The GOP appears to be rapidly transforming itself into the party that picks out the village idiots and then sends them off to Congress.
From this past week we have a few highlights that illustrate this.
Let’s start with this one. Sen. Mark Mullen, a devoted Christian, tried to have a bar-brawl fist-fight with a witness in the middle of a Senate hearing …
Reminder: Last month, Sen. Mullin told a group of religious-right activists that as a Christian, he is called to love his political opponents: “Even if you disagree with me, I still love you, I still respect you.” … er … yes Mark, we can indeed see your “Love” in action here, you just “love” violence.
If you are wondering why Sen. Mullin went after the witness like this, it’s because the witness, union leader Sean O’Brian, had tweeted this back in June …
Moving on, Sen Marjorie Taylor Greene (a.k.a. Marjorie Trailer Queen) went into full high-school mode and has been running around the halls of congress telling any her colleagues that will listen that Sen Lauren Boebert is a whore. That’s of course because Boebert was recently caught on camera jacking some dude’s beanstalk in a theatre full of kids …
One Republican lawmaker, who has heard Greene use that word multiple times to describe Boebert, told The Daily Beast that Greene has been at this campaign for some time.
“Calling her a whore, that’s not new,” this GOP lawmaker said. “She’s been doing that for a while.”
Another GOP lawmaker also witnessed Greene refer to Boebert as a “whore.”
Then, moving on once again, we also have the former House speaker Sen Kevin McCarthy who sucker-punched his colleague Sen Tim Burchett in the hallway. Matt Gaetz then promptly used this as an opportunity to try and have him sent to the principles office … (because of course Matt Gaetz is well known for his high ethical principles) …
Oh, and let’s not also forget that this past week we also had Sen James Comer becoming completely unglued during a hearing when he was called out for doing exactly the same thing he wants to impeach the President for …
Jerry Springer would feel right at home within today’s GOP Caucus.
And as many have observed over the years, putting a clown into a palace does not give you a prince, instead you end up with a circus.
Moving on, below you will once again find my usual selection of some truly bizarre and extreme claims that have popped up during the last 7 days. Each is laced with my snarky commentary.
With my usual hat tip to my various sources, let’s once again dive into this very murky pool of absurdity and stupidity.
Christian Nationalism
Christian nationalist South Dakota state Rep. Brandon Prichard opposes in vitro fertilization: “Children have a right to not be made in a lab as some experiment. I know many people are okay with IVF because it produces children for families that can’t naturally conceive. However, IVF is disordered, often results in abortion, and should be avoided.”
- I’m honestly surprised by this stance. I’d have expected the religious “quiverful-to-build-an-army” faction to enthusiastically embrace IVF so that they can create as many children as God will bless them with.
- His stance is a rather novel twist that completes the circle. Not only does he want to force people who do not want kids to have them, but he also wishes to force people who do want kids to not have them … all from the “party of less big government” that appears to have now taken up residence in all our bedrooms so that they can police what goes on.
- Ponder over his turn of phrase and consider how bizarre it is … “Children have a right to not be made” … he is saying that something that does not exist has a right to not exist. How exactly can somebody that does not exist have rights? … and apparently the potential parent, who really does exist, should not have the right to be a parent.
- The ignorance is also off the charts, because IVF is not an experiment, it has been around since the 1970s
Charlie Kirk is once again channeling David Barton by saying that “the Founding Fathers used Deuteronomy as the basis of our entire system of government,”
- The best response is to never stop pointing out that he is lying.
- Quote from that link: The claim relies on misrepresenting a 1984 study that examined the writers and sources of ideas that were most often cited in “the political writings of Americans published between 1760 and 1805.” The study found that the Bible was the most frequently cited source solely because many of the pamphlets included in the research were sermons that had been reprinted for mass distribution (and these sermons, predictably, contained frequent references to Deuteronomy). When the sermon pamphlets were excluded, quotes from the Bible appeared no more frequently in the political writings of the era than citations of the classical or common law. In fact, when the study focused solely on the public political writings from 1787 to 1788, when the U.S. Constitution was written and ratified, “the Bible’s prominence disappears” almost completely
- Perhaps if Charlie Kirk had obtained an actual education and not just dropped out of a junior community college near Chicago that be briefly attended, he might not have ended up being so utterly clueless. He has also never worked at a real job a single day of his life.
The Cult of Trump
Spokesman denies that Trump rhetoric echoes that of dictators like Hitler and Mussolini and declares that those who say it does will find “their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.” @marianne_levine reports in the Washington Post
- “I’m not like Hitler, and if you say I am then you’re going to the camps”
- Trump is no longer Right Wing, but rather is now Reich wing
- My guess is that the Spokesman being quoted is Herr Stephen Miller
- If Trump sounds like a duck and quacks like a duck … well yes, you can fill in the gap there.
MAGA Pastor Shane Vaughn is so confident that former President Donald Trump will be reelected in 2024 that he announced that he’ll “be chartering a bus for the Inauguration of Donald John Trump” and is offering to pick up supporters “along the way to Washington DC.”
- I truly do grasp why Shane supports him. Trump is a rather blatant fraudster who may indeed (hopefully) go to jail, and Pastor Shane is also a convicted fraudster … so … the old english proverb “birds of a feather” quite naturally springs to mind.
- I can guess where Shane is most probably going with this bus tour. It will soon be something along the lines of “For a donation you can book your seat” or similar, and no actual bus will ever emerge.
Lies, Damn Lies, & David Barton
David Barton has the gall to claim that “being a progressive means never having to say you’re sorry because they get stuff wrong all the time and they never admit it.” This is pretty rich coming from Barton, who has built an entire career on getting stuff wrong and never apologizing for it.
- Barton has managed to successfully corner the pseudo-history market, he now has a complete monopoly. Others playing in this arena simply peddle his disingenuous “facts” as “truth”
- Reminder: His own history book, supposedly all about Jefferson, was so full of distortions and lies that his own Christian publisher pulled it off the shelf and cut ties with him. You can most probably still buy it, but you would need to look in the fiction section to find it.
- Mr Barton’s entire “education” is a degree in “Religious Education” from Oral Roberts university.
- The one aspect here that is indeed truly awe inspiring is the degree of projection in play.
Additionally, now that former President Donald Trump is no longer in office, David Barton has this past week changed his tune once again and is back to declaring that President Joe Biden can be impeached for “incompetency.”
- He previously claimed that there were no constitutional grounds for impeaching a President, but apparently that only applied to Trump and not Biden. His raw hypocrisy and gross dishonesty is there for all his disciples to happily ignore because it panders to their pre-existing biases.
- If he wishes to discuss Presidential incompetence, then he need look no further than his very own lord and saviour, Trump.
Also, this past week David Barton declares that George Soros is “evil incarnate.”
- Ah yes, Soros, the favourite whipping post of the religious fascists. Follow the link to Barton’s page and you find that the word “Soros” appears 15 tines within that one page. I wonder how much rent Mr Soros has to pay for living inside Barton’s head.
- The basis for his “evil incarnate” claim is that Mr Soros apparently made contributions to support candidates that Mr Bardon does not agree with
- Barton also does his usual thing of lying by claiming that the Soros family was personally involved in the Holocaust and suggests they persecuted the Jews. In is true in one sense, the Soros family was indeed “involved”, they were a Jewish family.
- For reference, Reuters does a rather robust debunking of the many Soros Right-wing myths – here.
More Election Denial
Trump booster and election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell is stoking distrust in elections this past week–and raising money–with baseless claims about the recent Kentucky governor’s race.
- I’m shocked I tell you shocked … that Andy Bashear who led in pre-election polls won it.
- As documented by many journalists who wrote about the election, Bashear benefited from his family’s long presence in state politics, competent stewardship of economic development, and effective responses to natural disasters.
- Reminder: Lindell has been promoting fake stolen election claims for over three years now and so far has failed to come up with one single jot of credible evidence. All he has achieved is to stoke up anger and harassment against election officials, many of whom have left their jobs because of that.
Israel
APIAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, plans to spend $100 million to unseat members of congress who dare to suggest that supporting the extreme right-wing Israeli Netanyahu regime to carry out war crimes is morally reprehensible
For the record, let’s make this abundantly transparent …
- Hamas do not represent all Palestinians – they are a gang of fascist religious extremists and don’t have the support of the majority of Palestinians who are basically relegated to being cannon fodder.
- Netanyahu does not represent all Israelis – they are a gang of fascist religious extremists and don’t have the support of the majority of Israelis. There exists a great deal of anger within Israel directed towards Netanyahu.
- APIAC, who prior to 2021 did not directly support any political candidates, do not have the support of the majority of the Jewish community. They might claim to be bipartisan, but have aligned themselves with the Likud party of Israel, and the Republican Party in the U.S. The far better alternative to APIAC is J Street.
Christian Weirdness
Christian Zionist Pastor Greg Locke calls for Israel to genocide Gaza & “get a great big missile and blow that wicked Dome of the Rock plum off the spot where it’s standing right now so we can get that Third Temple rebuilt and usher in the coming of Jesus”
- You shall know them by their … (Checks notes) … big missiles and calls for genocide.
Former Senator Jim DeMint told former Colorado lawmaker Gordon Klingenschmitt that “credible science supports the fact that there has to be a creator God and that the Bible is true.”
- Pseudo science probably, because when you make stuff up, then you can justify any crazy claim. As for real science, the one that has actual empirical evidence, nope.
- Putting the god question aside, the actual credible scientific evidence for anything supernatural, anything at all, is so far exactly zero.
Pastor Mario Murillo proclaims that “Wokeism is a more demented form of Marxism. Wokeness breeds crime, perversion, and suicide.”
- “Woke” as in … being aware of and opposed to all forms of discrimination such as homophobia and racism, which according to Murillo is a “perversion”, and honestly that very claim is itself rather perverted.
- In that same posting, which to be rather frank (and accurate) is incoherent religious Bullshit, he rather bizarrely claims the “LGBTQ+ movement supports Hamas“. Er … no, that’s a lie, as confirmed by his total lack of any cited evidence for that claim. What is true is that rather large numbers of people, like you are me, don’t conflate the words “Hamas” and “Palestinian” as the same, and we do have a rather strong objection to the extreme right-wing Netanyahu regime embarking upon a campaign of war crimes that involves slaughtering vast numbers of Palestinian civilians.
Talia Levin @ Rolling Stone: These Evangelicals Are Cheering the Gaza War as the End of the World.
- “End of the World” has been any day now for the last 2,000 years. What never ends is this delusional belief.
Homophobia on Steroids
Isabella Riley Moody asserts that “any ‘man’ who respects a woman’s opinion is a homosexual.”
- I can only wonder how all those right-wing alpha-male homophobic individuals who usually agree with everything she says will respond to this latest opinion from her.
Even more Weirdness
Jim Daly says House Speaker Mike Johnson is “a victim of anti-Christianism”: “The great irony unfolding in the national conversation is that just as most people rightly condemn the antisemitism raging on college campuses and elsewhere, an abiding anti-Christianism is going mainstream with a rise in attacks on the new speaker of the House.”
- Sorry Jim, but the concern is not his religion, but rather his fanatical desire to impose his beliefs on others and his deep abiding hatred of the LBGTQ+ community. Intolerance of intolerance is not bigotry, but rather is common sense.
- Hint for those that don’t yet get it – Stuff that is fine: “I believe X is wrong so I don’t do X”; Stuff that crosses the line: “I believe X is wrong, so you must not do X”. Crossing that line is the essence of the GOP problem, and that’s a path Mr Johnson has already walked.
Charlie Kirk fumes that pastors who support Black Lives Matter are “introducing an unclean spirit from Satan into the church.”
- The observation that Mr Kirk thinks civil rights are satanic is a rather blatant bit of racist rhetoric.
- It’s not new, he comes out with racist stuff all the time, and yet his MAGA disciples are just fine with it all.
- As a MAGA cult cleric, the gospel Mr Kirk preaches in one that consists of conspiracy, intolerance, and bigotry so finding stuff like this coming from him is to be expected.
Nick Fuentes complains that “this country blows” because everybody hates him, and threatens to move to China.
- That’s a rather exciting promise, not a threat.
- Deeply weird to also discover that a Nazi has his feelings hurt because nobody likes him.
- Do you think it might be because of his deep devotion to Hitler?
Isabella Riley Moody, yes her again, proclaims that “we need to build statues of the man who killed Hitler.”
- Adolf Hitler, of course, took his own life at the end of World War II.
- She knows this and simply thinks she is being smart.
The False Profit$
MAGA Pastor Shane Vaughn, yes multiple entries this week, declares that the election in Ohio that amended the state constitution to protect reproductive rights was “ILLEGAL!”: “THE BRILLIANCE OF THE FOUNDERS understood that WICKEDNESS would run in the MASSES whereas VIRTUE would run in the MINORITY, and as such – you can’t allow an UNRIGHTEOUS majority to RULE a RIGHTEOUS MINORITY. Anyone who supports abortion is UNRIGHTEOUS !!!! The masses are UNRIGHTEOUS – so, in their BRILLIANCE, they did away with DIRECT DEMOCRACY and created something so much better…… WHY IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY – did the PEOPLE get to decide DIRECTLY what the LAWS of their state would be? In a REPUBLIC – the PEOPLE do not DECIDE the laws — their REPRESENTATIVES DO !!!!”
- Clearly the caps lock key on Shane’s keyboard is a tad sticky … must be all the spittle clogging it up.
- CAPS LOCK … the tool of choice for every nutter.
The above was not a one hit post, during the past week Shane continued his all caps freak outs over Ohio’s vote to amend its constitution to protect reproductive rights: “If we were abiding by the laws of the REPUBLIC – the disastrous abortion laws in OHIO would NEVER have happened…… our founders NEVER EVER EVER wanted THE POPULATION creating laws – they KNEW that EVIL flows in the MAJORITY and the WISDOM flows in the MINORITY – Citizens vote by their EMOTIONS whereas a vetted Legislature would vote by dictated norms and be a gatekeeper against the WHIMS of the population. DIRECT DEMOCRACY is killing us.”
- His stance is one where he directly opposes democracy.
- Hey, do you remember that famous talking point when Roe v Wade was overturned, it was something along the lines of “Send it back to the states to decide” … turns out that was also a lie.
Self-described Christian “prophet” Robin Bullock wants God to continue protecting Netanyahu, Trump, and… Putin.
- Given his choices for “protection” I can only assume that his God of choice is either Tyr, the Norse god of war, Aries, the Greek god of war, or Mars, the Roman god of war.
- My guess would be Ares because he traditionally handled the bloodlust aspects of brutal warfare and slaughter, and that is all very much within Netanyahu’s and Putin’s scope right now.
Media Matters
According to Elon, Media Matters is deemed to be “evil” for the “crime” of simply posting video and transcripts of the stupid shit that powerful people like him say …
Meanwhile …
In this next one, the golden moment is the look on his face when the gears in his brain click into place and he finally sees it …
Finally, tis that season once again …