Bookmarked.

There's also "Christianists". That one's been around for awhile.

Not really “Christian” as in “followers of Christ.” Nope. These are followers of what they “believe” are some cockamamie man-made conveniently and selfishly politicized distortions of the Message of Christ - to accommodate their personal prejudices and earthly biases and judgmentalisms. It’s the very fallible and deeply suspect “teachings” of man, not of Jesus.

Ye olde long-ago Catholic school inmate here. In my opinion and in-person witness throughout my foundational “Wonder years,” we were taught that the Teachings of Jesus were not exclusionary. He intended His Word out there to be for EVERYONE. From the exalted to the excoriated. BOTH the wanted and unwanted. The “in crowd” AND the outsiders and the banished and the otherwise-excluded.

Jesus would not have turned that prospective bride and groom away. He would not have judged. Certainly not the way this venue management did.

The real challenge, though, is to follow His Teachings ALL the way out. And that’s the hard part. Because we’re judging, too, when we condemn the perceived offenders here.

But DAYUM that’s hard. That’s the almost-impossibly hard part. It’s damn hard not to call a spade a spade. I struggle with that every minute of every day (particularly these days!), and I have a very long track record of failure - well-documented here. Jesus said we must love everyone, including our enemies. And that’s DAMN HARD. The whole “hate the sin, not the sinner” thing. And I fail at that every doggone day.

It’s hard NOT to hate and/or despise our republi-CON enemies. It’s hard not to hate who and what they are. It’s certainly easy to hate what they do.

Welcome to DU, throwthe_shoe!

Indeed. That's an insult to real morons everywhere.

Must mean THEY'RE morons, too.

Birds of a feather and all that.

Some things just need to be said.

Maybe she'll run into Goldie.

I cried over her again today. AGAIN today.

TODAY I cried over her again.

She was about 16 or so, too. Shit. I'm crying as I write this. Never had any pet's passing hit me this hard.

I know exactly where you are tonight, my friend. It was July 12th for me.

I can merely think of her and I start to get weepy.

Still aches like the Devil.

Whatever beats trump.

Biden's a good guy. I could easily get behind him. Loved him during the Obama years. And I LOVED how he laughed at both Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan, in turn, during Vice Presidential debates. Just sliced each of them right off their high horses and then cut them into itty bitty pieces! What a delight that was to witness. Each of those idiots stood about two inches tall by the time he got though chuckling at them.

A thing of beauty!

And if he's the nominee, I will be counting the minutes til I can mark my ballot for him, and I will work like crazy to help him take the White House.

Now there's a name I haven't heard in awhile.

Thanks for the readable treat, tblue37!

Life-long and very fallible Catholic here.

Spent more time studying the first five books of the Old Testament and then the New Testament. I never found an admonishment, parable, or single word of endorsement of any such mass-murder weapon.

I have found lots of material that teaches about the worship of God versus the worship of money. Lots of "do unto others" and "the least of these" and "the first shall be last and the last shall be first" stuff. Tons of that stuff.

Yep. At this point, that's what we're left with.

Trying to figure out how to get around them to achieve what WE want.

And why the hell not?

They do that EVERY minute of EVERY day! And look how well they're doing. The proof is in the results.

I no longer believe that when they go low, we go high. That doesn't work anymore. That's one for the Nice-Guys-Finish-Last club.

Seems to me the only way we can level the playing field is to outthink and out-game and outwit the bad guys. And if we have to be devious and sneaky and go around the rules, or WHATEVER, well then, so be it. Do we want a level playing field or don't we? Seems to me that rules only work with both sides play by them. When you DON'T have that, when one side follows the rules and the other side does whatever the fuck they think they can get away with, just to WIN, then the side that's playing by the rules simply gets ROLLED.

The only OTHER way to level the playing field is to force both sides to play fair. But since one of them has no intention of playing fair, THEY'RE never gonna de-weaponize. And even if they claim they do, they'll be lying. Because they want to win, at all costs, since therein lies the domination, the power they crave. The power over people they don't like or disagree with, to FORCE those unfortunates to bend to the winners' will. It's being forced at the point of a political gun. They'll never willingly dis-arm. Especially for the sake of merely playing fair or following rules. It's "we don't need no stinkin' rules." Rules are for suckers. And suckers don't win because they're not willing to do fucking ANYTHING to win. But we have an opponent who lusts to win literals at all costs. Regardless what it takes or to whom they have to sell their souls.All that counts is to win. Because when you win, YOU get to rule. AND you get to MAKE the rules.

So therein lies the conundrum. And therein lies the donald.