2017, A Hell Bound Train Of A Year (Part 7): Is Franklin Graham Brain-Damaged, Or Is It Just Because He’s A Typical Fake Christian Republican?

-by Noah

With every year-end review I do, I like to include one or more Republicans that, while they get some attention, largely fly under the radar. Sure, I do that all year long, but, you see, I just feel so bad that some miscreants just don’t get the exposure they so righteously deserve. Oh, how I long to rectify the situation!

So, this year, I thought I’d do an additional good work that will, I’m sure, gain me entrance into Christian Heaven, aka The Ultimate Gated Community. The Ultimate Gated Community? Yeah. You bet. Why else do you think that Christianity, especially pompous, sanctimonious, fake Christianity, has sooo much appeal to Republicans?

As for the question posed by the headline of this post, the correct answer is both. After all, one can’t be a Republican without a) hiding behind a fake and perverted version of what was once one of the world’s great religions, before it got so corrupted by greed and toxified by hate, and b) from what I’ve seen, you do have to be brain-damaged to be a Republican. How else does one explain things like promoting pedophilia for the sake of power?

Franklin Graham is, or at least likes to be known as Donald Trump’s pastor. He’s also the son of the late Billy Graham who, although he hung around politicians of both parties, liked to think of himself, especially, as Richard Nixon’s pastor. The Grahams like to really hang with the uber-douchebags.

Billy Graham, however, was a man of great accomplishment in his field. He managed to successfully apply the principles of old time western patent medicine salesmen to the selling of a brand of Christianity that is as phony as those old cure-all “medicines.” Sure, that’s what it’s all about anyway. Whether you’re Pat Robertson, Graham, or Joel Osteen, the godly man so famous for shutting his doors during the Houston flood this past summer, it’s all about marketing yourself and preaching for money, lots of money, more money than God, in fact. Saving souls? What’s that about? Just send your checks.

Whatever else you say about Billy Graham, at least he had the respect of the public, deservedly or not, even from people who didn’t like a lot of things he stood for. Maybe one reason is because Billy Graham didn’t engage in overt bigotry when it came to Islam or our LGBTQ citizens like his son does. Franklin, in fact, is in danger of being banned from Great Britain for those very reasons. Graham is so batshit crazy about anything to do with LGBTQ issues that he has warned music legend Grace Slick that her sins carry “a death sentence.” What set him off into full-blown crazyland? Well, when the anti-gay rubber chicken chain, Chick-fil-A used one of her songs in a commercial, she decided to donate her royalties to Lamda Legal, a legal rights organization that fights on behalf of LGBTQ people. Franklin also says that same-sex marriage is the work of Satan. No, sorry Franklin. You are the work of Satan. Period.

Graham has also made it clear that he thinks former President Obama is a “Secret Muslim” and that God chose Trump to be president. Franklin Graham is such a perfect match for birther Trump that I’d be surprised if Trump didn’t someday put tits on him and marry him.

To date, Franklin Graham is but a shadow of his father, a faded xerox copy printed on cheap paper. I know I’ve used this analogy before, but, it’s true 99% of the time so why not beat it to death? Over the years, I’ve noticed what seems to be an as yet unnamed disorder. For lack of a better name, I call it Rotten Apple From The Tree Syndrome. I observed it numerous times during my career in the corporate world: First there is a father who rose to the top of his profession, was actually good at it, and stacked up a lot of achievements and respect.

After that, came the son, the opposite side of the coin. The son who was both supremely obnoxious, insecure, and utterly incompetent. Such sons never learned how to grow up and only got a job because of daddy. Often, they lose their jobs but daddy is always there with the diaper-made parachute of another job. Unlike the father, the sons often temporarily just hang on by claiming achievements that will never stand up to investigation or analysis. People laugh at them behind their back, constantly. Some people call it the lucky sperm bank but I see it as a disorder. That’s Franklin Graham.

To his credit, Franklin Graham falls short of the hideousness of the more well-known Pat Robertson when it comes to being counted on for lunatic pronouncements from fake Christians, but, let’s be fair, Franklin just hasn’t been around as long and he doesn’t have his own TV channel. Graham could be just as crazy as ol’ Pat, but we just don’t know it yet. That’s as good of a reason as anything to write this post. His fans can thank me later for doing God’s work.

So here we have Franklin Graham, a man who is also a pastor. These days, he hangs out with a supremely obnoxious, insecure, and incompetent president who has even deeper problems; problems that affect all of us, regardless of religious (or not) background. Graham and Trump are kindred spirits in hate.

Graham also shares in Trump’s cries of fake news, even saying that the concept of fake news is illustrated in the Bible.

Isn’t everything? Some people will even tell you that the Bible has a code you can decipher to give you winning lottery ticket numbers and World Series winners. Next thing you know, Trump and Graham will be telling us that the fabled Bowling Green Massacre appears in the Bible too, so it has to be true.

In the past, Graham has also taken one of George W. Bush’s daughters to task for her support of Planned Parenthood saying:

Planned Parenthood is the #1 abortion provider in the United States. Raising funds for this organization is like raising money to fund a Nazi death camp, like Auschwitz, except for innocent babies in their mother’s wombs!

An obvious proponent of fake news himself, Graham also prides himself on spreading the big lie that Planned Parenthood was caught on video “trying to sell baby parts.” But, promoting fake news comes naturally if you are a fake Christian, especially one who kisses up to a fake president.

What does the God of the Crap Christians have against poor defenseless little animals?

If Fido, Rex, and Rover accept Macho Jesus as their personal

two-fisted savior, can they avoid being Left Behind?

"Pets don't have souls, so they'll remain on Earth. I don't see how they can be taken with you. A lot of persons are concerned about their pets, but I don't know if they should necessarily trust atheists to take care of them."

-- raptureready.com wackjob Todd Strandberg

by Ken

We already knew that the God of the Crap Christians has divinely kinky tastes, like the way he likes his hunky Christian boys to be all nice and buff so their bodies will look supercool all bloodied and broken when they get the stuffing kicked out of them. (Crap Christianity appears to have a significant degree of S/M cult built in.) But really now, what could the Big Dominator in the Sky have against poor innocent animals?

I have to admit that I never thought about this problem until this piece was forwarded to me, and maybe it's just me insensitivity to the well-being of animals always seems to me one of the surest and most repellent signs of inherent inhumanity, which is why it's the Nazi anti-pets ordinance that horrified me most of all the ghastly details we learned with the ultimate publication of the wartime diaries of Victor Klemperer (a first cousin of the great conductor Otto Klemperer, or "the musician Otto Klemperer" as Victor usually referred to him when his name came up in the diaries. Victor Klemperer, you may recall, was a romance languages professor who managed, just barely, to live through the Nazi regime in Dresden thanks to having a non-Jewish wife. As in a cheesy Hollywood melodrama, Victor and Eva were scheduled finally to be deported, presumably to a death camp, the morning after the fire-bombing of Dresden. In the chaos, they escaped the burning and melting city.

The diaries are filled with shocking documentation of the day-to-day horror of life in the Third Reich, as growing deprivations and indignities were heaped on Jews. and while lots of them, like the increasing restrictions on what Jews could own and what they could buy, growing in time into a near-total ban on Jews buying anything at any time. But none stick in my imagination as vividly as the ban that came down on Jews owning pets. Importantly, the ban wasn't limited to Jewish ownership of the little cutie pies. It was also illegal to give them away to non-Jewish owners. For animals like the Klemperers' beloved little cat, it was a death sentence. There's a special kind of sickness at work here.

So tell me, did you ever wonder about what happens to the pets of right-thinking Christians come the Rapture? The inescapable conclusion is that they're to be Left Behind with all us Jews and other heathens. Apparently the heaven of the Crap Christians is pet-free. What kind of mastering of the universe is that?

Well now, as I learned in this fascinating report that Noah passed on to me, a "Small Business feature from Business Week, an enterprising 61-year-old Christian entrepreneur in New Hampshire named Bart Centre has found a solution. It's the very solution that wasn't available to save the Klemperers' poor pussycat or any other Jewish-owned pets in Nazi Germany: placing the critters with Left Behind families.

For a fee, of course. If there's anything the God of the Crap Christians believes in, it's making a buck any way you can. Crap Christians understand that what the Macho Jesus-haters don't understand that so-called human "misery," which we always talk about as if it's a bad thing, is really an opportunity for some smart cookie to pocket some dough.

Caring for Pets Left Behind by the Rapture

For a fee, this service will place your dog or cat in the home of a caring atheist on Judgment Day

By Mike Di Paola

Many people in the U.S. -- perhaps 20 million to 40 million -- ”believe there will be a Second Coming in their lifetimes, followed by the Rapture. In this event, they say, the righteous will be spirited away to a better place while the godless remain on Earth. But what will become of all the pets?

Bart Centre, 61, a retired retail executive in New Hampshire, says many people are troubled by this question, and he wants to help. He started a service called Eternal Earth-Bound Pets that promises to rescue and care for animals left behind by the saved.

Promoted on the Web as "the next best thing to pet salvation in a Post Rapture World," the service has attracted more than 100 clients, who pay $110 for a 10-year contract ($15 for each additional pet.) If the Rapture happens in that time, the pets left behind will have homes—with atheiists. Centre has set up a national network of godless humans to carry out the mission. "If you love your pets, I can't understand how you could not consider this," he says.

Centre came up with the idea while working on his book, The Atheist Camel Chronicles, written under the pseudonym Dromedary Hump. In it, he says many unkind things about the devout and confesses that "I'm trying to figure out how to cash in on this hysteria to supplement my income."

Whatever motivates Centre, he has tapped into a source of genuine unease. Todd Strandberg, who founded a biblical prophecy Web site called raptureready.com that draws 250,000 unique visitors a month, agrees that Fido and Mittens are doomed. "Pets don't have souls, so they'll remain on Earth. I don't see how they can be taken with you," he says. "A lot of persons are concerned about their pets, but I don't know if they should necessarily trust atheists to take care of them."

This paradox poses a challenge for Centre. He must reassure the Rapture crowd that his pet rescuers are wicked enough to be left behind but good enough to take proper care of the abandoned pets. Rescuers must sign an affidavit to affirm their disbelief in God -- and they must also clear a criminal background check. "We want people who have pets and are animal lovers," Centre says. They also must have the means to rescue and transport the animals in their charge. His network consists of 26 rescuers covering 22 states. "They take this very seriously," Centre says.

One of Centre's atheist recruits is Laura, a woman in her 30s who lives near the buckle of the Bible Belt in Oklahoma, and who prefers not to give her last name. She has two dogs of her own and has made a commitment to rescue four dogs and two cats when—if—the time comes. "If it it happens, my first thought will be, 'I've got work to do,'" Laura says. "The first thing I'll do is find out where I need to go exactly."

The rescuers won't know the precise location of the animals until the Rapture arrives, at which time they will contact Centre for instructions. "I've got to get to [the pets] within a maximum of 18 to 24 hours. We really don't want them to wait more than a day." A day she believes will never come.

Centre doesn't think he will ever have to follow through on the service he offers. But he believes in virtuous acts. His Web site directs about $200 a month in proceeds from Google ads to food banks in Minnesota and New Hampshire. And to pet owners, he has already delivered something of great value: peace of mind, for just 92 cents a month. "If we thought the Rapture was really going to happen," Centre says, "obviously our rate structure would be much higher."

Somebody here is nuts, and I mean just plain crackers. I think you can guess who my candidates are.

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