This past week Mike Huckabee decided to reveal to the world that Jan 6 taught him absolutely nothing …
He is not a lone voice, others on the extreme right have also been using threats of violence as a bit of rather blatant emotional manipulation. This fear and intimidation is designed to try and save Trump from facing the consequences of his criminality.
Via RWW, here are a few more examples …
- Far-right online personality Stew Peters urged MAGA-minded Americans to begin exploring “extra-legal options” to remove “enemy combatants” like Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs from office
- Dominionist “prophet” Johnny Enlow, who said after the 2020 election that Trump would be justified in imposing martial law and calling for revolution, interviewed on the “Elijah Streams” program Henry Hastings, a former special forces commander who says God told him to train “modern-day Minuteman” with the military skills to “overtake and destroy those who would threaten freedom.”
- Kandiss Taylor, a conspiracy theorist whose campaign for Georgia governor in 2022 failed spectacularly, attended Mike Lindell’s most recent “summit,” where she said during an interview that the indictment of Trump and his co-conspirators for trying to overturn the 2020 election is treason that could lead to bloodshed. “This is war, and I hope and pray it gets resolved before we use guns. I really do. I do not want to see bloodshed in America, but we’re at war right now: a war for our freedom.”
- Far-right legal activist Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch and current leader of Freedom Watch, claimed in August that President Biden and members of his family had been indicted by a “citizen grand jury” and that a “citizens’ judge” had handed down felony convictions after a “trial” in Boise, Idaho. Klayman said he would “commission” members of law enforcement and the military to enforce the “sentence.”
They are not the only ones, others are banging this same pathetic toy drum without really understanding the dire consequences that their inflammatory rhetoric that is founded upon lies and disinformation might unleash.
It feels at times that their deep desire to blend the Crusades, the Salem Witch Trials, and Gilead into one big KKK White Christian Nationalist MAGA party is fast becoming a rather weird right-wing fetish.
To actually attempt to take up arms and die for the Big lie and the rather infamous liar would be catastrophically stupid. The deeply scary part is that these folks do “stupid” by the truck load because they have an almost infinite supply of it to call upon.
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
Tim Barton says the government’s response to the Hawaii wildfires is reminder that “the government can never be our savior”: “The government can never provide for us the things we should be looking to God to provide for us.”
- Tim Translator: “We don’t want decisive meaningful action, instead we to create the illusion of action while actually doing nothing, we want ‘prayer’“
- Listening to Tim Barton is a dangerous thing to do. Apparently his god provided the fires that ravaged Maui, but failed to provide a large amount of rain to put them out. In other words, Tim Barton’s god isn’t going to clear dry brush or fund fire departments, because that’s not how things work in the real world.
- Next Time Tim’s house catches fire, he should not call the fire department. Instead he should just pray – let’s see how that works out.
Jarrin Jackson asserts that “the Constitution was not written to mean non-Christian religions when it protects ‘freedom of religion’” and fumes over Christians who “equivocate and ‘tolerate’ other faith systems out of ignorance and/or cowardice.”
- History reveals how the end game for this plays out… “Oh no, THAT variation of Christianity is the wrong one, you are a heretic worthy of death, only my specific variation of Christianity is the “true” one“
If you are a Christian nationalist pseudo-historian like David Barton, how do you explain away slavery? By insisting that while southern slave owners may have been “professing Christians,” they weren’t real Christians because “they weren’t biblical Christians.”
- Since we are on the topic of “Biblical” stuff, the rather embracing fact is that the text is pro slavery from cover to cover. Example: Beating your slave is just fine as long as the slave survives that beating and is still alive after a few days because the slave is just property (Really)
- For the “Ah but that’s the OT, we now have the NT” folks, we also have Paul advising “Slaves Obey your masters“.
- What emerges from all of this is the manifestation of Olympic Class mental gymnastics amongst the fanatically religious as they strive to explain it all away
Whites Only
White nationalist Lauren Witzke fumes over the fact that immigrants and children of immigrants make up 15% of Congress: “As America’s White demographic is rapidly replaced, our representation in Government is quickly replaced as well. … If you import the third world, you (and your government) will become the third world.”
- Lauren Translation: “How dare these immigrants treat us like a freedom loving democracy for all, don’t these immigrants know their place and that they should only do menial work and that the real freedom is only for us whites“
Charlie Kirk hopped on the far-right “Ban the ADL” hashtag bandwagon, declaring that “The ADL is a mass purveyor of anti-white hate,” but quickly deleted the post and replaced it with one calling the ADL “America’s number-one purveyor of hate speech.“
- So this is how it played out – Kirk tweeted a stupid post. Someone comes to him saying “bruh, um, gotta take that down or we cant give you your bitcoin pay for today” He then takes it down and replaces it with a slightly less inflammatory piece
- The bigger picture here is that the two groups that expose the white supremacists, the ADL and SPLC, are catching a bit of gaslighting from the white supremacists when they claim that exposing them for who they are is “white hate speech” … no surprise there really. Instead we just get to see who they really are.
- Funny how Charlie’s stance for Free Speech rapidly evaporates when he is faced with fact-based criticism of the daft things he says.
The Cult Of Trump
Eric Trump asserts that the White House was waging a “war on religion” before his father came into office: “They were literally trying to take away the non-profit status of churches… You had the IRS targeting pastors.”
- Those things have literally never happened. A Trump telling lies … I’m shocked I tell you, shocked.
- What is true is that Church/state separation groups have urged the IRS to penalize churches that endorsed candidates from the pulpit but the IRS just don’t go there. There is no legal reason why they don’t, the 70 year old Johnson Amendment enables them to do it, yet they don’t, and I honestly have no idea why. Do any insiders reading this have any insight into what the story here is?
Homophobia on Steroids
A former leader at the American Family Association, an anti-LGBTQ Christian hate group, is suing the organization for (wait for it) same-sex sexual harassment. The details are bonkers.
- Yet another Christian organization is alleged to be full of abusive weirdos. You can now proceed to paint me unsurprised
- The big non-surprise is that the folks who spent their $28 million/year budget to hurt LGBTQ people and other marginalized communities are revealed to be screaming hypocrites
This past week we also got the following deeply weird claim. Some are now so out of sync with reality that they think public schools do government mandated sex changes, and yes, her stance very much has a very strong “mom from the 1976 Carrie movie” vibes to it …
Health Guidance from an idiot – never your best move
Charlie Kirk, yes him again, Tweets: “Wait, what?! According to the CDC’s newly published “Risk Assessment Summary for SARS CoV-2 Sublineage BA.2.86,” the new variant “may be more capable of causing infection in people who have previously had COVID-19 or who have received COVID-19 vaccines.” So if you’ve received the experimental mRNA injection, the CDC now admits you’re more susceptible to COVID… The “experts” failed you. Never again.“
- So yes, he read the CDC guidance and simply did not grasp what it was telling him. Reading comprehension is apparently a skill he lacks. He thinks it says that having the vaccine makes you more susceptible to the latest variant, and fails to grasp that instead it is warning people that the latest variant has mutated so much that even having the vaccine (or a previous bout of COVID) does not protect you all that well. #idiot
- I’m also intrigued to note that he now suddenly trusts guidance from the CDC, so that’s clearly a new move for him.
Covid is back and with it comes the same old lunacy
So this is happening …
Oklahoma Education goes into full whacky YouTube mode
First a bit of background context. PragerU might include the word “University” in their full name, but they are not in any way an academic institution and are not accredited in anything. To quote the Wikipedia page on them …
PragerU’s videos contain misleading or factually incorrect information promoting climate change denial. Historians and political scientists have also criticized PragerU’s videos for containing misleading or inaccurate claims about topics such as slavery and racism in the United States, immigration, and the history of fascism. PragerU has been accused of promoting anti-LGBT politics.
Now that you are armed with that insight, here is the announcement that actual teachers are being replaced by the PragerU batshit crazy YouTube channel …
So are the PragerU Kids videos bad?
Yes, they really are … it’s not “education” but instead is total crap …
Meanwhile, an actual teacher who was denigrated and fired by Walters, is now suing him …
Deeply Weird
At Pastor Greg Locke’s delicense conference Pastor Henry Shaffer said with a straight face that there are genderless names that make becoming transgender easier, so I guess there are Christian preferred names
- Using a shortened name, such as Sam instead of Samantha does not turn people trans, that’s literally not how that works.
- “The name God gave them” … er again, that’s literally not how people get names.
- The one deep mystery here is to seriously wonder how anyone this blazingly, incomprehensibly, stupid can get a tent full of people to not only listen, but agree with them?
Story by Hemant Mehta: A Christian group won’t let anyone access a section of the Jersey Shore on Sunday mornings when church is in session. They barricaded the entrances with chains and padlocks, violating state law.
- Jesus: “The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath”. Jersey Shore Christians: “Not in this town!!”
Kent Christmas used his Sunday service to announce that Dog the Bounty Hunter “has become a son in the Lord to me.”
- It’s common for Christians to refer to each other as Brother or Sister, but … son … not so much.
- So … if indeed Dog the Bounty Hunter is now his “spiritual” son, is Mr Christmas (yes, that is his real name) actually confessing that he just fucked Dog the Bounty Hunter’s mother?
Liberty Counsel declares that “the Jezebel spirit is alive and well in America”: “The altars are different now than in Jezebel’s day. Sacrifices once held in public now take place behind the closed doors of abortion clinics. Then, as now, the government protects the altars where the killing takes place. Soldiers who once guarded Baal’s and Molech’s priestesses have been replaced with law enforcement officers standing guard to ensure the endless line of children being led to the slaughter continues uninterrupted.”
- Their vigorous deployment of OT religious rhetoric to argue against modern reproductive health care reveals their complete lack of any credible rational arguments.
Nothing quite encapsulates the fetid state of right-wing media like far-right conspiracy theorist Stew Peters interviewing the niece of Osama bin Laden for a 30-minute segment alleging that Barack Obama is gay and Michelle Obama is a man.
- Tucker had Larry Sinclair, a guy who has a rather long rap sheet as a fraudster. However, poor old Stew can’t even rise to such heights and has to make do with family members of notorious terrorists, Noor bin Ladin. She is a staunch supporter of ultra MAGA who grifts by appearing on various right-wing podcasts and panders to their whacky claims.
Religious Fanatic Tweets: My wife and I removed the labels from all our canned foods. I created a secret code for all of them, so when she needs canned peaches for example, she can come ask me which one it is. This exercise has caused her trust and dependence on me to grow, by leaps and bounds
- OK, only a bit of fun and not real – this guy is a parody account, but he does not tell you that and he also plays the role with a very straight bat (check out all his other tweets). It is amazing how spot-on the parody is.
- Clues: His account only appeared in Aug; The books he claims to have written within his profile don’t exist; The podcast he claims to have does not exist; etc…
- If you enjoy watching a train wreck of comments, then this is the one to watch. The guy is a true trolling master.
Other weird news items this past week includes …
- Joe Jervis: Loony Laura Loomer Accuses Anti-Defamation League Of Organizing Yesterday’s Neo-Nazi Rallies In Florida.
- Tim Dickinson @ Rolling Stone: Conspiracy Theory Kingpin Calls for Hunter Biden’s Execution.
- Hemant Mehta @ Friendly Atheist: Bremerton’s praying football coach got what he wanted, so now he may quit for good.
- Caroline Kitchener @ The Washington Post: Highways are the next antiabortion target. One Texas town is resisting.
- Angry White Men: Tucker Carlson’s Interview With Larry Sinclair Was Tabloid-Style Sleaze.
- Peter Stone @ The Guardian: US ‘university’ spreads climate lies and receives millions from rightwing donors.
- David Badash @ The New Civil Rights Movement: DeSantis Pledges to Install His Surgeon General, Who Reportedly Said Anti-Vax Policies Are God’s Plan, at CDC.
The False Profit$
- Even if the claim that being President gives you a free pass on that was true (it’s not), the rather embarrassing fact here is that you-know-who paid that hush money before he was president.
- It is indeed weird to see the divine rights of kings claim being resurrected like this by a MAGA pastor and well-known convicted fraudster. (Shane did serious jail time for fraud while he was a pastor, not before – I guess it is simply one fraudster supporting another)
- It is also deeply weird to see pastors now supporting the idea of paying off porn stars when cheating on your pregnant wife.
Also this past week Shane Vaughn says there is no need for Tucker Carlson to worry that former President Donald Trump might be assassinated because Trump is being protected by “the Super Secret Service: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, every one of the angels that have been assigned to protect God’s man.”
- Will Donatello, Leonardo and Michelangelo also be in this super-secret Ninja teenage protection squad for the Antichrist?
- With the shirt Shane has on in the clip, I can only assume that he is just back from Burning man
Self-proclaimed “prophet” Charlie Shamp claims that he had a prophetic vision of a fire-breathing dragon unleashing a “demonic attack” on Hawaii one year before the recent wildfires. The reason for the attack? The legality of abortion, of course.
- It’s the classic fake-prophet shtick to claim that you predicted something that has already happened. I also predicted two years ago that Charlie Shamp would successfully predict the wildfires, you do believe me don’t you? (Just send me your donations at 1-800-I-Am-Stupid).
- Funny how this “prophecy” regarding a wildfire did not appear before the wildfire actually happened.
Self-proclaimed “prophet” Julie Green tells Eric Trump that nothing will happen to his father because God has repeatedly told her that Trump is His “anointed and appointed one.”
- Clearly she mispronounced “Indicted” … as in “The Indicted and Disappointed one”.
- If she is really hearing voices then she needs serious medical help, not a podcast spot.
QAnon conspiracy theorist Dave Hayes says “all the rappers” love Trump’s mug shot and so he should “go hang out in the hood, hang out in the ghettos and bond with those people“: “If he does that, I think he would have a massive groundswell of support from minority communities.“
- Yikes … his suggestion here is that now that Trump is a criminal with a mug shot, he will be popular with minorities. This is how some people do racism while thinking that they are not doing racism.
“Wow” Moment of the week
Sara Murray, Jason Morris, Jeremy Herb and Marshall Cohen @ CNN: Fulton County special grand jury recommended charges against Lindsey Graham, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
Statistic of the week
Meanwhile …
Finally, who could possibly resist sharing this tweet ..