F Rosa Rubicondior: Democracy
Showing posts with label Democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Democracy. Show all posts

Sunday 5 February 2023

Secular News - UK Now a Majority Non-Christian Country

Secular News

UK Now a Majority Non-Christian Country

Religion, England and Wales - Office for National Statistics

For the first time in a census of England and Wales, less than half of the population (46.2%, 27.5 million people) described themselves as “Christian”, a 13.1 percentage point decrease from 59.3% (33.3 million) in 2011; despite this decrease, “Christian” remained the most common response to the religion question.

Pie chart of major religions UK 2021
The main England & Wales religious demographics
Source: ONS
Figures released recently by the UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) show that in the 2021 census, in answer to a voluntary question, less than half (46.2%) of the 56.0 million people who answered (94%) self-identified as 'Christian'. This represents a 13.1 percentage point decrease from the figure for 2011 for the same voluntary question.

The second most common answer was 'no religion', up by 12 percentage points from 25.2% (2011) to 37.2%.

Wednesday 4 January 2023

Trumpanzee News - Trumpanzees CAN be Nicer People

MAGA insurrectionists
Trumpanzees resorting to violence because they lost the election.
Conspiracy Theorists Are Nicer After Thinking Things Through | Psychology Today

A characteristic of Trumpanzee cultists, is their almost complete dependence on conspiracy theories to sustain their patently absurd belief in Donald Trump as some sort of divinely inspired saviour sent by God to engage with Satanic figures running the 'Deep State'.

These Satanic figures are, of course, because the only important things that happen in the world, happen in America, Democrat politicians, scientists and billionaires such as Bill Gates, led by Hilary Clinton, Barak Obama and assorted cannibalistic paedophiles. The conspiracy Trump was fighting gets ever more lurid, the more preposterous it becomes.

The 'Paedophile Deep State' conspiracy of course involved all the election officials in states where Joe Biden won in 2020, because they helped 'steal' the election from the rightful winner, Donald Trump, and all the judges who refused to overturn the result on the 'spurious' grounds that Trump's advocates could not find any evidence to support their claim, other than Trump's claim that he won really.

Another aspect of this 'Paedophile Deep State' conspiracy is the belief that the COVID-19 pandemic was fake and a pretext for injecting people with mind-controlling vaccines developed by Bill Gates, or as an excuse to stop people going to church, or that wearing face coverings was an attempt at population control because people can't breathe properly with a face covering and die of asphyxia. Of course, government health officials like Anthony Fauci, America's leading epidemiologist, were part of the conspiracy and faked the statistics such as the case numbers and deaths.

The third aspect of Trumpanzeeism is the belief that demands by black people to be treated the same as white people by the police is a conspiracy by political extremists such as anti-fascists [sic], to deprive white Christians of their rightful position as the middle and upper class of a stratified society. A society in which the poor (and Black) only have themselves to blame, welfare is a scam whereby the white middle class is robbed through taxation to subsidise fecklessness and drug dependence, and health care should be preserved for those who can afford to pay for it, the way God intended, in White Christian America.

And we shouldn’t forget the notion that Mexicans are all drug-dealing criminals and rapists who want to destroy America.

But just holding whackadoodle beliefs is itself harmless. What is harmful is the antisocial behaviour that can come from holding them, such as discouraging people from getting vaccinated against a lethal virus, encouraging them to attend super-spreader events where social distancing and wearing face coverings were seen as a disloyal political statement, and such as trying to overthrow a democratic government in a violent insurrection.

Previous research has shown that holders of conspiracy theories are more likely to indulge in criminal activities and other anti-social behaviour and less likely]y to conform to prosocial norms, often regarding laws and social norms as part of the conspiracy.

But there is some hope that at least the more anti-social consequences of holding conspiracy theories, such as those adhered to by Trumpanzees, according to the results of an interesting study by four researchers at the Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien, Tübingen, Germany, led by Lotte Plummerer, a PhD candidate.

As described in Psychology Today by Craig Harper Ph.D.:

Monday 5 December 2022

Trumpanzee Cult News - Trump or Desantis? The Nutjobs May Decide It.

Evangelical Christians are crucial voters in Republican primaries. Would they support DeSantis or Trump?
The American Christian far right now has two dogs in the fight for the position of Repugnican candidate in 2024 - the odious, epitome of a sore loser, former president, Donald Trump and the evangelical white supremacist, governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who emerged the stronger of the two in the mid-term disaster for Trumpanzee Repugnicans, where candidates who publicly bought into Trump's Big Lie of a stolen election, fared badly.

But is there much to choose between them? To someone like me from outside the USA, there doesn't appear to be a fag-paper's difference between Trump and DeSantis. They both appeal to the hate-filled, neo-fascist, human rights denying, white Christian evangelicals and misogynistic pro-life hypocrites who blame God and the Bible, and thank Trump and his stooges in SCOTUS, for their legalised denial of a woman's right to bodily autonomy.

What will come next? A ban on contraception? Legalised persecution of anyone who isn't heterosexual? Prohibitions on voting for anyone who isn't a white evangelical Christian? The abolition of democracy itself?

Seems a bit exaggerated? All of these have been advocated by the Christian far right at various time very recently and many of them see it as the entire reason for the 'culture war'!

Dominating the judiciary isn't enough for these privileged extremist who will only settle for a Taliban-style self-selecting theocracy which dominates both the Executive and the Legislature, which will be mere rubber stamps for the dictates of the self-appointed evangelical cult leaders. At least one popular televangelist with a huge following has already claimed to a cheering audience that God told him the government should be accountable to him, not the people.

How these extremists, who still form a significant block of American voters, despite the growing rejection of organised religions in the USA, will divide between the two candidates, then unite behind the winner, is still an open question, as is the question of how far their repugnant extremism will push people into the Democrat camp.

One frightening aspect of Christian fundamentalism the USA, is that many of them, the so-called dispensationalists, saw the relocation of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by Trump as the first move in setting the precondition for an apocalyptic war, and believe Donald Trump will complete that process. In that war they believe they alone will be saved and 'raptured' to a place of safety until it is safe to return to Earth where they will have everything for themselves and all those who disagreed with them will be dead - the greatest thing they can imagine!

If these self-possessed, entitled nutters gain the political powers they crave, they will have control of the biggest nuclear arsenal on the planet, with enough warheads to destroy all life several time over, all under the command of a narcissistic psychopath with an acute personality disorder, the self-control of a toddler and his own private nuclear bunker.

The stakes in 2024 really are that high!
In the following article reprinted from The Conversation, Professor David Smith, Associate Professor in American Politics and Foreign Policy, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney, gives his assessment of the prospects, and to what extent the unpopular (even amongst Repugnicans) state bans on abortion will affect the outcome of November 2024.

The article, which can be read here, has been reformatted fos stylistic consistency.

Monday 14 November 2022

Decline of the Fundamentalists - How the 'Nones' are Taking Back US Politics for Democracy

Americans who aren't sure about God are a fast-growing force in politics – and they're typically even more politically active than white evangelicals
GSS study showing increase in American rious “Nones”
('Black Protestant' and 'Jewish' subsumed into 'Other faiths' to give 'Other affiliation'
'No religion' includes Atheists, Agnostics and spiritual but not affiliated to any religion).
With the raucous jabber of evangelicals drowning out other, quieter, more measured voices in American politics, a non-American like me could be forgiven for thinking they are the major force in US politics, and they have had some, hopefully short-term, successes such as getting Trump elected in 2016 and him then stuffing SCOTUS with right-wing Christian extremists who promptly overturned Roe vs Wade. But there are more measured and thoughtful voices also beginning to exert a moderating and humanitarian influence, especially in the Democratic Party. They are the growing number of 'Nones', or people with no religious affiliations.

Of course this include Atheists/Agnostics, but it also includes people for whom religion is a personal thing that doesn't require affiliation to any one organised religion, although studies have shown that 'None' tends to be a half-way house between religious and Atheist as the loss of group affiliation tends to free the individual to look dispassionately at the (lack of) evidence, free from peer-pressure, and draw the rational conclusion - there is no evidential reason for religious belief.

The evidence is that the 'Nones' could have been behind Biden's win in 2020, helping to secure swing states, since 1 in 5 Americans adults and more than 1 in 3 Democrat voters are now 'None', and since 'Nones' tend to be generally more informed, it would be surprising if they weren't having an effect on US politics.

In the following article, reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency, Ryan Burge, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Eastern Illinois University, USA, gives his assessment of the impact the 'Nones' are now having on American politics. The original article can be read here:

Sunday 13 November 2022

The Trumpanzees are Losing it.

US midterms: America appears to have passed 'peak Trump'
Trumpanzee mid-term elections rally
This is beginning to look like the end times for Donald Trump and his Trumpanzee cult.

The mid-term elections which were supposed to deliver a 'red wave' of Repugnican candidates as Trumpanzees took control of both houses, failed to materialise and scarcely even resembled a dribble. It looks like the Democrats will retain control of the Senate and very many of the candidates publicly endorsed by Trump either lost or won by slim margins. To make matters worse for Trump personally, his arch rival for both the Repugnican choice for the 2024 presidential election and as leader of white right extremism, Ron DeSantis, won the gubernatorial race in Florida by a landslide, setting him up for a run at the presidency.

Friday 15 July 2022

How The SCOTUS Now Represents an Extremist Minority of Americans

Political and Religious Activation and Polarization in the Wake of the Roe v. Wade Overturn | PRRI

A survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) into attitudes to abortion and the overturning of Roe vs Wade shows the extent to which the ruling represents the viewpoint of a small, extremist religious minority of Americans - white evangelical Christians. But there are signs that this extremist minority may have shot themselves in the foot in this case.

The following charts tell their own story.


Saturday 7 May 2022

Talibangelical News - Evangelical Christians Now Control SCOTUS

On abortion, few Americans take an absolutist view| Pew Research Center

The much trumpeted impending SCOTUS ruling effectively striking down Roe vs Wade and so making abortion illegal in America unless specifically decriminalised at state level, is widely at odds with American public opinion, but largely in line with the views of white evangelical Christians, showing the degree to which entitled white evangelical Christianity, with Donald Trump's help, has subverted SCOTUS.

While 61% of Americans are in favour of legalised abortions, only 37% oppose it. SCOTUS is representing only a minority of American extremists while ignoring the views of the vast majority. On this issue, if no other, SCOTUS can be seen to represent only a minority of Americans, who nevertheless feel entitled to have their views predominating.


This Pew Research survey show that, of all the religious groups in the USA, only the White Evangelicals back a ban on abortion. 73% of white evangelicals say their almost universal opposition to abortion is shaped by their religion, while only 28% of white, non-evangelical Protestants say their views have a religious basis and 7% of non-affiliated cite religion as shaping their views.

Tuesday 19 April 2022

Talibangelical Christian Theocracy News - Pastor Tony Spell Spills the Beans

Pastor Tony Spell, Life Tabernacle Church, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
"Government of USA should be by prophets (himself) at the top, then priests, then princes, then the people, God sez!"
Christian Nationalist Tony Spell Says Prophets Should Reign Over Government and the People | Right Wing Watch

It is unusual for a Talibangelical Christian pastor to be so honest (and lacking in nouse) as to admit their political ambitions in public, knowing full well that they need to pretend to be good democrats and supportive of US democracy if they are to keep fleecing their dupes, but extreme right-winger, Pastor Tony Spell, of the Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has no such qualms. He wants to run the government, or at least have the right to veto government policies he doesn't like and command others instead.

Not to put too fine a point on it, he has ambitions to be the American equivalent of the Iranian Supreme Leader or the equivalent of a Taliban Caliph. Unelected, accountable to no-one but himself and having the power to meddle in every aspect of public and private life in the USA.

Tuesday 22 March 2022

Religious War Crimes News - How the Russian Orthodox Church Backs Putin's War on Women & Children

Patriarch Kirill and Vladimir Putin.

War on Ukraine is "an active manifestation of evangelical love for neighbours" - Patriarch Kirill
How Putin's invasion became a holy war for Russia

Fulfilling the Christian Churchs' historic roll of supporting right-wing totalitarian nationalism, the Russian Orthodox Christian Church is backing Putin's murderous and unprovoked attack on Ukraine and the territorial ambitions of Vladimir Putin.

For Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church, the war against Ukrainian democracy is wrapped in the Russian flag and shrouded in religious zeal, since Kiev is the home of Prince Vladimir the Great of Kiev, the legendary founder of the Russian Church who , in about 978 AD, was responsible for making Byzantine Christian Orthodoxy the official religion of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

The Hagia Sophia, Istanbul
Legend has it that Prince Vladimir the Great of Kiev was so impressed he adopted the Orthodox Christianity of Byzantium as the state religion for Russia, Ukraine and Belorus.
The legend is that he invited missionaries from Eastern (now Orthodox) Christianity, Western (now Catholic) Christianity, Judaism and Islam to persuade him to adopt their religion. He rejected Islam because of the prohibition on alcohol and pork, saying that the Rus couldn't do without alcohol and Judaism because 'God had allowed the Jews to lose Jerusalem'. He eventually settled on Eastern Christianity when his emissaries reported the magnificence of the Hagia Sophia Church in Constantinople (now Istanbul).

On Russian National Unity Day, 4th November 2016, with Patriarch Kirill, the oleaginous head of the Russian Orthodox Church, at his side, smiling and applauding enthusiastically, Putin unveiled a huge statue of Vladimir the Great outside the Kremlin. On the day that Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine, Patriarch Kirill published a grovelling and nauseatingly obsequious statement which read:

Saturday 15 January 2022

Covidiot News - SCOTUS Does Its Bit to Keep the Covidiot Trumpanzee Cull Going

Donald Trump, Republicans Rejoice as Supreme Court Knocks Down Biden Vaccine Mandate

Donald Trump's efforts to turn SCOTUS into a partisan, Repugnican tool, paid of yesterday as his appointed majority voted as a block to overturn President Biden's rule requiring employers with more than 100 employees to mandate their employees to either be vaccinated against COVID-19 or submit a weekly negative test before being allowed to enter the workplace. As expected, SCOTUS voted along partisan lines with Trump's appointees doing their master's bidding and voting to thwart efforts to control the spread of the virus. The mandate for workers at federally-funded healthcare facilities will be allowed to continue.

Monday 11 October 2021

Power at Any Price - The Lengths Christian Extremists Will Go To To Grab Power

Michael P Farris, Conservative Christian President and CEO of Trump-supporting Alliance Defending Freedom
How Michael P. Farris Tried to Block 2020 Election Outcome - The New York Times.

As students of Early 20th Century European history will be aware, the Christian churches were often amongst the most enthusiastic supporters of the extreme right-wing parties that overthrew democracy and installed odious, racist, misogynist and criminal fascist government in countries such as Portugal, Spain, Italy, Hungary and Germany. Not surprisingly then, they are amongst the most enthusiastic supporters of attempts by the extreme right-wing in the USA to overthrow democracy, reverse the stunning victory of the Democrats and reinstall the odious racist, misogynist and criminal Donald J. Trump in the Oval Office.

One such would-be autocratic theocrat, is lawyer, Michael P. Farris, President and CEO of Christian extremist organization, Alliance Defending Freedom [sic].

Monday 27 September 2021

Christian Hate News - Loony Talibangelical Extremist Greg Locke on the War-Path.

Pastor Greg Locke, Global Vision Bible Church, Tennessee.
"This means war!"
Hate-Preacher Tells Right-Wing Crowd They’re Being Persecuted: “This Means War!” | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

Readers of this blog will be very familiar with false prophet, rabid homophobe and preacher of hate with a persecution complex, Greg Locke, who recently announced he was building the violent Church that Jesus wanted. An announcement that promptly got him banned from Twitter and resulted in several of his more offensive YouTube videos being taken down.

According to Locke, only gay people would do nothing while the evil, Satanic Democrats closed churches to stop them spreading the coronavirus, and Jesus wasn't gay so he would have defended his First Amendments rights with his Second Amendment rights.

It goes without saying that the US Constitution applied in 1st Century Palestine and Jesus jealously guarded his right to use guns to keep his churches open by posting armed thugs at the door to stop the authorities "trying something"!

I'm not a psychiatrist, but Locke's behaviour since he was shown to be a false prophet by falsely prophesying that Trump would win last November by a landslide because God had told him personally, he would arrange it, is becoming so bizarre and extreme that if his behaviour doesn't meet the definition of insanity, then insanity needs to be redefined.

Friday 30 July 2021

Christian Jihadi Terrorists at the Capitol - Committee Testimony

Christian Jihadi terrorists attempting a violent coup d’état
(6 Jan, 2021)
D.C. officer: "It was clear the terrorists perceived themselves to be Christians" - Axios

It is clear from the testimony of serving Metropolitan Police officers to the Committee of enquiry into the violent insurrection in support of Donald Trump at the Capitol, Washington DC, on 6 January, 2021, that the people attempting the violent coup d’état were not, as the GOP and Trumpanzee cult maintain, assorted BLM/Socialists, but full-blooded Christian Jihadi terrorists. The terrorists were intent on creating a Christian evangelical theocracy in the USA.

Bizarrely, this was to be under the leadership of their idol, Donald Trump, possibly the least competent, most corrupt and most un-Christian US politician ever to hold public high office.


One of the police officer who gave evidence was Daniel Hodges, one of the on-duty officers who were violently attacked by the mob as they forced their way into the Capitol building, seeking to prevent the House from ratifying the EC vote confirming that Joe Biden had won the presidency and Trump had lost. Some were even calling for the seizure and summary execution of leading lawmakers.

During his harrowing testimony, he described being crushed by the mob against the Capital door and a Christian terrorist trying to gouge his eye out with his thumb.

He told the committee:
The sea of people was punctuated throughout by flags. Mostly variations of American flags and Trump flags. There was Gadsden flags. It was clear the terrorists perceived themselves to be Christians. I saw the Christian flag directly to my front, and another had 'Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president.' Another, 'Jesus is king.
  • To my perpetual confusion, I saw the Thin Blue Line flag, a symbol of support for law enforcement, more than once being carried by the terrorists as they ignored our commands and continued to assault us.
  • [The] rioters identifying as veterans said they had "fought for this country and were fighting for it again."
  • Others demanded that law enforcement refrain from attacking them because "'we're not Black Lives Matter,' as if political affiliation is how we determine when to use force."
From that last remark, it is clear that the Talibangelicals were entitled white supremacists who see themselves as privileged; entitled to exemptions from the law not available to non-whites; a law which they see as designed to maintain the social strata with blacks and Hispanics below the whites.

Other officers, such as Harry Dunn, a black officer and Sgt. Aquilino Gonnell (Hispanic), testified how they were subjected to racist abuse. When Dunn revealed that he had voted for Biden, a woman in pink shouted:
Did you hear that, guys? That [N-word] voted for Joe Biden!
And the mob began chanting "Boo! F**ing [N-word]".

Gonnell, who served in Iraq, was told he wasn't an American because of his race.

A screenshot from surveillance footage provided by the FBI shows Casey Cusick (red hat) inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan 6. along with his father Pastor Jim Cusick (white hat).

FBI Handout Photo
Amongst the 591 people so far charged in connection to the attempted coup d’état are an evangelical Christian pastor from Florida and his son. James Cusick is a pastor in the Global Outreach Church, Melbourne, Florida, of which his son, Casey is vice president. They have both been charged with disorderly and violent conduct at the Capitol. The FBI became aware of their involvement when they were named during questioning by a congregant who was also present. This was later confirmed by bodycam footage from the cameras worn by the police and surveillance camera footage.

According to this report in TOPNews-USA:
Pastor James “Jim” Cusick Jr. of the Global Outreach Church of Melbourne, and his minister son, Casey Cusick, face charges of entering a restricted building, disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds and violent entry, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. A third man, Global Outreach church member David Lesperance, also faces charges.

Investigators say they first received a tip via telephone in January, followed by an anonymous letter on March 26, alleging that Lesperance and the Cusicks had traveled from Florida to D.C. and participated in the insurrection after listening to former President Trump speak.

The FBI found surveillance footage of the three men among the mob of Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol during the riots that left five people dead and roughly 140 law enforcement officers injured.

Investigators secured a warrant to search Lesperance’s cellphone and found both historical location data placing him at the Capitol on Jan. 6 as well as photos from his iCloud account that show James and Casey Cusick inside the building, the affidavit states.
It is becoming very clear that the attempted coup d’état was a Christian insurrection in alliance with the neo-fascist, white supremacist right; an attempt by Taliban-style Christian jihadis to take over the US Government. The subsequent lies by the GOP and their white Christian extremist allies, intended to blame the whole thing on BLM activists and Socialist Democrats, and their attempts to obstruct any attempt to reveal the truth of who was behind it, is indicative that they already know the truth but don't want the American people to know, or to know what they were trying to achieve - a Christo-fascist takeover by a white supremacist minority and an abolition of democracy.
Expect even more obstructionism from GOP representatives as the party abandons any pretence of being a democratic party determined to uphold American democracy and preserve the spirit of 1776. The party of the entitled white right is not going to take defeat at the polls with good grace. They feel, like Donald Trump, that they have been unfairly cheated of the power that is theirs by right. Democracy was only ever going to be tolerated so long as it delivered them that power.

Friday 2 July 2021

Trumpanzee News - The Repugnicans Just Can't Accept Reality!

Fanatical Trumpanzee, Emerald Robinson
Keeping the Big Lie going
The Right-Wing Pundits Fueling Trumpists’ Hope in the Farcical Arizona ‘Audit’ | Right Wing Watch

The strategy of the Trumpanzee cult is now to convince enough Americans that there really was massive electoral fraud in 2020, to give Donald Trump a good chance of a comeback in 2024 as the candidate who will restore democracy and defeat the evil Democrats, as democracy in the USA descends to the kindergarten level of debate. It is a strategy that relies for its success on the gullibility of a large enough number of American voters so he doesn't lose the popular vote again like the last two times, and gains enough state EC votes so the Electoral College doesn't need to return a bogus result to get a Repugnican candidate into the White House, despite being rejected by a majority of the electorate, like it did in 2000 when Gore beat Bush and again in 2016, when Trump lost to Clinton, despite the Russian interference.

Part of this strategy involves a bogus 'audit' of Arizona's Maricopa County 2012 presidential election returns by a company calling itself Cyber Ninjas [sic], whose CEO is a fully signed-up "Stop the Steal" activist, which has been bought and paid for by rich Trumpanzees whose tactics have already included directing its operative to conduct a forensic search for bamboo fibres as 'evidence that the ballot forms were flown in from South Korea!'. Even before his company was awarded the contract (or maybe that was because of it) Cyber Ninja's CEO, Doug Logan, had come out in support of the "Stop the Steal" movement.

Meanwhile, this recount is being repeatedly hyped in the news and social media by a small number of leading "Stop the Steal" activists like Emerald Robinson.




Emerald Robinson was shown to be top of the ten most persistent posters of lies and disinformation about the audit, by the non-profit Advance Democracy, Inc which analysed over 215,000 tweets mentioning the Arizona audit between April 1 and June 19. Also high on the list were other leading Trumpanzee cultists, Emerald Robinson was shown to be the top of the ten most persistent posters of lies and disinformation about the audit, by the non-profit Advance Democracy, Inc which analysed over 215,000 tweets mentioning the Arizona audit between April 1 and June 19.

Also high on the list were other leading Trumpanzee cultists, Candace Owens, former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos, the Arizona Republican Party, far-right online personalities Matt Couch and Alex Sheppard, former reality TV contestant Anna Khait, and prominent Trumpanzee Juanita Broaddrick.

In all, just eight accounts were responsible for the vast majority of the disinformation being promulgates in a way which is clearly co-ordinated and one doesn't need to look much further than the Arizona Repugnican Twitter account (@AZGOP) to see who that might be by.

The farcical nature of the audit can be judged from this account of her observation of the audit process by Jennifer Morrell, a former local election official and national expert on post-election audits, writing in the Washington Post:
When Arizona’s secretary of state asked me if I would serve as an observer of the Arizona Senate’s audit of Maricopa County’s ballots, I expected to see some unusual things. Post-election audits and recounts are almost always conducted under the authority of local election officials, who have years of knowledge and experience. The idea of a government handing over control of ballots to an outside group, as the state Senate did when hiring a Florida contractor with no elections experience, was bizarre. This firm, Cyber Ninjas, insisted that it would recount and examine all 2.1 million ballots cast in the county in the 2020 general election.

So I figured it would be unconventional. But it was so much worse than that. In more than a decade working on elections, audits and recounts across the country, I’ve never seen one this mismanaged.

[...]

I was stunned to see spinning conveyor wheels, whizzing hundreds of ballots past “counters,” who struggled to mark, on a tally sheet, each voter’s selection for the presidential and Senate races. They had only a few seconds to record what they saw. Occasionally, I saw a counter look up, realize they missed a ballot and then grab the wheel to stop it. This process sets them up to make so many mistakes, I kept thinking. Humans are terrible at tedious, repetitive tasks; we’re especially bad at counting. That’s why, in all the other audits I’ve seen, bipartisan teams follow a tallying method that allows for careful review and inspection of each ballot, followed by a verification process. I’d never seen an audit use contraptions to speed things up.

Speed doesn’t necessarily pose a problem if the audit has a process for catching and correcting mistakes. But it didn’t. Each table had three volunteers tallying the ballots, and their tally sheets were considered “done” as long as two of the three tallies matched, and the third was off by no more than two ballots. The volunteers recounted only if their tally sheets had three or more errors — a threshold they stuck to, no matter how many ballots a stack contained, whether 50 or 100. This allowed for a shocking amount of error. Some table managers told the counters to recount when there were too many errors; other table managers just instructed the counters to fix their “math mistakes.” At no point did anyone track how many ballots they were processing at their station, to ensure that none got added or lost during handling.

I also observed other auditors working on a “forensic paper audit,” flagging ballots as “suspicious” for a variety of reasons. One was presidential selection: If someone thought the voter’s choice looked as though it had been marked by a machine, they flagged it as “anomalous.” Another was “missing security markers.” (It’s virtually impossible for a ballot to be missing its security markers, since voting equipment is designed to reject ballots without them.) The third was paper weight — the forensics tables had scales for weighing ballots, though I never saw anyone use them — and texture. Volunteers scrutinized ballots for, of all things, bamboo fibers. Only later, after the shift, did I learn that this was connected to groundless speculation that fake ballots had been flown in from South Korea.
The 'auditors' were looking for anything 'suspicious'. This could include a folded ballot paper, because, so it was reasoned, people who vote in person wouldn't fold their paper before posting it in a ballot box! Other grounds for suspicion was evidence of having handled food before handling the balot, such as cheese dust (from Cheetos!) because people who vote in person don't eat snacks while waiting to vote!

And so the farce continued. Cyber Ninjas even changing the process and the training of its contractors in mid-audit!

As Jennifer Morrell concluded:
What I saw in Arizona shook me. If the process wraps up and Cyber Ninjas puts together some kind of report, that report will almost certainly claim that there were issues with Maricopa County’s ballots. After all, Cyber Ninjas chief executive Doug Logan has publicly voiced his wild conjecture about the 2020 election. But the real problem is the so-called audit itself.

Audits are supposed to make our elections more secure and transparent — to strengthen the public’s trust in our democratic process. Maricopa County is known for having some of the best election practices in the country: Officials had already undertaken a hand-count audit and a forensic audit of their 2020 ballots and found no evidence of fraud. Now a group with no expertise, improvising procedures as it goes, is sowing doubt about the result of a well-run election. This is not an audit, and I don’t see how this can have a good outcome.
It’s a threat to the overall confidence of democracy, all in pursuit of continuing a narrative that we know to be a lie.

Matt Masterson
Former Department of Homeland Security official
This is a well-financed campaign designed to fool the American electorate into believing what started life as Trump's desperate attempt to deny that he had been decisively rejected for a second term at the polls and that Biden won fair and square in a secure election. Having failed to convince any court, including SCOTUS with its Trumpanzee stooges, that there had been a massive electoral fraud, based on nothing more than Trump's say-so, Trumpanzee cultists in the GOP are now trying to manufacture the evidence that was singular lacking when the courts asked for it.

The only fraud going on here is that being inflicted on the American electorate by an undemocratic, would-be dictator and the extreme right who can't accept that the American people had the great good sense to boot Trump out of office at the first opportunity and to revert America to a properly run, democratic state with a legitimate president and good governance, in place of the White House-based crime syndicate many of whom are now facing jail, despite the blanket pardons for their crimes handed out by the syndicate boss, President-reject, Donald J Trump.

Sunday 31 January 2021

Trumpanzee News - Catholic Priest's False Witnessing for Deranged Donald

Fr John Zuhlsdorf
Priest performed US 'election exorcisms'

Catholic priest and fanatical Trumpanzee, Fr John Zuhlsdorf, who maintains the popular Catholic, "Fr Z" blog, Has no worries about the truth of his claims when it comes to supporting President-reject Trump.

Falsely claiming his bishop had granted him permission to do so, he included the rite of exorcism after his noon Mass the day before the attempted coup d'etat at the Capitol on 6th January.

Having fully signed up to the evidence-free QAnon, pro-Trump conspiracy theory of a stolen election and massive electoral fraud, he claimed his reason for doing so was:

Saturday 9 January 2021

Christian Hypocrisy News - Bearing False Witness for Trump and Violent Insurrection

Evangelist Falsely Claims None of the Capitol Rioters “Were Trump Supporters” | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

Extreme right-wing fundamentalist Christians, who, despite the tax-exempt (non-political) status of their churches have been politically partisan and acted as cheer-leaders for the increasingly deranged President-reject Trump over the past few weeks, are now desperately trying to distance themselves from the attempted coup they helped foment last Wednesday.

Here we see one such hypocrite, Mario Murillo of Eagle Mountain International Church, ignoring a central tenet of his purported faith and bearing false witness to the world. Obviously, Jesus' instruction to not be a hypocrite wasn't meant to be taken seriously by him either. Murillo seems to have self-licensed exemptions from so many tenets of Christianity and instructions from God and Jesus that it's difficult to find any that he feels he should comply with.

Sunday 29 November 2020

President-Reject Trump's Dangerous Legacy

U.S. voters are fearful, angry but hopeful about country post-election | Pew Research Center

President-reject Trump's legacy is to leave almost two-thirds of Americans feeling fearful about the future of the country, as the coronavirus pandemic grips the country like no other, and the narcissistic fool is too proud to admit defeat and allow the handover to President-elect Biden to proceed as smoothly as it should if continuity is to be maintained and Biden is to get to grips with the major problems as quickly as he needs to.

This is the finding of a Pew Research survey published a few days ago.

But the survey also showed how a majority of people now feel more hopeful following Biden's election than felt hopeful during Trump's disastrous stint in office but not in charge, rising to 56% from 42% under Trump.

So we now have the paradox of a majority of Americans still feeling fearful, but more hopeful about the future of the nation.

Friday 11 September 2020

Covidiots - Trumpanzees Don't Want Covid-19 Vaccination

Caption
Seven in 10 Americans willing to get COVID-19 vaccine, survey finds

A survey by researchers, Paul L.Reiter, Michael L.Pennell and Mira L.Katz, from Ohio State University has shown that 69% of Americans "probably" or "definitely" would get the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine when one becomes available, but 17% are "not sure" and 14% are "probably" or "definitely" unwilling to.

The astonishing thing is how this opinion is influenced by politics, or political affiliation. As the Ohio State press release put it:
One of the more unexpected findings in this study – and something that isn’t typical of public health research – is the correlation between political affiliation and willingness to adopt a public health intervention, Reiter said. Respondents who identified as liberal or moderate were significantly more likely to accept a vaccine. “COVID-19 has turned into a political issue in many cases, and I think that some people just pick their side based on that, without much research,” he said. “We’ve seen that with mask wearing. It’s a promising public health intervention, but it’s turned into a political powder keg.”

Sunday 31 May 2020

Covidiots - Minnesota Catholic Church 'Above the Law'

Bernard Hebda
Archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis
Showing Backbone, MN Bishops Defy State

Showing not the slightest sign of contrition or humility, following the bankruptcy of the St. Cloud diocese in Minnesota, because of the $22.5 million payout to the victims of its predatory paedophile priests, the Catholic bishops of Minnesota issued a defiant letter about the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, calling for the ban on assembly in places of worship to be lifted and declaring the church to be above the law.

In defiance of Minnesota governor, Tim Waltz, the letter asserting the "independence of Body of Christ has from secular authority" and announced the resumption of public Masses beginning May 26.

Astonishingly, they felt entitled to announce that they had given their parishioners "permission for the resumption of the public celebration of Mass on Tuesday, May 26, which will give us time to be ready for the celebration of Pentecost on May 31." They feel they have the authority to "give permission" to Catholics to defy the lawful instructions of an elected state governor!

The letter, signed by all six bishops (only one of whose dioces is not now in a state of bankruptcy due to having to pay their share of the $210 million paid to 210 victims of their priests) states that the lockdown order is an order "that defies reason." Presumably, a Catholic bishop knows more about viruses and epidemiology than virologists and epidemiologists.

Monday 15 June 2015

Magna Carta - And Why The Pope Tried To Kill It

On this the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, it's worth spending a few minutes remembering how fortunate we are that the Pope Innocent III didn't succeed in his determination to annul it and put an end to this dangerous idea of equality before the law.

Although it was probably never intended as such, Magna Carta has become one of the most important documents in history, being regarded as the origins of several basic principles now taken for granted:

  • The idea of equality before the law. This establishes the right to a fair trial and the rule of
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