From CNN:
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said she believes God wanted President Donald Trump to win the 2016 election, the Christian Broadcasting Network reported on Wednesday.
“I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president, and that’s why he’s there,” Sanders told CBN’s David Brody and Jennifer Wishon, according to a transcript of the interview provided by CBN.
Thoughts of Jaycee Dugard brought up my brief brush with one of the worst pedophiles the Catholic church has known to date. His name is Father Oliver O’Grady, who spent years being shuttled from one diocese to another even though the hierarchy of the church knew he was molesting children. He finally wound up as the parish priest in a small town in Calaveras county, California. I was working as a dental hygienist for a local dentist and Father O’Grady happened to be one of our patients.
The dentist I worked for was a devout Catholic. My employer was, on the whole, a nice fellow who felt strongly about his convictions. He had anti-abortion posters hung quite visibly in his lab where patients would see them as they were escorted to their dental chairs. Some patients took offense at being subjected to something like that in a dental office and angrily left the office–and in some cases they left the practice itself. To me, this dogmatism on his part was like wearing a pair of blinders which allowed you to see only what you were supposed to see.
Often the dentist, his assistant and I would have lunch at a nearby sandwich shop. On some occasions the dentist’s wife would join us. At one of these informal lunches we were talking about water wells; a common topic in rural areas where having a good well is essential to life itself. I happened to mention that a neighbor of mine, whose father was half Native American, taught me how to dowse for water with a forked branch. The usual term for that was “water witching”, a skill that even the men who worked for our local electric company, PG & E, knew how to do.
My employer turned to me and said, very serious and straight-faced, “Isn’t that witchcraft?” At first I thought he was kidding, but quickly realized he wasn’t. I was nonplussed and stammered something about “No, it’s just something you feel.” The dentist’s wife was in our little group and she tried to smooth things over a bit, but I have to say I was taken aback that someone in our modern age would bandy about the charge “witchcraft.”
Now, post-Palin anti-witchcraft blessing ceremonies, I’m no longer surprised.
I mention all of this in regard to Father O’Grady only to make the point that while my employer was looking behind the dental chair for imaginary witches, here we had a man who was actually doing unspeakable things with children. Father O’Grady was a figure of authority and power, as was the diocese that sent him to this unsuspecting little hamlet. Everyone in my office fell all over himself in deference to this man when he came in for his appointments. It was “Father this…” and “Father that…” but no one had the slightest clue that he had been molesting children for years and the powers that be knew about it, but kept it hidden.
The sadly laughable thing about it was that he was such a little milquetoast of a man when I finally did meet him. I took an immediate dislike to him because he would not look me in the eye. What kind of a priest won’t look you in the eyes? Aren’t the eyes windows into the soul? Father O’Grady’s soul was hidden from view. There was too much ugliness there.
Father O’Grady as he looked sometime around when I met him.
It was several years after I left that practice that the whole story surrounding Father O’Grady came to light. I could only imagine what they thought at my old dental office. Had real evil replaced the imaginary? I somehow doubt it. Excuses were made all along the line for the transferring of O’Grady from one place to the next, without punishment or warning. The man involved in Jaycee Lee Dugard’s abduction seems to have had every break in the books also. It shouldn’t have taken so long in either Garrido’s case or Father O’Grady’s for someone to step up and put a stop to the abuse.
The kids deserved better.
WPEC CBS12 News CBS12
BREAKING: Sinkhole near Mar-a-Lago is causing traffic delays as crews work the scene.
Schooley @Rschooley
Can we get a time stamp on this and the sinkhole opening at Mar-a-lago?
Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias
Trump starts fucking with mystical orbs and the next day a sinkhole opens in front of Mar-a-Lago. He has no idea what he’s unleashed.
From Alexandra Petri in the Washington Post:
I guess this is how we are writing up the victims of crimes now. I did not realize that when you boarded a plane you gave away the right to have your past remain your past, but a theme of life these days is that only people who have never done anything wrong, or are in some way related to Donald Trump, deserve to go through their lives unmolested.
In accordance with this new house style I am writing up an incident whose anniversary some people are celebrating this week.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The gentleman arrested Thursday and tried before Pontius Pilate had a troubled background.
He had had prior run-ins with local authorities — most notably, an incident of vandalism in a community center when he wrecked the tables of several licensed money-lenders and bird-sellers. He had used violent language, too, claiming that he could destroy a gathering place and rebuild it.
At the time of his arrest, he had not held a fixed residence for years. Instead, he led an itinerant lifestyle, staying at the homes of friends and advocating the redistribution of wealth.
He had come to the attention of the authorities more than once for his unauthorized distribution of food, disruptive public behavior, and participation in farcical aquatic ceremonies.
Some say that his brutal punishment at the hands of the state was out of proportion to and unrelated to any of these incidents in his record.
But after all, he was no angel.
From Politico:
“You think this is easy? In this beautiful room that is 122 degrees,” Trump said, although the arena was notably chillier than his usual venues. “It is hot and it is always hot when I perform, because the crowds are so big, these rooms were not designed for this kind of crowd.”
So Trump views campaigning for the most important job in the country as all part of a performance, like when he was on the “Apprentice.”
God help us.
Trump’s former presidential rival, a key surrogate and possible vice presidential pick, told The Hill on Friday that he believes Trump is becoming more spiritual.
“I know that he has prayed. I have eyewitness,” Carson said in a Facebook Live interview.
Asked whether he had personally seen Trump pray, the retired neurosurgeon, who is a man of deep Christian faith, conceded he had only heard about Trump praying.
“I have not seen him [pray] but I have eyewitnesses who have,” Carson said. “And I think he’s starting to move more in that direction. I think that’s a good thing.
“I think he’s starting to recognize that there’s a greater power. And I tell him, just last week, that I believe God is using him.”
Yeah. God is using him like he did that plague of locusts.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in an interview Sunday that presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump will “have to answer” for the reports about his behavior toward women.“I also think there are things from many years ago and I think that, you know, as Christians, judging each other I think is — is problematic,” Priebus said on ABC’s “This Week.”
From The Daily Kos–written by Hunter:
“Texas Republicans’ drive to find the stupidest people in the state and elect them to office seems, if anything, to be picking up steam.
[Republican Mary Lou Bruner] received 48 percent of the vote in a three-person GOP primary for a seat on the Texas State Board of Education this Tuesday, falling just short of the 50 percent needed to claim victory. She will compete in a May runoff election against Keven Ellis, a chiropractor and city school board president who earned 31 percent of the vote.
Some things that Mary Lou Bruner has stated she believes: Obama used to be a gay prostitute. Climate change is a hoax promoted by the communists and, specifically, by Karl Marx himself. Slavery is not the reason for the American Civil War, but we have been led to think that through a conspiracy by historians who “waited until all of the people who were alive during the Civil War and the Restoration died of old age.” School shootings started only after “the schools started teaching evolution.” That there may have been dinosaurs on Noah’s ark, and the reason there are no dinosaurs now is that Noah only brought baby dinosaurs that starved to death when he let them loose back on land.
Presuming that Texas Republicans do not find their long-lost sense of shame between now and this May—and evidence that they will is sparse—she is likely to become one of the most powerful people in America when it comes to content of the textbooks Texas children, and therefore children in quite a few other states besides, find on their desks in coming years.
An openly raving Damn Lunatic. It may be time to consider walling the state of Texas off. I am not ruling out an airlift to rescue the remaining sane people.”
Me first.
I Tried Being Tasteful... 