::sigh:: It’s not that the NRA has convinced people of anything, it’s that it’s literally a constitutional right. Dems need to drop this call for widespread bans on firearm types and features, and work more on addressing the circumstances that lead to violent crime in the first place.

O’Rourke saying that they were literally going to take guns is exactly the stupidest fucking thing to say in Texas, especially given that Latinos, African-Americans, and women are the fastest growing demographics of new gun owners, and especially given that LGBTQ+ people are finally figuring out that cops and the gov’t won’t protect them and so they need to protect themselves.

Lagavulin 12y, double, neat.

Laphroig or Ardbeg will do in a pinch.

If they don’t have any islay single malt whiskys, then usually cheap bourbon.

That depends on whether you value your own life more than you value the principles that we were led to believe America was founded on.

The discontent that led to the American Revolution didn’t start overnight, but someone fired the first shot when the British were coming to confiscate the cannon that the colonists had collected.

Don’t forget Warren and the rest of The Squad.

Can’t be an American breakfast; that’s not a 1911.

TWO WORLD WARS!!1!

I would suggest that you reconsider TST in light of recent actions. At the very least, look into all of the people that have been summarily kicked out solely by Doug Mesner AKA Lucien Greaves, been stripped of their ministerial titles, and how many chapters/congregations have separated from the org. If you use Reddit at all, you can find some of it there. I’m friends on Facebook with some of the higher-up people that either left or were kicked out, and… It ain’t pretty.

The long and short of it is that Doug Mesner and Cevin Soling (AKA Malcom Jarry) entirely own all of the intellectual property that is The Satanic Temple, and so they have complete control over everything that goes on. It’s fundamentally authoritarian, even though they officially espouse more anarchistic, freedom-loving principles. The most recent schism is because Doug is exercising his authoritarian tendencies and throwing people out that disagree with him.

I’ve actually put a lot of thought into this lately, what with the most recent schism in The Satanic Temple.

The seven tenets are great. I’d keep those.

I would start with the understanding that it was an atheistic religion, and I would treat it as such. I would write a constitution, and a charter, and any group that agrees with and meets the requirements laid out in the constitution should be allowed to affiliate themselves. It should be organized as a non-profit.

I like the way that TST’s ministry program worked before Doug threw most of the ministers out. I’d steal that. I would amend the process slightly though; I’d say that any person with a diagnosed personality disorder would not be eligible for ministerial positions, as narcissists, people with borderline personality disorder, etc., should not ever be in leadership positions. I would say that any person that successfully completes the ministerial program should be eligible to be a leader of a congregation, and people that have not passed would not be.

I would propose that the congregations send representatives to a national (or international) convention where they decide what the organization’s position should be on issues–I believe that it takes two majority votes in the SBC over a period of four (?) years for major doctrinal changes, or changes to the constitution–and those representatives would also select board members, who would in turn select a president. (I’d have terms of board members be offset so that there was never a period where a large percentage of the board was turning over.) Fundamentally, the church should be run by the people, and should be serving the congregants, rather than the congregants serving the organization.

I believe that yes, members and congregations should be paying in to the national organization, but no person within the organization should be getting paid for their work. I don’t care if it’s a collection, a set amount per person per week, or what; operating a religion requires funding. That said, the only compensation to anyone within the org should be minimal travel expenses for people that need to travel for their position; otherwise, it should be entirely a lay ministry. (Yes, that would be a financial hardship for some ministers, but I’d rather see that than have people seeking leadership for the financial benefit.) Finances should be fully transparent, and visible to all members, so that everyone can see where money is coming in from, and where money is going.

I also like the Mormon model of fully engaging all members. As long as it’s not onerous, I think that this can help individuals feel seen and heard, and also keep them feeling like a part of community. I would do things like have each members selected in turn to deliver brief biweekly sermons, with sources, and then have members in each congregation engage in a roundtable discussion about the sermon. You would want to have the possibility of sub-groups within each congregation so that different needs of individual members could be taken care of.

I made some notes somewhere, but I’m not sure where they are right now.

EDITS:

Members should have to pay, because the operations of a religion cost money. You have to have a (stable) place to meet, you need to pay for power, and yes, you need to pay for attorneys and accountants. It should definitely be strictly a lay ministry though, with leaders only being compensated for their expenses, not time.

The issue with The Satanic Temple now is that Doug Mesner (aka Lucien Greaves) and Cevin Soling (aka Malcolm Jarry) outright own all the legal entities that make up TST. There is no process that can replace them; they can remove any person or group that they don’t like. They have the ultimate power to make all the rules, and they are entirely above them. That means that, despite TST claiming to believe in freedom from tyranny, it’s fundamentally an authoritarian organization rather than a democratic one. For all of it’s many, MANY other faults, the Southern Baptist Convention is democratic, and I think that’s a quality worth emulating.

After seeing all the shit that Barack had to go through, is it really surprising that Michelle wants nothing to do with it? I wish she would, but she’s simply not been interested in politics in that way.

It looks like most Ipsos polls are a little over 1000, and most of them seem to use likely voters rather than registered voters.

I have edited my comment to reflect that I’m wrong.

You are correct, and I am not. I’ve edited my comment to reflect that.

The PUA-types and this alpha/beta/sigma nonsense really appeals to the incel crowd. They believe that they can somehow game relationships in order to get sex. Like, they do steps a, b, c–which is the kind of systems PUAs are/were pushing–and you get laid.

The whole thing is a constellation; I don’t think any of those groups exists in a vacuum, and there’s lots of points where they cross over.

My ex-wife wasn’t even conservative, so IDK.

EDIT: I am wrong about the sample size. Yes, the sample is a little small, but not too far off. They’re registered voters rather than likely voters, which is not quite as good, but, again, no terrible.

The poll surveyed 892 registered voters and has a margin of error of 3.2%.

As FiveThirtyEight would say, that’s a bad use of polling. That’s a very small sample size, and there’s no indication that it’s representative in any meaningful way.

Even more important, Obama has said she has no interest in being the president; she’s not willing to run.

I’m going to add a choice here:

In honor of the late, great Steve Albini, Kerosene, by his band Big Black. It’s been covered by a few bands, but no one has managed the harsh, nihilistic electro-punk feel of the original.

Blood and Wine was especially tragic; I sympathized with Dettlaff and his pain, and Syanna was a terrible person. But preventing Detlaff from killing Syanna for using him leads to him attacking Geralt, who has to defend himself. Regis understands why you had to kill Dettlaff, but he still loved him like a brother; the death of Dettlaff leaves him feeling terribly alone. There isn’t any way to end the bloodshed; everyone is hell-bent on destroying themselves.

Erm, no, that was popularized by Millennial PUAs, who are all solidly middle aged now.

I use diceware and random number generators to create my user names.

Well. I was married to someone that thought it was disgusting, hated that I masturbated, and did her level best to shame me out of it. She also hated sex. (Well, with me; she suddenly liked sex once we were separated and she was dating.) And many fundamentalist religions do teach that no one should ever masturbate, and that women should always be sexually available to their husbands, no matter what. (Oh, and women don’t have sexual needs or desires of their own, they just exist to fulfill male needs.)

rather bloodlessly, around 50k deaths overall,

Wut.

50,000 deaths is ‘rather bloodlessly’? And since that’s comparable to oppression within the USSR, it’s not that bad?

while outright invasions may not be justified,

Correct. That, right there, is the most important point you’ve made. They collaborated with Nazis to carve up territories, and were then shocked when the Nazis turned on them. As far as the appeasement pacts made with Nazi Germany by France, England, et al., there’s very, very good reasons why the Vichy gov’t and Quisling are viewed so negatively by everyone that isn’t an apologist.

The modern far-right really got it’s first big taste of legitimacy with the Tea Party. Which, yes, would be 2009-ish, and a blood-relative to the election of Obama. (E.g., without Obama as president, the racist fears of the Tea Party would have fizzled out in the harsh light of reality.) But I look at all of this on a continuum; the only two conservatives I see in recent memory that have made an apparently sincere attempt to stop the crazy train have been John McCain (…although he took Palin as a running mate…) and Mitt Romney, and they both got crushed by Dems. Well, maybe Liz Cheney too. Maybe. But she was okay with everything except Trump, so I dunno. Anyway, point is - Nixon, Reagan, and Gingritch were all laying the foundations and drawing up the architectural plans that Trump has used, and is using now, to build his version of a fascist state.