Praise be to God: New Rules in Texas

Praise be to God!

Thanks to the ruling by Texas governor Gregg Abbott:

1. County Clerks can ignore the Supreme Court and not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples if their religious belief says so;
2. Public librarians will no longer have to check out the Book of Mormon if it violates their religious belief (the Koran has already been removed from the shelves.);;
3. Pharmacists will no longer have to dispense drugs of any kind if it conflicts with their Christian Science beliefs;
4. Vegan pizza parlor clerks will not have to sell sausage pizza to anyone as it conflicts with their religious beliefs;
5. Protestant clerks will not have to sell rosaries to Catholics;
6. Protestant carpenters will not have to work on building mosques;
7. PETA members will not have to sell materials to livestock farmers nor issue hunting licenses; nor sell any guns at Walmart;
8. Clerks will not have to sell anything resembling a Burka or any material that could be used for one;
9. Unitarians will not have to serve anyone.
10. The only way to get anything done will be to hire atheists.

Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of Potsdam Station

# 4 in the John Russell series. At the end of volume 3 in this excellent series, Russell had escaped to Sweden and Effi had returned to Berlin, hiding in plain sight disguised as an old woman by using her make-up and acting skills. Germany had just declared war on America and the Gestapo sought both of them. Fast forward to April, 1945. Paul, John’s son, is sixty miles from Berlin on the eastern front as part of a Panzerfaust unit as the eastern front shrinks, Effi is surviving but also working to help refugees escape, and Russell is in Moscow hoping to enter Berlin with the Russian troops to find Effi.

Downing follows the travails of John (struggling to get back to Berlin to find Effie), Effie (hiding from the Gestapo as she helps refugees escape the city), and Paul (trying to stay alive as his unit is pushed back to Berlin)  as each tries to survive the war in the inferno that 1945 Berlin had become.  And Downing vividly describes that hell.

I won’t risk spoiling anything about the plot. Let it be enough to say this series is excellent, but please read them in order.

NB:  Re the Kindle edition.  The book switches perspectives regularly, e.g., from Russell to Effi to Paul and back, and there is often no transition in the Kindle edition, it’s just the next paragraph, no space, no chapter, no nothing. That needs to be fixed. On the other hand, I see there are new editions out and mine is an older one, so perhaps that has been fixed.

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Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of A Twisted Faith: A Minister's Obsession and the Murder That Destroyed a Church

Audiobook: There’s something salacious about true crime stories that always intrigues, yet the author’s reportage of intimate thoughts and conversations always makes me wonder just how accurate they can be. Some of the intimate details and verbatim conversations where only the perp and one other person are present tend to set off my crap detector.  The scene where the victim’s mother goes out with Nick and then gives him a BJ had me wondering just who his source was for that little tidbit.

Certainly this was a fun book to listen to while mowing and doing summer chores.  You don’t have to listen too carefully as the broad strokes provide more than enough to get the gist and individual conversations aren’t necessary to keep things moving.

Basically, this is the story of a deeply troubled church pastor, Nick Hacheney, in Bainbridge, WA, who began an affair with a parishioner, Sandy, known for her conversations with God and her predictions (from God) about what would happen in the smallest details of people’s lives.

It’s also a cautionary tale of how naive people can be in believing what they want to and attributing their actions (and wishes and desires and lusts) to God’s will.  Frankly, any sensible person would have tuned out of this church when people started talking about how God had told them to buy a new car or jewelry even though they couldn’t afford it. Apparently the jump to murder wasn’t very long when you think God ordains it.  Hacheney drugged and killed his wife, then set the house on fire to cover his tracks. Then he proceeded to screw (in the literal and figurative sense) what seems like half the women in the church (God’s will you know; he needed comforting and missed the physical touch of his wife.)  Gullible and stupid doesn’t begin to describe it.

The original investigation into the fire was very sloppy. (God and his minions always get away with have to meet a lower standard.)  I think the first part of the book could have been cut and the last part concerning the investigation expanded.

Hard to put down though.  Sort of like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

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History News Network | What We’ve Overlooked in the Debate About Charleston: The Connection between Guns and Racism

History News Network | What We’ve Overlooked in the Debate About Charleston: The Connection between Guns and Racism:

"In the late 1960’s the Black Panthers creed was “the gun is the only thing that will free us.”  In 1967, they invaded the California State Assembly with guns in hand protesting the Mulford Act, which made it illegal to carry loaded firearms in public.  The NRA later supported the Mulford Act and that icon of American conservatism, Governor Ronald Reagan, signed the law stating  “I see no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons. …. [The Mulford Act] would work no hardship on the honest citizen."  The national Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 and the Gun Control Act of 1968 followed, which the NRA did not oppose.  The “not law abiding” blacks got controlled. 



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Unconditional Love

Let's face it, there is no such thing as unconditional love. Certainly not the kind churches feed us. God certainly doesn't love you unconditionally or s/he wouldn't put so many conditions on things.  Let's take baptism, for example.  Unless you sprinkle a little water on a baby's head and that baby dies, that baby will burn in Hell forever.  That's the condition of an insane psychopath.