted when GOP capture of the House deprived them of subpoena power.

So why aren’t Senate Democrats—who do have subpoena power, as they are in the majority—following up on the House Democrats’ investigation?  
Then there’s the politics. A big reason Republicans have manufactured fake scandals about President Biden and foreign dealings is to ensure that Trump’s actual corruption—and his likely criminality—gets lost in a fog of both-sides news coverage. [That’s an example of the FTZWS* propaganda tactic]
Again, us Americans are hopeless with our pants and defenses down. Law enforcement is broken. The Dem Party is a sick joke. The pro-kleptocratic dictatorship GOP is morally rotted to is core. The MSM is still mostly clueless, subverted and incompetent. Some Churches are being weaponized against democracy, our civil liberties, inconvenient truth and good faith sound reasoning.

* Flood the zone with shit

Pants down engagement posture
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Raw Story reports about another ferocious Christianity attack on democracy, secularism, truth and sanity:
Trump lawyer Alina Habba blames mysterious 
demonic plan for ex-presidents court cases

Alina Habba told a group of nearly 90,000 prayer warriors Sunday that the many court cases of Donald Trump were the work of Satan, new video shows.

Habba appeared on the Arc of Grace Ministries’ live broadcast to detail her battle to save America’s justice system from what she described as a nefarious foe.

“There’s God’s plan and then there’s the demonic plan,” Habba explained to Amanda Grace and 87,000 viewers of the online prophet’s YouTube show. “We need to fight these people that are obviously coordinated and are trying to have a crusade of election interference.”
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is mucho confused. He says that some Trump supporters are “out of touch with reality.” He says he is having a “hard time understanding why” Trump's legal issues don’t “seem to be moving the needle” with more voters. Poor Mittens. He’s soooo clueless it’s almost adorable. Maybe if he engaged in some more tax evasion, that would cheer him up.

Q: Why do churches that go along with attacks like this on democracy, innocent people (the ‘demons’) and the rule of law still get tax break privileges? Are we crazy-go-nuts, or are things just supposed to work like this?
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From the Rut Roh, We’re Hosed Files: Also meanwhile, back to the USSC rauchfest. During oral arguments yesterday, several of the Republican authoritarian radical right plutocrats signaled that they are ready to rip the guts out of nearly all federal agencies. The Hill reports, incorrectly calling the authoritarian plutocrats “conservatives”:
The Supreme Court’s conservatives appeared inclined to cut back the regulatory power of federal agencies, with several justices during a pair of arguments Wednesday seeming ready to overrule a legal doctrine that has bolstered agencies’ authority for decades.

Over more than three hours of argument, the justices put the Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer on defense as she sought to preserve Chevron deference, which instructs courts to defer to agencies’ interpretation of federal law if it could have multiple meanings.

The practice has strengthened presidential administrations’ ability to regulate wide aspects of daily life. The range of examples referenced at the arguments revealed the breadth of Chevron’s impact: artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, environmental protections and more.

Although several conservative justices railed against the precedent during Wednesday’s arguments, it remains unclear whether a majority is willing to outright overrule Chevron, which would mark a major legal victory for business and anti-regulatory interests. The court could instead narrow the doctrine’s scope without explicitly disavowing it.

In particular, three members of the high court’s conservative wing — Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — reiterated their long-publicized concerns about the precedent’s viability.

“The government always wins,” Gorsuch said.
Gorsuch in particular hates federal agencies. His seething anger apparently dates back to the 1980s when his mommy was head of the EPA and got hounded out of power when she tried to gut the EPA’s regulations and power. Gorsuch is blinded by his authoritarian hate his huge grudge lust. Evidence of blindness is his insulting, arrogant blatant lie “the government always wins.” In reality, the special interests who run the government usually win and us regular people usually lose.

Neil Gorsuch - do not be fooled by his smiley
face, he is driven by radical plutocratic rage and hate

CNN reported about Gorsuch yesterday:
Neil Gorsuch has a grudge against federal agencies. 
He holds their fate in his hands

Anne Gorsuch, a former chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, cut a flamboyant, defiant figure in early 1980s Washington as she slashed air and water quality regulations.

She fought with environmentalists, was held in contempt by Congress and eventually resigned under pressure from the Ronald Reagan White House that had championed her. Her memoir was, appropriately, entitled: “Are You Tough Enough?”

Her son Neil Gorsuch, a Supreme Court justice since 2017, has shown his own brand of defiance and anti-regulatory fervor.

In recent years, Justice Gorsuch has voted against regulations that protect the environment, student-debt forgiveness and Covid-19 precautions

He has led calls on the court for reversal of a 1984 Supreme Court decision that gives federal agencies considerable regulatory latitude and that, coincidentally traces to his mother’s tenure. The Supreme Court will hear a pair of cases on Wednesday testing that 40-year-old case known as Chevron USA, Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which has become the touchstone for resolving conflicts over agency power.
See, it’s rut roh time, especially for the EPA and environmental protections for American citizens.

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