Herschel Walker Knows Who Has Multiple Personalities, It Is Jesus
Theology time.
Let's be clear: This blog post is not for any kind of ableist commentary about mental health, or multiple personality disorder — or, more properly, dissociative identity disorder.
It is about how Herschel Walker is the literal actual GOP nominee for the US Senate seat in Georgia, the man handpicked by Donald Trump out of, um, Texas, to come and take back that seat from Raphael Warnock, who doesn't say things like this:
\u201cIn an old interview, Herschel Walker explains why he didn\u2019t think his Multiple Personality Disorder is a mental illness: \u201cDo our Lord Jesus Christ have a mental illness because he said he\u2019s the father, the son and the Holy Spirit? To me, those are 3 different personalities.\u201d\u201d— Ron Filipkowski \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udde6 (@Ron Filipkowski \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udde6) 1655852843
WALKER: Do our lord Jesus Christ have a mental illness, because he said he's the father, the son and the holy spirit? To me those are three different personalities. We're not so much different than he is!
OK. So. Speak for yourself, sir, first of all.
Walker has said for years that he deals with having multiple personalities. And so he asks, "Do our lord Jesus Christ have a mental illness?" Since Walker is running against the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, it occurs to us they could do a theological debate about this, instead of a policy debate, because we really don't think in our heart of hearts that Herschel Walker has policy beliefs. After all, he recently suggested, after the Uvalde massacre, that we could help solve mass shootings with a "department that can look at young men that's looking at women that's looking at social media." Not sure which of the Holy Trinity's multiple personalities inspired that idea. "Cain killed Abel, and that's a problem we have," said Walker at the time, again revealing his extensive trove of Bible knowledge.
Needless to say, the divine mystery of the trinity in Christian theology is not an example of dissociative identity disorder. So no, that is not a way Herschel Walker is like Jesus.
Also, to our knowledge, the Christ did not lie about the size of his chicken empire or lie about having a career in law enforcement or lie about his education or father secret children and/or just consistently forget to mention three out of four of his offspring. (While acknowledging the one who is just an honestly terrible young man, best wishes from Wonkette!)
Also, we feel like if conservative evangelical Christians actually loved Jesus — and let's be clear, that's not what the fuck they're about these days and it really never has been — then they might feel like their savior is being insulted when this charlatan loser accuses him of having multiple personalities.
Again, our point here is that this is the actual GOP nominee for a United States Senate seat in Georgia, because that's how far gone the GOP is. Whatever is going on with Walker, we cannot imagine him serving constituents in Georgia well, and it's obvious to literally anyone that Trump only picked him out because Trump and the Republican Party writ large think so little of Black voters that they believe they'll vote for any Black celebrity just because they're Black. (Remember how enthusiastically MAGA types supported Kanye's independent run for the presidency, even as that guy appeared to be in the throes of a mental breakdown? Yeah.)
Of course, for white evangelicals and Trump, it helps that Walker likes to confirm their biases for them:
\u201cDon't take our FREEDOM for granted.\nAMERICA is under attack by BLM.\nBLM are marxist who want to destroy America ..in the disguise they care about black people & social justice. But really to breakdown the Law & Order of this Country.\nHave you thought of America with no Freedom?\u201d— Herschel Walker (@Herschel Walker) 1600639985
Georgia, for the love of Christ — father, son and holy spirit — please vote in November.
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Everything's On Fire, But Did You Notice That SCOTUS Just Burned Down The Separation Of Church And State?
Cool country we got here.
"What a difference five years makes," writes Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a bitter dissent released this morning, as the conservative justices take advantage of another day without decisions on guns and abortion to dump a raft of godawful holdings that fundamentally alter Americans' lives for the worse. But today's ruling in Carson v. Makin is another strike of the wrecking ball against the wall between church and state, and we're not looking away from it.
The case concerns education subsidies in Maine, the most rural state in the country, where more than half of all school districts lack a secondary public school. Leave aside for the moment the sin and shame of a rich, developed nation which theoretically enshrines the right to a free, public education in federal law but where wide swathes of the country fail to run schools at all. Maine offered a subsidy to parents living in districts with no public education to use at private schools, but barred them from using the money at religious schools.
Up until this morning, this made sense under the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, which reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." For a long time, we all understood this to mean that the Constitution protected the government's right, not to say its obligation, not to subsidize religious activity. But thanks to the AHEM unfortunate events of 2016, the Court has fallen under the control of theocrats who have flipped this formulation on its head. Now, any government benefit must be extended to religious organizations — i.e. the government must "establish" religion — and any refusal to do so is presumptively an encroachment on the "free exercise thereof."
"The State pays tuition for certain students at private schools — so long as the schools are not religious," writes Chief Justice John Roberts in doe-eyed wonder that anyone would accuse him of abandoning 50 years of precedent. "That is discrimination against religion. A State’s antiestablishment interest does not justify enactments that exclude some members of the community from an otherwise generally available public benefit because of their religious exercise."
Welcome to America where "sincerely held religious beliefs," no matter how bigoted, trump everyone else's right to marry, adopt, control our own bodies, or direct our own taxpayer dollars. Let's take a wild shot in the dark that if a liberal synagogue tried to open a women's healthcare clinic which provided abortions, the Court would take a different position if the state refused to subsidize it.
The decision is a broadside against the separation of church and state, of course, but it's also part of a concerted attack on public education itself and its role in crafting a body politic of Americans able to function in a civil democracy. Because, in case you didn't notice, Republicans are waging an all-out attack on public education in this country.
Writing for the Court's liberals, Justice Stephen Breyer dissents:
What happens once “may” becomes “must”? Does that transformation mean that a school district that pays for public schools must pay equivalent funds to parents who wish to send their children to religious schools? Does it mean that school districts that give vouchers for use at charter schools must pay equivalent funds to parents who wish to give their children a religious education? What other social benefits are there the State’s provision of which means — under the majority’s interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause — that the State must pay parents for the religious equivalent of the secular benefit provided? The concept of “play in the joints” means that courts need not, and should not, answer with “must” these questions that can more appropriately be answered with “may.”
Justice Breyer's dissent refers multiple time to "play in the joints" between the first and second parts of the Establishment Clause, the balance between the ban on government "establishment" and the individual's right of "free exercise." But in many ways, it reads as a paean to a bygone era where judicial ambiguity allowed states to craft individualized solutions to meet the needs of their own citizens. But to hold this era of judicial restraint up as a model, you have to pretend that we still live in a country with majority rule. And we do not.
This is a country which routinely puts a man in the White House who lost the popular vote. Where Democrats need a titanic wave to overcome the small-state advantage in the Senate and massive gerrymandering in the House. Where state legislators pick their voters, and not the other way around. Where wide majorities of Americans support abortion rights and gun control, but cannot enact laws to protect themselves. And where our nation's highest court is stacked with appointees of presidents who could not garner the support of a majority of citizens and consistently gives us laws we do not want.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor suffers from no such lack of clarity in her own dissent, noting that the Court's 2017 holding in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer, in which the Court held that state funds for playground resurfacing had to be extended to religious schools, was the camel's nose under the tent.
"[T]he Court for many decades understood the Establishment Clause to prohibit government from funding religious exercise. Trinity Lutheran veered sharply away from that understanding," she writes, noting that the majority waves off the obvious difference between government funding for playground rehab and the state satisfying its obligation to educate children by subsidizing religious indoctrination.
"The 'unremarkable' principles applied in Trinity Lutheran and [its 2020 successor] Espinoza suffice to resolve this case," shrugs the Chief Justice blithely.
"This Court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build," Justice Sotomayor laments, concluding:
What a difference five years makes. In 2017, I feared that the Court was “lead[ing] us . . . to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment.” Trinity Lutheran, 582 U. S., at ___ (dissenting opinion) (slip op., at 27). Today, the Court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation. If a State cannot offer subsidies to its citizens without being required to fund religious exercise, any State that values its historic antiestablishment interests more than this Court does will have to curtail the support it offers to its citizens. With growing concern for where this Court will lead us next, I respectfully dissent.
With growing concern for where this Court will lead us next, your Wonkette agrees.
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Shockingly, Franklin Graham Not Best Guy To Come To About Domestic Violence!
Who would have thought?
Franklin Graham, son of the late Billy, is a bit of an asshole. For decades, he has encouragedhatred of LGBTQ people and Muslims (and further insisted Barack Obama was a secret Muslim because his father, an atheist, had given him "the seed of Islam"), repeatedly cozied up to Vladmir Putin (largely because of how terrible he is to LGBTQ people), and generally been the worst. He's suggested that those who criticize Donald Trump are demonically possessed.
Thus, it's hardly surprising that the Washington Post is reporting today that when a victim of domestic violence came to Franklin Graham for advice, his response (which he stands by) was to accuse her of cheating on her abuser and then pressure her to get back together with him.
It all began when Naghmeh Panahi started advocating for her husband/abuser Saeed Abedini, a Christian Pastor, to be released from prison and contacted Graham for his help. He had previously been severely abusive and had even pleaded guilty to domestic battery in 2007 after assaulting Panahi while she was pregnant — but although she was scared of him, she still didn't think it was acceptable that he was sentenced to an Iranian prison for eight years for "allegedly compromising Iran’s national security by leading illegal house churches."
Her then-imprisoned husband, Saeed Abedini, had abused her physically and emotionally for most of their 13-year marriage, she said, and when Graham first heard, he called her in November 2015.
“Naghmeh, are you cheating on him?” he asked. Panahi replied strongly that she was not.
Graham, son of the evangelical titan Billy Graham,confirmed in a phone interview with The Post that he asked the question, saying he suspected an affair because Panahi had been advocating so fervently for her husband’s release only to “go cold on him.”
“It was a good question to ask,” Graham said, “and I would have asked it again.”
Narrator: It was not a good question.
In hopes of getting Panahi to reconcile with her husband, Graham also tried to convince her that she had not really been abused, because what happened between them did not jive with his very After School Special idea of what an "abusive husband" is like.
According to the recording, Graham said the marriagecould “be fixed easily,” and he seemed to dismiss the severity of her abuse. “I’m not here to defend him calling you bad names, yelling at you, whatever,” he said.
“Beating me,” Panahi interjected.
Graham told her that abuse is a “gray area,” that an abusive husband was someone who “comes home and he takes a six-pack of beer and he jumps off the chair because the kids are making noise and beats his wife and beats the kids and that’s something that goes on almost every day.”
And that was not her situation, Graham told her, because he felt an abusive husband was someone who “stomped” on his wife every night.
“I was beaten,” she replied.
But hey, it wasn't every night, and there probably weren't even any six-packs involved, so it's hard to say if she was really abused. Hell, he probably wasn't even wearing a white ribbed tank-top when he assaulted her.
None of this is especially uncommon in churches. Just last month a 400-page report on sexual abuse cover-up in the Southern Baptist Convention came out, detailing (among other things) the ways victims of this abuse were ignored and the way abusers were able to go from church to church without anyone finding out about their past history or problems with molesting children. And we all know about the Catholic Church, The Church of Latter Day Saints, the Amish, the Church of Scientology, the Jehovah's Witnesses ... and probably a thousand other different churches out there. This is not a dig at religion, but rather an acknowledgement that organizations, particularly especially patriarchal organizations, do not, as a rule, tend to be great about handling abuse. Especially when they are led by hateful patriarchal misogynists like Franklin Graham.
Graham, by the way, will be going on his "God Loves You" tour this fall, so you'll want to be sure to miss that.
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Lauren Boebert Cites Noted Gunhumper 'Jesus,' That Guy Always All Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew!
This is not about those sexxxy sexxx allegations, sorry :(
Editrix's note: We're aware of all things on the internet and are not writing about the sexxxy sexxx allegations at this time as "we heard it from somebody trust us" doesn't meet our exquisitely high journalistic standards of blogginess. Please enjoy this absolute idiocy in its stead.
On Saturday, Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert was a guest speaker at Charis Christian Center's "Family Camp Meeting 2022," held from June 8-12, and used said platform to bastardize her own religion. Boebert, despite whatever her religion says about false idols, has a co-equal deity: Guns. More specifically, in this instance, the AR-15 that has been used in mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, Buffalo, New York, and many more.
Lauren Boebert: Bad at paying taxes, bad at paying employees, bad at cooking food, bad at Bible!
In this section of her speech, she spoke about "cancel culture" (removing all meaning from that phrase) and how AR-15s can't be blamed for mass shootings:
\u201cLauren Boebert implied that because Cain didn\u2019t kill Abel with an AR-15, guns can\u2019t be blamed for mass shootings.\u201d— PatriotTakes \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 (@PatriotTakes \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8) 1655246382
This isn't the first time Boebert tried to explain Bible heroes getting "cancelled," but it is the first time to our knowledge that she combined it with her gun fetish. This logic falls apart fast when you remember Cain used a rock to kill just ONE person, not a group of them. The ability of an AR-15 to shoot multiple bullets (or "rocks" if it makes Boebert and Cain more comfortable) in quick succession is what makes it more deadly and this analogy idiotic. If you wanted to kill multiple people at the time the Second Amendment was written, you either needed as many shooters as possible or victims who refused to move out of the way, since it took an average of 20-30 seconds per shot as the 18th century muzzleloader required 12 steps to load and fire. That's just one of the reasons — "well-regulated militia" being another — why every argument regarding "the Founding Fathers' intentions" since District of Columbia v. Hellerhas been a bad faith misreading of the history and context of it.
But Boebert saved the best for last when she used Homer Simpson's logic to argue why Jesus could have used an AR-15.
\u201cLauren Boebert claims Jesus \u201cdidn\u2019t have enough [AR-15s] to keep his government from killing him.\u201d\u201d— PatriotTakes \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 (@PatriotTakes \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8) 1655248326
Let's ask Jesus. We happen to have Jesus right here!
But Jesus said to him, “Friend, why have you come?” Then they came and laid hands on Jesus and took Him. And suddenly, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword, struck the servant of the high priest, and cut off his ear. But Jesus said to him, “Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.Or do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will provide Me with more than twelve legions of angels? How then could the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must happen thus?” -
Matthew 26: 50-54 (New King James Version)
Kinda hard to argue that twelve legions of angels would not be more effective than an AR-15, then and now, had Jesus not freely chosen to be sacrificed ("lamb of God," Lauren Boebert) to wash the sin from all of humanity (his thing, not ours).
Lauren Boebert is a terrible Christian, you are very surprised by this, the end.
