This copy & paste job has lots of interesting stuff about Charles Darwin, his wife, and Alfred Wallace who had the same ideas Darwin had. This motivated Darwin to finish the book he was writing, the book that changed the world, On the Origin of Species.

CAPTURING DARWIN'S DILEMMA: THE SCRIPTWRITER'S STORY

In crafting a film about Charles Darwin's great dilemma—whether or not to go public with his incendiary theory of evolution—scriptwriter John Goldsmith faced some quandaries of his own: How do you offer a fresh portrayal of one of the world's most iconic figures? Can you convey the essence of Darwin's scientific ideas in the context of a compelling drama? What's more, how do you avoid the "gotchas" of countless Darwin experts apt to catch any tiny inaccuracy? In this interview, Goldsmith, who years ago traced part of Darwin's Beagle voyage to better understand the man, explains his fascination with both Darwin and his wife Emma, and the extraordinary research he did to get the details right.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

NOVA: In a film about Darwin, why did you open with a scene about Alfred Wallace?

John Goldsmith: That's where the story begins. Always begin at the beginning. The whole concept of the film was to take a piece of Darwin's life and tell the story of On the Origin of Species and evolution generally within that framework, right? And the trigger for Darwin publishing anything on evolution was this letter that came out of the blue from Wallace. It's kind of like a spear thrown that goes thunk! into Darwin's heart as he sits there peacefully in Down House in North Kent. It's really where the story starts.

Q: In the script, you describe the set using Wallace's own words. What research did you do for this?

Goldsmith: Well, Wallace, God bless him, wrote lots of autobiography. As well as collecting and selling specimens, he wrote books. And he wrote a book about his experiences in Borneo and Malacca, and that book contains a description of his room.

Q: It's one of many instances where you tied your details—dialogue and sets and other parts of the script—to historical documents, which I found impressive.

Goldsmith: As far as I could, because even if one can't precisely get it right in terms of props and production, at least the whole team knew what we were aiming for.

Q: When we first see Darwin, he's in his study. He's making a beehive out of cardboard. What impression did you want to give of him right away?

Goldsmith: Well, that's an interesting example. You know, more is known about Darwin than he even knew about himself, because he wrote incessant letters. He was virtually a recluse for most of his life, and his equivalent of the telephone and e-mail was the postal service. So lots and lots of letters. And there's a wonderful thing online now, the Darwin Correspondence Project. The crucial years that I was interested in, they're all there.

"He was a lovely father. They were a very unusual family."

I wanted to know exactly what he was doing on the date when the story starts. And I managed, by going through all this correspondence, to discover that he had just received a letter from his brother Erasmus and was making this little model beehive. Erasmus had sent him a drawing and instructions on how to make it, and that's what he was doing.

Q: That's remarkable, that you pinned down that moment.

Goldsmith: If it had been any other subject, really, one wouldn't have bothered. One would have made something up. But the world is full of Darwin experts who know what he had for tea on May the 4th of 1862, down to the last lump of sugar, and they're all sitting there with their pencils poised.

Q: You were trying to avoid their gotchas.

Goldsmith: Exactly, yes. But it's also a classic example of reality driving the creative side of things, because it's a wonderful example of the kind of man Darwin was—the meticulous care he took. He was interested in everything.

A VERY NICE FELLOW

Q: From all that you've read of Darwin, how would you sum up his character?

Goldsmith: Well, he's a character who, alas, has vanished from the world: the independent scientist. He isn't holding a job down; he has no chair at a university. He can do exactly what he wants. And because Darwin realized that if any example in nature upset his theory the theory was dead, he made it his business to look into absolutely every aspect he could think of in nature.

When you delve into the detail of his life and the evolution of his theory, it really hits home the kind of extraordinary range of his activities, everything he was interested in.

Q: From barnacles...

Goldsmith: From barnacles to the beehive.

Q: If it weren't for Wallace sending this letter, do you think Darwin would have ever published his theory?

Goldsmith: I don't know. I don't think anybody does. It's very hard to say. He'd written about half of [what he called] "the big book." My feeling is he probably would have prevaricated for some years more. I think, inevitably, he would have published, because if it hadn't been Wallace coming up with something similar, somebody else would have. There were a lot of people working in this area. But given his druthers—as they say in North America—he probably would have left it until he was on his deathbed in order to avoid all the fuss.

Q: Why would Wallace send Darwin this letter and his paper on evolution?

Goldsmith: Well, Wallace didn't actually ask Darwin to comment. He just asked him to pass it on to [the eminent scientist] Sir Charles Lyell. Darwin and Wallace had met. They'd corresponded. Darwin was a client. [Darwin had bought specimens from Wallace.] So, really, Darwin was a contact.

Darwin came from the upper middle class. He'd inherited a chunk of the Wedgewood family fortune. His father, Dr. [Robert] Darwin, had made an awful lot of money. He was extremely well connected in politics and literature. Wallace was from a completely different background and sort of knew nobody. And of course, in Victorian England, as I suppose it is today, it's who you know. And Wallace obviously liked Darwin. Darwin was an extremely likable man. He wasn't a snob. He was a very nice fellow.

"A lot of the dialogue in the movie is verbatim from letters and diaries..."

Q: When Darwin reads the letter, he becomes physically ill.

Goldsmith: Yes.

Q: I assume that detail wasn't documented in the historical record.

Goldsmith: (laughs) Yes. Well, we don't know whether he threw up, but he had that tendency. Any kind of strain would make him physically ill. He suffered terribly from this very mysterious illness.

Q: And this letter certainly would have been upsetting. You mentioned that about half of Darwin's "big book" was already written by the time he received it.

Goldsmith: Yes. Then, because of the necessity to get something out, he abandoned the big book and started again. On the Origin of Species is a much shorter book. It was intended to be a sketch. It grew into 300 or 400 pages. But the big book was going to be 1,000 pages, I would think.

Q: So, in a way, Wallace did Darwin and the world a favor, because what we got is such a readable book.

Goldsmith: It's incredible. It's amazing. He was a naturally excellent writer. He had a very accessible, easy style. He never talks down. He never oversimplifies. But his mind is so clear and his perceptions are so straightforward that any lay reader like me can understand.

LOVING PARENTS

Q: Early in the film you introduce Darwin's children, scampering around the house. What do we know about Darwin as a father?

Goldsmith: He was a lovely father. They were a very unusual family. They lived in a way that very few upper-class Victorian families lived. They had a very loving, informal, very modern attitude to children and to child rearing. Absolutely a million miles away from what we think of as a Victorian upper-class way of thinking, where you had a formal handshake with your parents at six o'clock before going to bed, and that's about all you saw of them. In the Darwin house, they believed in playing with their children and talking to them and being with them.

Q: It's endearing.

Goldsmith: It is.

Q: Why is the memory of Annie, Darwin's daughter who died at 10 of scarlet fever, so significant in the film?

Goldsmith: It was the great emotional moment of Darwin's life. What remnants he had of Christian faith, I think, were absolutely killed stone dead by that. It touched him enormously. He adored her, absolutely adored her. They had a very special relationship. And he had to watch her die. I mean, it was absolutely appalling.

"I suspect that Emma came to realize that her faith could survive evolution."

Q: The film pivots on Darwin's relationship with Emma. How did you get a sense of their relationship? Was there correspondence?

Goldsmith: Obviously, they lived together 50 years, so they didn't often write to each other. But he occasionally went away to take the water cure and so on, and they would write to each other. Also, Emma kept diaries. My great friend Edna Healey, who wrote the life of Emma (Emma Darwin: The Inspirational Wife of a Genius), used the diaries and the letters extensively. You get a very good picture of Emma from that. She was, how can I put it? She was quite lazy. She didn't get up very early in the morning. She liked to lie in bed.

What neither of them were—which was remarkable for those days—neither of them was a snob. England was very, very class-conscious. And Darwin and Emma simply weren't that way, Emma particularly. She wasn't interested in fine clothes. She was sort of casual, a very loving, wonderful mother.

We're very lucky. She wrote children's stories, and we found one that she'd written, which we used bits of in the movie. And they're enchanting, they're absolutely lovely, and they give you the person.

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THEM

Q: What about Emma's religious views?

Goldsmith: She was a convinced Christian. She was a Unitarian, which means she wasn't a kind of raving evangelical. To quote Erasmus Darwin, Charles's grandfather, "Unitarianism is a featherbed for fallen Christians." I love that. So she wasn't a fundamentalist, but she did believe in the basic tenets of the Christian faith. She believed in the afterlife and so on. And it was a sorrow to her that her husband didn't. She writes somewhere that she believes their love will go on forever, and she would love it if he believed the same. He couldn't, really.

Q: You have a line—it's one of my favorite lines in the film—where Emma refers to "Notebook D," a famous notebook in which Darwin writes about evolution, as "Notebook D, for the devil." Did you conjure that yourself?

Goldsmith: I'm afraid I did, yes. A lot of the dialogue in the movie is verbatim from letters and diaries and so on, but I have allowed myself creative leeway occasionally, and that's one of my little things, yes. I hope I'll be forgiven by the Darwin community. I don't suppose I will be.

Q: Another great line, I believe, is a direct quote: When Darwin is writing to his friend Joseph Hooker about his ideas, he uses the phrase "it is like confessing a murder."

Goldsmith: Yes. It's so hard for us to imagine ourselves back in that time when it was like murdering something. He realized the intellectual consequences and theological consequences and philosophical consequences of what he was thinking.

Q: Do you think that, ultimately, Emma was able to reconcile her religious views with Darwin's view of evolution?

Goldsmith: This is an area I didn't go deeply into. But the Anglican Church and, indeed, the Roman Catholic Church, quickly came to terms with evolution. After the initial outrage and shock, horror, people realized that this actually didn't chop the legs off conventional religion at all. And I suspect that Emma came to realize that her faith could survive evolution, as the faith of millions and millions and millions of Christians has.

Q: Was it challenging to tell this story without having the screen time to develop characters like Joseph Hooker and Charles Lyell more?

Goldsmith: Not really, because it's a domestic drama, and that's what we wanted to do. If we'd had millions, we could have done it a completely different way, but we didn't. And, in a way, I'm rather glad we didn't, because I think, as a domestic drama on a small scale, it's much better for television. Also, it focuses the mind wonderfully.

It's really about these few terrible weeks in Darwin's life. And it's really about Darwin coming clean to Emma, if you like, and then having to have that final conversation, a conversation about God, which they'd avoided throughout their marriage. They'd never really talked about it. They'd agreed to just leave that to one side. Most marriages survive on those strategies. But in these circumstances, they simply have to have the conversation, and they do, and it's the emotional climax of the movie.

Emma then has my favorite line, when Darwin's feeding flies to a sundew flower, and he asks her about publishing, and she says—and this is a verbatim quote from Emma—"I suppose you're going to prove it's an animal." It's her way of saying, "Yeah, go ahead and publish." She had a wit, Emma did.

Q: Well, we're very glad that those few terrible weeks took place, aren't we?

Goldsmith: We are. Changed the world.

I watched a chess game. Grandmaster defeats Master. Some moves I was able to predict but usually their moves completely surprised me. Each player had 8 minutes to finish the game, but 3 seconds was added to their clock every time they moved.

https://lichess.org/JRJlKaoz/black

At the Wall Street Journal 3 years ago I wrote about the breathtaking stupidity of Christian assholes.

March 24, 2016.

I wrote the first comment at a WSJ article about some idiot who wrote a book about the Magic Jeebus Man.

Hello folks. Hardcore atheist and anti-theist here.

I congratulate Mr. Lewis for making tons of money for selling a book about nonsense. The religion industry is very lucrative.

"Lewis acts like a guide on the journey from unbelief to faith."

"Faith" is the keyword. Faith is an excuse to believe in whatever makes people feel good. The problem is if something requires faith then it has no real evidence and it's probably totally wrong.

What keeps these childish supernatural fantasies from going extinct is the relentless brainwashing of young gullible children. The brainwashers know the indoctrination has to start at a very young age. They know they can't wait until the victims are old enough to think for themselves.

I try to be optimistic about this terrible problem. I think science education and the internet are killing the moronic Magic Man fantasy and that's a good thing.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/mere-christianity-still-gets-a-global-amen-1458858161

Today, November 3, 2019, I clicked the link at the Wall Street Journal. I found numerous comments complaining about what I wrote. What a bunch of fucking crybabies. They all were being stupid fucking assholes which is typical for Christian scum. And the stupidity was overwhelming. I never met a Christian who wasn't a fucking moron.

I wanted to learn something about Christianity's most ridiculous fantasy so I looked it up and I found this bullshit.

https://billygraham.org/answer/what-happens-to-us-in-the-first-minute-after-we-die-do-we-enter-heaven-immediately-or-do-our-souls-go-into-some-kind-of-a-sleep-until-the-end-of-time-when-our-souls-and-our-bodies-will-be-reunited/

Question:

What happens to us in the first minute after we die? Do we enter heaven immediately, or do our souls go into some kind of a sleep until the end of time, when our souls and our bodies will be reunited? I've always had lots of questions about heaven.

Answer:

The Bible doesn’t answer all our questions about heaven and life after death—and the reason is because our minds are limited and heaven is far too glorious for us to understand. Some day, all of our questions will be answered—but not yet. As the Apostle Paul wrote, “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

However, the Bible certainly does indicate that when we die we enter immediately into God’s presence if we belong to Christ. From our earthly point of view, death looks somewhat like sleep—but not from God’s point of view. Paul declared, “We are confident (of eternal life), I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). Elsewhere he wrote, “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far” (Philippians 1:23).

Later, we will be given new bodies—bodies that will never age or be subject to death, because they will be like Christ’s resurrection body. As the Bible says, “The dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:52).

Is your hope in Christ? Death is a reality—but so is God’s offer of salvation in Christ. Don’t put off your decision for Him, because you could be called into eternity at any moment—and then it will be too late.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

If I understand this insane bullshit correctly, when Christian morons drop dead, their magical invisible soul magically flies to a magical paradise where they get a brand new body that never dies. I assume the new body is the same as the old decomposing body. The whole thing requires Jeebus to repeatedly wave his magic wand.

The magical 2nd life in a magical paradise for cowardly morons is what makes religions exist. If there was no childish heaven fantasy then nobody would go to church and Muslims would stop blowing themselves up.

Therefore, to eradicate religious insanity, it's just necessary to get rid of the supernatural heaven thing.

How could anyone convince a cowardly superstitious moron to throw out heaven? Not easy to do. Extreme stupid is very difficult to fix.

White bellbirds produce loudest bird call ever recorded.

New York Times - The Loudest Bird in the World Has a Song Like a Pile Driver

When a mate approaches a male white bellbird in the Amazon, he whips around and sings his piercing tune right in her face.

By Cara Giaimo

October 21, 2019

The pressures of sexual selection have made peacocks gorgeous, wood thrushes sonorous and birds of paradise great dancers. At first glance, the white bellbird doesn’t appear to have benefited similarly. Barrel-chested and big-mouthed, with a long wattle dangling from the top of its beak, this rainforest bird looks more like a Muppet than an avian Casanova.

But everyone’s got their thing. According to a paper published Monday in Current Biology, this goofball boasts the loudest birdsong ever recorded. And he must be proud of it, because he sings the most piercing note right into potential mates’ faces.

The white bellbird — one of four bellbird species in South and Central America — is a favorite among birders in Brazil. It has a “strange, metallic, kind of alien call,” said Caio Brito, one of the founders of Brazil Birding Experts. When several sing at once, they are “deafening,” and sound like “several blacksmiths trying to compete,” said Arthur Gomes, a biology student at São Paulo State University who contributed to the new research.

Mario Cohn-Haft, the curator of birds at the National Institute of Amazonian Research in Brazil and one of the authors of the study, regularly travels to understudied rainforest areas to survey birds and other species. On a 2017 trip to the Serra do Apiaú, a peak in north Brazil, he encountered bellbirds, which tend to live at high altitudes. They are “the soundtrack of the mountain,” he said. “You can hear them from a mile away.”

While examining a bellbird specimen during that trip, Dr. Cohn-Haft was struck by the thickness of its abdominal wall. It had “this really ripped, washboard stomach,” he said. He thought it might have something to do with the loudness of their song — “if they didn’t have that kind of protection,” he said, perhaps “their guts would blow out.”

He sent photos to Jeffrey Podos, a professor specializing in bioacoustics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who was similarly intrigued. A year later, the two led a team that further studied the bird.

Until a few years ago, assessing the amplitude, or loudness, of birdsong required an unusual amount of devotion and tech-savvy. Only a couple of dozen species have been properly measured, said Dr. Podos.

But new tools are making the pursuit much easier. For their expedition in 2018, Dr. Podos and Dr. Cohn-Haft brought sound level meters more commonly used for industrial-noise monitoring, along with laser range-finders to pinpoint how far away the birds were.

At the top of the mountain, they measured two vocalizations made by the white bellbird: a longer, more elaborate song, and a shorter, more intense one.

The white bellbird’s second song type is louder than a jackhammer, and approaches, “at its peak, the amplitude of a pile driver” — around 125 decibels, said Dr. Podos. That makes it three times more intense than the call of the screaming piha, the previous record-holder for loudness.

The researchers also discovered a trade-off between song length and amplitude — the more intense the song’s peak, the less time it lasted. “If sexual selection keeps pushing the song to be louder and louder, it’s going to become shorter and shorter,” said Dr. Podos.

This, along with the song’s simplicity, is in keeping with “a pattern of evolutionary trade-offs between sound amplitude and song complexity,” said Gonçalo Cardoso, a researcher at the University of Porto who was not involved in this study.

One big mystery remains. The white bellbird sings its pile driver tune when a potential mate is nearby. It starts facing away from her, and then whips around to blast the loudest, record-setting note right into her face. This choreography puzzles experts: Many other birds, including the famously elaborate satin bowerbird, actually tone down their displays once a female expresses interest, so as not to startle her.

The bellbird’s strategy “goes against expectations,” said Dr. Podos. “They just really seem to be socially awkward.”

“I am surprised that the loudest bird makes loud sounds when the female is so close,” said Nicole Creanza, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who was not involved with the study. She said the findings went against her expectations, but called them “a great foundation for future research.”

Dr. Podos hopes to see whether such behavior actually helps male birds get mates.

“We never saw copulation — we never saw what a really good male does,” he said. “The ones we saw might have just been losers.”

Copy & paste job about "The Problem of Evolution in America". I agree with the whole thing.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 2012

The Problem of Evolution in America

Once again, Jerry Coyne gets it right.¹ He is about to publish an article in the journal Evolution on Science, Religion, and Society: The Problem of Evolution in America. There's a link from his blog [My paper on religious and social factors affecting American acceptance of evolution] where he notes that the manuscript isn't quite ready for publication and most of you can't see it because it's behind a paywall.

Here's the abstract ...

American resistance to accepting evolution is uniquely high among First World countries. This is due largely to the extreme religiosity of the U.S., which is much higher than that of comparably advanced nations, and to the resistance of many religious people to the facts and implications of evolution. The prevalence of religious belief in the U.S. suggests that outreach by scientists alone will not have a huge effect in increasing the acceptance of evolution, nor will the strategy of trying to convince the faithful that evolution is compatible with their religion. Since creationism is a symptom of religion, another strategy to promote evolution involves loosening the grip of faith on America. This is easier said than done, for recent sociological surveys show that religion is highly correlated with the dysfunctionality of a society, and various measures of societal health show that the U.S. is one of the most socially dysfunctional First World countries. Widespread acceptance of evolution in America, then, may have to await profound social change.

Sandwalk readers will be familiar with Coyne's attack on accommodationism because he's absolutely correct. You will also understand that the problem is not evolution vs creationism but science vs religion. You can't ever solve the problem of creationism without dealing directly with the false doctrines of religion.

But Coyne goes one step further. How do you make America into a more secular society like those in other Western industrialized nations? Coyne argues that the popularity of religion in America is due to the fact that America is a dysfunctional society and religion may represent the only hope most people have in such a society. Therefore ...

Creationism in America, then, may be a symptom of religion, but religion in the modern world may itself be a symptom of unhealthy societies. Ultimately, the best strategy to make Americans more receptive to evolution might require loosening the grip of religion on our country. This may sound not only invidious but untenable, yet data from other countries suggest that such secularism is possible and, indeed, is occurring in the United States right now. But weakening religion may itself require other, more profound changes: creating a society that is more just, more caring, more egalitarian. Regardless of how you feel about religion, that is surely a goal most of us can endorse.

I think he's right about this. You can remove the need for religion by creating a more just society. But I don't think it will be easy. Looking at it from the outside, it appears to me that there are millions of Americans who don't accept the just society² as a desirable goal. They call themselves "Republicans" and they vote for people like Rick Santorum.

I think it's also going to be very difficult to convince most Americans that their society is less than perfect. In other words, most of the rest of American society accepts the concept of a just society but firmly believes that America is the only country that has achieved it.

---

1. That doesn't mean that he's right all the time. It just means that his batting average is way above average for an evolution defender.

2. Canadians will be familiar with the term since the just society was the goal of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau who named his son, and political heir, "Justin."

Tchaikovsky 9 Sacred Pieces No. 1 - Cherubic Hymn 1

Miserere mei, Deus - Allegri - Tenebrae

I found something at the New York Times that belongs in this blog. It's about the Christian fucktards who are in love with our fucktard president. It's about the idiots of Idiot America. "Paula White, Trump’s Spiritual Adviser, Says He Has ‘a Hunger for God’". That's bullshit. Trump was never interested in religion until he realized he needed Christian retards to win the election.

New York Times - Paula White, Newest White House Aide, Is a Uniquely Trumpian Pastor

Ms. White, a Florida televangelist, is being brought into the Trump administration to help shore up his evangelical base — even though some Christians consider her beliefs heretical.

Paula White’s rise to greater prominence and influence in evangelical circles is strikingly similar to President’s Trump’s rise among Republicans.

By Jeremy W. Peters and Elizabeth Dias

November 2, 2019

Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon turned to Billy Graham, the evangelist so ubiquitous he was known as America’s Preacher. Barack Obama turned to Rick Warren, the author of “The Purpose Driven Life,” which was the best-selling nonfiction hardback in American history after the Bible.

Donald J. Trump has a televangelist from Florida: Paula White, an outsider whose populist brand of Christianity mirrors Mr. Trump’s conquest of the Republican Party. And she is in many ways a quintessentially Trump figure: a television preacher, married three times, who lives in a mansion.

For years he has called her his longtime friend and personal pastor. When he ran for president in 2016, he turned to her to drive his evangelical support. And on Thursday the White House confirmed that Ms. White had officially joined the administration to advise Mr. Trump’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative, which aims to give religious groups more of a voice in government programs devoted to issues like defending religious liberty and fighting poverty.

Her new role gives her a formal seat at the table as Mr. Trump tries to ensure that evangelicals — the foundation of his political base — remain united behind him in his bid to win a second term. As a liaison to Mr. Trump, Ms. White has regularly facilitated meetings for conservative pastors and White House officials, assuring the president’s core constituencies that he addresses their interests.

Among Christians, however, Ms. White is a divisive figure. Her association with the belief that God wants followers to find wealth and health — commonly called the prosperity gospel — is highly unorthodox in the faith and considered heretical by many. And experts on religion in politics said that Ms. White’s ascendancy was unlike any other relationship between a president and a faith adviser in modern times.

“I never would have guessed that Paula White and Donald Trump would be the preacher-president duo people remember like Billy Graham and Richard Nixon,” said Kate Bowler, a professor of Christian history at Duke Divinity School.

“Paula White survived scandal and little support from the religious right to become one of the only stand-alone women in the male-dominated world of televangelism,” Dr. Bowler said. “She has done what no one thought she could do, scraping out a place for an unpopular theology beside an unpopular president.”

Ms. White’s rise to greater prominence and influence in evangelical circles is strikingly similar to Mr. Trump’s rise among Republicans. Both were outsiders who often faced suspicion and scorn from more conventional, established leaders of the spheres in which they sought acceptance. And both survived accusations of financial misconduct and ethical improprieties.

Ms. White, who also goes by Ms. White-Cain after her marriage to Jonathan Cain, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame keyboardist for Journey, did not respond to requests for an interview.

Some argue that by elevating figures like Ms. White, Mr. Trump is undermining Christianity in the same way he has damaged the Republican Party.

The move is “a very ominous sign” and signals that “Christian narcissism” has come into the White House, said the Rev. William J. Barber II, who organized the Moral Mondays protests in North Carolina and who spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2016.

“The so-called prosperity gospel is a false gospel,” he said, comparing it to a theology that justified slavery because of economic prosperity. “It is an attempt to interpret the gospel to be primarily about personal wealth and personal power, which is contrary to the theology of Jesus where the good news was always focused on caring for the poor, the least of these, the stranger, the sick.”

But her appeal with some religious Christians helps Mr. Trump reach audiences that are not naturally inclined to support him.

Although hard to quantify, Ms. White’s influence in less politically active evangelical circles, including among televangelists and viewers of the popular Trinity Broadcasting Network, appeared to help Mr. Trump in 2016.

Most polls focused on Mr. Trump’s white evangelical or Roman Catholic support, but conservative political strategists also capitalized on his marginal support in Christian subsets, like some Hispanic and African-American charismatic churches. But in a sign of how unpopular Mr. Trump remains with African-Americans, several hundred people from Ms. White’s heavily African-American congregation left her church because of her association with him.

Mr. Trump’s candidacy had initially divided evangelical leaders, with many prominent social conservatives supporting candidates like Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida during the Republican primary. Mr. Trump largely skirted the traditional Washington evangelical apparatus and instead surrounded himself with outsider figures who had amassed popular, if not traditionally political, influence, like Ms. White and the Liberty University president, Jerry Falwell Jr.

When it became clear that Mr. Trump would be the likely nominee, the two Christian factions came to a détente after two meetings one day in New York, largely around Mr. Trump’s support for anti-abortion policies, religious liberty and persecuted Christians in the Middle East. Ms. White, as the pastor personally closest to Mr. Trump, became a key liaison.

Darrell Scott, a pastor of a largely African-American church in Cleveland who supports Mr. Trump, said that Ms. White had been “active” in African-American and pentecostal circles for decades.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council who considers himself a more traditional conservative Christian, said that Mr. Trump had cooked up an “evangelical gumbo” by bringing together people from parts of Christianity that would ordinarily never intersect.

“I didn’t know Paula White before,” he said. “She came from a different stream than I’d probably swim in.” But as they’ve become close over the last three years, he said, he and other evangelicals who are not aligned with her theologically have come to realize their role with this administration is the same. “We’re there to influence public policy and move this nation forward where faith is openly welcomed, so that you don’t have to hide the fact that you’re a person of faith,” he said.

Ms. White has become a regular in Washington, organizing frequent meetings for pastors around the country to meet with administration officials. When Mr. Trump met with his informal evangelical advisory coalition this week, she was seated at his right hand.

This past March she helped facilitate a meeting at the White House with Vice President Mike Pence for 100 Hispanic pastors and denominational leaders, said Tony Suarez, the executive vice president of the National Hispanic Christian Leaders Conference, a network of 40,000 Hispanic evangelical congregations.

Ms. White led a pentecostal-leaning church, recently renamed City of Destiny, with thousands of members near Orlando, Fla. She stepped down as senior pastor in May and announced plans to start a university and 3,000 new churches. In 2007, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, and the Senate Finance Committee had investigated her ministry’s tax-exempt status, but the investigation was eventually dropped.

Ms. White first met Mr. Trump in 2002, when he called her after seeing her preach on a Christian televangelist program. They stayed in touch, she bought an apartment in his 502 Park Avenue building, and he reportedly attended Bible studies she occasionally led in New York.

He invited her to attend the first season finale of his show “The Apprentice,” where she prayed with the cast and crew before the live taping.

She prayed with him before he went onstage to accept the Republican nomination for president in Cleveland. She became the first clergywoman to lead an inaugural prayer when he took the oath of office, according to Mr. Trump’s inauguration committee.

Her employment at the White House raises questions about whether she may be putting her church’s tax-exempt status in question, as churches are not allowed to engage in overt political activity. Though she has stepped down as the pastor, she could run into difficulty with the Internal Revenue Service if she remained active in the church, even in an informal role, while working for the president.

“My sense is if she is leaving her church position and making a clean break that there would be no I.R.S. problem,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a campaign finance watchdog. But, he added, “If she is continuing in an official public role for the church while working in the White House that would cause a tax status problem as she would be using the church for political purposes.”

Asked if Ms. White had divested her financial stake in the church, a White House spokesman said they would not comment on personnel. Ms. White will not take a salary, according to another White House spokesman.

The divisions about the meaning of Christianity are a point of contention headed into a heated general election, where Democrats are putting Mr. Trump’s vision of morality on trial.

“I get asked this question all the time — how can these Christians support Donald Trump when so much that he says and does is literally antithetical to the person and teachings of Jesus?” said Jim Wallis, a progressive evangelical who has challenged the conservative wing of his church for decades.

“White nationalism isn’t just racist, it’s anti-Christ,” Mr. Wallis added.

Like many of the president’s most devoted followers, Ms. White insists that he is not fazed by the attacks on him. The impeachment inquiry, she said in a recent interview with The New York Post, “wears on him.” But as for his re-election, she said, “I’ve never seen the base more energized than it is now.”

More on Religion and Politics

Paula White, Trump’s Spiritual Adviser, Says He Has ‘a Hunger for God’ Jan. 19, 2017

Evangelicals, Having Backed Trump, Find White House ‘Front Door Is Open’ Feb. 7, 2018

#MAGA Church: The Doomsday Prophet Who Says the Bible Predicted Trump March 15, 2019

As Support for Trump’s Impeachment Grows, His Base Digs In Its Heels Oct. 21, 2019

I don't have a very high opinion about the know-nothing liberals at the New York Times.

At the New York Times, I wrote something about Senator Warren who is an anti-business liberal extremist.

As expected, a liberal crybaby wrote this bullshit. Just when I was about to write a reply the New York Times stopped accepting comments for this article.

The liberal fucktard wrote "You have no idea how our workers have lagged while corporations make billions. That is not how capitalism is supposed to work. We are actually reaping the benefits of Obama era fiscal decisions."

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This is what I was going to write:

American workers are getting jobs and raises, and they appreciate that income.

Corporations make billions because they make their customers happy. That's a good thing. That's why corporations exist. And when they have tons of money they can hire more people. This is exactly how capitalism is supposed to work.

We are reaping the benefits of Trump's decision to throw out unnecessary regulations. This gave corporations a reason to expand their businesses because they didn't have to worry about the government getting in the way like they did when Obama was president.

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Despite my contempt for Trump, his ridiculous trade wars, and his war against the environment, I hope he wins in 2020 so I can watch liberal crybabies cry like babies for the next 4 years.

I found something interesting at the Wall Street Journal about a Californian who is now an American Duchess in the UK.

An American Duchess Takes to the Barricades

Meghan Markle’s activism may alienate the British public from the monarchy.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, with her husband Prince Harry at Windsor Castle on Oct. 25. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

By 

Gerard Baker

Nov. 1, 2019 11:54 am ET

Once again, it seems, there’s some kind of deep-state American plot under way to destroy the British monarchy.

You’ll remember that an earlier one came close to succeeding in 1936, when Wallis Simpson from Baltimore infiltrated the heart of the British establishment by accepting a proposal of marriage from King Edward VIII. Her status as a twice-divorced woman was too much for the stiff-collared intendants of British social and constitutional niceties, and the ill-starred coupling caused a crisis of potentially revolutionary proportions, ending only when the king was forced to abdicate.

Now the Americans are back at it, probing here and there at the soft underbelly of the British royal family, clearly intent on bringing it once again into disrepute and danger. But the star-spangled dagger now aimed directly at the House of Windsor takes the form of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, formerly Ms. Markle, one-time cable TV star and now, it seems, the lead in an unfolding drama that is shaking public confidence in her and her husband Prince Harry, sixth in line to the throne, opening up rifts in the royal household and threatening perhaps even the popular standing of the monarchy itself.

The duchess is profoundly unhappy at the treatment she is getting in the British tabloid press. A couple of weeks ago, she and her husband gave an emotional interview to ITV in which she spoke of her torment: “I really tried to adopt this British sensibility of a ‘stiff upper lip.’ I really tried, but I think that what that does internally is probably really damaging.”

There are considerable privileges to being a royal. The houses are quite spacious, the furniture and fixtures are opulent, the travel is luxurious, and you get to dress up a few times a year for big state occasions. The only thing that you are required to do in exchange for these gifts from the British taxpayer is to be uncontroversial, especially in anything that has even a tinge of politics about it.

The monarchy has survived the modern era essentially because it has carefully observed this rule. Queen Elizabeth herself is perhaps the perfect model.

The duchess has a very different view of her royal responsibilities. She clearly feels it’s time the monarchy got progressive and uses her prominent platform to promote “causes”—invariably those embraced by the left. She’s a passionate believer in aggressive regulatory action to tackle climate change. She’s supported a campaign to “decolonize” British universities, making them and their disciplines less white and more diverse. In July, she “guest-edited” Vogue magazine and featured on the cover 15 women activists, almost all associated with left-leaning causes.

Try to imagine another 4 years of Trump. It could and probably will happen. There are people who bet on who will get the President of the United States job. Trump: "At around even money to win, he’s the odds-on favorite to be re-elected."

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION ODDS 2020 (UPDATED 11/1)

Over the past two months, there’s already been significant movement on some candidates.

Donald Trump has oscillated from +100 and +120 at bet365 and betway. At around even money to win, he’s the odds-on favorite to be re-elected.

On the Democratic side, polling favorite Elizabeth Warren has emerged as the top challenger to Trump, surging past Joe Biden during the summer. Kamala Harris fell from early frontrunner to merely a contender after the July debates. She now sites behind Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang at most sportsbooks. Beto O’Rourke removed himself from the race on Nov. 1.

If you're a Muslim or if you suck up to Muslim scum, get off my planet.

All Muslims, whether or not they're terrorists, belong to the world's largest terrorist organization. It's called Islam.

There are zero moderate Muslims because there is nothing moderate about belonging to a terrorist organization. There is nothing moderate about forcing women to cover their hair or wear a black tent. There is nothing moderate about being an evolution denier. There is nothing moderate about killing your own relatives if they throw out Islam. There is nothing moderate about believing Allah is real. There is nothing moderate about believing in a magical paradise for cowardly Muslim morons.

In the Muslim theocracies, most Muslims agree suicide bombing is sometimes justified.

All Muslims are scum.

Anyone who sucks up to Muslim scum is a stupid fucking asshole.

Crybabies for Allah should spend a few days at this place: https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/.

An example:

On This Day...
Nov 02, 2009: Glendale, AZ, Arizona
A woman dies after her father runs her over
with his car for being 'too Westernized': 1 Killed

I asked a question about the "loving god" bullshit. This was the most ridiculous answer. Someone else wrote the best comment.

Why would a loving god torture dead people who didn't suck up to it?

As if it's possible to torture something that's dead.

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A fucktard (aka typical Christian asshole) wrote this bullshit (I fixed his numerous spelling and grammar errors):

The spirit/soul of a man never dies. That is what's tortured. This is not hard to understand!

Also, God is love and he is also just meaning justice will be served. What kind of God would he be to let unrepentant sinners into heaven who never followed his laws or even believe he existed.

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Best comment:

What is hard to understand is how someone could be stupid enough to actually believe there's something called a soul.
-- Hernando

Lovéren -- Track #04: Sessa Nulma

Sessa Nulma, Sessa Nulma Enchant tonight Sessa Nulma, Sessa Nulma Bring me to life Spirit take me behind the sea to a universe that's ours Sessa Nulma, Sessa Nulma Treasure that I seek to find Enchant me, sweetly, quietly, slow Rivers flow out to the corners of the earth Sessa Nulma, Sessa Nulma Reflections in your eyes Sessa Nulma, Sessa Nulma Draw me close tonight Guide me through all the sands of time Through the darkness that binds me Sessa Nulma, Sessa Nulma Relentless desire Cast your light on all that's true Surrender your beauty Let it be my muse Sessa Nulma, Sessa Nulma Enchant tonight Sessa Nulma, Sessa Nulma Bring me to love

Trump will win in 2020 despite his stupidity, despite his ridiculous trade wars, and despite his war against the environment, because the Democrat's ideas are stupid.

"The Democratic presidential candidates aren’t talking about the real economy because most of them don’t understand it."

The Wall Street Journal article is about the Democrat's war against corporations. That's strange because corporations create millions of jobs. They exist to make money by making their customers happy. The Democrat's war against corporations is just plain fucking stupid.

The Democrats have another problem. They're crybabies. Nothing makes them happy. They're always looking for an excuse to cry like babies. And this is one of the reasons why, despite my extreme contempt for Trump, I hope he wins.

Will Trump ever grow up and stop acting like a moron? No, of course not. I used to think it was possible but stupid can't be fixed.

Wall Street Journal - The Democrats’ Spooky Politics

Their party’s presidential candidates have created a bogeyman even scarier than Donald Trump. It’s ‘corporations!’

By Daniel Henninger

October 30, 2019

It was this weekend in 2012 that I went to a Halloween party wearing a quite realistic-looking Joe Biden mask. After about an hour, people said it was too spooky and asked me to take it off. When the Obama presidency ended, I threw the Biden mask away, assuming I’d never need it again. Wishful thinking is always a mistake.

With Halloween in the air, it’s the right moment to discuss the central role played in presidential politics by bogeymen—creatures conjured to distract and scare the citizenry. In politics, the bogeyman is always just around the corner. For John F. Kennedy it was “the missile gap”; for Barack Obama, “the wealthiest”; and for Donald Trump, criminals pouring across “the border.”

Naturally, the Democrats running for their party’s presidential nomination needed a bogeyman, and they have created one even scarier than the Trump monster. It’s them—“corporations!” At their recent presidential debate, one candidate after another claimed corporations were wrecking the country.

Elizabeth Warren, who knows a thing or two about scaring people: “They have no loyalty to America. They have no loyalty to American workers. They have no loyalty to American consumers. They have no loyalty to American communities. They are loyal only to their own bottom line.” And by the way, “I have a plan.” Yikes.

Cory Booker ranted about “corporate tax incentives,” and Amy Klobuchar wants a rollback of “what we did with the corporate tax rate.” Beto O’Rourke somehow related a woman he said was working four jobs with “some of these corporations,” and Tom Steyer, billionaire, said we have to “break the power of these corporations.”

Finally Joe Biden, seeing where this was going, invoked the “corporate greed” of companies that are “not investing in our employees.”

Politics, as has been proved lately, can get crude, and one understands why candidates play the race card, the class-warfare card or the anti-immigrant card. But how has the Democratic Party arrived en masse at playing the anti-corporation card?

If one sits through any of these three-hour-long Democratic debates or their climate and LGBTQ town halls, it’s hard not to notice that there is an 800-pound elephant in the room that none of them (including the moderators) want to talk about—the American economy in the here and now.

Unless the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is another front for Donald Trump, the reality of historically high job creation and rising wages for people regardless of income level, race, sex or sexual orientation has become impossible not to notice.

Even the New York Times recently admitted the jobs boom was forcing “corporations” to dig deeper for workers: “With the national unemployment rate now flirting with a 50-year low,” it noted that companies are offering work-from-home options to parents, accommodating employees with disabilities, reducing educational requirements and waiving criminal background checks.

This 50-year unemployment low—and the self-respect and sense of personal possibility that comes with it—didn’t just happen. It is the explicit result of Congress and President Trump redeploying two proven pillars of Reaganomics. They dropped the tax rate on—yes—“corporations” to 21% from its investment-killing decades at 35%, and he unwound a waaay-overboard Obama regulatory regime that was imposed on virtually every private-sector producer in the U.S. economy.

You’d have to be obtuse not to recognize the historic burst of individual economic opportunity happening now. The wonder wasn’t so much the economic revival this produced but the astonishing scope of the Trump boom.

The Democratic presidential candidates aren’t talking about the real economy because most of them don’t understand it. The Democratic Party’s historic link to the real economy was private-sector labor unions affiliated with industries such as steel, mining and cars. With the decline of those unions, the Democrats have become an almost wholly public-sector party, for which the private economy, which employs millions of workers, has become a distant planet whose only function is to send the oxygen of tax revenue. Which is why Democrats propose unpriceable ideas like Medicare for All or the Green New Deal. Which is why so many blue-collar workers in 2016 managed to identify their lot with an unapologetic billionaire businessman.

This is the real reason a moderate and totally embedded private-sector Democratic figure such as Mike Bloomberg isn’t likely to run. The party, captured by cotton-candy socialists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has deserted him. The real-world disconnect even got to primo Never-Trumper Alec Baldwin, who recently lamented the attacks on “a country built on both freedoms and commerce.” Commerce? What’s that?

The economy slowed to a 1.9% growth rate in the third quarter as business investment fell beneath the enduring weight of the Trump tariffs, which could yet take some sheen off his accomplishment. But come the general-election debates next year, Mr. Trump will relentlessly pound his opponent with the fact of real work created for real people. Whether it’s Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren, they’re going to need a better bogeyman to compete than corporate greed.

Write henninger@wsj.com.

I wrote this stuff somewhere else. It's about the ridiculous Christian cult.

Christianity has 3 problems. It's ridiculous, it's disgusting, and every Christian fantasy is obviously bullshit. The cult was invented by morons who made everything up.