You Will Anyway: It's Sunday

Sunday, June 16, 2024

It's Sunday

Donald Trump was largely missing from the annual gathering of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest and most politically powerful Protestant denomination. This was no MAGA fest: There were no MAGA caps or Trump signs in sight, and mentions of the likely Republican nominee were scarce. When he spoke Monday [via streaming technology] to a room of a hundred people, only a handful pulled out their smartphones to record.

[...]

Albert Mohler, a prominent evangelical theologian and president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, told Nightly that Trump hasn’t been clear enough on his abortion stance.

[...]

Trump did not mention the word “abortion” at all in his brief, pre-taped video address, instead hewing close to his brand of partisan grievance politics.

“You just can’t vote Democrat. They’re against religion. They’re against your religion in particular,” he said, though Democrats like Carter, Bill Clinton and even Al Gore at one point all considered themselves Baptist. Trump only received a polite smattering of applause for his remarks.

[...]

“I think President Trump needs to say that he is as pro-life as he was in 2016 and that he will defend the unborn and work with the pro-life movement to help affect a meaningful defense of unborn life and of life at every stage. I think he must make that clear.”

Politico

He will if and when he needs to, for the votes.

The biggest star of the convention was — surprise — former Vice President Mike Pence, who has been attacked by Trump after rejecting the then-president’s pressure to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election. [...] He won three standing ovations, and stood in a reception line for almost half an hour after speaking, signing autographs and posing for selfies.

Don't anybody tell Trump.

Even former presidential candidate and current Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis received more namechecks from the stage and in the hallways than Trump, mostly because of his firm positions in the culture wars and particularly on abortion.

And while we're on the subject of the Southern Baptists...

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"It takes only a bit of knowledge of history to realize how dangerous it is to think that the people who run the country know what they are doing." -- Howard Zinn

"It’s not about not having something to hide; it’s about having something to lose. What we lose when we’re under observation is our humanity...Rights are inherent to our nature, they’re not granted by governments, they’re guaranteed by governments. They’re protected by governments." -- Edward Snowden

"Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause.” -- Howard Zinn

"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

"We should always remember that the danger to societies from security services is not that they will spontaneously decide to embrace [Stasi style] mustache twirling and jackboots to bear us bodily into dark places, but that the slowly shifting foundation of policy will make it such that mustaches and jackboots are discovered to prove an operational advantage toward a necessary purpose.” ~ Edward Snowden

"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild

"News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising." ~ LACUNA

"What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler

"There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack." ~ Molly Ivins

"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." ~ James Thurber

"The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plane....When you hold up your arm and swear to uphold the Constitution, you don’t say, 'Except in wartime.'" -- George McGovern

"I’ll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one." ~ Bill Moyers

"When did hope become a political dynamic? Hope is right below wishful thinking and right above performing a rain dance on the scale of activity." ~ Rich Hall

Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.