Covidiot News - Loopy Homophobic Rabbi's Paranoid Vaccine Claims

Rabbi Daniel Asor, "Covid-19 vaccine can make you gay"

Popular rabbi warns followers COVID vaccine 'could make you gay' - www.israelhayom.com

A Jewish Rabbi, Daniel Asor, popular in Israel amongst the Orthodox Haredi community, is talking impressionable followers out of having the Covid-19 vaccine, claiming it is part of a plot to turn them gay. He is also promulgating the ludicrously nutty QAnon conspiracy theory that the vaccine is part of a plot to implant microchips in people. A plot that includes the ultra-right-wing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, apparently!

According to this report in Israel Hayom:

In addition to purporting a false link between vaccines and homosexuality, Assur [sic] also advocates various conspiracy theories about the coronavirus, claiming, among other things, that both the virus and the vaccines are the work of a "global malicious government," comprising the Freemasons, the Illuminati, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and others, who are "trying to establish a new world order."

Evangelical Christian Loons Hearing Voices Again - Calling for Trump and Violence

A thin police line confronts pro-Trump insurrectionists outside the Capitol rotunda.
Wednesday 6th January, 2021.

© OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images

Texas Pastor Tells Followers to Stock Supplies, Keep Guns Loaded Before Biden Inauguration

Brandon Burden, pastor at KingdomLife in Frisco, Texas, a member of the Frisco Conservative Coalition and a realtor, spoke in 'tongues' (i.e babbled incoherently) in front of his followers on Sunday then told them it was a 'executive order from the CEO in Heaven', telling them to stockpile supplies and keep a loaded gun ahead of Joe Biden's inauguration next Wednesday.

In a clear incitement to attack and occupy Washington, he told them:

Take down the walls of Jericho. The Lord says your Jericho is Washington, D.C. That's your fortified city.

Christian Fruitloop News - Paranoid Nut Job for Paranoid Trump

Fanatical Trumpanzee preacher of hate, Pastor Greg Locke,
Global Vision Bible Church, Tennessee

Greg Locke Alleges Mitch McConnell Was Controlled by Illuminati Hand Signals During Election Certification | Right Wing Watch

It's often difficult to tell whether American evangelical Christian fundamentalists like Greg Locke are genuinely as nutty as they seem or whether they are simply tapping into the income stream from people who really are nutty enough to follow them and give them tax-exempt money.

The more charitable view would be that surely, they can't really be so deranged and psychotically paranoid as they seem at first sight to be and still be able to live without constant responsible adult supervision. So that leaves cynicism, greed and fraud as the reasons for their bizarre behaviour and assertions. But, whatever the cause, the basic principles of Christianity seem to have been abandoned somewhere along the line. There is no commitment to truth or personal integrity and greed, avarice and relentless self-aggrandizement seem to have taken control.

Unless they really are bordering on the certifiably insane, that is.

Christian Fruitloop News - Locke and Kerr Hear Voices Again

A little bit of good news for President-reject Donald Trump and his embittered Trumpanzees. A couple of fruitloop evangelical Christian's have been talking to God and he has reassured them that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, Trump is still going to win and will continue in office as the worst president in US history.

Pastor Greg Locke, Global Vision Bible Church.

First off we have Greg Locke, Lead Pastor of Global Vision Bible Church.

Hate-Pastor Who Still Thinks Trump Will Win: God Will Dethrone Democrats in 2021 | Beth Stoneburner | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

Locke describes himself on his Twitter page as:

Outspoken Pastor that [sic] is unashamed of the Gospel of Jesus and refuses to bow to the politically correct idols of our culture.

Which basically means he's a fully-signed up Trumpanzee and follower of the pro-Trump disinformation source, QAnon. He inhabits a strange world in which evil spirits are trying to take over America and the deranged, dysfunctional and incompetent serial failure, Donald J. Trump, has been sent by God because he needs his help in fighting these evils spirits!

Hoax Miracle News - Failure of the San Gennaro's Blood Hoax Worries Neapolitan Catholics

Naples Cathedral

Blood of Catholic saint fails to liquefy despite hours of prayer, sparking worries about future

The fake 'miracle of San Gennaro's blood' is an tri-annual hoax perpetrated on the devout Catholics of Naples who attend the rather drab cathedral in a run-down slum area just north of the docks, in May, September and December.

They go to pray and hold a special mass, then witness a priest mutter a few magic spells, give a vial containing a brownish mixture of iron chloride, calcium carbonate and salt, all of which can be found locally, a good shake until it becomes 'liquid', then hold it up for the crowds to see and proclaim the 'miracle' of the liquefaction of what is claimed to be a sample of the blood of a local saint who died about 1700 years ago.

This saint, Saint Januarius or San Gennaro, is believed to protect Naples from earthquakes and the brooding, ever present menace from nearby Vesuvius.

Why the QAnon Conspiracy Failed Trump

5 facts about the QAnon conspiracy theories | Pew Research Center

As conspiracy theories go, the theory the QAnon is a Trump-supporting conspiracy intended to win him a second term by polarising and dividing America, and one in which Donald Trump is actively involved either directly or indirectly through his staff, is one of the few with any merit.

However, as this Pew Research survey from last November, prior to Trump's defeat in the presidential election, shows, it failed to achieve this to the extent needed to ensure a Trump second term. In fact, because Democrats by and large saw through it and saw QAnon for what it was - a right-wing attempt to fool people into supporting Trump - it could well have hardened their determination to remove Trump from office and replace him with someone with more personal integrity and basic honesty.

Covidiot News - The Orthodox Church's Super-Spreader Events

Funeral of Bishop Ioannis of Lagadas, who died from Covid-19 at age 62.

Credit: Sakis Mitrolidis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Greek Orthodox Church Faces Criticism as Virus Hits Its Ranks - The New York Times

Readers of this blog will be familiar with how Eastern Orthodox priests have been instrumental in spreading the coronavirus amongst their followers in much the same way that Catholic Priests and, especially, American fundamentalist Christian pastors have been.

Only a couple of weeks ago I reported how the death from Covid-19 of 82-year-old Metropolitan Bishop Amfilohije Radovic, one of the leading Orthodox Patriarchs campaigning against the measures to contain the virus on the grounds that piety would protect church-goers, was treated as an opportunity for a super-spreader event.

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.

Covidiot News - Why President-Reject Trump is Encouraging National Suicide

Daily new coronavirus cases, USA (27 Nov 2020)
(A new spike is predicted by experts following widespread travel and flouting of the guidelines during the Thanksgiving holiday)

Source: Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center - New Cases

An Extraordinarily Dangerous Moment for Rural America | Psychology Today

An extraordinarily powerful article in Psychology Today explains why people in rural America are being led like lambs to the slaughter by a failing President Trump as his powers decline in the last few weeks of his disastrous presidency.

Professor Floyd "Ski" Chilton, of the University of Arizona, hails from the rural American south and identifies with this 'tribe'. He explains the phenomenon as an expression of the dual thinking process - the slow, deliberate, analytical thought process versus a fast, effortless, unconscious, associative processes:

The early works of Sloman, Stanovich, Evans, and Kahneman proposed a dual process theory of thought. A psychological distinction is made between slow, deliberate “thinking” versus fast, effortless, unconscious, associative processes and emphasizes the dominance of the latter evolutionarily driven, unconscious system in most people and especially in people who feel threatened.

Why Trumpanzees Go along with President-Reject Trump's Delusions

August Landmesser 1936. The lone dissenter from the Nazi cult.

Source: Wikipedia

Compelled to Conform: When Tribal Ties Trump Truth | Psychology Today

An article in Psychology Today, by Noam Shpancer Ph.D., explains very well the current strange phenomenon of dedicated Trumpanzees insisting, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary and the singular lack of evidence for it, that President-reject Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election.

The answer is that cult-think, i.e. the need to belong and conform to the pressure from a group, rather than have the courage to stand up and tell the truth, is the stronger motive for these weak and intellectually dishonest individuals. Conformity has greater value to them than the truth does. They will be admired more for conforming and not spreading doubt and dissent than they will be for defending the truth.

President-Reject Donald Trump - Portrait of a Disordered Narcissist

President-reject Donald Trump, the best narcissist.
"No-one does narcissism better than me!"

Is This How Narcissists Think? | Psychology Today

An article by Mariette Jansen Ph.D., in Psychology Today neatly explains President-reject Donald Trump's bizarre behaviour. It is characteristic of someone with a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).

Although, like his all too obvious learning difficulties, this has never formally been diagnosed. Nevertheless, he has all five classic symptoms of NPD which can be easily observed.

These are:

Covidiots - Why Conservatives Don't Care About the Welfare of Others

Here’s Why Conservatives, Liberals Differ on COVID-19 | Lehigh University

In a thought-provoking paper by Luke Nowlan and Daniel M. Zane of Lehigh University Business School, the different reaction to the coronavirus pandemic seen in conservatives and liberals (particularly in the USA), and especially the measures governments are taking to mitigate the effects of it, they showed how these can be explained by differences in the level of superstitious belief in agency.

As has been noted before in this blog, conservatives and fundamentalist religious creationists in particular tend to suffer from the teleological thinking mode they inherit from their infancy, so tend to see agency in everything. Nothing can happen in their world that doesn't have a sentient mind making it happen. No object can do anything unless it wants to or something else makes it. The same mode of thinking also makes them susceptible to conspiracy theories, of which the Theory of Evolution is believe to be one.

Liberal thinkers however are much more likely to accept that some things happen randomly and without purpose or intent simply because the world is not deterministic, so random things can and do happen.

Still Lying to Win. How Desperate Donny is STILL Trying to Fool Americans

Belief in the truth-value of narratives by candidate preference.

QAnon story gains credence with up to 44% of Americans: News: The Media School

The latest report from Indian University's Observatory on Social Media shows a continuing campaign of lies and disinformation emanating from QAnon, designed to win support for Donald Trump by fooling Americans.

It shows how this tactic is having its greatest success amongst republican voters, who appear to be the most gullible and susceptible to conspiracy theories and unlikely narratives. This bears out the recent article in Psychology Today which explained the psychology behind the making of a Trump voter.

What Makes a Trumpanzee?

5 Psychological Reasons Why the 45th President Remains Popular | Psychology Today

Why would anyone in their right mind even think of voting for Donald Trump again? That question was answered by the psychologist, Vinita Mehta Ph.D., Ed.M., writing in Psychology Today.

There are five things that make a Trumpanzee:

1. Social Dominance Orientation (SDO).

   Readers of my blog-posts may remember we met this term in another Psychology Today article which explained why religious fundamentalists can so easily turn violent and why Creationists feel compelled to over-claim their expertise and insist they know impossible things to be true. Basically, they have a hierarchical view of society and try to elevate themselves up this assumed social hierarchy by pretending to be the superior of educated people, privy to 'secrets' and having a special understanding not available to lesser folk. People who are high in SDO:
   

Christian Loonies for Trump

True to form, Evangelical Christian lunatics are coming out in strength for Donald Trump, that most un-Christian of American presidents.

Here we have a clutch of such fruitloops. The first is one is self-styled "prophetess" Kat Kerr, whom readers of my blog will remember from when she had ordered 100 million angels to guard the GOP National Congress and announced that her personal friend, Jesus, was a Trump supporter.

She has now announced that she can draw God from memory, because she has met him, touched his 'living' hair and has a photographic memory.

Covidiot News - Wackadoodle Conspiracists

Covidiots protesting against lockdown in Harrisburg, PA, USA

Credit:
Paul Weaver

Popular COVID-19 conspiracies linked to vaccine ‘hesitancy’ | University of Cambridge

Researchers from Cambridge University, UK have analysed data obtained from five different countries and have shown how readily misinformation and fake news about the coronavirus can gain traction. The countries are USA, UK, Mexico, Ireland and Spain.

Using this data, they were able to identify a number of 'key predictors' for susceptibility to fake pandemic news. They also found a clear link between susceptibility to fake news about coronavirus and hesitancy about receiving any future vaccine against it.

Creationism News - 120,000 Year-Old Footprint Blunder

Researchers surveying the Alathar lake, situated within an interdunal depression in the western Nefud Desert, Saudi Arabia

© Palaeodeserts Project

Ancient Human Footprints in Saudi Arabia Provide Snapshot of Arabian Ecology 120,000 Years Ago | Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

One of the way in which Creationist frauds explain the precise ordering of fossils in the sedimentary geological column - which they claim was all deposited during the biblical flood, is by the mysterious, magical process of 'hydrological sorting'.

In this magical process, global flood water somehow sorted all the fossils so they just looked like there has been an evolutionary progression even though they had all been created as is during a single week a few thousand years earlier, and before which nothing ever died.

The other way is with the, if anything, even more desperate and preposterous 'explanation', that the precise ordering was achieved by the more advanced animals running to higher ground to avoid the flood. None of them were ever sick, injured or lame in any way that would impede them and make them appear out of place un this advancing silt layer, apparently. How that translates to moving up the geological column and the fact of fossil shellfish being found at the top of mountains is never explained because the dupes never ask, and if they do, they are speedily condemned to Hell as blasphemers and removed from the website on which they asked it.

Covidiots - India's BJP Leaders

Covid-19 cases (18 Sep 2020)

Source: Johns Hopkins University

Sitting in mud with conch shell: BJP leader says tactic will boost immunity against Covid-19 | IndiaToday

India is leading the world in the number of new SARS-CoV-2 infections a day, having overtaken Brazil in early August and USA a few days later. Yesterday, a total of 173,932 new cases were recorded, bringing the total to 5,020,359 with 82,066 deaths since the pandemic began.

India is a deeply religious society, like the USA, so it is not surprising that the population is easily duped by frauds who offer magical cures and preventions, especially when linked to religious nationalism.

Indias equivalent to the magic spells cast by America's Kenneth Copeland, is that of BJP MP Sukhbir Singh Jaunapuria. According to this report in India Today:

Covitiots - How the Far Right Fruitloops Think

Selfish anti-mask protesters harangue a counter-protester for advocating compassion

Insane Anti-Mask Protester’s Defense: “Most Child Molesters Love ‘Em!” | Beth Stoneburner | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

A far-right bunch of paranoid ftuitloop American conspiracy nuts, calling themselves the “Liberty Action Coalition”, put their ignorant, self-centred covidiocy on display in the town of St. George, Utah for all to see the other day, and I am more than happy to help them in this endeavour.

Amongst the more insane reasons for allowing people to die rather than them be be slightly inconvenience, in true white evangelical Christian style, were:

Covidiots - Missouri GOP Fruitloop Candidate

Sandra McDowell, Covidiot Christian fundamentalist and GOP candidate for governorship of Missouri.

Missouri GOP Candidate Rejects “Demonic Ritual” of Wearing Masks During Pandemic | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

Hemant Mehta (if you're not following his Friendly Atheist blog, you should be!) brings us news of a fundamentalist Christian Covidiot GOP candidate from Missouri who is standing for the State governorship and is now campaigning against the wearing of facemasks as an anti-Covid-19 measure on the grounds that they are part of a "demonic ritual"!

She is Sandra McDowell, who actually posted this on her Facebook page and which Facebook have not yet taken down:

I’m not afraid to take a stand!! Are you?? I walked in Walmart tonight without a mask ... and I refuse to wear a mask anywhere I go from NOW ON unless I choose to! That’s my right... as it is yours!! But really.... this is not about masks... masks are just a symbol of deception and oppression. Its compliance training for what’s to come. It’s about control and instilling fear in America. Fear is not of the Lord, but of the enemy. Despair is the absence of faith! This is all part of a demonic ritual to get rid of our individual God-given rights. BLM just said it... it’s a spiritual battle... they are chanting to dead spirits practicing witchcraft. Our bodies... our faces... are created in the image of God. We shall not veil our faces spiritually or practically. 2 Corinthians 3:13-16 Our country was founded on freedom and liberty for all... and God was the author of our nation and that freedom and liberty. Not people! God! Their faith in God!! Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty!! 2 Corinthians 3:17 #takeastand #spiritualbattle #warriorforchrist #unmaskmo #mogov #bibleverse #missouri #moreformissouri — at Walmart O Fallon - Highway K.