Today's Wingnut

Michele Backmann is just a fuckin' loon.

The 15-minute city is an urban planning concept in which most daily necessities and services, such as work, shopping, education, healthcare, and leisure can be easily reached by a 15-minute walk or bike ride from any point in the city.

Today's Wingnut

"He didn't do it."

"So what if he did?"

"Maybe that's what we need."

"He should do it again."

Today's Wingnut

Wait - Stormy Daniels is a communist?

What she does for a living is about as capitalist as it gets.

• Noun - verb - COMMUNIST!
• Noun - verb - HUNTER BIDEN!
• Noun - verb - WOKE!

Today's Wingnut

They have to install a few basic fantasies in their firmware:

1. They're the "real America"
2. They deserve to be obeyed
3. The "enemy" is whoever argues against their righteous vision of absolute power

And, of course, they have to keep insisting on the pretense that "the others" - those other people, the other side, the other whatever - are trying to do what these Daddy State assholes are actually doing.

Once they've decided they're in the right, no manner of shittiness is beyond the pale.

Being shitty in service to a cause is one thing, but every time out, when being shitty is rewarded, then eventually, the shittiness will become the point. Shittiness for the sake of being shitty.

Wingnuttery

This is probably not a real thing:

What's troublesome though is that given some of the weird shit that comes from these clowns, it's easy to see how people could take it at face value.

Even the debunkment at Reuters waffled a little on it:

News outlets have previously reported that Perry has amplified claims that Italian satellites were involved in manipulating U.S. election results, a charge that Department of Justice (DOJ) officials dismissed as false.

The claim about Chinese thermostats used to manipulate election results has been linked to a Perry associate, Jeffrey Clark, a former DOJ official.

According to the Washington Post, Clark submitted a request in December 2020 for an “intelligence briefing about an allegation that the Chinese were controlling U.S.-based voting machines via internet-connected smart thermostats,” but the Justice Department dismissed the request as “not credible.”

We've reached a pretty bad place when the liars are telling us that the people reporting on their lying are lying.

Today's Wingnut

It's always a creepy kind of fun to watch these guys pretend they can justify their shitty behavior simply by insisting they've done nothing wrong; then trying to shift the guilt by claiming law enforcement mistreated them by investigating that shitty behavior, and holding them accountable for it.

Here's Ali Alexander going full Marion Berry: "Bitch set me up!"

Today's Wingnut

Kari Lake, Arizona loser

First the absurdities:

You're already convinced there's a "divine plan", so Ms Lake invites the inference that the divine plan gives you a divine right to win elections (cuz that's what god's perfect plan calls for).

Then she points to the evil-doers who are thwarting god's plan - and just leaves it up to the faithful to go ahead and take it from there (aka: Stochastic Terrorism).

BTW, ignore the logical contradiction that god's perfect plan would include evil-doers thwarting god's perfect plan, and you'd be interfering with god's perfect plan were you to step in and fight those evil-doers who are thwarting god's perfect plan in accordance with god's perfect plan, which of course has to include the righteous stepping in to put god's perfect plan back on track, because a perfect god with a perfect plan could always use a little help, and that's about when all the "thinking" stops and the shooting starts ...

... and then the atrocities:

When battling evil, you must be willing to take up the devil's own sword - to wield it against him, and all others whom god now commands you to smite hip and thigh, and blah blah blah.

Today's Tweet

This is not mere coincidence.

Tonight, there are unconfirmed reports coming out of Moore County, NC of three substations being shot up with firearms simultaneously to cut power to a drag show. Reportedly, nearly 40,000 people in Moore County are currently without power.

— charlotteclymer@mastodon.social (@cmclymer) December 4, 2022

 

Today's Wingnut

I haven't delved into it, but it seems like all of these kooky "theories" follows one or more of a few themes:

• "Here's what they don't want you to know"
• "I've discovered the lost secrets of the ancients"
• "I'm smart so I know this, but you're not so you don't - here's some enlightenment for you"

"BTW, you should send me $20"

Oy

Today's Wingnut

I think this derives from Constitutional Originalism, but this guy wants to take it all the way out to the Logical Extreme - if not a few steps beyond.

This could easily translate to "property-owners only", and with not much imagination, to requiring a Literacy Test as well.

I can't remember the last time I saw anyone this adamant about squelching the vote.

Today's Tweet

Also, Today's Wingnut. Nick Fuentes, leaving no doubt about who and what he is.

Republican operative Nick Fuentes reacts to GOP failures in the midterm elections: “We need a dictatorship. We need to take control of the government and force the people to believe what we believe.” (from @RightWingWatch) pic.twitter.com/qbC73Vs19A

— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) November 10, 2022

More Wingnut

Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton says that "the Constitution is a God-given document based on God's word" and thus electing Christians to office "allows God's principles to work in a nation."

His argument is circular to the point that it's chasing its tail right up its own ass.

But it is kinda clever.

He needs to dodge the obvious question (If an all-powerful god wanted us to be a theocracy, wouldn't we be a theocracy already?), so he skips backwards to the founding, claiming the US is supposed to be a theocracy, but those rotten liberals are thwarting god's plan.

But that demands the conclusion: if god's plan can be thwarted by a few bureaucrats and activists, then that's one weak-ass god you got there, Skeezix.

Today's Wingnuts

There's practically no daylight between the Republican Party and the foil hat wackos.

This is what the GOP is now - the dark side reality of The King Of Hearts.

The Press Poodles can stop referring to it as "The Far-Right". 

Far-right pundits baselessly claim Hurricane Ian was created by the 'deep state' to target Gov. Ron DeSantis and other red states: 'They are angry with us'

Two far-right pundits are spewing baseless a conspiracy theory about "weather manipulation" — claiming that Hurricane Ian was created by the so-called Deep State to target Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other GOP-led states as "punishment."

The comments were made by DeAnna Lorraine and Lauren Witzke, both former GOP congressional candidates, according to The Independent and RightWing Watch, a group that monitors right-wing activity.

"We understand that the 'deep state,' they have weather manipulation technology," Lorraine said on her Telegram show, per a clip posted by the group on Friday, referring to the hurricane that struck the Sunshine State.

"These huge hurricanes always seem to target red states, red districts, and always at a convenient time — typically right before elections," she added. "Or, in this case, possibly because Ron DeSantis has been stepping out of line a lot and challenging, fighting the 'deep state."

The "deep state" is a conspiracy term referring to a shadowy cabal of influential people who manipulate politics and public life, Insider previously reported, and was used by former President Donald Trump and QAnon.

Florida is still reeling after Ian ripped through the state earlier this week, cutting power and downing trees. Floodwaters reached as high as the second floor of some buildings. Officials note that Ian has weakened to a tropical storm and appears to be heading north toward Georgia and South Carolina.

During the interview, Witzke agreed with Lorraine and suggested that the deep state is "trying to change people's DNA through vaccination."

"Of course, they would be willing to do something like this to target red states," Witzke said.

"I'm not putting it past the elites to target something like this towards Florida as punishment for getting rid of vaccine mandates or getting rid of child grooming," she continued. "They are angry with us, and it wouldn't surprise me to find out that the technology does exist. But you're not supposed to talk about that or know about that because that's controversial or a conspiracy theory. No, it's true."

DeAnna Lorraine, who ran for Congress in 2020, and Lauren Witzke, who was the Delaware GOP's candidate for Senate in 2020, agree that Hurricane Ian is the deep state using "weather manipulation technology" to punish Gov. Ron DeSantis for not enacting a vaccine mandate in Florida. pic.twitter.com/uscJuROSqP

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) September 30, 2022

Today's Wingnut

Julie Green, a self-proclaimed "prophet" with close ties to Doug Mastriano's gubernatorial campaign, claims that Washington is controlled by Luciferians and that God wants the capital city moved and DC destroyed.

When your imaginary friend tells you to go out and find an imaginary enemy.

Today's Oy

Doug Mastriano has gone full Trump, all but barring the press from attending his events, plus this weird kicker where he's shunning press coverage almost altogether. Which seems like an odd choice for a political campaign - since exposure is oxygen - until you see the parlay the campaign is trying to pull off. ie: Getting the wacko message to the MAGA Faithful while keeping it from the general public so as not to "scare the straights".

It's pretty strange, except that it's not. What Mastriano and the other MAGA pimps are doing is following the usual pattern for cults: Taking it to the logical extreme, which is where even good ideas go to die.

Like grandma said: 

"People know you by the crowd you run with - you need to get some better friends."

(pay wall)

Opinion
And on the eighth day, God said: Let Mastriano win Pennsylvania

And, lo, it shall come to pass, on the eighth day of the eleventh month of the Year of our Lord 2022, that Our Heavenly Father shall gather the inhabitants of His Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, from the Sacred City of Filial Love to His Earthly Paradise on the Monongahela, and from all other dwelling places therein; and He shall say, “Riseth up ye and goeth to the polling places; and therein casteth ye thy ballots in such manner that the Heavenly Host doth thunder, ‘Yea, Doug Mastriano, assuredly and verily thou art a cuckoo bird.’ ”

— the Gospel according to nobody in particular

Doug Mastriano is on a mission from God.

The Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania has done any number of things that would doom to Hades the political prospects of any mortal politician: wearing a Confederate uniform, doing business with a white nationalist website, calling Roe v. Wade worse than the Holocaust, associating with militia figures from groups such as the Oath Keepers, appearing at the Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection, and sharing QAnon conspiracy ideas, anti-Semitic propaganda and anti-Muslim hatred.

But though he walks through the shadow of the valley of defeat, he fears no evil — because he has his very own campaign prophet! Her name is Julie Green, and she personally receives messages directly from God, “sometimes … twice a day,” she says, when He instructs her to turn on certain recordings and then speaks to her through the music’s “frequencies.”

The Good Book tells us a prophet is without honor in her own country, and, sure enough, Green has been removed from YouTube, she complains. (She shares her prophesies instead on Telegram and Donald Trump’s Truth Social.) But Mastriano has raised up Prophet Julie and her gospel — which, it so happens, is all about how Mastriano’s enemies will be turned into pillars of salt.

God, speaking through Green, told Mastriano in February that “I will not forsake you” in the quest “for the great steal to be overturned,” as Eric Hananoki (God bless him) chronicled for the liberal watchdog Media Matters for America. In March, Mastriano’s campaign invited Green to give the opening prayer at a campaign event at which a Mastriano aide welcomed her as “a representative of God.” In April, Mastriano appeared with Green at a conference and posted a photo of himself with her. In May, Green, at the Mastriano campaign’s request, made a custom prophecy video for his followers. In June, Green, claiming she visited Mastriano “several times,” said “we just have a special relationship.”

Praise be. Neither Mastriano nor his prophet responded to my requests for comment.

Axios reports that Mastriano’s associations with people such as Green have “raised eyebrows” in Republican circles. But Green is just one of many self-proclaimed prophets who have been predicting Trump’s political resurrection. In the MAGA age, they’ve reportedly got quite a following among Pentecostal and charismatic Christians. It’s one more sign (from on high?) of a movement gone bonkers.

Blending Old Testament fire and brimstone with insurrectionist invective, Green serves up endless jeremiads against opponents of God’s “son” Trump, as Hananoki detailed.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “will be visited by the Angel of Death for her crimes against my nation. … She loves to drink the little children’s blood. … Yes, a true witch she really is.”

God, speaking through Green, disclosed that elites have done “human sacrifices” and “manipulated even the weather.” Arizona’s Republican Gov. Doug Ducey sold his “soul to the devil” and “treason will be written on you for all eternity.” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) “formulated plans to throw out [Trump] from his rightful position as president. … You will pay with your life.”

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), too, will have her life “taken from you by the Angel of Death.” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) will face “eternity in the Lake of Fire.” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) “stood alongside the Red Dragon.” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) “will reap what you have sown in this hour of judgment, saith the Lord of Hosts.” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is “a snake in the grass” who “infiltrated my nation, and that is the last thing you will ever do.” President Biden, Green proclaims, “has already been judged and is no longer alive.”

Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and others are due to meet similar ends, according to God’s word — as told to Green.

Will Green’s many prophecies come to pass?

Well, that depends. Will the good people of Pennsylvania succumb to conspiracy lunacy masquerading as scripture? Or will they, and voters everywhere, decide that this is just one more sign that the false prophets of MAGA have gone entirely too far?

God willing, voters will know them by their fruits.

Today's Wingnut

Mark Robinson, North Carolina's Christian nationalist lieutenant governor, tells Christians to stop reading the news: "When Jesus Christ comes back and is swinging that double-edged sword and riding that white horse, ABC can write all the stories they want to, but their entity is going down in flames."

Jesus left the instructions for YOU.

YOU have to do this.

YOU have to do that.

These guys always invite the inference that they're special - they are one with god - and if you disagree with them, then you're going against god.

Never fails, and the devotees never get wise to the scam.

And what's really scary is that the relaxed-n-groovy-hippie-dude Jesus has morphed into a rage-fueled avenger, who's coming not with love and mercy and forgiveness, but with an iron rod. And it's a very short step from true believer, praying for deliverance, to radicalized terrorist, taking up the sword of a vengeful god against the infidel.

This is exactly what the founders told us to reject.

Today's Wingnut

We are not now, nor have we ever been, a Christian nation. Not officially, and not un-officially, and not with a wink and a nod. Never.

Ever.

RWW Blog:

Gimme My Shit Back, Asshole

The records that Trump took from the White House don't belong to him. They belong to us.

He had no right to take them, and he had a legal obligation to return them. All of them.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Mar-a-Lago search appears focused on whether Trump, aides withheld items

A lawyer for Donald Trump said agents seized about a dozen boxes on Monday, months after 15 boxes of items were returned

In the months before the FBI’s dramatic move to execute a search warrant at former president Donald Trump’s Florida home and open his safe to look for items, federal authorities grew increasingly concerned that Trump or his lawyers and aides had not, in fact, returned all the documents and other material that were government property, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Officials became suspicious that when Trump gave 15 boxes of items to the National Archives about seven months ago, either the former president or people close to him held on to key records — despite a Justice Department investigation into the handling of classified and other material that had been sent to the former president’s private club and residence in the waning days of his administration.

Over months of discussions about whether documents were still missing, some officials also came to suspect Trump’s representatives were not truthful at times, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

On Tuesday, a lawyer for Trump said the agents who brought the court-approved warrant to Mar-a-Lago a day earlier took about 12 more boxes after conducting their search.

People familiar with the investigation said that Justice Department and FBI officials traveled to Mar-a-Lago this spring, a meeting first reported by CNN. The officials spoke to Trump’s representatives, inspected the storage space where documents were held, and expressed concern that the former president or people close to him still had items that should be in government custody, these people said.

By that point, officials at the National Archives had been aggressively contacting people in Trump’s orbit to demand the return of documents they believed were covered by the Presidential Records Act, said two people familiar with those inquiries. Like the others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the investigation.

Christina Bobb, a lawyer for Trump, said his lawyers engaged in discussions with the Justice Department this spring over materials held at Mar-a-Lago. At that time, the former president’s legal team searched through two to three dozen boxes in a storage area, hunting for documents that could be considered presidential records, and turned over several items that might meet the definition, she said.

In June, Bobb said, she and Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran met with Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence and export control section at the Justice Department, along with several investigators. Trump stopped by the meeting as it began, to greet the investigators, but was not interviewed. The lawyers showed the federal officials the boxes, and Bratt and the others spent some time looking through the material.

Bobb said the Justice Department officials commented that they did not believe the storage unit was properly secured, so Trump officials added a lock to the facility. When FBI agents searched the property Monday, Bobb added, they broke through the lock that had been added to the door.

The FBI removed about a dozen boxes that had been stored in the basement storage area, she said.

Bobb did not share the search warrant left by agents, but said that it indicated agents were investigating possible violations of laws dealing with the handling of classified material and the Presidential Records Act.

Trump aides also declined to share the search warrant with The Washington Post.

Cue the nutballs - and bring on the Keyboard Kommandos.

The Atlantic: (pay wall)

The Bad and Good News About Trump’s Violent Supporters

The FBI search at Mar-a-Lago prompts sincere talk of violence. But some threats remain mere threats.

In some corners of MAGA-land, a new civil war is getting under way. The FBI’s arrival at Mar-a-Lago yesterday evening to collect evidence in a criminal investigation related to former President Donald Trump is the trigger that some of his supporters needed to suggest that violence is imminent. Predictably, the unverified Twitter accounts of armchair revolutionaries circulated claims such as “I already bought my ammo” and dark talk of “kinetic civil war” and “Civil War 2.0.”

Not to be outdone, the National Rifle Association posted an image of Justice Clarence Thomas above an indignant quotation from a majority opinion he wrote: “The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second class right.’” Verified right-wing influencers got in on the martial rhetoric, too. “Tomorrow is war. Sleep well,” Steven Crowder promised.

The bad news is that much of this talk is sincere. It is intended to intimidate the people investigating Trump’s many abuses of power, and to galvanize and organize his true believers—some of whom already proved on January 6, 2021, that they will commit violence in his name. The latest such propaganda is shocking to read, mostly because the talk of violence comes so casually to Trump’s apologists. It is all out in the open now.

The good news is that some threats remain merely threats. A violent movement either grows or shrinks. Its ideology is not defeated; it simply stops motivating people to action.

David A. Graham: The Mar-a-Lago raid proves the U.S. isn’t a banana republic

Trump has a hold on a party that has been offered plenty of exit ramps from its relationship with him, but he is not Voldemort. He has been isolated and humiliated. Many of the individuals who used violence to support him on January 6 are now in jail. His audiences have dwindled. Even on the night of the FBI search, in the area of Florida that he now calls home, an impromptu roadside demonstration in support of him attracted “roughly two dozen” supporters, the Miami Herald reported. “Roughly two dozen” isn’t a revolution. It isn’t even a rally.

For many Americans who wish for a peaceful democracy and remain frustrated about Trump’s continuing influence in Republican primaries, hope springs eternal that someone or something—Robert Mueller, two impeachment drives, and now criminal investigators—will definitively erase his power. But expecting saviors to intervene is the wrong way to think about how the threat of violence from Trump’s supporters might dissipate. Rather, the danger will be over when violent MAGAism becomes a rallying cry for a limited pool of adherents whose online anger fizzles upon contact with the real world.

A win, at this stage, isn’t that Trump’s troops make an apology. It is that they remain an online threat, a cosplay movement, a pretend army that can’t deliver, whose greatest strength is in their heads rather than reality.

Trump, as a former president of the United States, may be a rather unique leader of a violent insurrection, but that doesn’t make the ongoing, multiyear strategy any less effective. The January 6 committee has adopted a counter-insurrection strategy by portraying Trump squarely as the leader of a violent movement, and not simply the leader of the GOP. But some of his more extreme followers are now turning on one another. Members of the Oath Keepers, for example, have spoken to FBI investigators about matters connected with the Capitol riot—a sign that at least some fear legal penalties more than they fear the consequences of breaking with Trump. If the former president’s legal jeopardy deepens, he will in all likelihood try to raise the level of agitation in the days ahead; he knows how to use language that incites followers to violence without giving them specific instruction.

But allow me at least a glimmer of optimism. “Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come,” the poet and author Carl Sandburg famously wrote. And the decline of MAGA looks something like that—just a smattering of people respond to the overheated rhetoric of Trump and his allies. If Trump’s supporters only end up cosplaying a civil war, that itself is a small victory.

Today's Wingnut

RWW Blog

"...has declared Dickus Cheneyus an enemy of Rome and all good citizens are duty-bound to do him harm..."

These jerks do, in fact, hear themselves when they speak, but they've conditioned their audience to ignore their contradictions. They can say whatever they feel the need to say one day, and then say exactly the opposite the next day without a care in the world, because they know the rubes will think what the rubes are told to think.

This crap continues until "some of the people" get hip to being fooled all of the time.

Today's Wingnut

RWW Blog - Tyler Russell filing in on the "Right Dissident"

From the standpoint of real-world practicability, there's no pretense about any of this. Even if we can assume these assholes are just demagoguing the whole thing, and their intent is simply to grift the rubes, there's a widening and deepening audience who take this shit as gospel, and whatever it's grown into at this point, it's taken on a life of its own.

BTW:

Article 11 of the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, declares, “The government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

Once ratified by the US Senate (as the Treaty of Tripoli has been done), the terms of that treaty become law in the US.

Lots of argument about the subject, and I have to come down on this:

While the US was founded by people who generally believed in some kind of deity, they stated often that they had every intention of avoiding the mistakes of history, and so were determined not to take any religion's doctrine and turn it into law.