Louisiana Inks Plum Distribution Deal with Fading but Omnipotent Self-Help Author
June 20: Tenish Commandments … Student-loan debt … Comstock Act … Biden leading Trump …
If TFN makes unbearable news bearable, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Gov. Jeff Landry (R-LA) yesterday inked the publishing industry’s sweetest deal ever for best-selling author God, requiring all of his state’s public classrooms to post a version of one of His most ignored and ridiculed works.
The deal would give unprecedented and illegal exposure to a vanity-press author who once dominated the self-help shelves and remains a best-selling author today behind only better writers like Steven King and worse writers like James Patterson. But God’s monopoly has been fading after years in which He has failed to turn in even a first draft of a long-promised sequel to his blockbuster debut.
And His works have come into increasing disrepute up against competing works by humans who get their shit peer-reviewed. By contrast, God hasn’t updated His works in hundreds of years. In fact, other authors have successfully peeled away some of God’s fan base by penning unauthorized sequels of their own.
While God remains widely popular, and even inspired a splashy get-together of fans and cosplayers on Jan. 6, 2021, His works are read in the U.S. less than ever. God’s dwindling popularity is propped up today less by His written oeuvre and more by modern-day interpreters and performance artists.
Atheist author Richard Dawkins has said that his readers cite reading The Bible more than any other reason for converting from religion to reason. Landry apparently saw how poorly God has been doing lately, even after a marketing campaign that’s lasted thousands of years, and stepped in to lend a hand yesterday.
Landry signed America’s first law requiring all public classrooms — even in schools for older kids who aren’t credulous little bags of credulity — to display one of God’s most famous works, the a Ten Commandments. God actually wrote three versions of it in the Bible, with a total of 17 commandments, so Louisiana Republicans decided which to use. That’s right, the humans decided!
“[I]f you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses,” Landry said lyingly at yesterday’s bill-signing ceremony.
First of all, the idea that law-abidingness correlates to religiosity is, appropriately enough, fiction. Multiple studies have shown the opposite is true. The least devout, most secular states have lower crime rates. Same thing for countries.
Besides, although some of the laws in the Tenish Commandments may have originated with God, most of the ones dealing with morality actually predate His work, leading to accusations of plagiarism. Or at least syncretism.
In Landry’s view of history, the day before Moses showed up with the tablets, no one minded a little killing or thieving, what with there being no laws before Moses. If that were remotely true, can you imagine the people’s relief when someone finally said no more killing or thieving? “THANK you! Finally! See, this is what I’ve been saying! I told you killing was bad. We shouldt not kill!”
But there were earlier laws. Historians tell us that murder has been frowned upon for quite some time. Ur-Nammu wrote no fewer than 32 laws, which burned up the Mesopatamian cocktail circuit. And Ur-Nammu’s laws included bans on killing and thieving, providing the basis for Ur-Nammu to file suit against Moses for intellectual property theft, even though that’s not forbidden by the Tenish Commandments.
And there’s evidence that even early readers who got to meet The Author face-to-awesome-face weren’t super impressed. Moses thought the first draft was so shitty he destroyed it. And then, once the people had God’s final draft in an exclusive first edition, literally written by the hand of God…they lost it.
Landry’s Hail Mary faces critics other than just literary ones. There’s also legal critics.
The American Civil Liberties Union and Freedom From Religion Foundation will be suing to block the law’s implementation.
For one thing, the version Louisiana Republicans cobbled together isn’t just any Tenish Commandments. It’s a Protestant Tenish Comandments. Traditionally, Catholic churches use a version of the Tenish Commandments that doesn’t include a commandment found in Landry’s version: The one forbidding making graven images for thyselfs. Which makes sense cuz Catholic churches are teeming with graven images.
And for all of Landry’s talk about the historical importance of the Tenish Commandments, they’re using the most modern version: Protestantism came loooong after Catholicism and Judaism. Hell, Landry might as well have ordered the 95 Theses nailed to every classroom door.1
Whether any of this will matter in the courts didn’t come up in Biblical prophecy. But the Supreme Court has already ruled against classroom Ten Commandments. And today there are six Catholic justices and one Jewish justice!
There are only two Protestants on the Supreme Court. One of them, Neil Gorsuch, was raised Catholic and no one seems to be sure how much of it stuck. In fact, the only clear-cut, Martin Luther-approved Protestant on the court is a justice almost 100% likely to recognize Landry’s deal as the white Christian supremacist shit it is: Ketanji Brown Jackson.
There’s a part of me, though, that looks forward to seeing Louisiana implement this. This kind of forced proselytization works just swell in insular cocoons, but kids today have a whole-ass internet.
If history tells us anything, it’s that anything required to be posted in a classroom will be mocked the shit out of. Consider some of the Commandments we’re talking about:
I AM the Lord thy God — My governor dude, kids are gonna have SO much fun with this. The capitalization alone screams “grandpa tried to text me.”
Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images Y’know which images are graven? All the images. Now, a narrow, Biblical interpretation would say this one just refers to statues, but that’s not what the required poster says! Which means some precious class clown is guaranteed to tell Teacher “no graven images!” whenever it’s time to draw.
And what’s Teacher gonna say when kids explain they couldn’t do their homework because they had to keep the Sabbath holy? In fact, the first five of the Tenish Commandments have nothing to do with actual morality: They’re all literally God’s equivalent of rock-star tour riders, dictating how He should be treated and worshiped and not served brown M&Ms lest ye be smited.
And there are probably more important things for Louisiana students to be learning. Hell, there are more important things for Republican Louisiana legislators to be learning. Like basic math!
The number of commandments listed in their Ten Commandments law, for instance, is 11. That’s right, in Louisiana, this one goes to 11. You can read all 11 in the law right here. Pretty sure the kids of Louisiana are gonna go to town once they’re old enough to count the 11 Ten Commandments, assuming going to town is still legal by then.
The real point behind all of this, of course, is to further inject religion into government. Which Democrats too often greenlight if the steps are incremental enough. But the ultimate goal is to destroy secular grounding for laws and replace it with a religious one — which can be used to justify all kinds of shit that would never fly in a system based on reason.
Not to mention the fact that, however devout some voters may be, their theocratic leaders typically don’t give two shits or two Corinthians about the literal, obvious, common-sense readings of even the most beneficial religious mandates.
Right-wing Christians want the freedom to do whatever they want, replacing reason as moral authority with a magic book that can be interpreted to justify anything, and ignore that book when it’s inconvenient.
In fact, just the day before Landry’s bill signing yesterday, his personal god, Donald Trump, vowed to violate a divine commandment repeated in the Bible vastly more times than the Tenish Commandments is are…
Trump Rejects God to Promise Young People the Dignity of Repaying Their Predatory Student Loans
Former Pres. Donald Trump — who built a career on stiffing creditors and portraying that as business acumen — suggested Tuesday that if he’s re-president, he’ll rescue student-loan borrowers from the “vile” debt-relief policies of Pres. Joe Biden.
In tortured syntax that would prove challenging even if you took out student loans to study James Joyce, Trump criticized Biden’s attempts at debt forgiveness and relief. “He did that with the tuition and that didn’t work out too well, he got rebuked, and then he did it again, it’s going to get rebuked again, even more so, it’s an even more vile attack.” (As president, Trump only inflicted debt relief on business owners who borrowed money so they could survive his handling of the COVID pandemic.)
Trump also blamed Biden’s debt relief for America’s soaring debt, which Trump launched into the stratosphere with a trillion dollars of tax breaks weighted to favor rich people.
Trump’s defense of student-loan payments — the bulk of which consist of paying off interest — is a bold rejection of a principle common to all the Abrahamic religions: The principle being that principle is the only thing you should have to pay back.
In fact, usury — originally, the charging of any interest at all on a loan — has been opposed over the years by Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, kings, queens, popes, Martin Luther, and Dante Alighieri. It’s been punishable by fines (greater than those for theft), excommunication, and banishment to the seventh level of Hell (lower than murderers).
Not surprisingly, divine retribution appears to be on the way for Trump risking God’s wrath: New polling shows a lot of voters want debt relief. Because relief.
Eighteen percent of Americans, about one in five, say student-loan debt will be a big influence on their presidential vote. And 29% call it a national crisis.2
Around 43 million people have student-loan debt, and among those poor bastards, 29% say it’ll be a big factor in their vote.
It’s worth remembering that it was Trump, during COVID, who first froze student-loan repayments. Just like Jesus wanted.
(I actually tried to figure out what the New Testament says about interest, and people still haven’t agreed on what the fuck the Parable of the Bags of Gold means even though it was written by the perfect Author.)
Democrats Aim to Abort Comstock Act in its 604th Trimester
Sen. Tina Smith (D-TN) today will introduce legislation to undo 1873 legal provisions that Republicans want to use to ban the mailing of abortion pills — and outlaw any abortion facilitated via mail, even the e- kind.
Sending abortion pills and other obscene materials in 1873 — such as child pornography or drawings of socks — was outlawed by the Comstock Act at a time when most mail was delivered not by electrons but ponies. Largely forgotten today because grow-the-fuck-up, the Comstock Act now is being revived by right-wing Christians as a means of clamping down on abortion pills, now the most common method of abortion.
Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) is introducing the bill in the House, and told the Washington Post that party leadership is backing it.
Smith clarified that the legislation will preserve the Comstock Act prohibitions against child pornography, which could create new legal problems for former Pres. Donald Trump.
Militarism and Sexism Scramble Partisan Approaches to the Draft
Senate Democrats are pushing legislative language that would require women to register for the draft. Because…equal rights!
We don’t currently have a draft, of course, other than the intense economic pressure placed on poor people who have to join the military to make a living. But new wording added by Democrats to the annual military-spending bill would force women to join men in registering for the draft, in the event America is invaded liberated by Mexico.
It’s not a clear-cut partisan issue, though. Some Republicans support the measure, because war stuff. Others oppose it, because lady stuff.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said on Fox, “normal [sic] people are like, ‘Leave our daughters alone.’” Except, of course, when our daughters want to breastfeed in public, get pregnant without getting fired, transition gender, use contraception, have an abortion, party with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), or not be called “Honey.”
Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sam Brown is making it an issue in his race against Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV). Scarred during military service by an improvised explosive device, Brown said, “Look at my face. This is the high cost of war and I just found out that Jacky Rosen voted this week to make signing up for the draft mandatory for our daughters.”
Brown clarified that he still supports facial scarring in combat for men.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Jack Reed (D-RI) pushed back, saying that, “[I]f we were in a situation requiring a draft, I think we would need all able-bodied citizens 18 and above,” adding, “If we go to a draft, that means we’re in a serious, serious situation.”
Such situations could include scenarios like, for instance, re-Pres. Donald Trump declaring that undocumented migrants constitute a foreign invasion, and/or that the Antifa army is now so big it can only be defeated by drafting women, although presumably Trump would exempt women he found good-looking enough to not want scarred.
You’ve Been So Good, Have a Poll
Pres. Joe Biden is leading former Pres. Donald Trump in the latest poll, Democrats can celebrate today … if they’re willing to trust the source for this (it’s Fox).
For the first time in almost a year, Biden is now both leading Trump and has cracked 50% … if you believe Fox. The new Fox poll puts Biden at 50% with voters, compared to 48% for Trump.
That’s a three-point shift from last month, when Trump was ahead by one point but also hadn’t racked up 34 guilty verdicts. The margins are even impressiver when you zoom in on independents.
Last month, Trump led by two points among independents. Now Biden is nine points ahead among independents, who apparently understand crime news better than political news.
The poll — which, again, Fox — also shows a growing number of people, 32%, feeling good about the economy. Which is great news for Biden but also for anyone inspired to become a paying Fucking News subscriber.
TCB
ONE-TIME DONATIONS I can’t tell you how tempted I am to keep saying that I need to test the new, TFN one-time-donation button. Why? Because after I said someone reported it wasn’t working, several of you generous Newsfuckers successfully donated. Due to goddam Integrity™, however, I’m forced to drop this obviously successful marketing tactic and must now appeal solely to your interest in supporting TFN’s weekday newsfuckery and original reporting. Thank you!
SOCIALS Come say hi on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, Mastodon, Spoutible, and/or Threads!
Go get ‘em, kids…!
That’s what Martin Luther did, even though future Protestants would’ve spotted him on their Ring cameras, freaked out like scaredy-babies, and called the cops on him.
After college, I used to call student-loan debt my generation’s Vietnam. In my defense, I was kidding.
Lessons in history should be required for those who promote the "historical significance" of the Tenish (love that line) Commandments.
Sec 1. A(7) of the bill (on page 2) refers to the Mayflower Compact and it is total hogwash. It was neither "America's first written constitution" nor "the first purely American document of self-government."
The many-details-omitted version of the history: A group of English settlers were headed for the northern reaches of Virginia (which extended to the mouth of the Hudson River). They wound up in what is now Plymouth, MA.
But that put them beyond the bounds of their patent, their lawful authority to settle on "the King's land," which was for Virginia. Some of the passengers said that meant everyone could do as they pleased and no one had any authority over them. Because that seemed a threat to the group's function (and quite possibly survival), its leaders enforced the agreement under the threat of barring dissenters from getting off the ship.
The key point is that if you compare what the document says with the powers allowed to them both under the old patent for Virginia and the one they got for New England the next year, it's clear that the "Compact" was a stopgap under which they agreed to govern themselves as if they had a patent until they got one. And it worked.
But it asserted no authority of local governance beyond those typically granted in patents for English settlements and was in no way a constitution.
Brilliant. Jon seems to be at his best when he's debunking religious shit.
I'm hopeful the donate button will allow the person who could maybe afford $50 will have the privilege of donating something. ALSO: GIVE A GIFT SUBSCRIPTION. THIS COULD BE A WAY OF COMING OUT TO YOUR FRIENDS & FAMILY THAT YOU ARE A COMMIE, PINKO, RADICAL ACTIVIST!