Matthew 10:34-37
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
Discuss.
There was a big auction this past week, and a Da Vinci painting of Christ sold for $450 million. It’s too bad my boy Muhammad forbade his followers from reproducing images of him. Shit, we could be making a fortune selling paintings of Muhammad from the Seventh and Eight Centuries.
Well, he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.
@1 Anyone who can pay $450MM for a picture doesn’t need the tax break that Republicans are about to hand him by taxing the middle class and running our country deeper into debt.
Thomas J. Hudner Jr. died last Monday. Hudner and his wingman, Jesse L. Brown, were flying cover for Marines trapped at Chosin Reservoir when Brown’s plane was hit by ground fire. Too low to bail out, Brown crashed on a snowy hillside. Seeing his injured wingman trapped in burning wreckage, Hudner crash landed his own plane, suffering injuries, then made futile efforts to pull Brown free. Hudner was rescued, and though his impetuous actions were criticized for putting his rescuers in harm’s way, he was awarded the Medal of Honor. Brown, a sharecropper’s son, had fought discrimination to become the Navy’s first black aviator.
2
We don’t know who bought the painting. It may not have been an American buyer. I suppose we will eventually learn the buyer’s identity.
The part Matt left out:
He that loveth country more than a 51 vote majority is not worthy of me; and he that loveth community more than locker room talk is not worthy of me. Get some!
@4 Sure, the buyer could be one of Trump’s Russian gangster friends, or even Putin himself. Or maybe a Saudi princeling or Colombian cartel boss. Lots of people can afford $450,000,000 paintings. At least two dozen. But whoever it was, we can be sure of three things: (1) He didn’t earn this money from honest labor, (2) isn’t drowning in taxes, or (3) using his riches to create jobs, raise wages, or invest in business expansion.
What happens when you run off your immigrant farmworkers.
“KENT, England — Fruit grower Tim Chambers left 150 tons of raspberries, worth just over $1 million, to rot on the bush in June. With too few laborers to pick produce on his farms, he also decided not to plant a good portion of the late-season raspberries that he usually harvests in the fall. He’s not alone. Fruit and vegetable growers across Britain are suffering from a sharp decrease in seasonal workers from other European Union nations who make the harvest possible.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/brexit-referendum/british-fruit-left-rot-looming-brexit-squeezes-seasonal-labor-n820161
The difference between soldiers and civilians toting military rifles, explained.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/i-m-army-veteran-gun-owner-good-guy-gun-theory-ncna821976
The real reason Trump doesn’t pay much taxes is because the Trump Organization is a small business making profits like you’d see from a sandwich shop.
“Donald Trump has an inflated view of his assets. The president’s family business is worth about one-tenth of the value he has claimed, according to an analysis of the latest figures he has filed with the federal government. … Crain’s determined that Trump has been reporting inflated revenue since at least 2010 … ‘the numbers that he presented are just flagrantly untrue,’ Elstein told NPR.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-organization-one-tenth-value_us_5a10ea53e4b045cf4371dfde?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
You fuckers are gonna piss and moan about the 2016 election forever. Give it a rest already!
Realizing they’re working for a small child with a nasty temper and violent mood swings, Trump’s aides only show him polls portraying him favorably, and generally speaking those polls exclude the general public and reflect only what his supporters think of him.
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/11/18/trump-aides-only-show-him-positive-polls-report/23281903/
10,
Butt sore? That happens when you let a shirtless Russian dictator fuck you in the ass.
Give it time. The humiliation will lessen with time. But to prevent this trauma from recurring you should henceforth decline to vote. If you can be conned by Fuckface, you can be conned by anyone.
12
Bitch, bitch, bitch. That’s all you fucking do.
Just shut the fuck up fot a while.
13,
Demanding that random passersby do not take note of your plight will not change the humiliation nor the spectacle of finding yourself in a muddy Russian ditch by the side of the road with your pants around your ankles surrounded by discarded vodka bottles.
Until you have to common sense to pull your pants up, wipe the jizz off your chin, and climb out of that ditch you can’t blame us for pointing, laughing, and mocking you.
You built this all by yourselves.
@13 This is a liberal blog. Try Free Republic. You’ll have friends there.
@1 When human beings are allowed to think for themselves and to create then wonderful things happen. Sometimes odd things. Why this not particularly good painting by DaVinci is worth 2 billion has more to do with only 2 paintings by the man remain in private hands than anything Allah is saying here. If anything Allah should be ripping up the greed of those involved. How it’s a personal affront to him.
Allah doesn’t because Allah knows his precepts have doomed is followers to never enjoy truly harnessing the scientific method, or enjoying the fruits of a Renaissance or the enjoyment of the fruits of knowledge as Allah’s messenger demands surrender to Allah.
This verse has the same intent. We have rejected such and in so doing clearly reject Jesus as God. Of course the book Matthew was written a century or more after his death. Is written more to enhance Matthew’s views, and contains forgeries. This is not CNN or ABC talking to the man on the street or asking the Disciples what Jesus just said to them at this little Commission. Heck the man who wrote the book never talked to any of the disciples and wrote it in Syria.
The very next verse after this tells people to pick up their cross. Excuse me this single verse puts in question the authenticity of the whole as the crucifixion is a long way off, and surely the Son of God should be able to save himself if the given passages are true. Guess the Roman soldiers did not believe much in him. And there are the versus in Acts and a tradition that the Jews hung Jesus. This passage and much of Matthew maybe written to place the blame of who killed Jesus more firmly on the Roman’s. At least these passages give a glimpse as to why the Romans that we owe much to might crucify Jesus. Rather than telling the Jewish rabble to take care of this troublemaker yourselves. .
@10 @13 Also, this is America, not Zimbabwe. We have the right to criticize our leaders and their policies. Elections decide who governs, but don’t end debates. Most people learn that in 7th grade civics class. Were you home schooled?
@16 Scarcity is the mother of all bubbles. It’s really the shits to find out everyone else has a tulip, too.
@2 Until the buyer is revealed your assumption that it’s an American is spacious. It could have been one of Allah’s followers buying it in order to burn it in Chop Chop square in Riyadh. It also could have been bought by or for a museum.
Of course you leave out why a buyer would purchase a paining for this much. The assumption the painting will maintain it’s value in relationship to inflation. Something truly rich people do, which explains why Chinese investor buy luxury apartments in Seattle and never live in them. Same theory. Neither of which has anything to do with taxes or very little as the taxes don’t happen until the new buyer sells the painting. Meanwhile New York does enjoy a boost in sales tax collected when the painting is paid for. New York state may even send the auction house a thank you note, unless it’s a foreign buyer, who gets out of paying the tax., Of course to maintain anonymity they may be willing to pay the sales tax.
@19 Yes, indeed, that’s a spacious assumption — all 3.8 million square miles of it. It’s probably true this purchase has something to do with either (1) taxes, or (2) moving money out of China.
@5 Of course Matthew would not have been particularly thrilled with the Renaissance, the Great Enlightenment, or a Constitution that contains a clear divide between church and state. So Matt can go jack off for all I care. As he ain’t sweat the small stuff you are talking about, though clearly he would put the sword to every American.
@6 Rich people seeking to preserve what they have purchase art, real estate, coins, gold, silver, old cars, old airplanes, antiques, ect. These purchases are made in spite of any tax plans, and are made because money is funny and can become worth nothing. There is also inflation, and in an economy with no good opportunities to make investments exist the rich gotta park their money in something. When treasury bills loose their luster then it’s paintings. So this purchase has little to do with taxes per say, though the buyer should they sell the painting fully intends to make a profit, and pay the appropriate taxes. Meanwhile he take women into his or her boudoir to be mesmerized by the painting, and that can lead to nudity and other things. You get the future King or Queen of England in that situation and then that is $540 million well spent.
15,
It isn’t so much a “liberal blog” as a blog where liberals are freely permitted to bludgeon, mock, humiliate, and heap scorn upon the ignorant mob of hooting, AM hate-radio programmed meat bags currently offering themselves up to the timeless GOP long con.
@8
Zimbabwe?
@9 We got claims that Donald Trump is worth squat. We got claims he doesn’t pay his taxes. Both claims cannot be true. Democrats need to decide on a consistent smear. In any case the man has more money that 90% of Americans will see over a lifetime, even if they are a rabbit in his comfy rabbit hole playing the stock market.
Damn! I wish I’d known that!
@10 That is apparently the plan, Not a good or effective plan, but something worked in Virginia (which may have be a simple return to historic normalcy, historically is has sucked to be a Republican politician in Virginia) and New Jersey where it probably did not matter who ran for the Dems they win was in the bag.
I don’t know what will happen in Alabama, but Ray Moore is running a smart campaign, and can still win. Just the race is no longer in the bag, in part because the Republican establishment hope he would go away, but this is actually good for Moore at the state level. Dems had better hope in this grand spin the bottle, truth or tell that their candidate does not have a similar skeleton in the closet, or it does not come out before election day. The black vote is going to help the Democratic candidate, but this controversy is not going to get those voters to the polls in the numbers needed. Any uptick in black women voting will be undone by a similar down tick in black men voting, and the whole controversy ma be viewed differently in African American communities.
There is rot at the DNC that should be dealt with, and is not. The current financial situation of the party is being obscured perhaps to hide the fact the party is paying bills left over from the last election. Which means resources are not there for Alabama, and that considerable resouces were squandered in heavy support of one congressional race and nearly no support in most of the others. Usually when a party loses to the degree the Democrats have then new leadership replaces the old, but that has not happened. Is not happening. Which means the whining will continue. As the great and all powerful Hiliary Clinton is not President.
And Nancy Pelosi is a dead parrot.
@26 We know what you smoke on the bus, so did the US customs. Wish you had known that Willie? So much for that bucket list item of smoking with Willie.
@12 Only you are the one being fucked. Do you have a brand of knee pads and lubricant to get you to and through the 2018 elections?
@14 You clearly do not understand how dictatorships work. If he is Putin’s bud and they enjoy and he consents then he will be done in Putin’s quarters in Red Square or his Dacha and he will be made the equivalent of a commissar who will then seek you out and leave you in the muddy ditch. Should you wake up surrounded by vodka bottles and a sore ass what will you do, because next time if he does his job more properly you will be dead by a gunshot to the back of your head in the ditch. He will be awarded all your property and possessions. That is how Dictatorships work, followers are awarded, and do the shit work. Dealing with you is the shit work. That is how a dictatorship works. We are not in one.
@15 If a liberal blob that does not mean kow towing to or giving lip service, or giving blow jobs to the Democratic establishment. And anyone can look up the blogs statement and will see it’s not what RR claims. Something about local and state politics in Washington state. I think it even uses the word progressive, but if not Washington is a progressive state, not any more or less liberal than any other US state, all of which are based on liberal ideas of the enlightenment. By default nearly all who participate are liberals, or did you not get the memo after the Soviet Union fell that liberal ideas won the cold war, and we are all liberals? (Yes this shocked some conservative commentators at the time, but even Rush Limbough rejoiced about liberal ideas.)
@20 I will take your admission of money being moved out of China that your original assumption the buyer being an American (or even a person as Corporations can own property) as your original statement had no basis, as it has no merit if the buyer is not a US citizen. (They could be Canadian or Mexican or from Costa Rica and they are also Americans though we don’t state that nearly often enough, which is why we are ugly Americans.)
I know I should celebrate as that is the closest you will come to an admission of being wrong. So HURRAH. I know totally sophomoric, can’t even say it feels great to gloat. Would someone please pass me a piece of apple pie in celebration.
@!8 Not if you are a rabbit, Rabbits love tulips. More tulips means more fat rabbits.
@17 Same to you bud.
The article did not prove your statement. It did not make it untrue either. If things here were like Zimbabwe the articles points would be more true. Still here a group of black panthers peacefully took rifles into California’s state capital. That sort of thing does not happen in a lot of other nations. In fact in many only the military and few citizens own guns. The writer of the article forgot he does his job to defend the constitution and that includes the 2nd amendment. Which is why he can see young men or old men or women with guns on our streets who maybe the good guy with a gun types. They may or may not possess all the skills needed for the situation or all the training, ect. That is not the point. With a gun at least they are on a par with the majority of shooters. Unfortunately he left out the fact that in combat situations a lot of bullets go back and forth and few hit the combatants, and it’s by no means unusual that non combatants are hit. That is the way of modern combat even with all the training the US Army gives our troops. The same is true in a street fight between combatants with guns. A lot of shots will be fired and most will be misses, and unfortunately some will hit others not involved. In fact there will most often no good guy with a gun until the police show up, and in really bad situations the national guard. In either case it’s our good guys with guns dealing with someone with a gun, and we hope for a favorable outcome. Though most police and especially national guard guys would tell you they would prefer to the a good guy with a gun against a bad guy with a knife with a hundred yards or more between.
The writer also left out the fact our military are to fight wars. That we have at least a loose idea the military does not involve itself with fighting crime. The concept of a clear demarcation between the two has always been an issue in America. There were times the Sheriff could do a posse, but service members could not participate in such posses. By and large our military is not there for law enforcement, unless there is a declaration of military law. Zimbabwe needed no such declaration.
These crooked cops ran an extortion racket that framed innocent people and sent them to prison if they didn’t pay up.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/18/.....index.html
@22 “money is funny and can become worth nothing”
You can have any picture I own for $450 million. You can pay in dollars, too.
@24 No, @8 has nothing to do with Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe is the GOP’s idea of good government. We haven’t discussed that yet.
@25 “the man has more money that 90% of Americans”
Sounds about right. I figure he’s worth roughly the same as me. Which is actually quite remarkable, considering he’s gone through three wives and four bankruptcies. He does it by not paying his bills.
@30 “We are not in one.”
True. Trump doesn’t know how to be a dictator. He hasn’t learned the fine art of political murder yet, and probably wouldn’t be very good at it. Maybe that’s why he pals with Putin.
@34 “a group of black panthers peacefully took rifles into California’s state capital”
Why not, since white panthers do that at Texas’s state capital?
https://www.texastribune.org/2015/01/13/gun-advocates-take-and-make-arms-texas-capitol/
@34 “in combat situations a lot of bullets go back and forth and few hit the combatants, and it’s by no means unusual that non combatants are hit”
Statistics for ammunition expenditures in Vietnam vary, but it probably was at least 50,000 rounds for every enemy KIA. In any modern war, civilian casualties far outnumber soldier casualties, partly because modern militaries target civilians who can’t shoot back. War is safer that way.
@9 I wonder if one of the reasons, other than his ego, he inflates his worth is so that he can get banks are more apt to give him loans and loans of greater value. And then we all know what he does after getting the loan – he renegs to pay the loan back and creditors and goes bankrupt. Great business if you banks are that stupid.
If his worth is so mysterious unknown to everyone then how do banks really know what his net worth is. And doesn’t that mean he has to lie…..and we all know this guy doesn’t lie. He’s a Christian man and Christians don’t lie. Nor do they fucking grab pussy. Than man is innocent – not sure why he gets such a bad rap.
@10 you guys pissed and moaned for 8 years and you guys continue to moan, groan and whine……we are only getting started. Go fuck yourself.
@13 not a chance. You would like that but go fuck yourself.
@25 so you don’t agree with the Republican notion that poor people don’t pay taxes then.
Abigail just being sideways again.
The loons are gonna lose their minds…
Mueller demanded discovery of a shit ton of Govt emails from the White House and FBI to see if the firing of Comey was indeed obstruction of justice. (Drip, drip drip)
It started with a small land deal that they lost money on called Whitewater and by he time it was done it was a blowjob and articles of impeachment.
Remember all the other Presidential candidates who had a state Campaign Chair plead guilty to sex trafficking of minors?
Wherein an IBM computer expert argues paper ballots are the only way to go.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/guardian-of-the-vote/544155/
@46 These special prosecutor investigations do have a tendency to acquire a life of their own. And in Trump’s case, Mueller is operating in a target-rich environment. The question is not whether any of Trump’s associates will go to jail, but whether anyone in his entourage WON’T go to jail. Unless, of course, he pardons the entire criminal gang known as “the Trump administration.”
Republicans claim cutting corporate taxes will result in an average wage increase of $4,000 for middle class workers. Democrats suggested an amendment that would reverse the tax cuts if wage went down. Guess how Republicans responded?
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/11/17/1716433/-Dems-prove-not-even-GOP-believe-tax-cut-scam-will-increase-middle-class-income-at-hearing?detail=emaildkre
Roger Rabbit Commentary: That’s right, all you get in return for buying their flimflam is an unenforceable promise. Who would sign a deal like that? Um, that’s right, blue collar dolts who abandoned the party that fought for workers for 100 years and now vote for Guns and Bibles.
Kicked In The Balls Dep’t
Trump makes snide remark about New Zealand’s Labour Party prime minister. PM replies, “No one marched over my election.”
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/11/17/1716510/-New-Zealand-s-prime-minister-shuts-Trump-down-with-a-joke-about-popularity?detail=emaildkre
A rightwing narrative is emerging on what caused the Keystone XL pipeline leak that spilled 5,000 barrels of oil in South Dakota last week: Sabotage (by environmental terrorists, no doubt).
Manson is dead. Now he can be Hitler’s bitch in a warm place.
@ RR @ 53:
The parent post is exactly the theme that Manson was using on his followers to convince them to go along with him. He specialized in targeting the disaffected Christian kids who had come out of abusive and neglectful homes and had run away to find something better. He had a knack for finding young girls who were just stepping off the bus or wandering around the hippie communities in Los Angeles and San Francisco, who had left their religious-crazy parents in search of enlightenment and safety.
He was the son of a hooker and unknown father who spent his childhood watching his mother fuck half a dozen different men a day to feed him.
In other, rather unsurprising news, Fat Donny has been a KGB/GRU asset since at least the late 1980s. They have real dirt on him, I’ll bet plenty of Felonious dirt. The kind that gets people slammed into a Federal Prison cell for their entire lifetimes, and the GOP has always known this. They allowed him to run because their entire economic program is about re-creating the slave state economy and the wealthiest 1% of the population cannot stand the idea that they have to pay people to work for them.
All they needed to do is make sure he was wined, dined, constantly complimented, praised and well rewarded for his efforts on their behalf with plenty of young hotties to fuck.
No wonder the Hillbillies are so easily triggered.
This sort of now routine episode must be utterly humiliating for them.
Still, it isn’t as if they weren’t warned. Repeatedly. Loudly. For years. By people who were much smarter and better educated than them. Still, they ignored it all, peeled off their shirts, flipped their hats around backwards, and just screamed about Meskins until their ears bled.
“..people who were much smarter and better educated than them.”
Yeah, continue to refer to those people in that manner and see how well they will vote for the candidates you want.
It’s the elitist attitude of liberal progressive Democrats that every one hates. The “basket of deplorables” won’t vote for those who are a bunch of snobbish “…affluent, elite, healthy, and highly educated coastal progressives.”
How can someone who presents himself as “highly educated” be so fucking dumb?
“The “basket of deplorables” won’t vote for those who are a bunch of snobbish “…affluent, elite, healthy, and highly educated coastal progressives.””
Damn, you really are one stupid motherfucker. The “deplorables”, since you haven’t noticed, are a bunch of fascists, white supremacists, Klan, Nazis and dumbfucks like you.
@55 The problem here is anyone who visited Moscow or Russia in the eighties would have been checked out by the KGB and GRU. Even if they went as a tourist. There would have been a lot of those dinners and other attempts to recruit. Most of these attempts would have been dry holes, and nothing in the article says anything other than there is likely a file and some attempt was made. Well duh.
Of course it doesn’t ask the question as to how much effort the KGB or GRU would have put into turning a developer with little or no access to the information they would have wanted. A man more interested in making money, and already making more money than the Russian’s would have been willing to pay,
The article is just a smear job. Trump is no more likely or unlikely than the thousands of American’s who went to Russia as tourists in the 80’s.
For American’s working in the state department, or over there in some kind of government capacity it made for some really long debriefs. Perhaps some opportunities. Hmm so why not make it interesting and say Trump was an CIA asset that went to Russia to give the KGB false information. Did they fall for it?
@46 So Mueller is fishing. He’s on a fishing trip, and has little or nothing. The White House either goes along, or plays the executive privilege card. The pardon card will be kept unused as long as possible if used at all. Mueller has to get someone to justify the investigation, So a couple of sacrificial lambs go to jail over unrelated charges, and the investigation peters out, and Mueller gives up.
I think the Senate investigation into the President’s nuclear powers interesting. Is Trump really going to use nukes on Switzerland?
If they think that then there is a need for a discussion, and well it’s time. Only we aren’t talking about Trump using nuclear weapons in on a neutral nation. We are talking about him using nukes on North Korea, something he can do under what was passed by the US Congress authorizing Harry Truman and Eisenhower to make war there, and included the ability to use atomic weapons. That has not changed, Unless congress is going to change that Trump and any other President can use nukes on North Korea unilaterally, and it’s completely legal. Such use as long as we are technically at war with North Korea cannot be illegal. There is also the point the White House can by pass commands and go directly to one or more carrier commanders, or a sub off the coast and give the order. They could also give the order to the Commander at Guam. It’s not likely we are going to use our ICBM’s on North Korea.
In other news we are rapidly approaching a point where only monks who have been in the convent for decades can run for office if they are a man. If you are even thinking of running for office and you are a guy don’t touch women they have cuties.
@45 Not at all, but they are consistent in the lie and smear. They do not turn around and say that poor people make plenty of money and should definitely be paying more tax on their income. They make only one consistent claim. Democrats then have to justify taxing the poor, and take the blame for what taxes the poor do pay, And the poor here in Washington state pay more than in other placed due to our regressive tax scheme. Yet there is little to no chance at this time poor people in Washington state would vote for a change in the Washington State constitution to have an income tax here, Of course Republican’s would claim that is class warfare, another exaggeration, but at least they are consistent in the claim, and therefore more effective.
@54 Manson is an interesting case history. He was a criminal who grew up in institutions. If anything his history is a testament to the problems that were present and continue to be present in our prison system, and juvenile services. He learned manipulation from a pimp in prison, and went out and was a great salesman. The odd disconnect is that Manson never actually killed anyone, just he got others to do it. Does not make him Hitler or even a NAZI. He was a bad dude and a great salesman. Of course we place all the blame on the monster rather than look at our society. Which contributed to the creation of the monster, and who helped him, or went out to do murders in his name. He makes us uncomfortable, because we don’t want to look in the deep recesses of our minds or in the mirror, and acknowledge societies failures here. So now the wicked witch is dead, and Alice and her dog Toto can meet the Tin Man on their way to Rivendell.
57, 58,
Boo Hoo Hillbilly!
Your endless pleadings for Democrats to accommodate your racism, intolerance, fear, misogyny, and ignorance are rendered useless.
Wanna know what did it? Can you guess?
Yup. That’s right. It was the treason.
So long as you were really only fucking over mostly yourselves, but also racial, ethnic, gender, and religious minorities and women, we were content to plod along patiently pushing back against your backward ways, confident in the march of progress and perhaps a bit too willing to accept the obstructions. That’s on us. So it’s no wonder you grew to feel entitled to it.
But then you guys went and joined forces with a Communist Dictator. That really blows. And we aren’t tolerant at all when it comes to betraying the United States and imperiling out nation’s future security and prosperity. And as if that weren’t bad enough, you had to go and manifest your treason in the person of an uncouth, balding, dick-pill gobbling, fake billionaire, reality television con man with all the refinement of an NHL goon. It’s not as if Newt Gingrich wasn’t available.
So we’re done with you. And honestly, we really don’t give one single fuck who you vote for from now on. You betrayed America. It’s on.
Anyone else notice that @ 65 works as well with Boo Hoo #CrookedHillary as it does with Boo Hoo Hillbilly?
66,
Nope. Not so far.
That might have something to do with us Democrats being:
a) proud of our political party, while acknowledging occasional gaffs;
b) very, very proud of our most recently elected President;
c) absolutely and 100% uninterested in pleading for kind regards from stupid, ignorant, beer drunk, racist, gun-hugging, intolerant, aggrieved, poorly educated, low-income, Oxy-crushing, arm-fishing hillbilly traitors;
d)not traitors.