What was the Noose for? A Goose / Gander Principle

   

    Are we a nation of laws?     

    Rules and guidelines have been set down and as a society, we have agreed to abide by them for community safety and stability. When rabble-rousers succeed in inciting a riot, justice in stable societies is usually fairly swift. They round up the trouble-makers, find out who the ringleaders were, and arrest them. But in the case of January 6, those that encouraged the crowd to take the law into their own hands, so far, have avoided justice. 

    There is an old proverb that dates from at least 1670 - its true origin stretches back much further - that declares "what is good for the goose is good for the gander." It was an early example of equal application of justice. If something is just for this group for doing this thing, then it certainly applies to that group doing it as well.

    It's time these treason enthusiasts get a taste of the justice they demanded of others, because who was on the correct side of the law on January 6, 2021? 

    What did the insurrectionists assemble a gallows with a noose on it for? Was that just decoration, a mild threat, or a working model that they intended to use? 

    These insurrectionists are the 'ants'. They are the foot soldiers, not the ringleaders. That is who justice needs to seek out immediately. Those who worked up, incited, and directed the foot soldiers into attack mode, all the way up to and including Donald Trump who encouraged them to march on the Capitol and fight like hell. There should be no avoiding justice on this issue. Insurrection attempts must be dealt with in a manner that will cause great discomfort... just as it did for the rest of America that watched in horror as the rioters carried out their assault on democracy.

    Those that committed these acts should have seriously considered whether it was worth their lives. Less than a century ago - they would have faced nothing short of a firing squad or a hangman’s noose. Five hundred years before that it would have been an ax slicing through their neck. They are escaping the justice they truly and historically deserve. All they're facing today is the boredom of sitting behind metal bars for a few years, and we'll even pay for their incarceration at taxpayers' expense. Lucky us.

    The rioters demanded to HANG Mike Pence. In my view, "what was good for the goose..." 

Every person in the above picture should be subjected to the same if they believed Pence deserved it.

The Vice President was doing his Constitutional duty. 

Were the insurrectionists? 

Was Donald Trump?

    It's hard not to agree with the sentiment of Game of Thrones' Tyrion Lannister about his reaction if he were to get so much as a whiff of treason... 

Well said!

The insurrectionists and every leader should face that fate.

Impeach Donald J. Trump

Why is removing Trump from office even a question anymore?

How Trump Can Further Show Just What an Extraordinary Military Commander He Is

               There’s a caravan walking at about 2 to 3 miles an hour through Mexico at this moment made up of primarily impoverished families who are escaping the violence and lack of job opportunities in the Central American countries where they are from. Donald Trump is insisting at his rallies, at press conferences, and at brief encounters with reporters outside the White House, that they are a brutal invasion force. They are still over 800 miles from the southeastern border of Texas, but the general direction suggests they are heading toward California which is over 2000 miles from their present location. (They are near a strange place in Mexico that Fox’s Lou Dobbs called ‘Juar-ll-daaaaaaa.' I haven’t been able to find it on a map of Mexico either.) At the rate they are travelling, it will take them at least 2 weeks to a month to reach the U.S. if they come here at all. But to Trump, the danger is now, today, immediately, so he has told Defense Secretary James Mattis to send armed troops…5000, 5200, 10,000, no 15,000…to meet the threat. That’s more than the U.S. has deployed in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq to fight ISIS.

If you don’t look too closely, the men in that caravan are…(maybe they’re Middle Eastern, who knows?)…of military age, strong and virile (but unarmed, except for some rocks they might be able to throw). Reporters actually travelling with the caravan describe them as mostly thin, underfed young fathers, and teenage boys who are desperately trying to avoid being forced into joining a gang. Trump along with Fox news claims the women are being cowed into marching in the front of this invasion force in order to form a human shield for those men. And even worse, the women are keeping their babies close to themselves, and the young children nestled around them to provide an extra layer of bodies for the mass of terrifying invaders behind them, and those kids are riddled with diseases like smallpox, leprosy, aids, tuberculosis, and even STDs. According to Fox news hosts, Fox news guests, and many Trump supporters, they are all being paid by billionaire George Soros or the Democratic Party. How do they know? They say it is just so obvious and hinting that members of our own congress must also be going down there and urging them on, encouraging them to sweep into the U.S., and make sure to vote for Democrats…so they can rip health care away from law-abiding white Christian Americans, take over our cities, take away all our jobs…and kneel when the National Anthem is played!

These are the dangerous invaders Trump is warning about

From the Oval Office Trump admitted that “nobody knows for sure” whether there are gang members, ISIS soldiers, or Middle Eastern terrorists in among the caravan, but it’s possible…anything is possible. Why he doesn’t say that their pockets are all stuffed with millions in gold coins and they are coming to give it to Americans, free…is unknowable. But isn’t’ that also possible if anything is possible? He says he “tries to tell the truth” but the qualifier is he “tries”, not “does.”

If Trump really thinks this is truly a dangerous invasion force, why doesn’t he use the same tactic that has worked so well for him in the past? The tactic that makes disreputable news anchors wax poetically about how beautiful their launch is, how their use makes him appear more presidential to certain members of Congress, how Ivanka thinks it makes him…I mean, how Melania thinks it makes him more manly and desirable, how the use of them showcases what a strong, powerful, forward-thinking leader he is, all from the safety and comfort of one of his golf resorts?

Launch Tomahawk cruise missiles at them.

Trump insisted that Syria, a country far, far away and no threat to us, deserved to have cruise missiles launched at them…twice. If they were a threat, how much more is a threat just 2000 miles away and getting closer to our border? Since Trump is using the language of war, why not use our weapons of war? Just don’t distract him with a beautiful piece of chocolate cake or he’ll forget at which country he was supposed to launch them. We don’t need to wake up and find we’re now at war with Uruguay because Trump can’t tell the difference between that country and Mexico.

Not just cruise missiles either. Trump has no problem having our military and CIA launching missiles from drones over countries we are not at war with. If U.S. Predators and Reapers can send Hellfire missiles into wedding parties in Pakistan and schools in Yemen, then he can ignore Mexican sovereignty and launch missiles at the migrant caravan, too. Yemen, Pakistan, Mexico…what’s the difference?

But he mustn’t stop there. The world needs to see how tough Trump is. So send U.S. carrier groups into the Gulf of Mexico and down the Mexican Pacific coast to launch air attacks on the caravan. Maybe Trump can even ask for help from the Saudi Arabian Air Force which has lots of experience blowing up kids on buses and in schools in Yemen using U.S. weapons and hardware Trump sold to them. They’ll be able to show our pilots how and where to lay down ordinance to cause maximum damage. U.S. submarines can be included to add their missiles and firepower to the defense of the nation from this dangerous hoard of…poor people trying to escape the same war-like setting in their own countries.

Our F-117s, F-35s, A-10s, B-1s and B-2s can gain valuable experience dropping bombs on them or flying in low and slow and machine gunning them as they are strung out along Mexican roads. Sure, there will be some collateral damage and unintended casualties of Mexicans who happen to be too near a drop zone or target area, but innocent dead Mexicans is the price we have to pay to be free. Last year, Trump claimed he authorized our military in Afghanistan to drop a 21,000-pound non-nuclear bomb called a MOAB onto a suspected terrorist site. It was never confirmed that it was, but that’s immaterial. Plus, two innocent Afghani civilians were killed by it. However, dead Afghanis mean about as much to Trump as dead Mexicans. He can do the same to these violent migrant people. With a blast radius of over a mile, a MOAB will kill a good one-quarter of the first wave and make the rest of them think long and hard about wanting to come to the U.S. for anything.

                   Monkey see...monkey do!

It is certain Trump’s base will love this idea. Nothing makes them happier than to think Trump is killing thousands if not hundreds of thousands of non-white, non-English speaking people. They get giddy with the thought that, even with the massive tax cut that added $1.5 trillion dollars to the national debt - and there’s now GOP talk about gutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to make up for some of that debt - that there’s still plenty of money laying around to throw at a military solution to the immigration issue…specifically these immigrants. What difference does a few billion dollars added to that deficit make if Trump can get a couple thousand dead immigrants out of it?

And as a last resort, if any of them do happen to reach the Rio Grande or the New Mexico, Arizona, or California border, and if they can be goaded into throwing a rock, Trump has ordered the 15,000 deployed soldiers there to consider that a weapon and then can now shoot-to-kill the migrants. Because in Trump’s way of thinking, a hand-thrown rock is as lethal as an AR-15 and deserves the return fire from one. That is what happens when you don’t serve in the military and make wild assumptions based on your feelings.

Military genius such as this can only come from someone who avoided service altogether with five draft deferments, suffered from a painful bone spur (or spurs…who knows for sure) in his foot, has never spent a day in the military, but overcame all that, and, using his vast military school background, has deployed the world’s mightiest military force to kill unarmed immigrants walking toward our southern border. We see this in every great military leader down through history. Leaders like…………..well, they must be there because how else would we know how great a military genius Trump is?

Remember, on June 16, 2016, Trump told Bill O’Reilly on Fox News that “No one is bigger or better at ‘the military’ than I am.”

If these migrants really are part of an invasion force, show us you are up to the task of defending the nation by the application of your Constitutional and presidential powers to stop them. Here is your chance to prove you understand it, Trump.

Ban all Religions Until the Test Results Come Back Positive

        

        Last week Donald Trump, in his usual inimitable fashion, again made an incendiary comment that aroused great anger, from fellow Republican presidential candidates, and almost everyone to the left of Trump. But not to his supporters; they loved it. They can’t wait to have Trump banning Muslim immigrants...actually anyone they don’t like...and ignoring established U.S. laws, policies and regulations….”Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...and turn them away."

         But as wrong as I think Trump is, he may have stumbled onto a very good idea. It just isn’t restrictive enough. Let’s run with his idea of banning a religious group. If I agreed with his position, then we shouldn’t stop there; we should go even further. Let’s not just ban Muslims from entering the U.S., let’s ban ANY religious person. Yes, ban them all… until they’ve passed a test indicating they understand the separation of church and state, that they will uphold and defend that separation, and that our Constitution supersedes ANY law that's in someone’s holy book.

        This ban would not just apply to foreigners hoping to resettle in America, but also to anyone who already lives here. For example, if Christians promote an interpretation of their God’s laws as somehow overriding the Constitution, they need to be removed to another place, say, the Vatican, until such time as they take a test proving they understand this is a secular nation and the Constitution is the ONLY law of the land. They can practice whatever religion they want in their own homes or in a place of worship (that would no longer be tax-exempt), but they cannot claim their God’s law is higher than Constitutional law.

        It doesn’t matter if the believers are Hindu, Mormon, Buddhist, Shinto, Zoroastrian, or they worship of a pile of rocks. They must show, via both written and verbal testing, that they acknowledge their religious laws stop at our border. They do not supplant any U.S. law at any time…period!

         If they are Muslim and disagree; Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Yemen, and even ISIS are all trying to implement Sharia. Let them live there and practice their faith. Or if they are Mormon and believe that what Elohim says overrides U.S. law, expel them to one of the uninhabited islands of the Alaska archipelago until testing confirms they fully understand and comply with the Constitution.

         Trump's not the first. Whether anti-British, anti-Chinese, anti-Japanese, anti-black, or anti-Commie...down through history, Americans have loved vilifying and repressing others.

        

         Now, far be it for me to point out to the oh-so-wise and well-informed Trump, who clearly hasn’t studied U.S. history, we already tried banning certain groups…the Chinese in the late 1800s, the Japanese in World War Two, and Communists during the 1950s. It just doesn’t work, and won’t work, even if we turned this nation into a completely fascist dictatorship like, say, Nazi Germany. So rather than banning, the best step is to make sure everyone understands we are not bound by the religious laws of any gods, or any religious sects.  

        Trump’s pandering to squeamish, anxious white xenophobes gets great press, but it won’t get him elected president. However, if he’d go along with a test given to every religious person immigrating here, or living here, so we can get them up to speed on how the Constitution works, then he and I might have some common ground to discuss ideas.

Know your Constitution

You WILL believe. It's in the Constitution

Speaking before about 400 students and faculty at Colorado Christian University this past Wednesday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that secularists are wrong when they argue the Constitution requires religious references to be removed from the public square. He opined that a battle is underway over whether to allow religion in public life, from referencing God in the Pledge of Allegiance, to holding prayers at school events and town hall meetings. “I think the main fight is to dissuade Americans from what the secularists are trying to persuade them to be true: that the separation of church and state means that the government cannot favor religion over non-religion.” Scalia said.

           …and yet the First Amendment clearly states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Where does it indicate favoritism towards religion? That a jurist on the Supreme Court can misinterpret the meaning is astounding! 

Antonin Scalia conjures up a whole new interpretation

Alright, let’s take Scalia at his word, that he really believes the First Amendment actually favors religion over non-religion. Which religion does it favor? There is not just one religion, so if we are to believe he means it, which religious faith is the one that guides us? Scalia is a professed Catholic, so should it be Roman Catholicism that is the moral compass and guiding light of our nation? Most Pentecostals, Baptists and Mormons will vehemently disagree with that idea. Should the Jews and Muslims be left out of Constitutional protection, or is it extended to them because they at least believe in some sort of supernatural entity?

                                     Whose altar do we bow before?

Scalia continued, “We do Him honor in our Pledge of Allegiance, in all our public ceremonies. There’s nothing wrong with that. It is in the best of American traditions, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. I think we have to fight that tendency of the secularists to impose it on all of us through the Constitution” meaning that in the past, secularists simply wanted the Constitution upheld. But no more. Upholding the Constitution has changed under his judicial guidance. It means the government is now free to impose religion, ill-defined though it may be, on all of us.

Justice Scalia suggests that we already acknowledge god in our pledge of allegiance, which is an odd position for him to take since during his school years the phrase ‘under God’ wasn't even in it. If we are one nation under god, which one do we stand under…Amon Ra, Wotan, Kulkukan, Zeus, Brahma, Quetzalcoatl, or The Great Spirit? It can’t just be the gods that Europeans brought over when they wrestled the American continents away from the original inhabitants. The native’s various deities were sacred and revered before the immigrants arrived, so those gods should be included in those we stand beneath. And it was only a year ago that Scalia admitted that he believed the devil was a real being, so he apparently recognizes Satanism as legitimate. Wouldn't it be logical then to include Satan as worthy of worship since Satanism is recognized as a religion?

Americas list of gods to worship continues to grow

Freedom of religion means the freedom not to worship at all. People can do what they like as long as they allow others to do the same without forcing it on anyone. Thanks to Scalia, we may have 'freedom of religion' re-interpreted as ‘we have to worship some god…but we have the freedom to choose which one.’ If the government gets to impose a religion on us, what happens if it turns out to be, say, the "Christianity" as practiced by Westboro Baptist Church? Would Antonin Scalia use the power of the court to force all Americans to adhere to Westboro’s concept of what god wants? In which case, who is going to protect us from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia?

Public Spectacles

While watching the local news Labor Day weekend, there were two stories that make me wonder if people really understand our Constitution and why we separate church and state in this country.

Brighthouse Network’s Central Florida News 13, or CFN13, repeated the two stories every hour for about 12 hours. One involved Apopka football players being led in a Christian prayer before and after their games. The prayers made some of the players and fans, who were from different faith backgrounds, uncomfortable and they asked school officials to refrain from saying them. CFN13 covered the story from the outraged-Christian-point-of-view with interviews of people all but damning freethinkers and non-theists for interfering, and for what they perceived as “stopping kids from praying”. The people who objected to the prayers were only asking that school officials and coaches not instigate or give the prayers recognizing only one religion.

Can you imagine what would have happened if one of them began saying an Islamic prayer, started chanting a mantra to one of the Hindu gods, or conducted a Voodoo ritual? The same people who think there is too much fuss being made over simple prayers at school events would be livid, and would insist that only Christian prayers be allowed at these functions. In their view, prayers to Jehovah/Yahweh are acceptable but prayers to other gods are wrong. Yet Christians have the same evidence regarding their deity that other religions have of theirs. Zero!
        I’m looking forward to the day one of the cheerleaders does this at a football game: 

Several parents were quick to point out that atheists were in a minority in this country and insisted Christians had the right to pray anytime, anywhere, with the insinuation that atheists should keep quiet since they were outnumbered. A free society is one where it’s safe to hold an unpopular view, which makes me wonder if we're a free society anymore. Christians might want to consider that sometimes a majority only means all the mistaken are on the same side. Ignorance has become a point of view.

Winter Garden City Council opening the meeting with a Christian prayer

The second story involved a man named Joseph Richardson who attended a Winter Garden city council meeting. Winter Garden Mayor John Rees told Richardson that he “may rise or leave the room” as they gave the prayer and the Pledge.

“I don’t believe I have to do that, thank you,” was Richardson's response.

After the prayer in the name of Jesus was concluded, Richardson was again ordered to rise. “Now, sir, please stand while we do the Pledge… please stand. Children have to do it in school, too,” Rees said. "You don’t have to say it. Please stand.”
       Richardson stood his ground, responding “I don’t have to do that.”

Rees seemed to take this as a personal affront rather than a citizen exercising his rights.

Richardson was abruptly told, “You have one of two choices, sir. I'm asking you to either stand or be escorted out [as we do] the Pledge. It’s just not fair to our troops and people overseas, sir.”

When Richardson still didn’t stand, the Mayor turned to the Chief of Police and said, “Chief, ask him to either stand or please escort him out 'til we get through the pledge,” the mayor said.

The officer walked over and asked Richardson, “What do you want to do? Do you want to stand or leave?” The man was quickly escorted out of the room.
        As Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote in 1940, “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us."

Mayor Rees should know that citizens are within their rights to remain seated for the Pledge and that it does not reflect a lack of patriotism. The fact is, refusing to stand and repeat it is more patriotic and respectful of our secular constitution than rising and declaring us to be ‘one nation under god.’ That 'god' part was only inserted in 1954 when Congress wanted to demonstrate the nation's piety as compared to Communism's godlessness.

The pledge seemed fine up until 1954

The mayor and those city council members should spend a lot more time studying the Constitution and its meaning. Nowhere is there anything that states 'not standing' is considered disrespectful to military personnel. The flag does not equal the military, nor is it written they, or any American, needs to be respected just because they are posted on foreign soil.

The Mayor’s judgment really needs to be scrutinized when he insists American citizens should stand when he makes an appeal to the Christian god.

Some Americans think this should be our flag.

Anyone who doesn’t see a threat in religion had better take notice of these events. When Christianity and politics were previously blended together it was called the Dark Ages and Europe eventually suffered over 600 years of the Inquisition. In nations where politics and religion are one in the same today, you have places like Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia. 
     People insisting that Christianity is harmless are deluding themselves. It is not harmless once someone in power decides to do exactly what the bible says, as the Crusades, the witch trials, the killing of heretics, the slavery issue, and even opposition to gay marriage shows. If the new Christian-politicos gain control of the government, the old Inquisition will pale in comparison to what they will do with that power. These 'religion trumps secularism' events are happening more and more frequently. Those who believe a wall should permanently separate church and state need to stand their ground. Our future depends on it.
       Don’t misunderstand; anyone has a right to their beliefs, but they don’t have a right to force it on anyone else or to have them respect it. We might acknowledge it, but we also then have the right to say “Are you kidding me? Your belief is stupid.”