So, this past week … well yes, you know, I don’t need to articulate things because the SCOTUS lunacy landed with the subtlety and quietness of a Nuclear denotation.
As a brief reminder, as if you actually needed one, this past week items 3 and 4 below happened…
Oh and with all that noise about the above, you might have also missed that SCOTUS also did the following this past week …
… and here is a bit more for you on 303 to spotlight just how utterly batshit crazy it is …
The literally tens of millions impacted by yet more SCOTUS legal lunacy really do need to remember all this when they next find themselves in a voting booth.
Hint: Voting as follows is really not your best play – “Well gosh, I’ll have lots more of this discrimination and impoverishment please, because it is all so much fun“.
Meanwhile, what is now very clear is that SCOTUS has been totally corrupted and lacks any and all legitimacy, so what now?
Well, the good news is that it is not game over, there are often options …
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.
Christian Nationalism
Christian nationalist worship leader Sean Feucht brags that members of Congress helped him sneak into the U.S Capitol so that he could take communion in the Rotunda: “We laid hands all over that place. We brought oil. We brought shofars. We’re crazy.“
- “We’re crazy” … well, he said it. At least we can all agree with him on that.
- Side Note: Nobody needs to sneak in, you just join the queue with everybody else and walk on in. They have even let me in many times.
Jason Rapert says his goal is to see every seat in Congress filled by right-wing Christians: “My vision is this: That of the 535 that serve in Congress and the U.S. Senate, that we elect Christians to every one of those offices.”
- The weirdness of his claim is the observational context – almost all of those elected to the 118th congress right now identify as some variation of “Christian” … 87.8% to be precise. Then another 6.2% are Jewish, and 3.7% refused to provide such details.
- What Jason means of course is that he wants them to all be fanatical Christian Nationalists who embrace Dominionist beliefs like he does so that he can then see impose a theocracy. For him The Handmaids Tale is an instruction manual.
- Luckily the Supreme Court recently (last Tuesday, June 27) closed the road to much this by dismissing the “independent state legislature” theory case. Dispite all their shitfuckery they got something right (Yes, that’s a real word).
Jarrin Jackson provides a case study in what Christian Nationalism sounds like: “How can all nations be made to obey, how can they be taught to obey Christ if Christians aren’t involved with government, if they’re not involved with politics?”
- “Obey” … Obey what exactly? There is absolutely no consensus of what that means, hence we have lots of different conflicting beliefs under the “christian” umbrella.
Further Reading …
- Diana Wallens @ Global Network on Extremism & Technology: Moms for Liberty: The Use of Facebook to Spread Far-Right Propaganda and Change Public School Curriculum.
Repaying Loans
The raw hypocrisy of it all is truly jaw dropping. To quote Biden himself …
“My program is too expensive? … The average amount forgiven in the PPP pandemic loan program, the average loan amount forgiven was $70,000. Now, a kid making $60,000 trying to pay back his bills, asking for $10,000 of relief? Come on. The hypocrisy is stunning.“
Here are a few actual examples …
Republican State Representative Mike Flood, owner and operator of Flood Digital Networks LLC, an organisation that had it’s loan’s forgiven, thinks that … “The only person responsible to repay a loan, is the person who applied for the loan“.
The Cult of Trump
- Here is Trump Quote from it that illustrates that he knows how to push their hot buttons and rile them up for him: “We are warriors in a righteous crusade to stop the arsonists, atheists, globalists, and the Marxists, and we will restore our republic as one nation under God with liberty and justice for all,”
- Listen in and it becomes clear that MAGA is moving into full medieval religious crusade mode for 2024 as they go to war against (checks notes) … “the deep state” … “wokeness” … “woke feminism”, … and “corporations that consider diversity and environmental consequences in their investment decision-making” – in other words everybody and everything that is not carved in their intolerant bigoted image.
Pastor and convicted fraudster Shane Vaughn has made a commitment to attend as many of former President Donald Trump’s rallies as possible and he was overwhelmed after he managed to get close to the stage at a recent event: “When you get to be this close to the President — and stand in faith for his TRIUMPH over the evil forces that seek to destroy him – there’s really no adequate words to describe the feeling.”
- It really is a cult.
- He is also obviously working really heard to get a White House pass.
Self-proclaimed “prophet” Manuel Johnson was at the event where an image of former President Donald Trump supposedly appeared in the clouds above Mount Rushmore. Johnson reports that Trump’s “face may not be carved there in stone, but it is carved there in the spirit.”
- Leon Festinger truly nailed all this over 65 years ago.
- Should we also wonder if Trump appeared to them on their morning toast?
Hank Kunneman says that “anybody with a brain” knows that Trump won because the Democrats “embrace a lot of Satanism”: “What has happened to our country has been the result of liberals who have an agenda, which is the agenda of Hell.”
- Hank’s words translate to just this – “donate to me“.
- If indeed Trump was the chosen one of God, then Hank is basically complaining the Satan is more powerful than God.
- Meanwhile Christians seriously wonder why their numbers are rapidly shrinking.
Further Reading …
- Ken Meyer @ Mediaite: ‘I’m Being Indicted For You!’ Trump Goes Full Martyr in Speech at Faith Conference, Rages at the ‘Scoundrels and Thugs’ Who Charged Him.
- Jeremy Herb @ CNN: CNN obtains the tape of Trump’s 2021 conversation about classified documents.
- Charlie Nash @ Mediaite: Trump Insists Recording of Him Showing Off ‘Secret’ Documents is ‘Actually an Exoneration.’
- Michael Luciano @ Mediaite: Trump Reverses Course, Now Claims He Was Lying About Iran Battle Plans On Infamous Recording: ‘It Was Bravado.’
Homophobia on Steroids
Scott Lively declares that “the grooming of children is a long-term process, as was the murder of marriage. Obergefell wasn’t a knife stabbed through the heart in a back-alley surprise attack – it was a decades-long poisoning of God’s institution of marriage.”
- For context, Scott is the guy who has made an entire lifetime professional career out of being a homophobic bigot.
- Notable points in his “career” include the promotion of his absurd claim that gay people were prominent in the Nazi Party and were behind Nazi atrocities. He is also the lunatic who persuaded lawmakers in Uganda to enact the death penalty for being gay.
Hank Kunneman rants that if Christians don’t reclaim the “true meaning” of the rainbow, then “your children are … gonna continue to be mutilated at the hands of the those in government that don’t have a moral conscience.”
- It really is not the government that parents need to fear, it is the constant flow of pastors, youth leaders, and priests sexually abusing kids that they should actually be concerned about. See here, and here, and here. Is any of that an issue for him? Apparently not; Hank’s big worry is the ownership of “rainbows”.
- Irony Alert: The Christian “true meaning” of the “Rainbow” is all about a god slaughtering almost every single human on the planet.
- Regarding the actual mutilation of kids, let me simply drop one word on that – guns.
- Then again, if discussing child sexual mutilation is on the table, we could perhaps also have a chat about circumcision.
Further Reading …
- Media Matters: Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles calls for banning “that evil Pride flag from every public space forever.”
- Prem Thakker @ The New Republic: The Supreme Court Just Used a Fake Case to Make It Easier to Discriminate Against Gay People.
PseudoHistory
Tim Barton says that critics have to use ad hominem attacks on him and his father, Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton, for not having any academic credentials as historians because they know they can’t attack the history they present “because what we’re promoting is actually true.”
- I really don’t need to tell you this … but it is not just a lack of credentials. The key concern is that absolutely nothing they claim is actually true. Unlike them, I can cite evidence for that … see here, and here, and here.
- You can more or less guarantee that if Barton claimed something, then it is most probably not true. Example: Regarding Barton’s book, “the Jefferson Lies”, a group of ten conservative Christian professors reviewed it and reported negatively on its claims, saying that Barton misstated facts about Jefferson. His Christian publisher also formally withdrew the book from publication and stopped production when it was revealed to be a pack a lies (see here).
Months ago Right Wing Watch very robustly debunked pseudo-historian David Barton’s claim that public schools in the 1800s required students to memorize large portions of the Bible, but he just keeps repeating it.
- Those that embrace Barton’s lies just don’t care about what is actually true, they want him to keep on lying to them. It’s what Barton has always done … lie, get debunked, ignore that and just keep repeating the lie.
Knowing History really does matter
Truly Bizarre
- Quote: “What the Lord revealed to me is that Mount Rushmore has a direct ley line to Washington, D.C.,” he added. “And he said, basically, that as we continue to work in prayer and do the work of the ministry, that God was going to break that connection
- Once, not too long ago we all simply laughed at crazy people. These days we elect them so that they can devote their lives to fighting things that are not actually real.
If you arrive at church to find Alex Jones up on stage with your pastor, ranting about how they’ll require you “to cut your children’s genitals off to get ESG money” as they mandate “government-forced suicide” perhaps it is time to find another church?
- The issue is no longer that churches have been politicised by conservative extremism. Some are now moving way beyond that into deeply crazy stuff.
- Clearly Jones needs to tap into a new source of grift to help pay the $1.487 billion in damages that he now owes due to his old grift.
Dave Daubenmire declares that “hate can be a good thing”: “America would be a better place if the American Church started to hate some things.”
- “started“!!!
- Hey Dave, you should perhaps suggest that they start with this … “A False Witness who speaks lies” (Proverbs 6:19)
Gordon Klingenschmitt believes that if your child is “confused about their gender,” then they are under “demonic influence” and need “to be brought to a pastor who knows how to do that exorcism.”
- because that has always worked out so well over the years for all who go down that road.
Further reading on more crazy stuff from the past week …
- Hemant Mehta @ Friendly Atheist: Christian evangelist: I helped a woman grow an inch taller instantaneously!
- David Edwards @ Raw Story: ‘I don’t take medications’: Marjorie Taylor Greene says TV turns on ‘by itself’ to spy on her.
- David Moye @ HuffPost: Sen. Rick Scott Tells Communists And Socialists To Stay Out Of Florida.
Fahrenheit 451
Arkansas Legislator Vows to ‘Eliminate All the Funding for Public Libraries’ Affiliated With the ALA
- For those unfamiliar with the acronym ALA, that’s “a bastion of the left wing“, the 146 year old American Library Association, a non-profit is deeply guilty of the “crime” of having a stated mission that is to … “provide leadership for the development, promotion, and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all.” … (Oh the horror … shudders).
- That Legislator is basically one of the folks who only ever read just one book, and so perhaps he considers all other books to be an unnecessary evil.
The False Profit$
MAGA cultist/self-proclaimed “futurist” Lance Wallnau declares that “the devil is going all out against Trump, using the courts and government to persecute him. But here’s the catch: Everything happening to Trump and soon to Biden is part of a plan for righteous reform.”
- I hate to pour a bit of cold water on his claim, but the reason the courts are going after Trump just might have something to do with him breaking the law … no devil required.
- Reminder: God told Lance that lots of people were going to die in May. His consistent failed prophecies should be a small clue to alert followers that Lance is a fraud, but apparently not.
Statistic of the week
Interesting Articles
- Jennifer Bendery @ HuffPost: Tommy Tuberville Celebrates Broadband Funding He Voted Against.
- Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck @ CNN: Ron DeSantis voted for the First Step Act and hailed its ‘successes.’ He now calls it ‘the jailbreak bill.’
- Hemant Mehta @ Friendly Atheist: Josh Duggar’s father-in-law delivered a racist sermon praising Christian slaveowners.
- Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: Kevin McCarthy scrambles after accidentally speaking his mind.
- Sophie Lawton @ Media Matters: On Timcast IRL, Terry Schilling claims no-fault divorce will lead to our cities being “ransacked” by “criminal orphans.”
- Kate Riga @ Talking Points Memo: Supreme Court’s Right Wing Strikes Down Biden Student Debt Relief Plan.
- Media Matters: Following right-wing Supreme Court victories, Charlie Kirk boasts “we have to flood the zone” with more conservative cases.
- Hannah Knowles and Hannah Natanson @ The Washington Post: Moms for Liberty didn’t exist 3 years ago. Now it’s a GOP kingmaker.
- The Throckmorton Initiative: When the Wallbuilders Build the House.
- Tommy Christopher @ Mediaite: Trump Post Revealing Obama Address Was Shared By Jan 6 Fugitive Hours Before He Was Arrested With Guns Near Obama Home.
- Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: Fox News settles lawsuit filed by fired producer for $12 million.
So this truly great result also happened …
We now have “Free” Speech for $8 per month
You may also have noticed that half you new twitter quota is ads for the shittiest companies and tweets from Elon telling you about your quota.