Kids vs Rights

If you tell me you'd be willing to sacrifice the lives of your children in defense of your idea of unlimited 2nd amendment rights, you're either a total fucking liar, or a total fucking monster.

Either It Is Or It Isn't

Plain old everyday common sense tells us two contradicting notions can't be true at the same time ... but hey - Quantum Politics, anyone?

Mike Lindell says he had to borrow $10 million last year to keep MyPillow afloat — and is running out of cash, too

• MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell told Insider he had to borrow $10 million in 2022 to keep MyPillow afloat.
• Lindell said he'd also sold a building for $2 million and borrowed a further $2 million for himself.
• Lindell says he's burning through $1 million dollars every month on causes related to voter fraud.

MyPillow CEO Says Company Is Going Broke Defending Election Fraud Claims

MyPillow Founder and CEO Mike Lindell claims the company has had to borrow almost $10 million to keep the lights on. The MyPillow guy has been embroiled in a series of lawsuits brought by voting machine manufacturers who allege Lindell defamed them by spreading conspiracies regarding their role in the 2020 election.

“The machine companies continue to sue us for billions of dollars, and we had to borrow almost $10 million at MyPillow,” Lindell told far-right radio host and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon on Wednesday.

- and -

Mike Lindell Backtracks on Claims MyPillow Is Going Broke

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell says his company is in great shape, just hours after telling Steve Bannon it was going broke due to political pressure.

“I invented MyPillow2.0 and it is doing great!” Lindell told The Daily Beast on Wednesday night.

Despite trying to claim that his business was the victim of a political vendetta earlier on Wednesday, Lindell was quickly peddling a different story.

“Over 1/2 the loans are already paid back! MyPillow2.0 is manufactured 100% by MyPillow in Minnesota! You must have seen the ads in all TV stations across the country,” he said, referencing his collaboration with QAnon podcasts and web shows that are selling MyPillow products in a significant profit-sharing deal.

Lindell has been entangled in a number of lawsuits brought about by voting machine manufacturers after he spread unfounded conspiracy theories based on the “stolen” 2020 election. Lindell is a diehard Trump supporter.

The full scope of financial crisis is unclear, however, in January, he told WCCO that MyPillow had lost $100 million in retailers and that “we are not up 30-40%—we are down. We are down. I had to borrow money.”

Lindell told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon on Wednesday: “The machine companies continue to sue us for billions of dollars, and we had to borrow almost $10 million at MyPillow.”

Lindell declined to say whether MyPillow is currently losing money, instead telling The Daily Beast that “MyPillow had to spend millions on lawsuits and the last 2 years lost 30 box stores and shopping channels.

- more -

Today's "Conservative" Thing

I honestly don't understand what "conservatives" find so terribly wrong about that kinda thing - unless it's all part of some weird self-hatred syndrome, which makes it a projection of their own inner demons (?)

Is that why it seems so important for them to impose limits on people? Are they saying they can't possibly control their own potentially vile behavior, so they need to build a societal mechanism that imposes limits - by proxy - on themselves?

In the immortal words of Stan Marsh:

Behind The Masks

Why are Republicans meeting with mask-off neo-Nazis?

Without a peep from the Republican Owned Media . Not even mentioned in Google…

Republican congressman Matt Rosendale from Montana met with:

• Ryan Sanchez, disgraced former marine and member of the Rise Above Movement - a neo-Nazi street gang prosecuted for their role in the deadly 2017 Charlottesville Nazi rally.
• Pro-Hitler blogger Greyson Arnold, a white supremacist Groyper* and January 6th insurrectionist.

These are not mere far-right activists. These men support active calls for genocide against LGBTQ+, Black, and Jewish people in the United States.

From Mastodon:

https://kolektiva.social/@VPS_Reports/109961490100833234

* Groypers are a loose network of alt right figures who are vocal supporters of white supremacist and “America First” podcaster Nick Fuentes.

Patrick Casey, who heads the white supremacist American Identity Movement, is also a “lead” Groyper.

Groypers regularly confront mainstream conservative organizations like Turning Point USA (TPUSA) for failing to promote a truly “America First” agenda and for not being adequately “pro white.”

Many Groypers hold racist and antisemitic views.

Fuentes is careful to position the Groypers not as white supremacists but rather as “Christian conservatives” who oppose, among other things, immigration (undocumented and legal), globalism, gay and transgender rights and feminism.

Anti Defamation League:

https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/groyper-army-and-america-first

One more thing: http://bit.ly/3SWwqLV

Today's Perfect Example

Brian Tyler Cohen explains

Creeping Liberalism

Oh-oh. MAGA brains everywhere must be struggling with some heavy cognitive dissonance.

They have to contend with the realization that one of the last bastions of white supremacy is "going woke" - and has been for a while now.

ie: "My god, man, NACAR has a diversity thing going on?! NASCAR!?!"

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — When Josh Sims reports on NASCAR this season, the stock car series these days — from the garage to the grandstands to top brass — looks more like him.

Yes, Sims takes pride in the fact that he will become the first Black pit reporter for the Daytona 500 and that his rapid rise at Fox has made him one of the primary faces of the network’s NASCAR coverage.

More than that, Sims sees that NASCAR may finally be running out of unconquered firsts for people of color. For women. For any minority who perhaps has experienced an uneasy relationship with a series founded in the South 75 years ago, a generation before the civil rights era.

Sims’ journey from NASCAR novice through a sports anchor gig in Charlotte, North Carolina, that sparked his passion in the sport had led to his biggest assignment yet: pit reporting as a Black man from one of auto racing’s signature events.

“I never set out to be a first,” the 35-year-old Sims said. “I never set out to make history. I just wanted to be the best at what I was doing, whether it was hosting or reporting. At the same time, I kind of understand the platform and what it means for me to be doing this.”

And this season, he wants to share the stories on what he sees at the track beyond the in-race reports and fantastic finishes. Minorities may not necessarily become the dominant demographic for the series, but they can certainly grab a larger share of the marketplace.

“I think if more people out there saw it, saw people that looked them, instead of just driver, crew chief, you might be more inclined to feel like, hey, I feel a little more comfortable going to the track,” Sims said. “Getting that out there might help in terms of more people coming to the track and getting more different faces to the stands. It’s not necessarily about getting more people in, it’s showing what you already have.”

It was, of course, a very low bar but the garage and grid and fans certainly appears to be more diverse now than before 2020 when NASCAR banned the Confederate flag from its tracks and properties. NASCAR is still overwhelmingly white, but NASCAR President Steve Phelps isn’t exaggerating when he says you notice the change when walking through the garage.

Among the notable achievements: Jusan Hamilton, who last year became the first Black race director in Daytona 500 history, will do it again this season. Amanda Oliver, a Black woman, negotiates high-profile deals as NASCAR’s senior vice president. John Ferguson, a Black man, is the chief human resources officer.

Owners now include Pitbull and Michael Jordan, whose team features Bubba Wallace, the Black driver who prompted the flag ban. Rising stars in the developmental series include Rajah Caruth, a 20-year-old graduate of the “Drive for Diversity” program.

Phelps said NASCAR was committed to strengthening ties to various programs that can attract a broader fan base, from Boys & Girls Clubs to “some of the other areas we have from a partnership standpoint that really speak to what’s happening in the African American community, what’s happening in the Hispanic, Latino community (to) what’s happening in the LGBTQ community.”

“I never necessarily felt uncomfortable,” he said. “You get stuff here and there in terms of messages that’s emailed to you or sent to you but that’s par for the course if you’re a minority in the sport, a woman in the sport, even white drivers get stuff like that. But for every one or two of those, I get a lot more stuff from people excited that I’m here. You know, focus on the good.”

Raised in East Brunswick, New Jersey, Sims is a Villanova graduate who followed the Wildcats in NCAA Tournament games in 2009 and remained a fan of most Philly teams.

“I grew up in Jersey, so not exactly NASCAR country,” Sims said. “Growing up, you know the Jimmies and the Dale Seniors and the Tony Stewarts and everybody but it wasn’t something I followed week in and week out.”

“I was like, I am all in,” Sims said.

Charlotte can feel like a small town for a city and Sims kept bumping into friends and contacts in NASCAR. Fox Sports executives hired Sims in 2021 as a reporter for their slate of NASCAR shows. He also became the first Black pit reporter in any NASCAR series, for Trucks races.

“I kind of hope that young people that look like me, can see me doing it and now recognize that it’s possible,” Sims said. “I hope I can kind of blaze a trail for them to one day say, hey, because Josh Sims did it, I can do it, too. And that’s what’s important.”

Today's Phony Fuck

Matt Sclapp

Herschel Walker Staffer: Matt Schlapp ‘Groped’ My Crotch

American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp allegedly groped the crotch of a male staffer for Herschel Walker’s campaign in October.

A staffer for Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign has alleged to The Daily Beast that longtime Republican activist Matt Schlapp made “sustained and unwanted and unsolicited” sexual contact with him while the staffer was driving Schlapp back from an Atlanta bar this October.

The staffer said the incident occurred the night of Oct. 19, when Schlapp, chair of the American Conservative Union and lead organizer for the influential Conservative Political Action Conference, “groped” and “fondled” his crotch in his car against his will after buying him drinks at two different bars.

The staffer described Schlapp, who had traveled to Georgia for a Walker campaign event, as inappropriately and repeatedly intruding into his personal space at the bars. He said he was also keenly aware of his “power dynamic” with Schlapp, widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in national conservative politics.

Schlapp, the staffer recalled, said he had wanted to spend the evening discussing the staffer’s professional future.

“It was a public space, and I was thinking that he got the hint. I did not want to embarrass him,” he said. “But it escalated.”

We are withholding the staffer’s name at his request, citing concerns of drawing attention to himself while embarking on his first weeks in a new job in Republican politics. He said he would come forward with his real name if Schlapp denied his claims.

In a statement to The Daily Beast, Schlapp attorney Charlie Spies called the allegations an “attack” and said Schlapp “denies any improper behavior.”

“This appears to be now the twelfth Daily Beast piece with personal attacks on Matt Schlapp and his family. The attack is false and Mr. Schlapp denies any improper behavior. We are evaluating legal options for response,” the statement said.

The staffer, in his late thirties, recalled that while he drove Schlapp back to the hotel, Schlapp put his hand on his leg, then reached over and “fondled” his crotch at length while he was frozen in shock, calling it “scarring” and “humiliating.” When they arrived at the hotel, the staffer said Schlapp invited him to his room. The staffer said he declined and left “as quickly as I could.”

He informed the campaign about the incident the next morning.

When the staffer got home that night, he received a call from Schlapp—shortly after midnight, according to call records the staffer shared with The Daily Beast—to confirm that the staffer would still chauffeur him to an event in Macon the next day. The staffer described the call as “short and perfunctory,” but after confirming he would drive him, the staffer “broke down.” He then recorded a series of tearful video accounts detailing the evening, which he shared with The Daily Beast as well as with two people close to him, including the staffer’s wife.

“What is wrong with me? This is OK to happen?” he said in one of the videos. “I don’t know what I did. It’s very sad that this is OK.”

In another video, the staffer narrated the events “in regard to Matthew Schlapp, chairman of CPAC, who approximately two hours ago put his hands on me in a sustained and unsolicited and unwanted manner.”

“Matt Schlapp of the CPAC grabbed my junk and pummeled it at length, and I’m sitting there thinking what the hell is going on, that this person is literally doing this to me,” the staffer said in the video.

“From the bar to the Hilton Garden Inn, he has his hands on me. And I feel so fucking dirty. I feel so fucking dirty,” he said.

“I’m supposed to pick this motherfucker up in the morning and just pretend like nothing happened. This is what I’m dealing with,” the staffer continued. “This is what I got to do.”

The staffer’s communications with the campaign the next day, along with further exchanges with Schlapp, were documented in call logs and text messages, which the staffer shared with The Daily Beast, as described below.

At 7:26 a.m., Schlapp sent a text saying, “I’m in the lobby.” One minute later, the staffer called his supervisor, followed by a call with a senior campaign official. The staffer said the senior official was “immediately horrified” and pulled him off the driving duty, instructing him to tell Schlapp in writing that he’d made him uncomfortable.

Right after that call, the staffer sent Schlapp a text.

“I did want to say I was uncomfortable with what happened last night. The campaign does have a driver who is available to get you to Macon and back to the airport,” he texted, providing the name and phone number of the driver.

“Pls give me a call,” Schlapp replied, followed by, “Thx.” Schlapp then called him three times over the next 20 minutes, according to phone records reviewed by The Daily Beast.

When the staffer did not answer or return the calls, Schlapp sent another text, asking him to look “in your heart” and call back.

“If you could see it in your heart to call me at the end of day. I would appreciate it,” Schlapp texted at 12:12 p.m. “If not I wish you luck on the campaign and hope you keep up the good work.”

The staffer said he never called, and has not had any communication with Schlapp since that text. Schlapp, who has been married to conservative commentator and consultant Mercedes Schlapp since 2002, never asked the staffer what had made him uncomfortable.

In interviews, the staffer was emphatic that throughout the ordeal he felt “nothing but support” from Walker campaign officials, saying he never felt pressure and was given “complete autonomy” over how to move forward. The options included legal and therapeutic support, as well as pressing charges.

But the staffer declined to take legal action at the time, telling The Daily Beast he was concerned that speaking out about Schlapp could carry professional consequences and endanger career advancement. (The staffer had previously accompanied Mercedes Schlapp when she visited Wisconsin during the 2020 election.) He also said he felt that going public at the time would only further aggravate what he described as the “circus of scandals” surrounding Walker’s campaign just weeks out from the election. However, he said he is still weighing his options, especially if Schlapp denies the allegations and does not step down from his post at the ACU.

A senior Walker official, authorized to speak on behalf of the campaign, confirmed the details of the campaign’s involvement as the staffer described it, noting the campaign initiated a meeting between the staffer and legal counsel.

It’s not clear whether Walker himself was made aware of the allegations. He did not reply to a request for comment.

A senior campaign official told The Daily Beast that the campaign had no further contact with Schlapp after the incident and did not believe Schlapp took them up on the private driver. The driver told The Daily Beast he did not recall Schlapp, and could find no record of any passenger with that name in his client logs.

Schlapp—a veteran GOP operative whose decades in the upper echelons of the Republican Party include gigs in Congress and the White House—carries enormous clout in conservative politics. The organization he chairs, the ACU, hosts the annual CPAC events, magnets for die-hard conservative politicians which in recent years have been criticized as an increasingly heated incubator for radicals within the party.

The ACU did not reply to questions for this article.

While Schlapp has personally welcomed the LGBTQ community at the conference, CPAC routinely draws criticism for embracing anti-LGBTQ extremists.

In Feb. 2015, the year Schlapp assumed his ACU leadership, the Log Cabin Republicans—an advocacy group for gay conservatives—complained that CPAC had blocked them as a sponsor for the third straight year. A week later, Schlapp reversed that policy.

“If you are a conservative who is gay, you have a right to be here,” Schlapp said, adding that “doesn’t mean we water down our principles.”

But given the type of guests and rhetoric that enjoy a warm home at CPAC—while the GOP itself increasingly embraces dangerous anti-LGBTQ rhetoric—gay rights advocates have blasted the ACU’s outward efforts at inclusivity as disingenuous and exploitative.

Schlapp, a devout Catholic, has personally taken heat from members of the far right for his acceptance of LGBTQ Republicans, while some conservatives have bluntly denounced Schlapp’s nominal acceptance of the queer community as a betrayal of Christian conservative values.

The criticism flared last year when CPAC hosted an overseas conference in Hungary, whose president, Viktor Orbán, has imposed increasingly oppressive restrictions on LGBTQ citizens. In August, Orbán came to CPAC in Dallas, where he spouted a “hardline stance on gay rights” and received a standing ovation.

Schlapp has also come under fire for his defense of alleged sexual abusers like former President Donald Trump and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who partied at the Schlapps’ home this December alongside Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), the subject of a federal sex trafficking investigation.

But when it comes to sexual assault allegations against Democrats, Schlapp hasn’t held his fire, repeatedly targeting President Joe Biden for an unsubstantiated accusation from the 1990s.

“With 5 daughters I’d prefer Biden to be several doors down, not next door,” Schlapp tweeted when those claims first surfaced in 2019.

At the time, Schlapp was entertaining a Senate bid himself. A year later, Schlapp had dropped the political ambitions, but not the mudslinging at Biden.

“Thinking back on the Senate of the 1990s: was there a way for a female staffer who was a sexual assault victim to get fair treatment from an institution that was geared toward protecting senators of both parties,” he wrote on Twitter in 2020. “Biden stressing this event was 27 yrs ago is a bad strategy.”

Press Poodle Lamentations

Karen Tumulty wishes us not to hold her shittiness against her.

Yes, we want plutocracy

we just had the wrong plutocrat

(pay wall)

Opinion
I’m sorry I said nice things about Glenn Youngkin

I’d like to take this opportunity to retract the nice things I said about Glenn Youngkin a few months ago.

In July, I wrote a column when reports began to surface that Virginia’s Republican governor, a fresh and sunny political newcomer with proven bipartisan appeal, was already thinking about running for president.

At the time, I expressed hope that Youngkin — or someone like him — would seek the GOP nomination in 2024. His stunning 2021 victory in blue-ish Virginia showed that there might still be room in the Republican Party for a different model of politician, one who could run as a unifying alternative to Donald Trump’s venomous brand.

Optimist that I am, I still hope that a tribune of sanity will emerge in the Republican Party. But the everydad in the fleece vest probably isn’t that guy. When a situation this week called for expressing a modicum of human decency, Youngkin — who frequently talks about his religious values — showed he could rival the former president at diving for the gutter.

As news was breaking Friday about the horrific attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, by an intruder in their San Francisco home, Youngkin happened to be campaigning in Stafford, Va., for Yesli Vega, the Republican running in a very tight race against Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger.

“Speaker Pelosi’s husband, they had a break-in last night in their house, and he was assaulted. There’s no room for violence anywhere,” Youngkin said.

Alas, he didn’t stop there.

“But we’re going to send her back to be with him in California,” the governor said. As the crowd cheered, Youngkin doubled down: “That’s what we’re going to go do. That’s what we’re going to go do.”

Set aside the fact that his joke, if that’s what you can call it, showed a lack of understanding of basic civics and geography. Pelosi is in Washington because she has been elected for the past 35 years by the voters of California. This has nothing to do with anybody in Virginia.

What made Youngkin’s riff not only tasteless but also dangerous is that he was not referring to some random act of “violence anywhere.” The attack on Paul Pelosi was a direct product of the toxic political culture — a culture that the governor was helping to cultivate for what he apparently sees as a political opportunity.

Evidence now indicates that the assailant who beat Pelosi with a hammer, sending the 82-year-old to the hospital with a skull fracture and serious injuries to his arm and hands, had broken into the Pelosi home because he was looking for the speaker herself. Nancy Pelosi has been demonized for years by Republicans, including in countless GOP campaign ads. The attacker’s reported shouts of “Where is Nancy?” were a chilling echo of the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters’ cries as they tried to hunt her down in the corridors of the Capitol.

Being a jerk about Pelosi is not the only Youngkin action of late that betrays who he really is and what he is willing to do in service of his ambition. During his campaign for governor, he managed a tricky balancing act on the election denialism that has gripped his party. He promised to put “election integrity” at the top of his priorities in office — indulging the lie that fraud is rampant — but also acknowledged Joe Biden’s 2020 victory and called the Jan. 6 insurrection “a real blight on our democracy.” And, notably, he kept Trump at a distance.

But more recently, Youngkin is being seen with the worst people in his party. A little over a week ago, he stumped in Arizona for GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, one of the loudest of those 2020 deniers and someone who has refused to say whether she will accept the results of this year’s election. He called her “awesome,” and she declared him a “total rock star.”

Asked on CNN about his plans to campaign with Lake, Youngkin replied: “I think that the Republican Party has to be a party where we are not shunning people and excluding them, because we don’t agree on everything.” In other words, Youngkin thinks it’s fine to undermine democracy in the cause of lower taxes and school choice.

The governor remains popular in Virginia, with a recent poll showing his approval at 55 percent and most of his constituents saying the state is moving in the right direction. But the commonwealth limits its governors to one consecutive term, which means, come 2024, he will be looking for a new job.

Youngkin may still have some room for redemption, though it is shrinking. He could start by apologizing for his crude joke. So far, all we’ve heard is a statement from his office condemning the violence against the speaker’s husband and saying the governor “wishes him a full recovery and is keeping the Pelosi family in his prayers.” Meanwhile, his turn toward full-bore Trumpism is likely to be for naught. There are plenty of others, including the original, who do it better — and at less cost to their own integrity.

Liberty

This kinda shit boils down to this: Republicans are so afraid of women being free to make their own decisions about what happens to their own bodies, they've started passing laws prohibiting people from even talking about abortion in public.

The nonsense about "cancel culture" gushing out of their pie holes has to be stomped on.

'Chilling effect on free speech': Idaho universities disallow abortion, contraception referral

Idaho universities are warning staffers not to refer students to abortion providers, and at least one public university is barring employees from telling students how to obtain emergency contraception or birth control as well. It’s the latest restriction in a state that already holds some of the strictest abortion laws in the nation.

“This is going to have a very broad impact,” said Mike Satz, an attorney and former faculty member and interim dean at the University of Idaho’s College of Law. “It’s going to have a very strong chilling effect on free speech and it’s going to scare people. I’m afraid it’s going to scare people from going to school here or sending their kids to school at Idaho institutions.”

The prohibition against referring students to abortion providers or “promoting” abortion in any way comes from the “No Public Funds for Abortion Act,” a law passed by Idaho’s Republican-led Legislature in 2021. Boise State University, like the University of Idaho, told faculty members in a newsletter earlier this month that they could face felony charges for violating the law. Idaho State University did not respond to phone messages from The Associated Press asking if it had issued similar guidance.

The law also bars staffers and school-based health clinics from dispensing or telling students where to obtain emergency contraception, such as the Plan B pill, except for in cases of rape. Emergency contraception drugs prevent pregnancy from occurring and do not work in cases where someone is already pregnant.

The University of Idaho’s guidance released Friday goes a step further, also warning employees about a law written in 1867, 23 years before Idaho became a state. That law prohibits dispensing or “advertising” abortion services and birth control — leading to UI’s advice that condoms be distributed only to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, but not to prevent pregnancy.

It’s not yet clear how the the law barring “advertising or promoting” abortion and birth control services could impact students or other state employees who may use state-owned computers or wireless networks to share information about how to access reproductive health care on Instagram or other social media sites. Scott Graf, a spokesman for Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, said his office planned to discuss the guidance given to university staffers and the abortion laws in an internal call Tuesday morning.

Jodi Walker, spokeswoman for the University of Idaho, said the university follows all laws and said UI officials were still “working through some of the details.”

“This is a challenging law for many and has real ramifications for individuals in that it calls for individual criminal prosecution,” she said of the public funds law. “The section does not specify what is meant by promoting abortion, however, it is clear that university employees are paid with public funds. Employees engaging in their course of work in a manner that favors abortion could be deemed as promoting abortion.”

Abortion can still be discussed as a policy issue in classrooms, Walker said, but the university recommends that the employees in charge of the class “remain neutral or risk violating this law.”

“We support our students and employees, as well as academic freedom, but understand the need to work within the laws set out by our state,” she said.

But that could be nearly impossible, said Satz. Both the University of Idaho and Boise State University rely on grants to fund major research and academic projects, and the federal government is among the largest sources of those grants. The federal government also provides abortions through the Veterans Administration, Satz noted, and the “No Public Funds for Abortion Act” bars the state from contracting with abortion providers.

Idaho’s lawmakers could fine-tune the laws to ensure they don’t violate 1st Amendment free speech rights or lead to major funding losses, but the deeply conservative state Legislature isn’t scheduled to meet again until January.

Boise State’s advisory to employees noted that abortion-producing medications or procedures can still be prescribed if they are used to remove a dead fetus caused by spontaneous abortion, to treat an ectopic pregnancy or to “save the life or preserve the health of the unborn child.” But some of those scenarios are gray areas under other state laws criminalizing abortions, including one targeted in a U.S. Department of Justice federal lawsuit against the state of Idaho.

Idaho isn’t the only state where employees have been cautioned not to give abortion advice. In the summer, librarians in Oklahoma City were warned against using the word “abortion,” though that changed after the city’s library team reviewed the laws. Still, social workers, clergy members and others have raised concerns in Oklahoma about being exposed to criminal or civil liability just for discussing abortions.

Meanwhile, Over At CPAC

via The Lincoln Project

"There's no such thing as misinformation."

And we've hit a new high in "conservative" lows.

Oy

OK, look - keep your hands to yourself.

That said, c'mon, kids - this is what we call "assault" now?

Stop wondering why I call "conservatives" a buncha whiny-butt pussy snowflakes.

Today's Brian

Stupid GOP policies are about to create a metric fuck ton of "welfare babies", and we're supposed to believe that Republicans are having a Scrooge-On-Christmas-Morning moment, so now they'll open up the government coffers and fund the necessary infrastructure to provide support for all the newly minted poor and brown people they love so much.

Fat fucking chance.

It's another lie. When I listen closely, I hear the coded "cha-ching" language of privatization and the move to funnel public funds into sectarian enterprises.

We didn't raise enough of a stink about GW Bush's "Faith-Based Initiatives" bullshit, and this year, SCOTUS has further paved the way by allowing tax dollars to be paid out to religious schools.

Carson v. Makin

Brian Tyler Cohen

Today's Wingnut

These god-knobbers are just a few degrees to the east of full-blown Daddy State freaks.

And no, there's no mystery to it. There's no hypocrisy here. These guys have completely co-opted Jesus to make him compliant with their warped system of beliefs.

They've taken the guy who taught forgiveness and mercy, and "turn the other cheek", and transmogrified him into Mr Retribution - lookin' to get some payback for them.

Right Wing Watch:

Because they know their "arguments" don't stand up on their own. They rely completely on people falling for the bullshit that their preachers (ie: they themselves) are the only ones pious enough to know the true will of "the ultimate authority" - the one almighty god - our holy and infallible lord - which of course can be bent to our purposes as needed.

Fascism comes to America

wrapped in a flag,

spouting quotes

from a make-believe bible

On The Gun Thing

CNN's Jim Acosta with John Kasich and Kirsten Powers

Always remember that John Kasich is a smiling hyena.

But that said, when a "conservative" is willing to play against type on whatever issue, there's a chance (however slim) that we can get something good out of a ridiculously shitty situation.

A Thought

Over and over and over again, we've heard "conservatives" tell us it's a cherished privilege - and an honor beyond imagining - to fight, and to bleed, and to die if necessary, in order to protect and defend the sacred Constitution of these United States.

I'm just wondering why so many Republicans seem so willing to fight and to bleed and to die trying to shit-can it.

It's A Disease

No less than COVID, today's mutated strain of "conservatism" is virulent, and even more insidious.

Alex Jones is a kind of Patient Zero.

He needs help. Like serious help. https://t.co/4wh5NWlp72

— Cheryl Jones Head (@cjoneshead) December 13, 2021

Luckily, we have some pretty talented people up in here who can take a small bit of the raw terror out of it for us. This is not minimizing the problem, btw - it's therapeutic - it's contextualizing - it helps us get our arms around the problem.

Let's Review

I think the basic take-away is that really, not much has changed. Even when they acknowledge their bias, and especially when they actually articulate the contradictions internal to their "beliefs", they stay in the bubble.

Jordan Klepper - The Daily Show

We should prob'ly check in with some folks about that old bugbear "cognitive dissonance".

The Lincoln Project - Reed Galen and Dr Gale Tarvis

"...a personal, irrational fear of ever admitting error combined with the fear of being ostracized by the tribe..."

Our Mr Brooks

Mo Brooks fleeing the interview

Because conservatives are a buncha whiny-butt pussies.

Odd Thoughts

Teaching school kids everything that's actually happened in America - from The Three-Fifths Clause and Slavery and Critical Race Theory, to The Trail Of Tears and the slaughter of the buffalo in support of an attempted genocide, to Jim Crow and Greenwood, to Vietnam and the War On Protesters, to assassinations and attempted assassinations, to Murder-by-Drone and the myriad fucked up CIA misadventures, to Iran-Contra, to Voter Suppression etc etc etc - that's what conservatives are calling "teaching kids to hate their country".

They're admitting that knowing the truth about America will make those kids hate America. But instead of making changes in what we do and how we do them, so better things can happen - so our history is more often something we can be proud of - they'll just lie and pretend everything's peachy, and hope those kids don't ever find out.

That is nine kinds of fucked up right there.

It's The Capitalism Stoopid

This should make for some great theater.

The MAGA Gang loves to shit themselves about "freedom" and their right to stand up to the man and such, and how it's a matter of the free market, and then they whine about how the corporations are trying to force them to comply with government regulations, so they expect one government entity to ride in and rescue them from some other government entity, which is actually - of course - owned and operated by the corporations, so we'll just have to shoot it out cuz that's what the founding documents guarantee me the right to do - according to the government - and if you don't like it, well you can take it up with my buddies down at the duly-elected government-funded Sheriff's office.

But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself - and the story. Or am I?

Axios:

Europe to set a global vaccine passport standard

Europe seems poised to set the global standard for vaccine passports, now that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has signaled that vaccinated Americans will be allowed to travel to the continent this summer.

Why it matters: Opening up travel to vaccinated Americans will bring new urgency to creating some kind of trusted means for people to prove they've been vaccinated.

The big picture:

• There will probably never be a single credential that most people use to prove they've been vaccinated, for every purpose.
• But the EU's system will help set a standard for a proof of vaccination that's both easily accessible and difficult to forge.
• The U.S. is being closely consulted on the European passport, so any future American system will likely use similar protocols.

Details:

• Informal mechanisms like simply asking someone whether they're had a shot can suffice in many situations. A system for international travel will likely be far more stringent. And there's a wide middle, too.
• Other activities that don't need the same rigorous standards as international travel could rely on the CDC's vaccination cards; options like a printed QR code, similar to what's been proposed by PathCheck; or a digital QR code, like the ones created by CommonPass or the Vaccine Credential Initiative.
• There may be some state-issued credentials, like the Excelsior Pass in New York.
• A national credential is theoretically possible, and could be linked to the biometric information that already exists on many chipped passports — the World Health Organization is working with Estonia to develop something along those lines — but that would meet steep political resistance in the U.S.

The bottom line:

• The world of vaccine passports is almost certainly going to end up as a mishmash of different credentials for different activities, rather than a single credential used by everybody for everything.

Go deeper: Americans will likely have to navigate a maze of vaccine "passports"

Cue the outrage.

You know it's coming - they just haven't amped it up on DumFux News yet.