Maybe Trump could get there if he didn't murder people in cold blood like Obama murdered American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki

 Trump asks supporters for $15 donations to 'get him to heaven'...

 

Religion Unplugged story about how politics influences US Protestant pastors' perceptions of church budgets completely misses two data outliers in 2018

 

 Pastors Paint Poor Picture Of Economic Impact On Churches

“Overall, pastors’ perceptions of the economy’s impact on their churches are statistically related to the pastor’s own politics. Since both politics and economics are external factors to a local church, it is not surprising that the influences become combined for some,” said McConnell. “More surprising is that pastors report actual offerings which fit these differences in political leanings.”

In 2018, under Donald Trump, an astounding 45% (green), a record high in the data going back to The Great Recession, said the economy was having a positive impact on church budgets, and an equally astounding 14% (blue), a record low in the data, said the economy was having a negative impact. 

It's right there in the graph, but it goes completely unremarked.

Political differences in any other year notwithstanding, 2018 looks like an amazing year of consensus among US Protestant church pastors from both sides of the political aisle, agreeing that things were pretty damn good. 

2018 had marked a notable shift for the Trump presidency, which wasted its first year in office trying to repeal Obamacare and quickly pivoted to the economy, which Larry Kudlow famously wanted front-loaded in 2017 instead of the healthcare issue. Almost immediately in 2018 the Trump administration began talking about an economic boom in the wake of the passage of its tax cut package late in 2017. And if you paid attention to the conservative media, the narrative built into a crescendo in 2018 so that by September of that year even Noah Smith, no right winger, for Bloomberg was talking about it as an actual fact.

Was it? 

If you and your kin had suffered under the effects of the 2009 crisis, which just went on and on and on under Barack Obama, it sure seemed like it. The end of the drought for these people, who were dying of thirst, was deeply felt, and explains why the memory of what happened to them continues to exert such a powerful influence on support for Donald Trump in 2024. Barack Obama and the Democrats did little for them. That is how we got here.

In relative terms in comparison with past booms, however, there were many indicators which were improving but were not really stellar, and some not really improving at all, including on both fronts full time jobs, wage growth, GDP growth, new home sales, housing starts, average age of vehicles on the road, road travel, growth of not in labor force, inventories, and industrial production. To critical thinkers, the economic boom narrative seemed exaggerated.

But perception is everything, and it's NOT surprising that the story missed that. Elites specialize in overlooking the little people.

No one understands the appeal of Donald Trump except all the millions he has helped, clinging to their guns and their religion.

 

   

America's amusing smorgasbord of religious, social, and political beliefs according to Real Clear, ranked, annotated

Percent who believe in, believe that, say that, are, et cetera, per Real Clear Opinion Research, here:

 

Religious freedom is a fundamental human right 93.8 (this idea was foreign to ancient Israel, Greece, Rome, Christian Europe, and the era of the Muslim conquests, to name just a few)

 

God 85.4 (name not indicated)

Heaven 84.7 (John Lennon most hurt)

Healthcare is a fundamental human right 83.7 (the propaganda of the ObamaCare era worked)

Miracles 83.0 (Justin Amash fooled the people 5 times, Peter Meijer only once)

"In God We Trust" 83.0 ("In Fiat Money We Trust" was too long)

Jesus is God or Son of God 80.3 (thanks to not being aborted by the Holy Virgin Mary)

 

Hell 72.4 (San Francisco, New York City, Portland, et cetera)

The Devil 70.3 (yeah baby, drugs, sex, and rock and roll)

 

A woman and her doctor should get to decide whether to have an abortion 63.4 (vaccination highly recommended)

Ghosts 61.4 (unstated whether they are tiny baby ghosts or not)

 

Aliens 56.9 (oddly explains the southern border)

God is male 50.0 (Jesus is shocked, shocked, I tell you)

 

Reincarnation 47.7 (belief in Hinduism is dead last 0.5% ha ha ha ha ha, see below)

Witches 45.8 (strongly believed in Michigan methinks)

Prejudice against Jews is a very serious problem in the US 42.6 (because the Jews run everything)

 

2020 Joe Biden 38.6 (voting by mail multiple times or in person not specified)

Protestant 36.3 (prejudice problem 17.3)

2020 Donald Trump 34.6 (not everything deserves a comment)

Democrat Party 33.6

Republican Party 32.8

 

Never attend religious service 29.2 (makes sense given these results)

Prejudice against Muslims is a very serious problem in the US 29.1 (because of what they did on Oct 7)

God is neither male nor female 27.5 (0.9% of respondents also neither male nor female)

2020 didn't vote 24.8 (thank God) 

Catholic 22.0 (prejudice problem 14.9)

Independent party 21.4

 

Attend religious service once a week 19.5 (as good as it gets for category)

No religion 19.4

Prejudice against Evangelical Christians is a very serious problem in the US 17.3

Prejudice against Hindus is a very serious problem in the US 16.2 (but, but reincarnation)

Prejudice against atheists is a very serious problem in the US 15.7

Prejudice against Catholics is a very serious problem in the US 14.9

God is female 14.1

Not registered to vote 12.1

Atheist 3.8 (prejudice problem 15.7)

Agnostic 3.7

Other religion 3.3

Islamic 3.2 (prejudice problem 29.1)

Mormon 2.9

2020 voted for other 2.0

Judaism 1.9 (prejudice problem 42.6)

Buddhist 1.6

Orthodox 1.3 (Rod Dreher)

Hindu 0.5 (prejudice problem 16.2)

 

People clearly believe that some groups, to paraphrase Barack Obama in 2012 about the Danes, the Dutch, the Norwegians, the Irish, and the Filipinos, seem to get punched far out of proportion with their weight in the culture. 

 

Results discussed here, where this is surely wrong, leaving out the little word "not" in a crucial spot at the end:

Most Americans also remain deeply respectful of the country’s religious roots. A strong majority of respondents – 83% – believe the phrase “In God we trust” should remain on U.S. currency and coins, compared to 17% who back the phrase’s removal.

“Republicans felt more strongly that the phrase should remain compared to Democrats, with 91% believing the phrase should [not] be removed, compared to 78% of Democrats,” Kimball said.     

In 2011 former Republican Justin Amash (MI-3) joined eight Democrats to vote against "In God We Trust", which in his first term was a sign of things to come in his last.

 

 

There are lots of things just as phony as Christians and Republicans

Self-aggrandizing Democrats, for instance. 

Former Obama administration officials reportedly have increased their wealth dramatically since 2009 and now a bunch of them occupy high positions in the Biden administration, which is supposed to represent a return to normalcy :

Susan Rice, Domestic Policy Council Director, now worth as much as $149 million.

Ron Klain, Biden Chief of Staff, as much as $12.2 million.

Jeff Zients, Coronavirus Response Coordinator, $442.8 million.

Jen Psaki, White House Press Secretary, $1.5 million.

Brian Deese, National Economic Council Director, $7 million.

Jen O'Malley Dillon, White House Deputy Chief of Staff, $4.7 million.

Jake Sullivan, National Security Adviser, $27.5 million.

Julissa Reynoso, Jill Biden Chief of Staff, $14.8 million.

Story.

I'm not a hermit . . .

I've just been sheltering in place for the last decade.

Like ISIS, Obamas' gay portrait artist is really cutting edge

Reinhold Niebuhr's Christianity fatefully argued that the end justifies the means, playing into the hands of today's radicals

With which Jesus would most certainly not have agreed, otherwise we would know Jesus as a zealot instead of as an eschatological prophet who eschewed human agency in establishing the kingdom of God.

The pacifism against which Niebuhr was reacting is simply one of human beings' competing fall-back positions put forward from his teaching to take the place of Jesus' ultimately mistaken prediction of the end of the world. Pacifism is monstrous in the sense that it is an exaggeration of a part of Jesus' message, distorting that message, as are all interpretations divorced from the eschatological imperative, including Niebuhr's.

There is a direct line connecting Niebuhr to the present, where leftist radicals now eschew the nonviolence of previous civil rights movements and justify aggravated battery in the streets, destruction of private property, and suppression of freedom of speech, among other crimes against the liberal democratic order, in the name of the goals of that order. It's not a coincidence that Niebuhr is a hero to people like Barack Obama, John McCain and James Comey, realists who justify lying for the greater good.

If Niebuhr were alive today, one wonders if the irony of the unintended consequences of his own thinking would be lost on him.

Reinhold Niebuhr, recently discussed here:

A reviewer wrote in 1933 of Moral Man and Immoral Society, “To call this book fully Christian in tone is to travesty the heart of Jesus’ message to the world.” The reviewer took issue with the text because Niebuhr implied that Christians must sometimes resort to violence when dealing with groups. Niebuhr traded barbs with pacifists for the rest of the decade. “If modern churches were to symbolize their true faith,” he wrote in 1940, “they would take the crucifix from their altars and substitute the three little monkeys who counsel men to ‘speak no evil, hear no evil, see no evil.” ... In his view the aggressive fascist powers stood on one side. On the other were the naïve pacifists who would refuse to fight evil. We must choose the sensible middle ground, he argued. We must do evil for the sake of the good.

The Pecksniffian New York Times defends accepting Syrian refugees at a ratio of 1% Christian to 99% Muslim as representative

Ignoring the Obama administration's own declaration of a genocide against religious minorities on March 17, 2016, which Trump's policy seeks to address.

Here:

While only about one percent of the refugees from Syria resettled in the United States last year were Christian, the population of that country is 93 percent Muslim and only five percent Christian, according to Pew. And leaders of several refugee resettlement organizations said during interviews that it takes 18 months to three years for most refugees to go through the vetting process to get into the United States. Many Syrian Christians got into the pipeline more recently.

"Many Syrian Christians got into the pipeline more recently".

Yeah. They mean the ones who survived.

The rest were tortured, crucified or had their heads cut off before there even was a pipeline. An untold number of Christians has died in an officially declared genocide at the hands of ISIS since it took over parts of Syria and Iraq beginning in 2014. Perhaps over 1000 before that. 

Trump miracle election: Someone, somewhere, lets a dim pall fall upon 7.6 million former Obama voters who fail to vote for Hillary

Who's laughing now?

Obama received 69.5 million popular votes in 2008, but as of tonight 7.6 million of them failed to show up for Hillary for some reason.

Hm.

Complicit in evil: 65.9 million Americans

"The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay. We oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right. Abortion is an intensely personal decision between a woman, her family, her doctor, and her clergy; there is no place for politicians or government to get in the way."

Evangelical Timothy George Calls Lincoln The Most Spiritually Minded American President

Well, the devil was spiritually minded, too.

Here: 

Though Abraham Lincoln was neither baptized nor joined a church of any kind, he was the most spiritually minded president in American history. His faith was wrought on the anvil of anguish, both personal and national, and because of this he has much to teach us in our own age of anxiety.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Why is it that religious people today are so quick to venerate the American model of authoritarianism, the man who arguably ended the Republic, invaded the South, presided over the mass murder of fellow citizens, set the precedent for the meaninglessness of citizenship in the age of Obama and Anwar al-Awlaki (just as imperial Nero slew Roman citizen Paul of Tarsus), and refounded the nation on the basis of a few ideological principles and executive power which did nothing but alienate the Constitution from the Declaration? 

The "spiritual" views of the founding generation of enthusiasts found opposition to such tyranny completely synonymous with obedience to God, but we are largely found on the other side of the argument today.

They wouldn't know us, and if they did they'd take up arms against us. 

Pope Francis Brings Back The BatShitCrazy Papacy Of Yesteryear

And high time, too, since things were getting pretty boring for us Protestant ne'er-do-wells.

The full story comes from our ever helpful friends on the left at the UK Guardian, here, from which this explanatory excerpt:

'Indulgences these days are granted to those who carry out certain tasks – such as climbing the Sacred Steps, in Rome (reportedly brought from Pontius Pilate's house after Jesus scaled them before his crucifixion), a feat that earns believers seven years off purgatory.

'But attendance at events such as the Catholic World Youth Day, in Rio de Janeiro, a week-long event starting on 22 July, can also win an indulgence.

'Mindful of the faithful who cannot afford to fly to Brazil, the Vatican's sacred apostolic penitentiary, a court which handles the forgiveness of sins, has also extended the privilege to those following the "rites and pious exercises" of the event on television, radio and through social media.

'"That includes following Twitter," said a source at the penitentiary, referring to Pope Francis' Twitter account, which has gathered seven million followers. "But you must be following the events live. It is not as if you can get an indulgence by chatting on the internet."'

------------------------------------------------------------------------

How easy it is to get out of seven years in ppppurgatory when there's not a thing you can do to escape eight years of Barack Obama. "Greater things than these shall ye do" my foot.

Sins Cannot Take Anything Away From God, Nor Good Works Add To Him

"Look up into the sky, and see the clouds high above you. If you sin, how does that affect God? Even if you sin again and again, what effect will it have on him? If you are good, is this some great gift to him? What could you possibly give him? No, your sins affect only people like yourself, and your good deeds also affect only humans."

-- The Voice Of Elihu in Job 35:5ff.

The Lutheran Who Helped Put Barack Obama In The US Senate

[Sen. Paul] Simon died in Springfield, Illinois following heart surgery at the age of 75 in 2003. WBBM-TV reported his death as a "massive gastric blow-out". Just four days before, despite being hospitalized and awaiting surgery, he had endorsed Howard Dean's 2004 presidential bid via a telephone conference call he conducted from his hospital bed. He was also an early supporter of Barack Obama's 2004 bid for Senate. After Simon's death, his daughter, Sheila, made a television commercial in which she declared "Barack Obama will be a U.S. Senator in the Paul Simon tradition." The ad was considered a major reason for Obama's surprise victory in the Democratic primary. In the Senate, Obama praised Simon as a "dear friend."

Obama Purges Christians From Military, Sexual Assaults Skyrocket

From the story in Crisis Magazine, A Voice For The Faithful Catholic Laity, here:

This week Congress mulled over the Pentagon’s admission that sexual assault cases have spiked 35 percent in the last two years. ... 

In 2010, Admiral Michael Mullen informed a Christian chaplain who opposed the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy that “if you cannot get in line, resign your commission.” That same year Lieutenant General Thomas Bostick told “bigoted” soldiers to “get with the program” or “get out.”  In 2011, the Army, until a backlash prevented the change, planned on tweaking its visiting guidelines at Walter Reed Medical Center to read: “No religious items (i.e. Bibles, reading materials and/or facts) are allowed to be given away or used during a visit.” In 2012, officials at the Air Force erased the Latin word for God, Dei, from the logo of the Rapid Capabilities Office. The logo had said in Latin “Doing God’s Work with Other People’s Money.” It was changed to: “Doing Miracles with Other People’s Money.” ...

Meanwhile, Congress is baffled at how the culture of the military could permit so much sexual mischief. An exasperated Senator Angus King of Maine said, “Within the Air Force, it has to become unacceptable culturally.” It is a little late for politicians to be lamenting the loss of traditional mores.  The two trends within the military on display in the press recently—rising cases of sexual misconduct , declining Christian presence—are exactly what they should expect.

What's Wrong With Rod Dreher, In A Nutshell

"I am a conservative Christian who believes that Obama’s re-election is on balance a bad thing for American Christians, for a number of reasons."

"On balance"?

That's like saying cancer is on balance a bad thing for the body, as if there might be something good to be said for it. 

Oh, but I can hear it already: "All things work together for good", or some such riposte, I'm sure.

Like Keynesianism, Christianity always has an answer for why its not wrong.

Here.

Timothy Dalrymple Skewers Bill Keller, Won't Vote For Jesus

Alrighty then.

Story here.

Obama's Monstrous Theology: "Male and Male Created He Them"

From The Washington Post, here:

There is a lot of fawning media coverage of President Obama's new support for gay marriage. There is serious discussion of how he "evolved," and there are serious timelines being prepared by the Obama apologencia that earnestly track his "evolution." The only problem is they don't put "evolution" in quotation marks to highlight the cynical doubts that Obama's conversion deserves.  There is every reason to believe that this decision was made because Obama thinks it serves his current selfish political interests. He characterizes his politically expedient flip-flop as a theological "evolution."  The reality is, his political trajectory has stalled and he "evolved" into a desperate political situation.

Genesis 1.26-28:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

So God created man in his [own] image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Leviticus 20:13

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood [shall be] upon them.

Finally, Some Fighting Words About Barack Obama, and Other Enemies of Christ

"For 2,000 years the enemies of Christ have certainly tried their best. But think about it. The Church survived and even flourished during centuries of terrible persecution, during the days of the Roman Empire.

"The Church survived barbarian invasions. The Church survived wave after wave of Jihads. The Church survived the age of revolution. The Church survived Nazism and Communism.

"And in the power of the resurrection, the Church will survive the hatred of Hollywood, the malice of the media, and the mendacious wickedness of the abortion industry.

"The Church will survive the entrenched corruption and sheer incompetence of our Illinois state government, and even the calculated disdain of the President of the United States, his appointed bureaucrats in HHS, and of the current majority of the federal Senate.

"May God have mercy on the souls of those politicians who pretend to be Catholic in church, but in their public lives, rather like Judas Iscariot, betray Jesus Christ by how they vote and how they willingly cooperate with intrinsic evil. ...

"Remember that in past history other governments have tried to force Christians to huddle and hide only within the confines of their churches like the first disciples locked up in the Upper Room. ...

"Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care.

"In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.

"Now things have come to such a pass in America that this is a battle that we could lose, but before the awesome judgement seat of Almighty God this is not a war where any believing Catholic may remain neutral.

"This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences, or by the following fall our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman Centers, all our public ministries -- only excepting our church buildings – could easily be shut down. Because no Catholic institution, under any circumstance, can ever cooperate with the instrinsic evil of killing innocent human life in the womb.

"No Catholic ministry – and yes, Mr. President, for Catholics our schools and hospitals are ministries – can remain faithful to the Lordship of the Risen Christ and to his glorious Gospel of Life if they are forced to pay for abortions."

-- Bishop Daniel Jenky

Read the whole thing, here.

Socrates on Obama

"[W]eak natures are scarcely capable of any very great good or very great evil."

-- Socrates, Republic, Book 6