Freedom From Religion Foundation:

Washington State Rep. Matt Shea recently released a video admitting that he distributed an openly violent screed titled “Biblical Basis for War.” The Freedom From Religion Foundation condemns the document as dangerous and staggeringly hypocritical.

The “Biblical Basis for War” begins with a list of “4 Ways to know its [sic] time to fight,” all of which amount to an unjustified belief that God is on one’s side. Sections such as “Organizational Structure for War” leave no doubt that this is meant to be a guide to literal, not figurative, war.

The document specifically contemplates overthrowing “tyranny,” but it quickly defines a “tyrant” as “someone who rules without God.” Thus, it appears to call for

Don’t forget: Trump is the choice of the working stiff, the coal miners and Walmart clerks, the single mothers and displaced factory workers.

Suuure he is.

In the final months of the Obama administration, Walmart was under pressure from federal officials to pay nearly $1 billion and accept a guilty plea to resolve a foreign bribery investigation.

Barclays faced demands that it pay nearly $7 billion to settle civil claims that it had sold toxic mortgage investments that helped fuel the 2008 financial crisis, and the Royal Bank of Scotland was ensnared in a criminal investigation over its role in the crisis.

They were saying no, we won’t – and along came Trump to say there there, you don’t … Read the rest

Everyday Screaming:

Houston mother’s drive to vote at the polls Thursday was interrupted by a man’s racist road rage rant about President Donald Trump deporting her “illegal cousins.”

Janet Sabriu recorded video showing the enraged stranger’s bigoted remarks directed at her while her 2-year-old daughter watched from the backseat. Sabriu, who has been a U.S. citizen and Houston resident for nine years, was on her way to early voting Thursday afternoon along Wirt Road when she crossed paths with the man identified on social media as Charles Geier. The man’s rant repeatedly refers to Sabriu as a “bitch” as he demands that she leave “his country.”

“You’re driving in two lanes, you stupid bitch.” Geier can be heard screaming

The military doesn’t share Trump’s pretend-panic about The CaRaVan.

Military planners anticipate that only a small percentage of Central American migrants traveling in the caravans President Trump characterizes as “an invasion” will reach the U.S. border, even as a force of more than 7,000 active-duty troops mobilizes to prevent them from entering the United States.

According to military planning documents, about 20 percent of the roughly 7,000 migrants traveling through Mexico are likely to complete the journey.

…

The assessment also indicates military planners are concerned about the presence of “unregulated armed militia” groups showing up at the border in areas where U.S. troops will operate.

As in, you know, random civilians showing up to play soldier, in a … Read the rest

The Times (the NY one) has a big piece by Janet Reitman on the way federal law enforcement has ignored the danger of racist groups for decades, and how that has (surprise!!) allowed them to flourish like the green bay tree.

White supremacists and other far-right extremists have killed far more people since Sept. 11, 2001, than any other category of domestic extremist. The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism has reported that 71 percent of the extremist-related fatalities in the United States between 2008 and 2017 were committed by members of the far right or white-supremacist movements. Islamic extremists were responsible for just 26 percent.

(Sorry to interrupt but “Islamic extremists” are members of the far right, albeit a … Read the rest

Evil Monster Junior Twitter-complains that CNN refused to run Evil Monster Senior’s disgusting racist campaign ad. CNN explains why.

https://twitter.com/CNNPR/status/1058735152963182592… Read the rest

Make Murka Grate Again.

Incorporating Donald Trump’s border wall into a Halloween costume is questionable at best — especially if you’re an elementary school teacher.

That’s exactly what a group of staff members discovered at an elementary school in Middleton, Idaho.

Pictures, which were posted on the Middleton School District Facebook page but have since been deleted, showed the group dressed up as a wall with the phrase “Make America Great Again” on it. Another group in a second picture was dressed up with sombreros, carrying maracas and wearing fake black mustaches, which some parents called racist.

Not to mention dumb, ignorant, patronizing, clueless, so last century, mean, childish…

The district superintendent apologized.

Beth Almanza, an immigrant rights advocate

Originally a comment by latsot in Miscellany Room.

There’s a new £50 note being issued soon. One of those new plastic ones that spring clean out of your hand and away on the breeze if you try to fold them. Anyway, the Bank of England is accepting nominations for who should be featured on the note. It has to be a British scientist.

You know what’s going to happen here. The nominations are going to be Dawkins, Hawking, Cox (Cox has already nominated and argued for Hawking) with the more historically minded going for the likes of Crick, Darwin, of course (deserving but has already been on a note), Faraday, Halley, Higgs, Jenner, Dirac…. Well you get the idea. … Read the rest

McKay Coppins in the Atlantic on how Newt Gingrich made Trump possible.

[F]ew figures in modern history have done more than Gingrich to lay the groundwork for Trump’s rise. During his two decades in Congress, he pioneered a style of partisan combat—replete with name-calling, conspiracy theories, and strategic obstructionism—that poisoned America’s political culture and plunged Washington into permanent dysfunction. Gingrich’s career can perhaps be best understood as a grand exercise in devolution—an effort to strip American politics of the civilizing traits it had developed over time and return it to its most primal essence.

In June 1978, age 35, he gave a talk to some college Republicans.

“One of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is

Marina Hyde is merciless to Jordan Peterson.

Peterson is also a leading member of the arseoisie, or the “intellectual dark web”, as they prefer it. Again, are you familiar with the “intellectual dark web”? I do hope not. It’s a self-styling by a loose group of soi-disant intellectuals you’d cross continents to avoid having a pint with (although they didn’t go with that tagline in the end). There isn’t space for a full passenger manifest, but they include Peterson, talkshow host Dave Rubin, Newsweek columnist and perma-pundit Ben Shapiro and a bunch of other people bizarrely obsessed with what students do, even though we’ve known since time immemorial that students often act like idiots, and mostly grow out of

It is outrageous what the Democrats are doing to our Country. Vote Republican now! https://t.co/0pWiwCHGbh pic.twitter.com/2crea9HF7G

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2018

… Read the rest

It is outrageous what the Democrats are doing to our Country. Vote Republican now! https://t.co/0pWiwCHGbh pic.twitter.com/2crea9HF7G

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2018

… Read the rest

That lawsuit against North Dakota’s voter identification law? The judge ruled against a stay.

A federal judge in North Dakota on Wednesday declined to grant emergency relief to a Native American tribe and voters who said they are being disenfranchised by North Dakota’s voter identification law.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland ruled that granting an injunction days before the election “will create as much confusion as it will alleviate.”

But Hovland said the allegations contained in the lawsuit, filed Tuesday, “give this Court great cause for concern. The allegations will require a detailed response from the Secretary of State as this case proceeds.”

…

Versions of North Dakota’s voter identification law have been the subject of litigation for the

Voter suppression in Georgia, chapter 47.

[Brian] Kemp’s attempts to prevent people from voting exemplify the familiar ways in which access to the ballot has been restricted for people of color across the United States. But voter suppression also happens in ways that aren’t as well-known, and are even more insidious. In particular, local prosecutors have increasingly brought criminal charges against black voters and community activists for small technical infractions. They’re sending the frightening message that casting a ballot is risky — a message that resonates even when the charges turn out to be baseless and the people charged are acquitted.

In a particularly disturbing case, Olivia Pearson, a grandmother and lifelong resident of Coffee County, Ga., found herself