This past week Laura Loomer lost her primary. It was honestly a well-deserved loss. Inevitably she is now playing the oh-so-familiar card that has been lifted directly from her beloved Messiah’s deck …
The deep concern is that despite her well-established track record as an Olympic class gold-standard wing-nut she still managed to pull in 44.5% of the votes. That tells us a great deal about just how far down the rabbit hole many of those registered Republicans have gone within Florida District 11.
Meanwhile she is now telling all her voters to not vote for the official Republican candidate. Honestly, the democrats could not have found a better agent to work on their behalf and split the Republican vote like this.
As a rather stark contrast to how it should work, over on the Democratic side, Nikki Fried graciously conceded to Charlie Crist and urged everyone to support him to defeat DeSantis as Governor. Mr Crist, who was himself previously a Republican until he switched in 2012, has a decent shot at it. According to opinion polls he is just a few points behind the dictator.
Moving on, below you will find my usual selection of some truly bizarre 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 dive in.
Enjoy.
Student Debt
Mitch McConnell’s statement: “Biden’s student loan socialism is a slap in the face to every family who sacrificed to save for college, every graduate who paid their debt, & every American who chose a certain career path or volunteered to serve in our Armed Forces.. to avoid taking on debt“
- Translation: “if we make college affordable, how are we going to trick poor people into joining the military“
MTG whines about how unfair it is for student debts being forgiven. White House twitter account responds by calling out her gross hypocrisy with the observation that she herself had $183,504 in PPP loans forgiven … [Side Note: WH has issued similar responses to other hypocrites doing the same, for example here, and here]
Guns (again!)
In 2007, gun activists called for Pennsylvania state Rep. Angel Cruz to be “hung from the tree of liberty” for introducing a bill requiring gun owners to register their weapons and pay a $10 fee. Teddy Daniels, a MAGA candidate who recently ran for lieutenant governor in the state, sees nothing wrong with that: “When you go against the Constitution of the United States, yes, there should be consequences.”
- They really do have a lot of difficulty parsing the phrase “well regulated”
- After I registered my car and paid for the registration, the government came and took my car. Oh wait, that’s not how it works.
- This guy proudly wears a crucifix and yet calls for the state murder of opponents. I can only ponder the thought that if he had lived back in the day, he would have been one of those in the mob demanding that the commie trouble maker, Jesus, should be crucified.
DeAnna Lorraine thinks she knows how to stop school shootings: “Arm our children.”
- Kids with guns … what could possibly go wrong?
- Meanwhile at home … Mom: “Johnny. Where is the Glock I sent you to school with?” Johnny: “I traded it for a Gameboy.“
- For these people, a bulletproof vest, helmet, and gun is okay, but God forbid the use of a mask to stop a deadly virus, that is a step too far.
- I have no doubt her “solution” to drunk driving would be to make it mandatory for everybody to be drunk before they were permitted to drive.
Vaccine “Experts”
Right-wing anti-vax “expert” Stella Immanuel says Christians should refuse vaccinations rather than allow themselves “to be genetically modified”: “If I die, I’m a child of God. I get to go home to Heaven. … People have to stop being afraid to die.”
- She is literally encouraging people to skip the vaccine so that they can then die and go to heaven. This is a page taken almost directly from the Gospel according to Jim Jones.
Christian Nationalism
Channeling religious-right pseudo-historian David Barton, Glenn Beck claims that the Constitution “doesn’t cite specific Bible verses” because “it didn’t need to”: “Americans of that era knew the Bible well [enough] to understand all of the references.” His “evidence” is not convincing.
- Phrases such as “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” is right out of 2 Corinthians … yes?
- Why oh why would those founding fathers ever embrace a text that tells them to obey the king just after they have rebelled against the king?
- What is perhaps the true cherry on the cake here is that Beck is not in any way Christian, but Mormon.
Meanwhile Some Good News: Christian nationalist Jarrin Jackson lost the runoff election Tuesday to become the GOP nominee for a seat in the Oklahoma state Senate.
Homophobia on Steroids
A Christian from Oklahoma named Scott Esk once said sexually active gay people deserved to be executed by the government. After tonight, he could be the GOP nominee for a State House seat.
- Yes you also can be a GOP candidate, absolutely nothing you say or do will disqualify you … except perhaps an embrace of decency, empathy, integrity, and reality.
Lauren Witzke applauds a Florida Christian school that has banned gay and transgender students: “Opening the door to this demonic movement will end with the cancer spreading. It’s inevitable. This school is saving other Christian children from being exposed to perversions of the modern, demented world.”
- I’m not exactly convinced that taking educational guidance from Lauren Witzke, the QAnon conspiracy theorist who also promotes the idea that planet earth is flat, and that the COVID-19 vaccine is a satanic plot, will in any way lead to a positive outcome.
- What is literally demonic is her very vocal homophobic bigotry that will potentially result in innocent people being harmed.
Truly Bizarre
Kennedy: “Unless Dr. Fauci is going to seek asylum in some foreign country whose Powerball jackpot is 287 chickens and a goat .. then Dr. Fauci is going to be spending a lot of time in front of congressional committees if Rs take back control.”
- Dedicating you entire career to keeping people alive and healthy is now apparently a crime in the eyes of the GOP
Glenn Beck is still warning about the “Archduke Ferdinand moment,” which he’s been fretting about for 15 years.
- You would think 15 years of being wrong was enough, but apparently not, he wants to add lots more years of being wrong.
Eric Metaxas says that Christian leaders who don’t talk about Hunter Biden’s laptop or “the hoax of Jan. 6” are exactly the same as Christian leaders who stayed silent in Nazi Germany: “We have exactly the same thing.”
- Metaxas is literally Godwin’s law incarnate.
- So yea, let’s talk about the Laptop misinformation and disinformation and how it is being used to focus away from the Trump corruption saga, and we can also chat about people like Metaxas promoting lies about Jan 6th … lies that Trump’s own personally selected AG called “Bullshit” while under oath.
- Meanwhile, yep. I’m convinced, I’ll not be voting for Hunter Biden this November.
- Every time Metaxas speaks, a few more people stand up and quietly walk away from organised religion forever. If there was a medal for “Services To Atheism”, then Metaxas genuinely deserves to receive it.
Christian hate-preacher Jonathan Shelley and his colleagues held a book burning… for non-KJV bibles.
- Yes, you understood that correctly, they are burning bibles, any bible that is not a King James version is apparently deemed to be heresy in their eyes. They get their kids to form an orderly line, they hand them the bible to burn, and then it gets tossed into an oil drum fire.
- The deep irony is that this deeply Homophobic church might not actually realise that their beloved King James was very very gay.
The False Profit$
Shane Vaughn claims that former President Donald Trump has not announced that he is running for president again because if Democrats maintain control of the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms, “he would be impeached the first day after his inauguration.”
- Shane has no inside track into how Trump “thinks”, he simply opens up the paper each day, grabs the latest news, then runs with whatever it is to cobble up a viral clip that he can use to grift more donations.
- Reminder: Shane, as a pastor, went to jail for several years for fraud, that’s the topic that he is a subject matter expert in. When the time comes, he will indeed be able to offer guidance to Trump.
QAnon conspiracy theorist Dave Hayes (aka “The Praying Medic”) promises that “we’re going to live in a time of peace and prosperity” when former President Donald Trump returns to the White House: “The cures for diseases that they have hidden from us are going to be revealed.”
- Trump was president for 4 years and literally did the opposite. Over one million died, many more millions are suffering long term because he botched the response until it was too late.
- This is a cult.
- “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities” -Voltaire
Mark Burns declares that Trump “is under demonic attack” because “the hand of God” is upon him so that he can “bring the Christian right back to the forefront of American politics.”
- Mark Burns is rather close to the truth. Trump is a metaphorical demon doing lots attacking. He has successfully destroyed the GOP, successfully destroyed the evangelicals, and is vigorously undermining democracy.
- What Mark fails to grasp is that he himself is playing on team “Demon”
Christian conspiracy theorist and self-appointed “prophet” Hank Kunneman condemned Biden’s “illegal administration”… before, I assume, unleashing a curse upon him. Or speaking in tongues. Whatever. Bonus points for anyone who gets through the whole clip.
- “The Emperor’s New Clothes” needs to become mandatory reading for those within his audience.
Self-proclaimed “prophet” Robin Bullock reports that God is very upset about the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago: “God didn’t like that. It didn’t sit well in Heaven.“
- God just reliably advised me that Bullock, Rasputin lite, is full of shit, does not speak for him, and that he is delighted with the search [My credentials for making that claim are exactly the same as his]
MAGA Pastor Kent Christmas Says ‘The Kingdom of God’ Is the Only Legitimate Authority on Earth
- Anti-science virulently homophobic bigot tries to impose his extremist beliefs by claiming the age old divine right to rule card. Somebody needs to tell him that we permanently settled this issue back in 1776.
Loophole of the week
Atheist activist Chaz Stevens (@TheTweetOfJab) is sending Arabic-language “In God We Trust” posters to schools in Texas. A state law requires public schools to display donated IGWT posters, but it doesn’t say the signs have to be in English.
Previous solutions for similar laws resulted in schools posting images of the dollar bill. The latest law was designed to stop that, hence this new solution …
Interesting Articles
- Carter Walker @ Lancaster Online: ‘Flow from the pulpit:’ The LifeGate church members providing security to Doug Mastriano.
- John Fea @ Current: Doug Mastriano’s connection to the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation movement.
- Sophia A. McClennen @ Salon: How Trump redefined shameless hypocrisy — and made it politically indispensable.
- Hemant Mehta @ OnlySky: Texas will force schools to display donated ‘In God We Trust’ posters.
- Alex Bollinger @ LGBTQ News: GOP candidate said it’s “totally just” to stone gay people to death.
- Matt Shuham @ Talking Points Memo: GOP Guv Nominee Shocked That Candidate She Endorsed Publicly Called Jews Evil.
- Elle Hardy @ The New Republic: The Right-Wing Christian Sect Plotting a Political Takeover.
- Jennifer Cohn @ Bucks County Beacon: Underreported and Massive Theocratic Movement Joins Forces with Michael Flynn and Roger Stone.
- Kaleigh Rogers @ FiveThirtyEight: Election Denying Primary Candidates Are Crying Fraud, Win Or Lose.