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The less “religious” you are the more Christian you are

Sunday, November 2, 2025

This post at Skepchick got me thinking about one of my bugaboos, the willingness of the press and most writers, no matter how liberal they might be, to call a certain brand of fascists that are common in this country “White Christian Nationalists”, a title that confers respectability on horrible people. They are not Christians, if you define a Christian as a person who believes in the teaching of Jesus, and while they may be “nationalists” that term is not one understood for what it is by most people in our polity.

It is a fact in this country that the more a person claims to be a Christian, the more likely they are to commit what the Christian religions formally label sins and the more likely they are to be against all the things for which Christ allegedly advocated. As an example, Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, routinely lies to the press, which according to my understanding (I have an advanced degree in theology from Our Lady of Sorrows grammar school, formerly (god be praised!) in Hartford, Connecticut) violates the eighth commandment, which despite the fact that it was handed down to a Jew, is still binding on Christians. Those same professed Christians are also against things like helping the poor, sick and homeless, all things for which Christ advocated, choosing instead to make it even harder for the rich to get through that proverbial eye of the needle, by making their further enrichment their sole priority.

The post to which I’ve linked is about the fact that studies have shown what I and others who have escaped religion would have predicted: that people who move on from religion are most likely to drift left in their political views. That is, they are more likely to believe that one should actually live according to the principles for which Christ advocated than the people they left behind. I suspect this is particularly true of those, like Skepchick herself, who come from an evangelical background. As a point of information evangelicals are commonly referred to in this blog as “whackjobs”. The post also highlights the fact that more and more people in this country are replying “none” when asked about their religious preferences. This is not truly probative, but I have noticed on my Sunday bike rides that the whackjob churches I pass are generally pretty full, while the parking lots at the “mainstream” churches can be pretty empty. A number of those mainstream churches here in Groton have closed in the last few years, either replaced by whackjobs, or remaining empty, all of which supports the finding that “none” is rapidly becoming the religion of choice for many people, particularly those in the non insane (i.e., blue) states.

So, the long and short of it is that many, if not most, of the people in this country who actually believe in following the teachings of Jesus Christ are people who reject religion itself. They are the only ones who have a right to call themselves Christians. They may not believe in Christ’s divinity, but they agree with his principles.

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A Republican rebrand locally

Saturday, October 25, 2025

As I write this I am sitting in the room adjacent to the Registrar of Groton’s office. Early voting is going on in the registrar’s office, and we are taking care of new registrants in the room in which I am planted. Early voting for the municipal offices has been ongoing for a week and it’s my understanding that the turnout has been fairly good. I thought when I agreed to work some of these days that I’d be assigned to log in the folks who came to vote, but I am in fact helping to register new voters, and as you can imagine, the number of people coming in to register for the first time is far lower than those already registered who are coming in to vote. In fact, as of the time I write this, the number of new voters is in the single digit. It may be a little more busy here on Election Day itself, but it won’t be like last year’s Election Day, when I also helped register voters and we were pretty busy.

The municipal elections here in Groton may well be a test of how informed the average voter may be. Before the orange fascist came along the Republicans in Groton usually held majorities in our municipal offices and were either the majority or close to the majority in the Representative Town Meeting (RTM). That all changed after Trump’s first election. The year after he won, the Democrats won not just a majority on the Town Council (the Board of Ed and the RTM both have minority representation requirements) but, if memory serves, either all nine seats or all but one.

The Republican Party here in Groton is now a shell of its former self. Until that time years ago it was headed by fairly reasonable people. You know, people whose parents were Republicans in the olden days, who became Republicans themselves and really didn’t focus on what was happening to their party nationally. They have been displaced by whackjobs and the party itself has, this year, been unable to field a full slate of candidates. In the district in which I live, in which a fairly high percentage of Republicans reside (It contains Groton Long Point, a rich person enclave that sticks out into Long Island Sound), the party has failed to nominate a single person to the RTM, despite the fact that at least one of them would win no matter how many votes he or she got.

Realizing that their brand has fallen into disfavor, many of the whackjobs have rebranded themselves as members of the Groton Independent Party, the candidates being indistinguishable from a policy perspective from the Republican candidates. It is not the refuge of those old fashioned Republicans I described above, who have dropped out of politics and/or become Democrats. However, that is something of which not every voter is aware. We will soon be finding out how many people will blindly vote for a rebranded Republican because, after all, doesn’t voting for an Independent prove you’re not a captive of either party?

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Another compendium, the dementia edition

Thursday, October 16, 2025

A while ago I started a post in which I intended to tally each act of open corruption in which Trump or his henchmen engaged. I admit I’ve fallen down on the job, as there have been plenty since my last update, but I’m hoping to get back to work on it. This post is not about corruption. This post is about dementia, the point being to document the stuff the media largely ignores. I admit I’m coming to this late. There have been 238 days since the fascists took over, so there have been approximately 238 examples. They’ll keep coming, and I’ll try to document them, though I admit I may fall down on the job.

Here we go.

  1. This is an actual quote:
    “That’s true actually.. That heavily reduced most favored nation’s cost. Americans can expect discounts. And as I said, it could be, in many cases, way over 100%. And as an example, one particular drug that’s hot, very hot, 654% on inhalers, COPD, and asthma, as well as certain diabetics, medications, they’re going to be averaging about 654% reduction in price. You believe that one? The Democrats will say, well, you should have gotten more. It’s crazy.” Yes, according to Trump he has reduced the costs of medications by more than 600%, and apparently he’s reduced some by 1,000%.

Now some might argue that this is not a sign of dementia, that it’s just another lie. But in the past Trump’s lies were such that there could have been a reality in which they were true. It is unlikely that there is any planet in the Universe in which a given quantity can be reduced by 1,000 percent and still be a positive number.

2. Who knows. Maybe there is such a thing as a “reverse bathtub”, something about which Trump is an expert. But unlike the folks who are merely deeply confused, referenced at the link, I see it as yet another sign of decline.

3. Multiple instances documented here at Hullabaloo, along with other outrages. Again, one might argue that he’s simply lying, just like he did before the dementia came on, but the nature of the lies is such that the dementia seems clear.

4. I’m sure this will be ignored by the New York Times, but you couldn’t ask for more proof of a deteriorating mental state. More at the link, but this quote conveys a lot of it:””But you always find something new, like, is he in good health?” the 79-year-old president said. “Biden was great, but is Trump in good health? I sit here, I do four news conferences a day, I ask questions from very intelligent lunatics, you people.” It goes on.

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Rant

Thursday, September 25, 2025

There was a time, many moons ago, when I posted to this blog on a daily basis. Back then, we thought things were going wrong, but within limits that could be rectified. You know, George Bush was an idiot,but we could look forward to replacing him with someone good, and we actually did, and things seemed to be going well for awhile.

We’re living in a different world now, we’re on the brink of a fascist takeover. There’s plenty of things to write about, but it all seems so obvious that it’s hard to come up with a subject that seems worth discussing, since I’m fairly sure anyone reading this blog is totally aware of what’s going on. On the other hand, the obvious stuff appears to totally escape the notice of the mainstream press. I’m pretty sure they’re aware of it, but they hold off discussing it because they don’t want to get attacked. You know, stuff like Trump’s obvious dementia, which would be all over the front pages had Joe Biden exhibited the same symptoms. And then there’s the bending over backwards to make the absurdities sound somewhat sane. For instance, I read an article in the New London Day, which was from the Washington Post, about Trump’s claim that Tylenol caused autism. Every attempt was made to make what is clearly an evidence free assertion sound sane.

Particularly disturbing these days is the inability of establishment Democrats, particularly those in Congress, to understand what is happening in this country. Or, if they do understand, they have made a conscious decision to pretend that they don’t, and that they are still living in the pre Newt Gingrich era when relatively sane Republicans controlled that party. Not only do they pretend to believe they can deal with Republicans, they also kowtow to them in disgusting ways. The reaction to the Charlie Kirk murder is a case in point. Murder is wrong. But the fact that he was murdered does not make Charlie Kirk a saint. He was a despicable racist, a purveyor of hate. Yet a majority of Democrats went along with a resolution honoring Kirk. He doesn’t deserve to be honored. Were he a left leaning individual, Republicans would be praising his killer, as he implicitly praised the man who attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband or they would be joking about the killing, as other Republicans did about the Pelosi attack and after the killing of the Minnesota Democratic legislator. I’m not suggesting Democrats should go that route, but they should be as one in insisting that Kirk was in fact what he was, a loathsome individual. That’s only part of it, of course.

For years the Republicans attacked the “liberal media” until they got what they wanted, a media that bent over backwards to “both sides” every issue, which at this point means “double standard”, i.e., ignoring Republican corruption and incompetence, or whitewashing it, because, after all that’s just Republicans being Republicans or Trump being Trump so it’s not news, but it would sure get publicized if a Democrat did it. It’s time that the Democrats started attacking the press for this very thing, but of course they won’t. When I suggested they should do so to one of our Connecticut politicians he responded that Democrats don’t do that because they believe in the First Amendment. It has nothing to do with the First Amendment. Criticizing the press is a form of speech and perfectly legitimate, especially when the criticism is justified.

There has, so far as I’m aware, never been a president before Trump who has traded on the office in order to enrich himself. If any of his predecessors did it, the corruption was small potatoes compared to what he’s done. The media reports it as Trump being Trump and then moves on, and Democrats hardly say a word. They are equally silent or subdued when he engages in a speech that is both full of lies and fully demonstrative of his rapidly increasing dementia. I should note here that the European media doesn’t share the reticence of the American.

End of rant.

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The New London Day Bends the Knee

Monday, September 8, 2025

I should start off by saying that I am not a great fan of David Collins, now a former columnist for the New London Day, but I still maintain that his recent firing is yet another example of our media bending over backwards to kiss the ass of the fascists who are taking over this country.

Collins was fired after he refused to consent to a change to a column he wrote.

The column was about Greg Howard, a Republican who represents Stonington, who is also a cop and a fan of ICE. For the most part, the column (never published by the Day, but which Collins has distributed through Facebook) calls Howard out for a false allegation on Howard’s part that Blumenthal, by criticizing ICE, had endangered some of the fascists ICE agents, by identifying them, using the term “doxing”. Of course, the accusation had no basis in fact, so maybe Collins’ first mistake was imagining that the media should make an issue out of a Republican lying. It’s what they do, after all, so it’s not news.

Collins makes several good points, including those contained in this excerpt:

This is what Howard said about masked agents:
“Dems have their own extreme-left, brain-washed criminals that would use that rhetoric (from Blumenthal and other politicians) as a reason to interfere with or harm ICE agents, their homes or their families.
“It is likely for this reason, and the safety of themselves and their families, that ICE agents are trying to conceal their identify from the hundreds of cameras that film them.  I don’t blame them one bit.  This concern for their safety . . . is also likely why the ICE agents are trying to get in and out of areas quickly and in unmarked cars.”
Maybe Howard believes Stonington police should hide behind masks? What’s the difference? Why shouldn’t the transparency in law enforcement that serves professional police departments like Stonington so well apply to federal agents?
The difference is that Trump and Republicans like Howard are endorsing the use of fear tactics, a hallmark of democracy-destroying authoritarians.
Howard notes in his long email that local police traditionally make arrests without warrants, for DWI, domestic assault and drug and weapon possession.
But of course those arrests are based on police observing a crime, not a suspicion based totally on the color of people’s skin or their mastery of English.
Howard and other Republicans have crossed a dangerous threshold in supporting dark and Gestapo-like, masked police tactics here in Connecticut.
I hope voters here in Howard’s district, and the rest of Connecticut, are paying close attention to the fearsome police state Republicans are sponsoring.

He’s right on the law, by the way. Cops can dispense with the need for a warrant only when they arrest someone in the act or under other specific circumstances. Arresting someone because their skin is brown is not among those circumstances. Well, I guess I’m now wrong about that, given the Supreme court’s recent ruling, but it was the law when Collins wrote his column.

The Day ran an editorial (or whatever you want to call it) defending its actions, which you can read here. Among other things it criticizes Collins for having an email exchange with Howard instead of talking to him over the telephone, which seems odd as the dispute arose over the Day’s insistence that it insert an outtake from one of those emails into the piece, an option that would not have been open to them had the exchange been telephonic. And of course, one can understand why Collins would want the exchange in writing, since that would make it harder for Howard to deny whatever Collins wrote about him.

As I said above, I am not a great fan of Collins. He wrote some columns that I thought were unfair about some of our local Democrats, but of course the Day had no problem with those, inasmuch as the subjects were Democrats and, since they were Democrats, were not likely to attack the Day. Many years ago, in what seemed like a coordinated attack against it, the Day was besieged by right wing letter writers demanding that it be, to coin a term, “fair and balanced”, which of course translates into what has become the standard in the media today: bend over backwards to make Republicans look good, or in the case of a certain very stable genius, mentally competent, while doing the opposite to Democrats. Ever since that long ago time the Day has done its share of backward bending, and this is yet another example.

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Another easy prediction

Saturday, September 6, 2025

One of the frustrating things afflicting Democratic activists, is the establishment Democrat’s seeming insistence that things are perfectly normal, and they should continue to play by the rules that obtained 20 or 30 years ago, when there were still some reasonable and somewhat honest Republicans.

Case in point discussed here. The Republicans don’t have the votes to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government running. It looks like they will repeat their actions of the past, and give the Republicans what they want in exchange for a meaningless concession or two. The meaningless concession discussed at the link is “short-term extension of the Obamacare subsidies which were cut as part of the President’s budget bill.”. This would do some good, but would simply give the Republicans what they want while paving the way for them to ellminate the subsidies altogether, not to mention paving the way for the continuing transition to a fascist state.

At this point, the Democrats should be fighting fire with fire. Were the Democrats in charge, Republicans would be lining up to shut down the government, and then blame the Democrats if they succeeded. I give Newsom credit for recognizing that you can’t sit back and refuse to respond by giving them a dose of their own medicine because, after all, as the Schumer’s of the world would say, Democrats don’t stoop to that sort of stuff, and anyway, what’s all this talk about fascism.

Not only do the Democrats have to start fighting fire with fire, they have to start working the press for its utter failure to cover what is actually going on in this nation. If the government shuts down, not only should the Democrats rightly blame the Republicans, they should ride the press for failing to lay the blame where it belongs.

None of this will happen of course. The Democrats in DC have no ability to get a message out, and the messages they try to get out are insipid. Schumer will likely cave, and even if the doesn’t, Fetterman, who has become a functional Republican, will no doubt give them one of the votes they need.

Speaking of Schumer, by the way, it is impossible to believe (well, no, it’s actually easy) that he is urging the 78 year old Janet Mills to take on Susan Collins in Maine instead of backing the candidate who will appeal to a broader spectrum of voters and one who is actually speaking up for ordinary people.

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Windmills

Tuesday, August 26, 2025

A big issue here in the New London area is Trump’s recent decision to order a stoppage to work on a wind farm that has become a major part of the local economy. What interests me is the fact that, at least from what I’ve seen, both the media and politicians opposed to the stoppage never mention the real reason for the stoppage.

Yes, they’ll blame oil interests and the millions they donated to Trump, but the real reason has more to do with Trump’s childishness. He doesn’t like windfarms because Scotland built one near one of his golf courses and when he tried to stop him they told him to pound sand!

That’s the fundamental reason why his administration is going after wind farms. They’re on his enemies list because Scotland failed to kiss his ass. Sure, it doesn’t hurt that the polluting energy suppliers benefit, but that’s a secondary consideration. But as with his obviously declining mental and physical health, the media gives him a pass on this, and for some reason the Democrats speaking out against him are doing so as well.

On a side note, I wonder how many of the people who will now lose their jobs as a result of this order voted for him. I suspect the percentage was greater than the percentage of Trump voters in the state overall.

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Another prediction

Wednesday, August 13, 2025

Sort of a follow up to some previous posts in which I predicted that the Trump people would start releasing fake numbers to claim that the economy was doing well.

Here’s a report about the unqualified guy who Trump just picked to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

E.J. Antoni, the economist tapped by President Donald Trump to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, suggested suspending the agency’s closely watched monthly jobs report, arguing that its underlying methodology, economic modeling and statistical assumptions are fundamentally flawed.

In other reports they’re talking about issuing what are supposed to be monthly reports on a quarterly basis, but I’ll address Antoni’s suggestion. If he sticks to it, he doesn’t have long to last in his new position, and Trump will find some other incompetent to replace him. Trump wants “good numbers” and that means he expects the BLS to lie about the economy if that’s what’s necessary. After all, he, himself, lies about everything and look where it’s gotten him. It works!

So I’m guessing we’ll soon be getting numbers from the BLS and other agencies that are entirely fictional. I’m also guessing that the media will treat those numbers as if they’re real, though perhaps in the last paragraph in their reports they’ll put in something about how some economists question their accuracy. You know, in the paragraph no one ever bothers to read.

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All in Plain sight

Friday, August 1, 2025

Back in early May I predicted that the fascists would soon start releasing fake financial numbers and a few weeks later I noted that Paul Krugman had followed suit. It was only a matter of time, and now the time has come:

President Trump ordered his administration to fire the commissioner of labor statistics, Erika McEntarfer, after the July jobs report showed a sharp slowdown in hiring and a steep downward revision to May and June’s hiring numbers.

“No one can be that wrong? We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media.

He added, “She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes.”

Sure, she’ll be replaced by someone “much more competent”, this from the man who has yet to appoint a single competent person since his inauguration.

It’s obvious what is happening here, and it’s obvious that once the lackey who replaces this woman is installed, the numbers will be fake. It’s also obvious that the mainstream press will treat the numbers the same as when the people who released them were not lying ass-kissers. The truly amazing thing about current times is that the fascists running this country make no real attempt to hide their corruption and dishonesty and the people whose job it is to report on corruption and dishonesty are just so many Sergeant Scultzes, they “see nothing”.

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A lesson in the new constitutional law

Wednesday, July 30, 2025

The fascists currently running this country have decreed that government employees are now free to proselytize their fellow employees and members of the public with whom they come in contact. You know, because of freedom of religion and freedom of speech. The full memorandum issued by the Office of Personnel Management is available here.

Among other things, supervisors can organize prayer circles. Of course, participation is voluntary, with the unwritten understanding that, if you refuse, your job may be on the line.

Now, PZ Myers, over at Pharyngula jokingly points out that he is now free to advocate for atheism in his classrooms. Of course he has no intention to do so, but in any event he completely misinterprets the memo.

As I’ve pointed out in the past, I have both an advanced degree in theology, conferred by the nuns at Our Lady of Sorrows Grammar School, in Hartford and a law degree, conferred years ago when things were a tad different in the legal world, but I’ve been keeping track of the changes, so let me explain for PZ’s benefit, and anyone else who might read this, what he’s gotten wrong.

First, let me say that in the olden days (i.e., before Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, etc. came along) Myers would be right, though in the olden days such a memo would never have been released. But PZ doesn’t understand how the law works now.

The rule is that people have freedom of religion and freedom of speech when they believe what Republicans claim to believe (none of them actually believe what Christ taught, you know “love thy neighbor”, etc.) and they say what Republicans want them to say.

Let’s posit a hypothetical case. An atheist federal employee attempts to persuade members of the public that there is no god, and he is immediately fired. He brings an action claiming that he was merely exercising his freedom of religion and freedom of speech as set forth in the above cited memorandum.

He might win in one of the lower courts, but he’d lose at the Supreme Court level. After all, atheism isn’t a religion, so advocating for it is advocating for freedom from religion, and that’s so Warren Court (you know, the guys who got rid of school prayer) so that’s by the boards. And of course freedom of speech is no help, since you’re not free to abuse the member of the public with whom you interact by attempting to impose your beliefs on them, unless those views are approved of by the members of the Supreme Court.

Throwing out a case brought by an atheist will be easy for the Supreme Court, but you have to wonder how they would manage to hold that a Muslim would not be free to advocate for his or her religion, though I’m sure they could come up with something.

The irony of all this is that the person currently occupying the office of President is probably the least religious person that ever occupied that office. He’s violated each of the commandments, particularly the first, which if memory serves, goes: “I am the lord thy god, though shalt not put false gods before me”. In the case of the genius, he himself is the false god.

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