The abortion issue is going to bite them hard in the ass in November. And as more pretty white girls come forward to tell the stories of their near death experiences at the hands of these self-righteous assholes, it will get worse. I read a story today about a woman who was denied an abortion for an ectopic pregnancy. When she finally found a doctor who would risk imprisonment to save her, her tube had started to rupture. She lived. My own mother nearly died from an ectopic pregnancy in the late 60s. She was lucky that she had a general surgeon on her case who quickly recognized what was wrong and called in the OB. If we lived in Texass or Ally-Bammy or Miss-hippy or Miss-oori today, she'd be dead. And that's a crime.
This entire issue — the ignorant, cruel, “faith based” bullshit that conservatives are peddling about conception and fetuses etc.,—- and their unwashed index fingers poking into women’s private and personal health care decisions—- is one of the truly flagrant outrages of the past hundred years. Someday, with luck, the voters of this very strange, often regressive country will look back on this era the way we now (most of us with brain cells, anyway) look on bloodletting and “black bile” as a cure for disease.
I truly, devoutly, fervently hope you’re right (your opening sentence). The idiots are running the show in those states. May they soon be presented with a medical case in their own families that wakes them up.
On second thought, forget it. Their ignorance and cruelty is not subject to remediation.
The medical crisis is inevitable as doctors flee these regressive shitholes for states where they can actually practice medicine. It's not going to be long before the best a woman in one of these states can hope for is a nurse with some OB training, a GP with some OB training, or the old woman down the lane who has been helpin wimmin pop out whelps for 75 years.
I’ve thought the same thing for years. I mean, it could literally be true that within a year or two, red states see an exodus of good medical people and become medical deserts. Maybe that’s the way the Rethugs and the evangelists want it to be. But every one of those idiots, one fine day, is going to need medical attention. “Sorry, sir, there are no doctors in the state anymore.”
A simple solution. Vote Blue no matter who or what. A few election cycles of getting their asses handed to them and the Trumptards might find their way into the 21st century. Doubtful, but possible.
Yeah that's all well and good, we all agree (or don't!) and like it a lot (or not!) but it still requires strategic coping with the electoral college, the 271 votes needed to elect in a national race, the federal level, thus the crucial swing states really ARE crucial, it's not just journalistic or poli sci shorthand for "Read me, please!" - just as the House of Representatives is all about that magic penumbra emanating around 216-217, etc. etc.
To paraphrase that summary of F. Scott Fitzgerald on the rich:
“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we
are. They are different. ”*
― F. Scott Fitzgerald
The swing states are different from yours and mine, and the rich want to damn well keep it that way. They think they are better than your state and my state because they have figured this out, and managed to arrange to be born there, or move there, or have more than one residence and one of those qualifies in a swing state, or something.
Politics is hard.
Discuss!
* In 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that the rich “are different from you and me,” and Ernest Hemingway supposedly retorted, “Yes, they have more money.” The recent recession didn’t change things much.
Lucian, my father was a Presbyterian minister, Ph.D. in religion, college professor, and, finally, a small-college president for 19 years. He also studied with (and wrote his Ph.D. Dissertation about) Karl Barth, anti-NAZI activist and primary author of the Barmen Declaration denouncing Hitler’s attempt to usurp the Protestant Church in German during the rise of the Third Reich. My father passed away in 2021.
Before he died, I asked him once (among many Q&A sessions we had) what he thought of right-wing anti-abortionists. Here is what he wrote in 2017, unedited:
“With regard to procreation, therefore, we should begin by asking the most basic question: "What furthers god's purpose of LOVE?" Is it loving to force women to have children against their will, and perhaps that threatens their own lives? If organ transplants enable humans to preserve lives, does doing so "thwart god's will?" King Solomon was confronted by two women, each of whom claimed to be the mother of the same child. He said that he'd have the baby cut in half so that each woman would get her share! The true mother pleaded with him to give the baby to the other woman rather than cut it in two, and King Solomon gave the baby to the woman who loved the child enough to give it to someone else so as to preserve its life!
The Bible also includes accounts of adoption.
It is a human tragedy the many people argue about abortion and claim to be "pro-life," as if others are "pro-death?" There's a wonderful video of a nun saying that many who claim to be "pro-life" are really only "pro-birth" willing to allow babies to die of malnutrition, diseases, etc. rather than really stand for life -- including "abundant life."
Unfortunately, some people's minds are so "made up" that they are impervious to reason -- or love!”
As Saint Paul says in the Bible in his letter to the church at Ephesus, “Speak the truth in love.” That is my religion—learned from both my parents, who walked the walk every day of their lives.
Rudolf Karl Bultmann (German: [ˈbʊltman]; 20 August 1884 – 30 July 1976) was a German Lutheran theologian and professor of the New Testament at the University of Marburg. He was one of the major figures of early 20th-century biblical studies. A prominent critic of liberal theology, Bultmann instead argued for an existentialist interpretation of the New Testament. His hermeneutical approach to the New Testament led him to be a proponent of dialectical theology.
Bultmann is known for his belief that the historical analysis of the New Testament is both futile and unnecessary, given that the earliest Christian literature showed little interest in specific locations.[11] Bultmann argued that all that matters is the "thatness," not the "whatness" of Jesus,[a] i.e. only that Jesus existed, preached, and died by crucifixion matters, not what happened throughout his life.[12]
*******
Bultmann relied on demythologization, an approach interpreting the mythological elements in the New Testament existentially. Bultmann contended that only faith in the kerygma, or proclamation, of the New Testament was necessary for Christian faith, not any particular facts regarding the historical Jesus.[13] *******
He was critical of Nazism from the beginning and his career between 1933 and 1941 was marked by a series of struggles with Nazis regarding their influence upon the universities and the Protestant Church. As a Lutheran who held that the Church could not expect the Nazi State to be Christian, he did not directly denounce its anti-Semitism. But he objected to its claim to have authority over all aspects of German life including the universities and the Protestant church[26] and believed it was his responsibility to preach that it was unChristian, especially after Heidegger gave his pro-Nazi rectorial address in 1933.[27] He particularly rejected the Aryan paragraph that disenfranchised all people racially Jewish from civic organizations and many professions including clergy, entailing defrocking any Christian clergy with Jewish ancestry.[28] He stated that the Aryan paragraph was "incompatible with the essence of the Christian church",[29] since the church made no distinction between Jew and Gentile. He joined the Confessing Church,[30] a Protestant movement in Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi Reich Church.[31][32]
Insanity rules. Little Mike Johnson et al have a lot of deaths on their conscience between their inaction on Ukraine and their rabid actions against women. But wait! I just realized that they lack a conscience. Insanity rules.
Open your memory's streaming feature, click on the movie, "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," fast-forward to the scene where Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt and Bruce Bennett have been intercepted by banditos, who claim to be the federales, you know, the mounted police. Bogie says, "If you're the police, where are your badges?" Now use your brain's AI to substitute Mike Johnson's face under the bandito's huge sombrero and change the dialogue just a bit, "Conscience? We ain't got no conscience. I don't have to show you any stinkin' conscience."
"They don't make 'em like that anymore," those films, or at least very, very rarely. And so much of their influence (of literally hundreds, even over several thousand films) has rippled through the culture, I even have the screenplay of that film, and it's also interesting to look into the "B. Traven" biography - one of the most mysterious characters (no pun intended!) ever to be involved in Hollywood films, check this stuff out, you CANNOT make this up! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._Traven
Excerpt:
B. Traven (German: [ˈbeː ˈtʁaːvn̩]; Bruno Traven in some accounts) was the pen name of a novelist, presumed to be German, whose real name, nationality, date and place of birth and details of biography are all subject to dispute. One certainty about Traven's life is that he lived for years in Mexico, where the majority of his fiction is also set—including The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1927), the film adaptation of which won three Academy Awards in 1949.
Life
Virtually every detail of Traven's life has been disputed and hotly debated. There were many hypotheses on the true identity of B. Traven, some of them wildly fantastic. The other name most commonly identified with Traven is Ret Marut, a German stage actor and anarchist, who had edited an anarchist newspaper in Germany called Der Ziegelbrenner (The Brick Burner).[2][3] Traven's widow Señora Rosa Elena Luján accepted that her husband and Marut were one and the same in a statement after his death in 1969.[4] Marut was a pseudonym and probably derived from Hindu mythology. His career as an actor and later pamphleteer has been traced from 1907 by Rolf Recknagel and in detail by Jan-Christophe Hauschild.[5][6]
Of all the names given for the author only one has ever been traceable to a documented birth. This was Hermann Albert Otto Maximilian Feige, born in Schwiebus in Brandenburg on 23 February 1882. This name and date was given by Marut to the American Embassy in London in 1923 when applying for a passport.[7] This name is not universally accepted though no contradictory evidence has been produced. B. Traven in Mexico is also connected with the names of Berick Traven Torsvan and Hal Croves, both of whom appeared and acted in different periods of the writer's life. Both denied being Traven, claiming they were his literary agents only, representing him in contacts with his publishers.
B. Traven is the author of twelve novels, one book of reportage and several short stories, in which the sensational and adventure subjects combine with a critical attitude towards capitalism. B. Traven's best known works include the novels The Death Ship from 1926, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre from 1927 (filmed in 1948 by John Huston), and the so-called "Jungle Novels", also known as the Caoba cyclus (from the Spanish word caoba, meaning mahogany). The Jungle Novels are a group of six novels (including The Carreta and Government), published in the years 1930–1939 and set among Mexican Indians just before and during the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century. He claimed to have an uncle living in Germany called Yanson Jorinson, who he said lived from approximately 1847 to 1931, but, as with Traven, there is not much more known about Jorinson.
They simply do not care. All that matters is holding their job, which means pandering to their constituents. They are “extrinsic “ people, who care about things, and possessions, and status. “Intrinsic” people care about other humans, and fairness, and the environment, and reasonable progress. It’s a matter, frankly, of intelligence and conscience…. and that all-important charge of gunpowder that launches us into the world: “home culture.” What your parents or caregivers said, read, believed, and did.
This is Paternalistic control of woman at its worst. Yes there are many legislators of the female gender in on this horrid and atrocious denial of women’s reproductive rights. Those women must have a penis for a brain! This is The Hand Maids Tale on steroids. Women who don’t want this (and there are a goodly number) should organize a peaceful March on Washington DC! Like the massive March on DC by men many years ago!
This has to be stopped and only a suffragette-like match with the same determination as the original Suffragettes which I might add included Katherine Hepburn’s mother supported whole heartedly by her husband a doctor and gynecologist as I remember! Oh God I am livid at the audacity of these morons that think they run the whole show!
I repeat we need a massive PEACEFUL March on DC!! At 78 I up for it!!!
‘Hepburn's father, Thomas Norval Hepburn, attended Johns Hopkins University, where he trained as a surgeon, specializing in urology. He worked at Hartford Hospital, had his own practice, and helped establish the New England Social Hygiene Association to educate the public about venereal disease.’ Aug 29, 2014
If anyone thought you were using a figure of speech when you wrote, "Those woman must have a penis for a brain," I am gesturing grandly with my arm, learned from Vanna White, and the spotlight shines on the orange-smeared head of Convicted Sex Predator and Defendant Trump. As we have learned from an expert, Stephanie Gregory Clifford, often known as "Stormy Daniels," his penis-penis is short in stature, and works for less than three minutes at a time. Why should his brain-penis be any different?
You're talking Amanita phalloides, Cortinarius, Panther Cap, Deadly Galerina, False Morel, or any of the other toxic, indeed, poisonous 'shrooms, right? Looking at their photos on the web, widdle Panther Caps could have a certain Trumpian resemblance, but Ms. Stormy would have to be the judge.
It sounds like (is) a hefty sum for a few minutes work (close your eyes and think of the Queen), but it couldn't have been pleasant work (in her book, Stormy politely described it as "textbook, generic"). After doing a global search of my computer for missionary+position, I did a global replacement with top+flop. And if you let your fingers do the walking over your computer or phone's calculator keys, you see that Elon Musk did far better per minute the year he got Tesla to pay him $56 billion (newly rescinded). Of course, Musk did the bonking.
It’s always amused me that effeminate men like Johnson, the boys who would be bullied, are the most homophobic. Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins. It’s not a coincidence.
The Alabama legal move is the offsping of a Republicanesque Petri dish of putrified Christian principles and arrogant denial of women's right to determine their own healthcare.
We need to put in place exactly what they fear. Abortion availability in every county in all 50 states and territories no questions asked except by a non religious doctor. Protests banned to at least 2000 yards away from any hospital or clinic. They can have their free speech rights at specifically designated spaces away from heckling, evangelizing. or otherwise interfering with medical appointments.
It could not be clearer that certain Republicans have long been seeking to make this country into a theocracy - governed by religion, not by the rule of law. That goes against every principle that the founders imparted into our founding documents. They have succeeded as much as they have because of their own religious fervor that got voters to put them into elected positions in the states and in Congress so they could carry out their religious transformation of government, including the judiciary.
It is long past time to put an end to them and their efforts to destroy democracy as we know it. There must be a massive GOTV in November such that Republicans up and down the ballot, at national, state and local levels, are kicked out of office and relegated to their churches or other houses of worship, where they can fulminate all they want. But not at the expense of hundreds of millions of other Americans who don't want a religion not their own (or even their own), controlling their secular lives, including their health care. We are not, and must never be, a Gilead.
Barry Goldwater's warning "Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem" has come home to roost on steroids. The nuovo Confederacy's slaves aren't from Africa, they're women's ovum. We need to kick these people to the curb and into the sewers.
Where are all the angry young women? Where are the strong voices like Gloria Steinem, who spoke out so forcefully, and demanded women have rights as autonomous citizens of this country. They stood up. They spoke up they made change. Are today’s young women who are aghast at what’s happening complaining on Facebook? Or maybe they’re just so busy with filters in their selfies on Instagram? I can’t imagine how I’d be behaving right now if I were young and single and fertile but I know I wouldn’t be quiet. We’re all hoping for the giant blue wave in November. Elections that have been held midterm so far in red states have shown that women are not willing to put up with these restrictive abortion laws, but how much will they vote blue across-the-board to get rid of people like Mike Johnson? The theocracy is already here. It’s gonna take some serious, battling to turn it around.
Too funny, Lucian, and….as usual, spot on! FYI, my dear Kathi and I did the Lord’s work today and voted for Nikki Haley in the South Carolina Republican Primary. As you know, in SC any registered voter can vote in the Republican Primary, as long as they did not vote in the Democratic Primary, held earlier this month. Our hope is that enough Dems and Independents voted for Nikki today to get ‘Li’l Donny’s knickers in a twist to the point that he becomes enraged, we’ll have done our part. The more people see what a seriously sick individual he is, the less likely they’ll be inclined to vote for him come November. That’s our hope, anyway. Would we vote for Nikki in November? “Hell to the No!” She’s totally lacking in guts, honesty, and….like most of the so-called “leaders” in what used to be the Grand Old Party, without any moral compass or backbone. She is just one of those Republican opportunists out there, using her virtual metal detector to steer clear of the mines they’ve sown the beach with in order to get down to the river’s edge and cast her line for votes.
Didn’t she end up with a little more than 41% of the vote? I can’t stomach her. She is there just in case Trump strokes out, which, of course, I wish was true.
Nikki actually got a little under 40% with around 299,000 votes. The Orange-hued Dumpster Fire got almost 60% with circa 452,000 votes. But, the pundits and pollsters said she would lose by 30%, so that is a strong indication that Little Donnie’s inevitability of success in November is not as sure as he thinks. Of course, I am one of those who is hopeful that one of the criminal trials our former Grifter-in-Chief is embroiled in will catch him up before then, and that he will be facing serious jail time. That would be the case in D.C. about Conspiracy to fraudulently claim that he won an election which he clearly did not in order to thwart the peaceful transfer of power.
And…yes, Nikki Haley is very hard to stomach. She and all the other enablers and sycophants of DJT should also have to face serious consequences for their actions. In a perfect world, we would not have to be dealing with her at this late stage of the game.
The Republican windsocks in re the abortion stakes make me sick.
As for the religious aspect pushed by the Christian Nationalists, I wish there were a way to have someone suggest the country be forced to embrace Judaism, and maybe then these nutty Christians would get the picture.
The tax implications for child support alone are staggering! This is pure genius!
Seriously, another related issue: when is the "secular democracy" in the good ole USA going to slap the same property taxes on "church"-owned properties as all other land owners?
We could balance the budget in a few years, while feeding the poor, clothing the naked, healing the sick into the bargain - not only that, it would help the ranting evangelists and mush-mouthed celebrants of all creeds develop grit, determination, character to forge their own path in the...world...support their ideas with voluntary...
Lucian -- "Keeping up with these two or three faced bastards takes it out of you, doesn’t it? To support my work covering these soulless shape-shifters, please consider becoming a paid subscriber." Brilliant description of those people! I laughed out loud, so paying to support you is a privilege, since it's a rare day when I laugh out loud any more.
The abortion issue is going to bite them hard in the ass in November. And as more pretty white girls come forward to tell the stories of their near death experiences at the hands of these self-righteous assholes, it will get worse. I read a story today about a woman who was denied an abortion for an ectopic pregnancy. When she finally found a doctor who would risk imprisonment to save her, her tube had started to rupture. She lived. My own mother nearly died from an ectopic pregnancy in the late 60s. She was lucky that she had a general surgeon on her case who quickly recognized what was wrong and called in the OB. If we lived in Texass or Ally-Bammy or Miss-hippy or Miss-oori today, she'd be dead. And that's a crime.
This entire issue — the ignorant, cruel, “faith based” bullshit that conservatives are peddling about conception and fetuses etc.,—- and their unwashed index fingers poking into women’s private and personal health care decisions—- is one of the truly flagrant outrages of the past hundred years. Someday, with luck, the voters of this very strange, often regressive country will look back on this era the way we now (most of us with brain cells, anyway) look on bloodletting and “black bile” as a cure for disease.
I truly, devoutly, fervently hope you’re right (your opening sentence). The idiots are running the show in those states. May they soon be presented with a medical case in their own families that wakes them up.
On second thought, forget it. Their ignorance and cruelty is not subject to remediation.
The medical crisis is inevitable as doctors flee these regressive shitholes for states where they can actually practice medicine. It's not going to be long before the best a woman in one of these states can hope for is a nurse with some OB training, a GP with some OB training, or the old woman down the lane who has been helpin wimmin pop out whelps for 75 years.
I’ve thought the same thing for years. I mean, it could literally be true that within a year or two, red states see an exodus of good medical people and become medical deserts. Maybe that’s the way the Rethugs and the evangelists want it to be. But every one of those idiots, one fine day, is going to need medical attention. “Sorry, sir, there are no doctors in the state anymore.”
A simple solution. Vote Blue no matter who or what. A few election cycles of getting their asses handed to them and the Trumptards might find their way into the 21st century. Doubtful, but possible.
And any of us who detects a friend waivering about going to vote, throw them in the trunk of your car and take them to the voting booth.
Amen !!!! VOTE IN NOVEMBER!!! NO EXCUSES!!!!
Yeah that's all well and good, we all agree (or don't!) and like it a lot (or not!) but it still requires strategic coping with the electoral college, the 271 votes needed to elect in a national race, the federal level, thus the crucial swing states really ARE crucial, it's not just journalistic or poli sci shorthand for "Read me, please!" - just as the House of Representatives is all about that magic penumbra emanating around 216-217, etc. etc.
To paraphrase that summary of F. Scott Fitzgerald on the rich:
“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we
are. They are different. ”*
― F. Scott Fitzgerald
The swing states are different from yours and mine, and the rich want to damn well keep it that way. They think they are better than your state and my state because they have figured this out, and managed to arrange to be born there, or move there, or have more than one residence and one of those qualifies in a swing state, or something.
Politics is hard.
Discuss!
* In 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that the rich “are different from you and me,” and Ernest Hemingway supposedly retorted, “Yes, they have more money.” The recent recession didn’t change things much.
https://www.cbpp.org/blog/the-rich-are-differentthey-have-more-money
Yes!
Absolutely!
Lucian, my father was a Presbyterian minister, Ph.D. in religion, college professor, and, finally, a small-college president for 19 years. He also studied with (and wrote his Ph.D. Dissertation about) Karl Barth, anti-NAZI activist and primary author of the Barmen Declaration denouncing Hitler’s attempt to usurp the Protestant Church in German during the rise of the Third Reich. My father passed away in 2021.
Before he died, I asked him once (among many Q&A sessions we had) what he thought of right-wing anti-abortionists. Here is what he wrote in 2017, unedited:
“With regard to procreation, therefore, we should begin by asking the most basic question: "What furthers god's purpose of LOVE?" Is it loving to force women to have children against their will, and perhaps that threatens their own lives? If organ transplants enable humans to preserve lives, does doing so "thwart god's will?" King Solomon was confronted by two women, each of whom claimed to be the mother of the same child. He said that he'd have the baby cut in half so that each woman would get her share! The true mother pleaded with him to give the baby to the other woman rather than cut it in two, and King Solomon gave the baby to the woman who loved the child enough to give it to someone else so as to preserve its life!
The Bible also includes accounts of adoption.
It is a human tragedy the many people argue about abortion and claim to be "pro-life," as if others are "pro-death?" There's a wonderful video of a nun saying that many who claim to be "pro-life" are really only "pro-birth" willing to allow babies to die of malnutrition, diseases, etc. rather than really stand for life -- including "abundant life."
Unfortunately, some people's minds are so "made up" that they are impervious to reason -- or love!”
As Saint Paul says in the Bible in his letter to the church at Ephesus, “Speak the truth in love.” That is my religion—learned from both my parents, who walked the walk every day of their lives.
Another famous route to similar results:
Rudolf Karl Bultmann (German: [ˈbʊltman]; 20 August 1884 – 30 July 1976) was a German Lutheran theologian and professor of the New Testament at the University of Marburg. He was one of the major figures of early 20th-century biblical studies. A prominent critic of liberal theology, Bultmann instead argued for an existentialist interpretation of the New Testament. His hermeneutical approach to the New Testament led him to be a proponent of dialectical theology.
Bultmann is known for his belief that the historical analysis of the New Testament is both futile and unnecessary, given that the earliest Christian literature showed little interest in specific locations.[11] Bultmann argued that all that matters is the "thatness," not the "whatness" of Jesus,[a] i.e. only that Jesus existed, preached, and died by crucifixion matters, not what happened throughout his life.[12]
*******
Bultmann relied on demythologization, an approach interpreting the mythological elements in the New Testament existentially. Bultmann contended that only faith in the kerygma, or proclamation, of the New Testament was necessary for Christian faith, not any particular facts regarding the historical Jesus.[13] *******
He was critical of Nazism from the beginning and his career between 1933 and 1941 was marked by a series of struggles with Nazis regarding their influence upon the universities and the Protestant Church. As a Lutheran who held that the Church could not expect the Nazi State to be Christian, he did not directly denounce its anti-Semitism. But he objected to its claim to have authority over all aspects of German life including the universities and the Protestant church[26] and believed it was his responsibility to preach that it was unChristian, especially after Heidegger gave his pro-Nazi rectorial address in 1933.[27] He particularly rejected the Aryan paragraph that disenfranchised all people racially Jewish from civic organizations and many professions including clergy, entailing defrocking any Christian clergy with Jewish ancestry.[28] He stated that the Aryan paragraph was "incompatible with the essence of the Christian church",[29] since the church made no distinction between Jew and Gentile. He joined the Confessing Church,[30] a Protestant movement in Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi Reich Church.[31][32]
******* en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Bultmann
As a lapsed Lutheran, I want to learn more about him. Thank you.
Damn, I just deleted two comments replying that were the same text, anyway,
links to help:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE8ciMkayVM HAS A HANDY TRANSCRIPT, TOO!
0:00 / 58:31
Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth | Ep. 1: 'The Hero’s Adventure'
David, I would have highly respected your father. What a great precedent he set for you.
Insanity rules. Little Mike Johnson et al have a lot of deaths on their conscience between their inaction on Ukraine and their rabid actions against women. But wait! I just realized that they lack a conscience. Insanity rules.
Open your memory's streaming feature, click on the movie, "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," fast-forward to the scene where Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt and Bruce Bennett have been intercepted by banditos, who claim to be the federales, you know, the mounted police. Bogie says, "If you're the police, where are your badges?" Now use your brain's AI to substitute Mike Johnson's face under the bandito's huge sombrero and change the dialogue just a bit, "Conscience? We ain't got no conscience. I don't have to show you any stinkin' conscience."
"They don't make 'em like that anymore," those films, or at least very, very rarely. And so much of their influence (of literally hundreds, even over several thousand films) has rippled through the culture, I even have the screenplay of that film, and it's also interesting to look into the "B. Traven" biography - one of the most mysterious characters (no pun intended!) ever to be involved in Hollywood films, check this stuff out, you CANNOT make this up! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._Traven
Excerpt:
B. Traven (German: [ˈbeː ˈtʁaːvn̩]; Bruno Traven in some accounts) was the pen name of a novelist, presumed to be German, whose real name, nationality, date and place of birth and details of biography are all subject to dispute. One certainty about Traven's life is that he lived for years in Mexico, where the majority of his fiction is also set—including The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1927), the film adaptation of which won three Academy Awards in 1949.
Life
Virtually every detail of Traven's life has been disputed and hotly debated. There were many hypotheses on the true identity of B. Traven, some of them wildly fantastic. The other name most commonly identified with Traven is Ret Marut, a German stage actor and anarchist, who had edited an anarchist newspaper in Germany called Der Ziegelbrenner (The Brick Burner).[2][3] Traven's widow Señora Rosa Elena Luján accepted that her husband and Marut were one and the same in a statement after his death in 1969.[4] Marut was a pseudonym and probably derived from Hindu mythology. His career as an actor and later pamphleteer has been traced from 1907 by Rolf Recknagel and in detail by Jan-Christophe Hauschild.[5][6]
Of all the names given for the author only one has ever been traceable to a documented birth. This was Hermann Albert Otto Maximilian Feige, born in Schwiebus in Brandenburg on 23 February 1882. This name and date was given by Marut to the American Embassy in London in 1923 when applying for a passport.[7] This name is not universally accepted though no contradictory evidence has been produced. B. Traven in Mexico is also connected with the names of Berick Traven Torsvan and Hal Croves, both of whom appeared and acted in different periods of the writer's life. Both denied being Traven, claiming they were his literary agents only, representing him in contacts with his publishers.
B. Traven is the author of twelve novels, one book of reportage and several short stories, in which the sensational and adventure subjects combine with a critical attitude towards capitalism. B. Traven's best known works include the novels The Death Ship from 1926, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre from 1927 (filmed in 1948 by John Huston), and the so-called "Jungle Novels", also known as the Caoba cyclus (from the Spanish word caoba, meaning mahogany). The Jungle Novels are a group of six novels (including The Carreta and Government), published in the years 1930–1939 and set among Mexican Indians just before and during the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century. He claimed to have an uncle living in Germany called Yanson Jorinson, who he said lived from approximately 1847 to 1931, but, as with Traven, there is not much more known about Jorinson.
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I saw a poster yesterday suggest we call them Religious Nationalists...they are NOT Christian.
Certainly not pro-life. Only their own.
They simply do not care. All that matters is holding their job, which means pandering to their constituents. They are “extrinsic “ people, who care about things, and possessions, and status. “Intrinsic” people care about other humans, and fairness, and the environment, and reasonable progress. It’s a matter, frankly, of intelligence and conscience…. and that all-important charge of gunpowder that launches us into the world: “home culture.” What your parents or caregivers said, read, believed, and did.
This is Paternalistic control of woman at its worst. Yes there are many legislators of the female gender in on this horrid and atrocious denial of women’s reproductive rights. Those women must have a penis for a brain! This is The Hand Maids Tale on steroids. Women who don’t want this (and there are a goodly number) should organize a peaceful March on Washington DC! Like the massive March on DC by men many years ago!
This has to be stopped and only a suffragette-like match with the same determination as the original Suffragettes which I might add included Katherine Hepburn’s mother supported whole heartedly by her husband a doctor and gynecologist as I remember! Oh God I am livid at the audacity of these morons that think they run the whole show!
I repeat we need a massive PEACEFUL March on DC!! At 78 I up for it!!!
Correction about Kate Hepburn’s father.
‘Hepburn's father, Thomas Norval Hepburn, attended Johns Hopkins University, where he trained as a surgeon, specializing in urology. He worked at Hartford Hospital, had his own practice, and helped establish the New England Social Hygiene Association to educate the public about venereal disease.’ Aug 29, 2014
If anyone thought you were using a figure of speech when you wrote, "Those woman must have a penis for a brain," I am gesturing grandly with my arm, learned from Vanna White, and the spotlight shines on the orange-smeared head of Convicted Sex Predator and Defendant Trump. As we have learned from an expert, Stephanie Gregory Clifford, often known as "Stormy Daniels," his penis-penis is short in stature, and works for less than three minutes at a time. Why should his brain-penis be any different?
Perhaps Mushroom describes his brain, also.
You're talking Amanita phalloides, Cortinarius, Panther Cap, Deadly Galerina, False Morel, or any of the other toxic, indeed, poisonous 'shrooms, right? Looking at their photos on the web, widdle Panther Caps could have a certain Trumpian resemblance, but Ms. Stormy would have to be the judge.
Stormy was an expert, perhaps she'll write a book!
That’s a good one!
130k for 3 minutes...
It sounds like (is) a hefty sum for a few minutes work (close your eyes and think of the Queen), but it couldn't have been pleasant work (in her book, Stormy politely described it as "textbook, generic"). After doing a global search of my computer for missionary+position, I did a global replacement with top+flop. And if you let your fingers do the walking over your computer or phone's calculator keys, you see that Elon Musk did far better per minute the year he got Tesla to pay him $56 billion (newly rescinded). Of course, Musk did the bonking.
Match in the context should read ‘March’. Damn I can’t correct it here!
Open in browser and see if one of the 3 dots on the right of your response is "Edit." That, hopefully, will work.
Only here after comments start! Prior to that after I’ve just typed it for entry as a new comment the 3 dots do not include edit at all!
Nope
Time to "report" this glitch to Substack? I will try.
Sorry.
It’s always amused me that effeminate men like Johnson, the boys who would be bullied, are the most homophobic. Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins. It’s not a coincidence.
Nina Burleigh—here on Substack—said it best: “Prick a right-winger and watch the Kink squirt out.”
The Alabama legal move is the offsping of a Republicanesque Petri dish of putrified Christian principles and arrogant denial of women's right to determine their own healthcare.
Women Haters...the whole lot state by state!
We need to put in place exactly what they fear. Abortion availability in every county in all 50 states and territories no questions asked except by a non religious doctor. Protests banned to at least 2000 yards away from any hospital or clinic. They can have their free speech rights at specifically designated spaces away from heckling, evangelizing. or otherwise interfering with medical appointments.
It could not be clearer that certain Republicans have long been seeking to make this country into a theocracy - governed by religion, not by the rule of law. That goes against every principle that the founders imparted into our founding documents. They have succeeded as much as they have because of their own religious fervor that got voters to put them into elected positions in the states and in Congress so they could carry out their religious transformation of government, including the judiciary.
It is long past time to put an end to them and their efforts to destroy democracy as we know it. There must be a massive GOTV in November such that Republicans up and down the ballot, at national, state and local levels, are kicked out of office and relegated to their churches or other houses of worship, where they can fulminate all they want. But not at the expense of hundreds of millions of other Americans who don't want a religion not their own (or even their own), controlling their secular lives, including their health care. We are not, and must never be, a Gilead.
Barry Goldwater's warning "Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem" has come home to roost on steroids. The nuovo Confederacy's slaves aren't from Africa, they're women's ovum. We need to kick these people to the curb and into the sewers.
Where are all the angry young women? Where are the strong voices like Gloria Steinem, who spoke out so forcefully, and demanded women have rights as autonomous citizens of this country. They stood up. They spoke up they made change. Are today’s young women who are aghast at what’s happening complaining on Facebook? Or maybe they’re just so busy with filters in their selfies on Instagram? I can’t imagine how I’d be behaving right now if I were young and single and fertile but I know I wouldn’t be quiet. We’re all hoping for the giant blue wave in November. Elections that have been held midterm so far in red states have shown that women are not willing to put up with these restrictive abortion laws, but how much will they vote blue across-the-board to get rid of people like Mike Johnson? The theocracy is already here. It’s gonna take some serious, battling to turn it around.
Too funny, Lucian, and….as usual, spot on! FYI, my dear Kathi and I did the Lord’s work today and voted for Nikki Haley in the South Carolina Republican Primary. As you know, in SC any registered voter can vote in the Republican Primary, as long as they did not vote in the Democratic Primary, held earlier this month. Our hope is that enough Dems and Independents voted for Nikki today to get ‘Li’l Donny’s knickers in a twist to the point that he becomes enraged, we’ll have done our part. The more people see what a seriously sick individual he is, the less likely they’ll be inclined to vote for him come November. That’s our hope, anyway. Would we vote for Nikki in November? “Hell to the No!” She’s totally lacking in guts, honesty, and….like most of the so-called “leaders” in what used to be the Grand Old Party, without any moral compass or backbone. She is just one of those Republican opportunists out there, using her virtual metal detector to steer clear of the mines they’ve sown the beach with in order to get down to the river’s edge and cast her line for votes.
Didn’t she end up with a little more than 41% of the vote? I can’t stomach her. She is there just in case Trump strokes out, which, of course, I wish was true.
My thought exactly...she is a Stroke Follower.
Nikki actually got a little under 40% with around 299,000 votes. The Orange-hued Dumpster Fire got almost 60% with circa 452,000 votes. But, the pundits and pollsters said she would lose by 30%, so that is a strong indication that Little Donnie’s inevitability of success in November is not as sure as he thinks. Of course, I am one of those who is hopeful that one of the criminal trials our former Grifter-in-Chief is embroiled in will catch him up before then, and that he will be facing serious jail time. That would be the case in D.C. about Conspiracy to fraudulently claim that he won an election which he clearly did not in order to thwart the peaceful transfer of power.
And…yes, Nikki Haley is very hard to stomach. She and all the other enablers and sycophants of DJT should also have to face serious consequences for their actions. In a perfect world, we would not have to be dealing with her at this late stage of the game.
The Republican windsocks in re the abortion stakes make me sick.
As for the religious aspect pushed by the Christian Nationalists, I wish there were a way to have someone suggest the country be forced to embrace Judaism, and maybe then these nutty Christians would get the picture.
Remember the right wing fear mongering that Obama (a secret Muslim, of course) might seek to impose Sharia Law?
Oy.
Vey! Too funny!!!
These noisy Evangelicals may as well switch to Judaism, as all they ever seem to preach about is Old Testament stuff.
I think there’s enough of us Jewish nags that could accomplish this feat.
You’re on fire with these last two essays. 🔥
The tax implications for child support alone are staggering! This is pure genius!
Seriously, another related issue: when is the "secular democracy" in the good ole USA going to slap the same property taxes on "church"-owned properties as all other land owners?
We could balance the budget in a few years, while feeding the poor, clothing the naked, healing the sick into the bargain - not only that, it would help the ranting evangelists and mush-mouthed celebrants of all creeds develop grit, determination, character to forge their own path in the...world...support their ideas with voluntary...
Never mind!
I read this a long time ago Richard and I believe it's still true today, the catholic church is the biggest landlord in NYC.
Lucian -- "Keeping up with these two or three faced bastards takes it out of you, doesn’t it? To support my work covering these soulless shape-shifters, please consider becoming a paid subscriber." Brilliant description of those people! I laughed out loud, so paying to support you is a privilege, since it's a rare day when I laugh out loud any more.
I didn't even notice that! What a hoot. I was in too much of a rush to get to the comments.