December 27, 2023

Adam Kinzinger says Christians who support Trump don't understand their own faith.

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/12/adam-kinzinger-gets-this-right.html

The old saying, "even a broken clock is right twice a day," is a good description of how I feel about Republican politics, and politicians. The attraction between Republican politics and Evangelical doctrine and practice is easy enough to see. Both are systems in which promote a privileged class of people benefitting from the power that comes from the collective group and its resources.

Adam Kinzinger grew up in an Evangelical church, Baptist by denominational affiliation, and is currently involved in a conservative, non-denominational Evangelical church, which explains his affinity to Republicanism. However, there are places in Kinzinger's more moderate practice of Republicanism that indicate the effect of a more Biblical, less politically-oriented practice of Christian faith, in his case, than that which is visible in the heretical form of Evangelicalism, blended with right wing extremist politics, which we see dominating the GOP.

Kinzinger says that he voted for Trump's impeachment because of his own faith convictions, something which resonates with my own Christian convictions, based on an orthodox interpretation of the Bible, not on the faddish trendiness of modern megachurch celebrity preachers. It cost him his seat in Congress, and it opened him up to attacks from the likes of self-appointed Evangelical "leaders" like Franklin Graham, who's more a worshipper of prosperity than a believer in Christ.

"I'm going to go out on a NOT limb here: this man is not a Christian," said Kinzinger, and added, "If you are a Christian who supports him, you don't understand your own religion."

December 23, 2023

"Political Christianity" is a danger to American constitutional democracy.

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/12/evangelical-apostasy-is-big-danger-to.html

In spite of believing in some absolutes which would seem to lead people in the opposite direction of the kind of sinful worldliness that characterizes Trump's lifestyle and is his personal trademark, behavior which at least one Apostle labels as "anti-Christ," conservative Christians gravitate toward that kind of personality in the leaders they choose for their churches.

Southern Baptists have designed a denominational structure that allows strong, forceful personalities, the kind of people who seek power and use leadership to build their own personal kingdoms, to run the show and bypass the few democratic rules and structures they have in place. Over the past 30 years, almost all denominational practice and policy has been shaped by the influence of two men, one the President of a small, broken down Bible college in Dallas, the other a Republican political operative and appeals court judge in Houston. These men pointed to supposed "liberals" in the universities and seminaries, and convinced the uninformed and uneducated people in the pews to use the backward, provincial governing structure of the SBC to appoint trustee boards to fire people they claimed were liberal and to feather their own nests, along with those of their friends.

The kind of duplicity and hypocrisy this generates is visible in everything these people do. They take a hard line against adultery, but cheer and give unconditioned loyalty to a man who has claimed to have had affairs with literally hundreds of women, at times to openly humiliate one of the three women he's been married to in public, and who not only has not repented of it, as orthodox, conservative Christian doctrine requires, but has openly claimed he has done nothing requiring repentance. And politics and political affiliation has a lot to do with the standards that are applied. Former President Bill Clinton does not get the same consideration, even though he has repented and acknowledged his need for repentance. Baptist News Global has a good story on what's been going on with Clinton's former church in Little Rock, which you can read about in this article:

[link:https://baptistnews.com/article/on-al-mohler-paige-patterson-bill-clinton-immanuel-baptist-church-and-baptist-polity-and-politics/|

December 20, 2023

Any solution to the Israel-Hamas War requires realism.

The debate is all over the place, with one of the key points being the influence that the United States has because of the financial power we wield, the idea being that somehow it is our responsibility to determine what happens, not Israel's and not the Palestinians and of course not Hamas.

Israel has a right to exist in its ancient, historic homeland. And it should be noted, that since the UN first started working out a Palestine partition, and a "two state solution" if that's what we want to call it, it has not been Israel that has disagreed with the plans. It has also not been Israel that has launched the attacks starting the wars. Israel has built trusted alliances with the broader Arab world. Maybe this will upset that but it doesn't look like it. Some Arabs are realistic. Let them broker a peace deal.

December 18, 2023

One of Trump's Iowa supporters admits he has nothing to offer.

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/12/trump-has-nothing-to-offer-according-to.html

But she will vote for him anyway.

Richard Ojeda, a military veteran, former member of the West Virginia Senate and former candidate for the United States Senate, is one of the most common sense politicians I've ever heard from the state of West Virginia. He does a great job of commentary on the linked interview of a Trump supporter interviewed prior to attending a rally in Iowa. I honestly don't know if they pre-selected this person from among several interviews, or whether this just happened randomly, but they could not have picked someone better to characterize exactly what a Trumpie looks and sounds like when trying to answer questions of a political nature.

If that interview had been a high school civics test, she'd have earned an F, since she was unable to answer any of the questions with an actual fact. In fact, even with regard to the political position of her favored candidate, she was unable to actually answer a question about his position, or what he had done. She was unable to articulate a single fact or identify a source of facts during the entire interview.

She did an outstanding job of making a case for voters to support Joe Biden.

December 18, 2023

Democrats "overperformance" in off-year and special elections, is a referendum on the Biden Administration

Thank you, Chris Hayes.
https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/12/chris-hayes-democrats-overperforming-in.html

I always watch MSNBC's election coverage. They do a much better job of analysis and explaining than any of the other networks do. Their reassurances were comforting, noting that mountains of mail-in ballots were being counted with a substantial number of Democratic votes in several battleground states and to be patient, wait, and Joe Biden would eventually be known as the winner of the election. They explained exactly how the count would go in places like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada, and were very confident in their predictions. And they were right.

So when Chris Hayes did some research into election results, following yet another gloriously successful night of off-year elections that defied the doom and gloom of most media pundits who more than likely knew how things would turn out but weren't willing to concede yet another cluster of referendum elections on the Biden Administration's job performance, he found some interesting data. Hayes discovered that not only have Democrats defied prior trends after a sucessful Presidential election, but in this most recent string of special elections and off-year elections, they are overperforming their baseline by 11 percentage points. That is, according to Hayes and his research, significant.

--snip--

I can't remember who it was who said it, but I remember, back during the Reagan administration, hearing a pundit or commentator say that "Public opinion shifts just don't happen, they are manufactured." Do people really shift back and forth between politicians when it comes to politics? Not really. We do seem to have a much higher percentage of Americans who are unable to understand how politics and government work, who are unable to distinguish between propaganda and truth, and who fall into a cynical and apathetic malaise of confusion because they let themselves be affected by every trendy fad or conspiracy theory that makes the rounds of social media, than we did thirty years ago. But we're talking about upwards of 150 million people who are registered and eligible to vote. The majority of those who will are generally more informed than those who don't live in the real world.

It's showing up in real election results, not polls. And there's a lot that will happen between now and the 2024 election. A legal system that has so far withstood challenges to its integrity is about to deliver some verdicts that will have an effect on how people vote, something that even the right leaning polls now are admitting will be a significant and negative effect on their favorite candidate. Bottom line, I believe that if the election were held tomorrow, Biden would win the popular vote by at least 8 million votes, would add the states of North Carolina and Ohio to his electoral total while holding every state he won in 2020, and would be re-elected along with a majority Democratic House and Senate.

December 14, 2023

The "Politics" are lining up for a Biden win and a Democratic "blue wave" in 2024

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-politics-are-lining-up-for.html

There's a segment of the American electorate that lives isolated in its own media bubble, unaware of real live events or what's actually happening in politics. That's a problem, of course, but that whole segment is not large enough to win on the kind of nationwide scale that would be necessary to claim victory. The doom and gloom polls started coming out in October, suddenly, and with no real rational as to why there was such a shift in public opinion all of a sudden. Then, we had off-year elections which some media pundits jumped out to say were a "referendum on the Biden administration."

If that were the case, then it was a rather resounding referendum, right in the teeth of the polling data. Afterward, there was some backing down from the "referendum" talk.

Trump is going to get beat in the 2024 election, and the Republicans will struggle mightily to maintain their House majority, something I don't think they will get back. In all likelihood, the Democratic senate majority will remain slim, but intact. And yeah, I'm optimistic, but I think there's good reason to be this way.

December 13, 2023

Republicans talk about "grooming" but ignore their own huge problem with it

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/12/all-that-republican-talk-about-grooming.html

As it turns out, both of the "architects" of the Southern Baptist conservative resurgence have had their reputations tarnished by sexual abuse scandals. Pressler, as referenced in the Tribune article, has been accused of six different incidents involving males from the churches where he served as a volunteer youth minister, or employees of his law firm (see the Texas Tribune story here: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/27/houston-jared-woodfill-gop-paul-pressler-southern-baptist/ ). Patterson, as President of two of the denomination's theological seminaries, Southeastern in Wake Forest, North Carolina, and Southwestern in Ft. Worth, Texas, failed to properly handle sexual abuse cases committed by male students against female students, basically letting the perpetrators off the hook and telling the female victims to forgive and forget.

These are not "drag queens," or transgendered persons, gays or lesbians from the political left. These are leaders directly involved in orchestrating the marriage between far right wing Republican politics and conservative, fundamentalist Evangelicalism. What they claimed to be doing was restoring the Southern Baptist Convention to its historic, conservative roots. What they were really doing was using the denomination to advance a right wing political agenda and to feather their own nests. And they determined that it was better to use political power to achieve their goals, rather than having faith in the spiritual power of God. Their own worldliness got the better of them.

The denomination itself is paying quite a price for its sins. The sexual abuse scandal, which an investigation by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News uncovered, keeps coming to the surface, growing and getting bigger as time goes by. Each of the last three years, just prior to the annual convention meeting, the statistical report from the convention has shown a 400,000 decrease in overall church membership.

December 12, 2023

Jill Stein--get out now and endorse the President or quit running.

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/12/jill-stein-may-be-progressive-but-her.html

Advocating for a green new deal. Believing that jobs, health care and education are basic human rights. Government is obligated and bears responsibility to end poverty, oversee a just economy and guarantee equality in the application of freedom and justice. "Power to the people" is the theme and slogan of the presidential nominee's candidacy.

I love all of that, along with the need for government to become involved in radical justice, protecting human rights and the environment. I find little with which to disagree in the Green Party platform, or in the 2016 Presidential candidacy of Dr. Jill Stein. Their perspective on these specific issues represents my politics more closely than the more moderate and diverse platform of the Democratic party. But in spite of that, realizing that our two party system is still the predominant factor in national elections, I couldn't think about casting a ballot for Stein, because I knew Stein didn't have a chance, and I knew that taking a vote away from Clinton could be detrimental to her chances.

And in spite of finding quite a lot of agreement with the Green Party's platform, I think Stein and the party are very misguided in making another attempt at the Presidency. It's pretty clear, from the numbers, that she siphoned off enough potential votes from Hillary Clinton to keep her from winning. At this point now, she needs to step down, endorse the President and spend her time between now and election day campaigning for him.

December 12, 2023

Rush Limbaugh's plan for conservative victory was to gerrymander while in power, and no compromise with "libs"

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/12/democrats-need-to-plan-their-political.html

The first time I ever heard Rush Limbaugh on the radio, I was driving down a narrow, winding road in the Missouri Ozarks and his two hour rant was being carried on a local AM radio station in some small town. I thought he was awful, and I listened, more in fascination that he was even able to be on the radio. I kept listening, because as he put forth his very opinionated diatribe, he was also telling listeners how to get their way with government.

Pointing to weaknesses in the system, such as lifetime appointments for judges, low turnouts especially in local elections and the jurisdiction that various levels of government have, Limbaugh was a strong advocate for Republican gerrymandering, claiming that the power of state government to draw district lines extended right into Washington, DC. Noting that Republicans win elections because of low turnout, he was one of the major architects of the takeover of state legislatures during the early 2000's, while Democrats won major elections and then didn't show up to vote in the mid-terms to protect their gains. He was particularly prideful in taking credit for this GOP strategy slowing down the Obama Administration, which he openly called socialist.

So this is where we are. And my question is, "What are we going to do about it?" That's a question for all Democrats, particularly our party leadership.

December 12, 2023

Democrats need to have a plan like Republicans Did

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/12/democrats-need-to-plan-their-political.html

The first time I ever heard Rush Limbaugh on the radio, I was driving down a narrow, winding road in the Missouri Ozarks and his two hour rant was being carried on a local AM radio station in some small town. I thought he was awful, and I listened, more in fascination that he was even able to be on the radio. I kept listening, because as he put forth his very opinionated diatribe, he was also telling listeners how to get their way with government.

Pointing to weaknesses in the system, such as lifetime appointments for judges, low turnouts especially in local elections and the jurisdiction that various levels of government have, Limbaugh was a strong advocate for Republican gerrymandering, claiming that the power of state government to draw district lines extended right into Washington, DC. Noting that Republicans win elections because of low turnout, he was one of the major architects of the takeover of state legislatures during the early 2000's, while Democrats won major elections and then didn't show up to vote in the mid-terms to protect their gains. He was particularly prideful in taking credit for this GOP strategy slowing down the Obama Administration, which he openly called socialist.

So this is where we are. And my question is, "What are we going to do about it?" That's a question for all Democrats, particularly our party leadership.