You knew they would make a fuss about it the moment you got the news. So yes, Trump should never have had classified material in his possession, and neither should Biden, but honestly compare both cases and you soon discover a huge contrast …
- The national Archives spent a year chasing Trump’s missing documents, lots of documents, many boxes of documents. Trump persistently lied about it all, but they knew he had them, so they had to conduct a raid to get them back.
- Biden, when it was discovered he had a couple of pages, contacted the national archives and notified them, and also did a full sweep to see if anything else had been missed, and discovered a few more.
One was malicious, deliberately deceitful, and strove to obstruct. The other was an honest mistake that was corrected as soon as it was discovered. Legally, it is a crime only if the retention and removal of classified records is intentional – guess who faces considerable legal peril and who does not?
That reality has not stopped the usual talking heads leveraging this and hoping that their cult of fools are too stupid to grasp the vast difference in play. For example …
The above has a great deal to do with his lips being bright orange from constantly kissing you know who’s ass, and nothing at all to do with integrity or honesty news reporting.
From others we also get claims such as “Trumps documents where planted by the FBI” to “Biden’s document was Obama’s fault“. Yes Really.
Tucker of course is lying about it all as well. He is claiming that “Trump’s attorneys volunteered that there were more classified documents” … er no. Does he really think we all have alzheimer’s and have forgotten that Trump insisted there were no more documents, and that they were forced to conduct a raid to get back what he claimed he did not have.
In essence, the right-wing media is continuing to fan the flames by promoting fraudulent disinformation claims as “News”. They do it because there really are enough fools who buy what they are selling.
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 dive in.
Enjoy.
Warning: This will break your Irony Meter
Ingraham on Fox: If only we had a president who cared more about what was good for the country and less about how to protect his family’s corrupt business interests.
- It probably sounds a lot better in the original Russian.
- Many satirists have lodged an official complaint that they are being put out of business by Ingraham.
Jan 6
“Stop The Steal” organizer Ali Alexander, clad in body armor, released a video on the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol portraying himself and the insurrectionists as the real victims.
- Violently storm the Capital in an attempt to overturn a democratic election, assault and murder police … and then when arrested, claim your are being persecuted – that’s playing the victim so well that I’m surprised he did not also carry around his own body chalk.
- To put that another way … actions are having consequences … well gosh, who knew that, what a revelation.
- He finishes by begging for prayer for himself and others who took part in Jan 6 … well yes Ali, we are indeed all praying … praying that the trials are speedy, that the sentences are lengthy, and that the fines are hefty.
- Side Note: Given his open support for overthrowing democracy, the inevitable has happened – Elon restored his twitter account last week.
Females!
Andrew Torba declares that “any future political solution that doesn’t involve repealing [the 19th Amendment] is futile. Prepare for pain like this country has never seen before.
- For anybody not familiar with the 19th Amendment, that was passed in 1919 and granted women the right to vote. That’s his ideal political “solution”.
- Side Note: Mr Torba is the founder of Gab, the Nazi, Racist, Trump, and QAnon social media platform.
Andrew Anglin asserts that “the entire structure of the Western world is based around a compulsive desire of men to please women. The Taliban is a good model for healthy masculinity that Western men should emulate.”
- If I was to tag him as “US Taliban” he would receive that as praise and not criticism.
- Side Note: Mr Anglin is a neo-Nazi, conspiracy theorist, and editor of the website The Daily Stormer. He famously explains … “By the Grace of God, I found Adolf Hitler.“
Gas Stoves
Rep Ronny Jackson Tweet … “I’ll NEVER give up my gas stove. If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands. COME AND TAKE IT!!“
I just love this response …
She is not wrong about that.
CPAC Host Mercedes Schlapp tweets: “I’m keeping my gas stove“
- An understandable choice because it’s the only thing in her house she can actually turn on.
- To be brutally frank, of all the things in her house that she needs to worry about, her gas stove is way down the list. (That’s a reference to the various recent news articles regarding her husband)
Medical Guidance from Greg Locke’s Church
A Facebook group for members of Christian hate-preacher Greg Locke’s church says it’s okay to tell Type 1 diabetics to “stop taking insulin” if God speaks to you and passes along the message.
- Locke himself replied to the above tweet with “Stay in your lane God denier” … telling people not to believe stupid stuff that could kill them is literally the tweeters lane.
- This is really not going to end well for somebody. They already have a well-established precedent for stuff like this, Coburn Kennedy, an attendee of Locks church, believed Locke and is now dead.
- Reminder: These folks consider themselves to be “Pro-Life”.
Political Hypocrisy
Republicans are trying to take credit for the bills they voted against.
Journalistic Hypocrisy
- So yes, the NYT do good stuff, but when you get articles like this, it does cause considerable pause. I’m really not convinced that having a “Lies” section is a good move.
- Side Note: For those unfamiliar with her, which will I suspect be a very small minority, back in 2017 she rather famously defended outright lies as “Alternative Facts”, and thus the phrase was born.
- Apparently her “Alternative facts” statement back in 2017 resulted in a 95 fold increase in sales of George Orwell‘s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (I’m really not making that up, it literally did – to establish this fact I’ll cite the NYT article reporting this).
The False Profit$
Lance Wallnau passionately prays that God will raise up “one more bad boy billionaire” to join Elon Musk and Donald Trump in saving America, then asks God to have Trump experience “a Pentecostal encounter” that’ll make him “supernaturally sanctified.”
- Do prayers only work if you tweet them out to millions of people on twitter? So yes, you know the bible verse I mean, to be specific this one which is a direct quote from Jesus – “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others” Matthew 6:5-8
- I’m honestly confused by stuff like this because I can never really work out if they are praying to the billionaires or just praying for billionaires. Either way, it is all performative religious theatre that is part of their real goal of preying upon their followers by motivating them to keep paying donations.
- Regarding a “supernatural encounter”, I suspect Trump is way beyond the ability of three ghosts on Christmas Eve persuading him to start being a decent human.
Interesting Articles
- Roger Sollenberger @ The Daily Beast: Herschel Walker Staffer: Matt Schlapp ‘Groped’ My Crotch.
- Joe Jervis: FRC: Walgreens And CVS To Become “Centers Of Death.”
- Jenny Leonard and Akayla Gardner @ Bloomberg: You Held the Line’: Biden Honors Police, Poll Workers on Jan. 6.
- Bob Smietana @ Religion News Service: Who are the Christian nationalists? A taxonomy for the post-Jan. 6 world.
- Annie Gowen @ Washington Post: Supporters raise millions to rebrand Jan. 6 rioters as ‘patriots’.
- Molly Sprayregen @ LGBTQ Nation: GOP lawmaker wants to force young trans adults to de-transition.
- Jeet Heer @ The Nation: From a Clown Coup to a Clown Speakership
- Areeba Shah @ Salon: “I think it’s fantastic”: George Santos is very happy the GOP just voted to gut ethics office
- Jonathan Chait @ Intelligencer: Ron DeSantis Is Imposing Political Control on Schools
- Jennifer Bendery @ HuffPost: Republicans Who Voted To Overturn The 2020 Election Get Top Committee Posts
Statistic of the week
The Catholic Church has various teachings and so of course those that identify as Catholic will mostly agree with such teachings. There is however one rather stark exception – family planning.
Almost all US Catholics rejects what the Church teaches on that and simply ignore it …
Some Alternative music for that MTG tweet …
There is of course this …
And also this Benny Hill version that was flagged by twitter, but can be seen if you click “View” …