Thank you, Fred Clark - nail on head once again

Local News 2: Look at me! I’m a hero! I’m Corrie Ten Boom times William Lloyd Garrison!

Very Interesting! Who knew that Steve Bannon was a conservative Roman Catholic?

This Is How Steve Bannon Sees The Entire World

Go to the end of the article and read the Corrections, then read the article, remembering the corrections - the last one is important, dare I say critical.

You can also just listen to the entire talk and Q & A instead of reading it.

It was a very interesting and informative read. I reposted it on my Facebook feed with the suggestion that people read it. It may help alleviate some people's fears and apocalyptic nightmares (may not!). As I said on my post the morning after the election - the world will not fall apart. However, it will be a little difficult to swallow for some time to come.

As for me, it just further reinforces the problems that I have with all American politics and global western/mid-eastern politics - too much religion. I have no use for "Judeo-Christian values". I have spent a lifetime ripping them apart. I am a "pull the mote out of your own eye first kinda gal".

I am a humanist - there is no God - there is just us.

Therefore, any appeal to "Judeo-Christian values" has no more appeal to me than the appeal to "real Islam - not violent, not jihadist, etc. etc."

It all posits that somehow following "God" or whatever he/she is called, means that you can justify anything that you do in the name of that deity. 

Any ideology - and religion is an ideology - is a problem because it separates us into "small and very large tribes" - how human beings solve that problem will await the future,.

As an endnote:

Who knew that Steve Bannon is a right-wing Roman Catholic (Opus Dei??) - makes sense though. 

John F. Kennedy's election gave us Steve Bannon - nobody worries about what brand of Christian you are anymore.

What it didn't give us was a woman in the White House.

Well, maybe it's progress?????

The Marganilization of Women: (a Huffington Post blog by Christopher Rollston)

Women have been talking about this forever - even here the patriarchy rears its ugly head - there is nothing wrong with what Rollston says - in fact, I agree with him in spades - and as readers of this blog can attest, I would go further (see my article The Personal is Still Political, for example)

However,  my problem is the following: just that how many women have lost or been threatened with the loss of their positions for saying the same thing and less - maybe there is lots of women who have happy endings after challenging the "powers that be" but ..

On the other hand, at least, Rollston didn't have to recant to get another job - that's something, I guess, See Hershel Shanks: First Person: Misogyny in the Bible Biblical Archaeology Review March/April 2017

The academic version of this is Christopher A. Rollston, “Women, the Bible, and the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” in Frances Flannery and Rodney Alan Werline, eds., The Bible in Political Debate (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016).

Yup, it's all making sense again - just had to find the right context

Now I get it - finally!

Trump is just an old fashioned Old Testament prophet

Hellfire and damnation to the elites,

Power to the suffering people,

Make [.....] great again -

Just go back to the old ways,

Everything will be fine,

All will be forgiven

Guess what I was teaching today :-)

And this Steve Bannon talk fits right in: This is How Steve Bannon Sees the Entire World

The political is personal

I have just posted Michelle Obama's speech on the blog.

Really nothing more needs to be said. Yes we do take this personally.

And every man who has a wife, a mother, sister(s), daughter(s) should take this personally.

Because you never know which one of them or any of us will be the next ones. And so often we feel like there is nothing that we can do about it.

Michelle Obama's EPIC Speech On Trump's Sexual Behavior (FULL | HD)

Why? Because it's 2016 & children are not possessions

German court rules circumcision is 'bodily harm'

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18604664

Need I say more?

If female circumcision is illegal, then male circumcision should be illegal.

"The BBC's Stephen Evans in Germany says it is unclear what the next legal step will be, but this issue is a moral and political minefield."