Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day. This thread is for 'smaller' stories that don't call for their own thread. If a story blows up, please start a new thread for it.
Start sharpening your shivgees 
Alexandria Occasio-Cortez or Katie Porter for president!
Or Senate at a minimum. They're both national treasures. So are many others, but those two have especially been consistently outstanding.
Porter announced her run for Feinstein's Senate seat about a month ago (and Adam Schiff did the same a few weeks ago).
It looks like the Catonsville neo nazi was also arrested in 2016 for robbing a string of gas stations and convenience stores with a machete. Too bad some store owner didn't put her down then.
edit: Holy sh*t. I have seen her before.
AOC has another 2 years to go before she can run for president.
Her grandmother - great-grandmother? Might have worked with my mother...
Would that make her AOA?
Some of our most devoted culture warriors are having a full-blown Satanic-panic freakout over Sam Smith wearing a hat he got from a post-Halloween sale at Party City at the Grammy's last night.
Gonna be a lot of Jesus in this year's Super Bowl ads.
What's the big deal? It's part of a well-funded campaign that is just getting started.
The advertisements are part of an effort to shift away from a negative public perception of Christians, and towards Jesus, says Bob Smietana, national reporter for Religion News Service, in an interview with NPR.
Smietana says that the campaign is attempting to appeal to groups that may have felt excluded or repelled by the church in recent years, like members of the LGBTQ community, different races and ethnicities, those who lean more liberal politically, or people who have kept up with scandals of abuse.
The group behind the campaign has also purchased an advertisement slot for this Sunday's Super Bowl, one of the most expensive brand platforms out there. The estimated costs for those ads will run around $20 million.
In an interview with Christianity Today, the branding firm for the campaign said the plan included investing $1 billion over the next three years, a budget comparable to that of a major brand.
I am no ad executive, but perhaps there are more meaningful, tangible ways to spend $1B to improve their/Jesus' image?
A cynic would say that blowing that much on this ad campaign is emblematic of their approach to their faith, not actually living out the word but just loudly trying to convince others how great it is without putting in The Work, but I am not a cynic.
Anyway, here's an interview with a reporter for Religion News Service about the campaign.
DETROW: Who's behind this - this campaign?
SMIETANA: One of the main funders is the Green family, which are the folks behind Hobby Lobby. But there's a whole bunch of evangelical folks who've kind of joined them. There's a group called The Signatry, which is a kind of - it's basically a foundation that collects money. But they've tried to be pretty discreet about who's funding it. In part, I think they don't want to turn people off or get people focused on them. They really want to keep people focused on Jesus.
Well, speaking for myself, open-ness and transparency aren't really what I'm looking for in my faith. The more opaque campaigns funded by dark money billionaires unwilling to show their face in public, the better!
The ending of the interview really gets down to the reason why this campaign is probably gonna be wasted money though:
DETROW: I mean, we live in a world where every single personal choice you make gets grafted onto the political spectrum, and people use it to make inferences about where you are politically. It's interesting that the basic boiled-down aspects of the New Testament - loving your neighbor, helping out people who need help, you know, lending a hand to a stranger - can be something that's turned controversial and also viewed on that spectrum.
SMIETANA: Yes. These are interesting things that people think, the helping your neighbor or being loving could be suspect. But I think it goes back to the problem that American evangelicals in particular face is that their political ambitions and their deeply held religious beliefs and ethical beliefs are in conflict right now. So the things that will help them win politically will alienate people. So I heard a - recently I was doing reporting on another story. I heard a megachurch pastor. The first half the sermon was how terrible the liberals are. They're going to destroy your life, the first half. And then the second half was about their big evangelism campaign. And I thought, well, you have just told anyone who's not in your church that you don't like them.
DETROW: Yeah.
SMIETANA: And you hate them. They have already heard that. So they might hear your Jesus message. They are not going to be real receptive. If you tell people you hate them, they listen, and they leave, and they don't come back. And the ad campaign may not solve that.
Anyway, here's an interview with a reporter for Religion News Service about the campaign.
DETROW: Who's behind this - this campaign?
SMIETANA: One of the main funders is the Green family, which are the folks behind Hobby Lobby. But there's a whole bunch of evangelical folks who've kind of joined them. There's a group called The Signatry, which is a kind of - it's basically a foundation that collects money. But they've tried to be pretty discreet about who's funding it. In part, I think they don't want to turn people off or get people focused on them. They really want to keep people focused on Jesus.
Well, speaking for myself, open-ness and transparency aren't really what I'm looking for in my faith. The more opaque campaigns funded by dark money billionaires unwilling to show their face in public, the better!
Chrissy Stropp over at Religion Dispatches has more deets about the folks behind the ad campaign.
The “He Gets Us” campaign is a project of the Servant Christian Foundation, which Christianity Today describes as “a nonprofit backed by a Christian donor-advised fund called The Signatry.” Both the Servant Foundation and the Signatry, its financial arm, are headed by Steve French—and that’s all we know about who exactly is behind the campaign. Donor-advised funds, which don’t have to disclose the identities of the donors providing the funding for the projects they support, are often used by the Christian Right to minimize transparency. As CT reports, the “He Gets Us” ad spots were produced by Bill McKendry, whose portfolio includes campaigns for notorious Christian Right organizations like Focus on the Family and Alliance Defending Freedom....
So, what do the folks behind “He Gets Us” want from the people they reach? There are a couple of ways to get at the answer to that question. Along with considering Bill McKendry’s record mentioned above, one is to take a look at the 990 forms the Signatry has filed with the IRS. 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations, which include churches and charities, are tax exempt. But in order to maintain that status, they’re required to make annual financial filings that are matters of public record.
Thanks to that requirement, we can use 990 forms to find out what sort of organizations receive particularly large donations via the Signatry. And wasn’t it… who was that again? Oh yes, it was Jesus who reputedly said, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” and in that instance, at least, he had a point.
According to the Signatry’s 2020 form, the most recent available, in 2019 the organization directed over $19 million of funding to Alliance Defending Freedom, an SPLC-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group and the organization that wrote the model legislation on which Mississippi’s draconian new abortion ban was based. Nearly $8 million went to Answers in Genesis, the fundamentalist ministry behind the Creation Museum. Over $1 million is designated for Campus Crusade for Christ (rebranded as “Cru” since 2011). $374,800 went to Al Hayat Ministries, an organization that seeks to “respectfully yet fearlessly unveil the deception of Islam,” and that runs an Arabic-language Christian satellite TV station with the goal of converting Muslims to Christianity.
Part of me thinks 'well it's their money to blow' and then other thoughts hit
'ugh, all that money swindled from rubes'
'probably a good chunk stolen from the CARES act'
'at least its leaving their pockets'
'but its just going to ad agencies and tv networks and the NFL'
ugh
All that and they put a mountain lion in charge.
Yeah f*ck feeding the poor. Gotta get some Christian PR out there
The whole business smelled awfully Trojan Horsey from the jump.
And a lot of the messages they should be telling themselves. "Jesus was an immigrant"
Well...?
They are all about submission so that they can control. "He gets us." is thinly veiled "give up your independence."
And a lot of the messages they should be telling themselves. "Jesus was an immigrant"
Well...?They are all about submission so that they can control. "He gets us." is thinly veiled "give up your independence."
There is no use running. He gets us all in the end.
More George Santos news.
House Ethics investigation of Santa
So will this be a farce of, "we looked and found nothing wrong. All good here!" or will Santa resign to avoid the breadth and depth of his deceit beng laid bare and potentially being kicked out. Even if they continue to find dirt on this dude, I think they'll just censure him or some other meaningless theater so they can keep the seat.
and no that's not a spelling error- I've started calling him Santa because the dude is just all made up.
New York Rep. George Santos is now facing an investigation from the House Ethics Committee, a probe that could derail his already imperiled political career depending on the secretive panel’s findings.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy confirmed to CNN on Tuesday that the embattled freshman is under investigation by the committee, something that even Republicans acknowledge could lead to his expulsion from Congress if the panel turns up serious evidence of wrongdoing.
The toothless House Ethics Committee is not going to do sh*t. The Republicans cut its balls off on purpose.
I've seen a couple Tweets from different reporters saying that McCarthy's office has 'clarified' his original statement and that Santos *isn't* under investigation, only that a complaint has been filed against him.
Another reporter noted that the House Ethics Committee hasn't even met yet so it'd be really hard for them to have already put someone under investigation.
Some of our most devoted culture warriors are having a full-blown Satanic-panic freakout over Sam Smith wearing a hat he got from a post-Halloween sale at Party City at the Grammy's last night.
Ben's English teachers despised him. Like, utterly despised him.
He's a jooker, he's a smooker, he's a midnight tooker.
FWIW, I used to be a "Trump's not done until he's done" person, but I'm starting to increasingly believe that these are his political death throes. He's losing more and more of the donor class, and De Santis can offer a lot of the same stuff without the incompetence.
Is he saying "That's wrong!" or is he saying "That's wrong?"
LOL, the pearl-clutching.
Yes, now the unsubstantiated smears of pedophilia are beyond the pale.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, once a White House press secretary for President Donald Trump, is set to return to the national stage when she delivers the GOP response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.
Per prepared remarks, Sarah Huckabee Sanders will say in her SOTU response: "We are under attack in a left-wing culture war we didn’t start and never wanted to fight.
"Every day, we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags and worship their false idols."Full excerpt:
"Every day, we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols…all while big government colludes with Big Tech to strip away the most American thing there is—your freedom of speech."
How do you spell "projection" again?
Something tells me someone's going to do something extra disruptive tonight that'll get Secret Service involved.
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