The Cult of Clinton: That’s How it Crumbles, Cookie-Wise
Posted: November 20, 2016 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: A Tribe Called Quest, Alec Baldwin, Bullshit, Cult, Dave Chappelle, Donald Trump, Emmy Award, Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen song), Hillary Clinton, Kate McKinnon, Leonard Cohen, religion, Saturday Night Live 2 CommentsBrendan O’Neill continues:
…By the Cult of Hillary Clinton, I don’t mean the nearly 62 million Americans who voted for her. I have not one doubt that they are as mixed and normal a bag of people as the Trumpites are. No, I mean the Hillary machine—the celebs and activists and hacks who were so devoted to getting her elected and who have spent the past week sobbing and moaning over her loss. These people exhibit cult-like behavior far more than any Trump cheerer I’ve come across.
“Maybe she is an idea, a world-historical heroine, light itself…Hillary is Athena,” Heffernan continued, adding that “Hillary did everything right in this campaign… She cannot be faulted, criticized, or analyzed for even one more second.”
— Virginia Heffernan
Trump supporters view their man as a leader “fused with the idea of the nation”? Perhaps some do, but at least they don’t see him as “light itself.” That’s how Clinton was described in the subhead of a piece for Lena Dunham‘s Lenny Letter. “Maybe [Clinton] is more than a president,” gushed writer Virginia Heffernan. “Maybe she is an idea, a world-historical heroine, light itself,” Nothing this nutty has been said by any of Trump’s media fanboys.
“Hillary is Athena,” Heffernan continued, adding that “Hillary did everything right in this campaign… She cannot be faulted, criticized, or analyzed for even one more second.”
[Read the full story here, at Reason.com]
That’s a key cry of the Cult of Hillary (as it is among followers of L. Ron Hubbard or devotees of Christ): our gal is beyond criticism, beyond the sober and technical analysis of mere humans. Michael Moore, in his movie Trumpland, looked out at his audience and, with voice breaking, said: “Maybe Hillary could be our Pope Francis.”
Or consider Kate McKinnon‘s post-election opening bit on SNL, in which she played Clinton as a pantsuited angel at a piano singing Leonard Cohen‘s “Hallelujah,” her voice almost cracking as she sang: “I told the truth, I didn’t come to fool ya.” Read the rest of this entry »
Obama Administration: ‘Hey, About that Requirement to Defend The United States, Let’s Remove it from the Citizenship Oath’
Posted: July 22, 2015 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Citizenship in the United States, Conscientious objector, Ethical code, Naturalization, Non-combatant, Oath of Allegiance (United States), Obama administration, religion, United States, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services 1 CommentKatie Pavlich writes: The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has “clarified” requirements for individuals becoming naturalized citizens by stripping out the requirement of defending the United States through military service.
“Effective July 21, 2015, new guidance (PA-2015-001) in the USCIS Policy Manual clarifies the eligibility requirements for modifications to the Oath of Allegiance. Reciting the Oath is part of the naturalization process. Candidates for citizenship normally declare that they will “bear arms on behalf of the United States” and “perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States” when required by the law. A candidate may be eligible to exclude these two clauses based on religious training and belief or a conscientious objection,” an email from USCIS clarifying the requirements states (bolding is mine).
The new guidance:
-May be eligible for modifications based on religious training and belief, or conscientious objection arising from a deeply held moral or ethical code.
-Is not required to belong to a specific church or religion, follow a particular theology or belief, or to have had religious training in order to qualify.
-May submit, but is not required to provide, an attestation from a religious or other type of organization, as well as other evidence to establish eligibility. Read the rest of this entry »
Losing the Argument on Merit, Liberal Media Turns to Wu Wu: ‘Religion’ and ‘Mythology’
Posted: July 14, 2014 Filed under: Censorship, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Border Crisis, Daily Beast, Jacob T. Schwartz, media, Myth, New York Times, news, religion, Tea Party, White House 1 CommentTwo headlines in the last few weeks at Brietbart.com form an interesting duet…
Tony Lee writes: The New York Times editorial board believes the border crisis is merely “a myth.”
In a weekend editorial, the Times said the “White House is getting it mostly right” on immigration and blasted Republicans, who are “throwing up roadblocks” with “dangerous overreaction.” The Times praised the Obama administration’s request for $3.7 billion in aid to deal with a crisis they think is a “myth.”
“The besieged border is a myth, and the arrival of a few thousand weary refugee children on buses does not make the myth true,” the Times wrote…(read more)
Jack Schwartz at The Daily Beast argues in what is surprisingly not a metaphor that the Tea Party is for all intents and purposes a religion – and as such has crossed lines that endanger American democracy:
America has long been the incubator of many spiritual creeds going back to the Great Awakening and even earlier. Only one of them, Mormonism, has taken root and flourished as a true religion sprung from our own native ground. Today, however, we have a new faith growing from this nation’s soil: the Tea Party. Despite its secular trappings and “taxed enough already” motto, it is a religious movement, one grounded in the traditions of American spiritual revival. This religiosity explains the Tea Party’s political zealotry. Read the rest of this entry »
The Hammer: America’s War on Carbon Is Economic Suicide, Global Do-Goodism
Posted: May 6, 2014 Filed under: Mediasphere, Science & Technology, U.S. News, White House | Tags: Carbon Management, Charles Krauthammer, China, climate change religion, Environment, Fox News Special Report, Global warming, Greenhouse gas, India, religion 1 Comment“Any scientific theory that explains everything explains nothing.”
Despite the United States reducing its carbon emissions to 1992 levels, worldwide carbon emissions are higher than ever, “because we don’t control the emissions of the other 96 percent of humanity, especially China and India,” he said…(read more(
“And no matter what happens in climate that’s unpleasant, it’s attributed to global warming.”

Reality Check: Is Israel an Apartheid State?
Posted: March 27, 2014 Filed under: Education, Global, History, Politics | Tags: Apartheid, Arabia, Bejamin Porgund, college, Democracy, Education, Israel, Leftist Propaganda, Marxism, Palestine, Progressive Secularism, race, religion, South Africa, University 1 CommentReality-Based World to Tim Cook: ‘Screw You’
Posted: March 2, 2014 Filed under: Mediasphere | Tags: Apple, Ars Technica, Climate Alarmism, Climate change, climate change religion, cultism, Environment, National Center for Public Policy Research, religion, Shareholder, Sustainability, Tim Cook 1 Comment
Influenced by board member Al Gore? Apple CEO Tim Cook: Guzzling the climate-alarmist Kool Aid
“If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock.”
As Glenn Reynolds says “Duly noted”
At Apple shareholder’s meeting, Tim Cook tells off ‘climate change deniers’ | Ars Technica

‘Sit on the lap of Satan’
Posted: January 7, 2014 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: American Civil Liberties Union, Associated Press, Baphomet, Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, religion, Satan, Satanism, Ten Commandment 5 CommentsSatanists’ Statue Design for Oklahoma Capitol Stirs Controversy

This artist’s rendering provided by the Satanic Temple shows the proposed monument (AP Photo/Satanic Temple)
Cheryl K. Chumley writes: Members of the Satanic Temple have unveiled their design for a 7-foot-tall statue of the devil they want to locate at the Capitol building in Oklahoma, right next to a monument of the Ten Commandments that has stood since 2012.
And to many, the design may prove shocking.
The Associated Press reported an artist’s depiction shows Satan as the goat-headed and horned figure of Baphomet, complete with wings and a long beard. The Satan figure is shown sitting on a throne decorated with pentagrams, in the middle of a few smiling children. Read the rest of this entry »
Free Speech on Trial in DC, Today
Posted: October 4, 2012 Filed under: Mediasphere | Tags: Anti-Americanism, Censorshop, Middle East, religion, Terror Leave a comment“We will be back in court today fighting for our unalienable first amendment rights under the law and pushing back against the encroaching blasphemy laws do not criticize Islam under the sharia. This is the key battle in the stealth jihad being waged across this country and all free nations.”
D.C. Federal Court to Hear ADFI’s Challenge to Transit Authority’s Restriction on Anti-Jihad Advertisement Today, Robert Muise, Co-Founder and Senior Counsel of the American Freedom Law Center AFLC, will present oral argument in federal court in Washington, D.C. in AFLC’s request for an injunction to halt the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority WMATA’s censorship of a pro-Israel/anti-jihad bus advertisement. The hearing is before District Court Judge Rosemary M. Collyer, and it is scheduled to take place at 2:00 p.m. EDT in Courtroom 8 at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia located at 333 Constitution Avenue, N.W., in Washington, D.C. The hearing is open to the media and the general public. At issue in the lawsuit is the WMATA’s decision to delay running a pro-Israel/anti-jihad advertisement on its Metro system until some “future date” due to alleged concerns about “the situations happening around the world,” “world events,” and the “security and safety” of its passengers. The WMATA’s decision was based in response to the ongoing violence in Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere in an alleged protest of free speech in the United States that is critical of Islam. As a result of the WMATA’s censorship, AFLC filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on behalf of the advertisements sponsors, the Freedom Defense Initiative FDI and its executive directors, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer. The lawsuit challenges the WMATA’s unconstitutional restriction on FDI’s right to engage in protected speech in a public forum.
via Free Speech on Trial in DC, Today – Atlas Shrugs
France closes embassies after magazine publishes Mohammed satire
Posted: September 20, 2012 Filed under: War Room | Tags: France, religion Leave a commentThe publisher of Charlie Hebdo, Charb, holds up the new issue
Historian Says Piece of Papyrus Refers to Jesus’ Wife
Posted: September 18, 2012 Filed under: Mediasphere | Tags: History, religion Leave a commentA historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School has identified a scrap of papyrus that she says was written in Coptic in the fourth century and contains a phrase never seen in any piece of Scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …’”
The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple.”
The finding is being made public in Rome on Tuesday at an international meeting of Coptic scholars by the historian Karen L. King, who has published several books about new Gospel discoveries and is the first woman to hold the nation’s oldest endowed chair, the Hollis professor of divinity.
The provenance of the papyrus fragment is a mystery, and its owner has asked to remain anonymous. Until Tuesday, Dr. King had shown the fragment to only a small circle of experts in papyrology and Coptic linguistics, who concluded that it is most likely not a forgery. But she and her collaborators say they are eager for more scholars to weigh in and perhaps upend their conclusions.
Even with many questions unsettled, the discovery could reignite the debate over whether Jesus was married, whether Mary Magdalene was his wife and whether he had a female disciple. These debates date to the early centuries of Christianity, scholars say. But they are relevant today, when global Christianity is roiling over the place of women in ministry and the boundaries of marriage.
The discussion is particularly animated in the Roman Catholic Church, where despite calls for change, the Vatican has reiterated the teaching that the priesthood cannot be opened to women and married men because of the model set by Jesus.
Dr. King gave an interview and showed the papyrus fragment, encased in glass, to reporters from The New York Times, The Boston Globe and Harvard Magazine in her garret office in the tower at Harvard Divinity School last Thursday. She left the next day for Rome to deliver her paper on the find on Tuesday at the International Congress of Coptic Studies.
She repeatedly cautioned that this fragment should not be taken as proof that Jesus, the historical person, was actually married. The text was probably written centuries after Jesus lived, and all other early, historically reliable Christian literature is silent on the question, she said.
But the discovery is exciting, Dr. King said, because it is the first known statement from antiquity that refers to Jesus speaking of a wife. It provides further evidence that there was an active discussion among early Christians about whether Jesus was celibate or married, and which path his followers should choose.
“This fragment suggests that some early Christians had a tradition that Jesus was married,” Dr. King said. “There was, we already know, a controversy in the second century over whether Jesus was married, caught up with a debate about whether Christians should marry and have sex…”
More via NYTimes.com…
Amish beard cutters face possible prison terms as jury weighs clash of the clippers
Posted: September 17, 2012 Filed under: Mediasphere | Tags: religion Leave a commentAmish beard cutters face possible prison terms as jury weighs clash of the clippers – Telegraph.
“They were holding me down and had already got a chunk of the hair from my head,” he explained. “They had my beard in their hands like this and they were ready to shear it when the clippers broke.”
For his 77-year-old father Raymond, a bishop in the fundamentalist Protestant sect, there was no such good fortune. The attackers cut off his long white beard and much of the hair from his head before they fled into the night.
In what prosecutors claim was a vindictive rampage of spiritual grudge-settling, the Hershbergers were two of nine Amish victims shorn in such attacks in central Ohio.
After a three-week trial in Cleveland, a jury is now deliberating whether this was indeed a religious hate crime or, as the defence contends, the equivalent of a family feud.