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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
If the Republican Party goes fully off the rails it might have some positive side effects? Wasn't part of why they managed to retake the Senate that they culled the crazy candidate a bit? By that I mean avoiding having any "legitimate rape" style candidates at least get caught saying such things.
There's a level of crazy that even gerrymandering can't make win, if the Republican Party crosses that line then their majority is going to slip away.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran@Jack do remember that Star Trek involved Earth suffering WW3 before the whole socialist space hippie utopia settled in.
@Jack: Or we'll become WH 40 K-esque.
Or, more likely than either of those, Starship Troopers. The book, not the movie.
Leviticus 19:34And the Republicans are yet again ignoring the First Amendment
with the Texas Governor strong-arming ... Christian charities?
Today however, there is finally a case of legitimate, actual persecution of Christians in America, and it comes to us from the state of Texas.
You see, Texas is one of the states that has surrendered to ISIS and now serving their interests. One of the key things ISIS wants is for Muslim refugees around the world to be shut out, so that they have no choice but to return to an area controlled by ISIS– that’s their plan to build their numbers. Such a plan only works if we cooperate with it by rejecting and persecuting refugees to the point where they feel safer there than they do here. So far, plenty of states in America have surrendered and begun serving ISIS– including the state of Texas.
But today, Texas took it up a notch. No longer content to persecute Muslims, the Governor of Texas has added Christians to the list of folks on the persecuted list.
As you know, Texas is one of the states who have barred Syrian refugees from settling within its borders. Regardless of how one feels about this, the people of Jesus have a different responsibility: we have the responsibility to help the sojourner among us. We welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, and give food to the hungry– that’s an essential, core identity to being Christian. In fact, Jesus said it was a heaven or hell issue if you want to use some conservative lingo to make the point.
And here’s how the Texas decision has now turned into a real-deal case of anti-Christian persecution: instead of saying the state of Texas won’t accept refugees but allowing citizens of Texas to freely practice their religion in spite of the government decision, Governor Greg Abbott has ordered Christian ministries to immediately cease and desist giving aid to refugees.
According to KHOU in Houston, Gov Abbott sent a letter out to local organizations such as Catholic Charities, ordering them to stop serving Syrian refugees, else their programs would be at risk. Some charities have already complied with the demand, worried that their funding would be harmed if they were to continue practicing Christianity.
Here’s the deal folks: I’ve outright mocked some of the anti-Christian persecution claims over the years, because 99% of the time, they are absurd. But this case? The Governor of a state strong-arming Christian charities, demanding they stop doing the very things Jesus ordered them to do? This is a real-deal case of anti-Christian persecution. This is a clear case of the government ordering a set of people to stop practicing the tenets of their religion– in this case, helping refugees.
The government can do whatever the government wants to do. If the government wants to abstain from helping refugees? That’s their right. However, the government has absolutely positively no right to tell the Church of Jesus Christ who they can, or cannot help. It certainly has no authority to tell the Church to stop helping. (What’s even worse, is that Abbott claims to be a Christian. I’m guessing he hasn’t read Matthew 25 though– cause Jesus calls such a one “cursed.”)
So, let the record reflect that we finally have an absolutely legitimate case of the US Government telling Christians to stop being Christians– it just so happens that it occurred in the Bible Belt, by a “Christian” governor.
Also let the record reflect that when a legitimate case of anti-Christian persecution came, the persecution crowd was silent.
You know, the folks who cry persecution when they find out they’re not getting tax rebates because they discriminate, or that they can’t discriminate against LGBTQ people when working as a government contractor? Yeah– those folks don’t seem to think it’s persecution when the state of Texas tells Christian charities to stop feeding the hungry and clothing the naked.
So there you go folks. Persecution came to America and it turned out to be a Christian doing it, and the rest of the crowd didn’t even notice.
Actually it would mean that a majority of the electoral college were for it, they might not represent a majority of voters (electoral college majorities and popular vote minorities are a thing) and in the case of a Trump election might well come about simply because he bribed them to become faithless electors.
Come to think of it, what's to stop Republican electors from simply picking whoever the Republican establishment wants to pick, regardless of who the Republican primary candidate was?
"SURPRISE! IT'S PRESIDENT ROMNEY!"
"How many times am I going to have to tell you people no?"
"Fine fine. Jeb Bush it is."
Of course, in practice, they'd have to be universally aligned. If some of the electors cast ballots for Trump and some cast them for, you know, whomever, then assuming all the dem's electors actually voted for Hillary (or Bernie), then even if by some strange anti-miracle the dems didn't get the majority of electoral college seats, the Dems would still win the presidency.
edited 24th Nov '15 8:36:15 PM by TheyCallMeTomu
Several states have laws that punish faithless electors, though only Michigan and Minnesorta actually render the votes invalid.
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Actually no, if no candidate gets an absolute majority (270 electoral votes), then the House pick the president and the Sentate the Vice President.
edited 24th Nov '15 8:40:29 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranActually, I know who the Republicans will nominate:
JOHN CENA!
edited 24th Nov '15 10:14:43 PM by Protagonist506
Leviticus 19:34Also I'm expecting we're going to see a fucking hideously ugly and divided convention for the Republicans with no solid majority candidate.
edited 25th Nov '15 3:53:57 AM by PotatoesRock
I still think Trump is going to implode before the primaries. A brokered convention is a longshot.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's PlayTrump
, (and Republican candidates in general
) doubling down on the "torture is awesome" thing.
Trump said such techniques are needed to confront terrorists who "chop off our young people's heads" and "build these iron cages, and they'll put 20 people in them and they drop them in the ocean for 15 minutes and pull them up 15 minutes later."
"It works," Trump said over and over again. "Believe me, it works. And you know what? If it doesn't work, they deserve it anyway, for what they're doing. It works."
Emphasis mine.
In June, for example, Jeb Bush was asked whether he’d preserve President Obama’s executive order prohibiting torture. “I’m not ruling anything in or out,” Bush replied. Echoing his brother, Bush added that, at least in his mind, there’s “a difference between enhanced interrogation techniques and torture.”
Two weeks earlier, Ben Carson was asked about his own approach to interrogations. “You know, what we do in order to get the information that we need is our business, and I wouldn’t necessarily be broadcasting what we’re going to do,” he responded.
In June, when the Senate voted on an anti-torture policy, Marco Rubio didn’t show up for work – try not to be surprised – but he issued a statement denouncing efforts to ban torture, arguing that he didn’t want to deny “future commanders in chief and intelligence officials important tools for protecting the American people and the U.S. homeland.”
Every time I start to think these guys can't sicken me more than they already do...
edited 25th Nov '15 6:38:28 AM by TheWanderer
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |

In better news Jeff Bezos's New Shepard Spacecraft completes a test landing.
I know this is more relevant to the Space thread(and it's their if anybody wants to check it out), but goddamit it takes place in America, and we need a reminder that this country's future can still be Star Trek rather than Mad Max.
edited 24th Nov '15 6:59:29 PM by JackOLantern1337
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.