The Republican Party Has Flat Out Lost Its Mind

[pnwguy]

Jun 30, 2021 17:19:01 GMT LFC said:

These people are deranged snowflakes who ever play the victim. And they're in office.

A Washington state lawmaker wore a yellow Star of David patch on his shirt at a speech to conservative activists to protest COVID-19 vaccine mandates, The Seattle Times reports. State Rep. Jim Walsh appeared with the symbol, notoriously used by the Nazis to identify Jews during the Holocaust, at an event that was livestreamed on his Facebook page. “It’s an echo from history,” Walsh wrote in a Facebook post showing a video of the event, which was spotted by the Times. “In the current context, we’re all Jews.” In an interview with The Seattle Times on Tuesday, Walsh would not say whether or not he believed that wearing the star was offensive. “Some people are offended by having to provide vaccine documentation at their work,” Walsh said. “I can’t control who is offended by what.” The comments mark a continued series of remarks by public officials comparing COVID-19 restrictions and vaccines to events during the Holocaust. U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) recently apologized for comparing Congress’ mask rules to the Holocaust after widespread condemnation and her visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

Read it at The Seattle Times

If they are going to pretend to be Jews, we should insist they all get circumcised "fully". Like the Unsullied in Game Of Thrones

[goldenvalley]

Jun 30, 2021 17:19:01 GMT LFC said:

These people are deranged snowflakes who ever play the victim. And they're in office.

A Washington state lawmaker wore a yellow Star of David patch on his shirt at a speech to conservative activists to protest COVID-19 vaccine mandates, The Seattle Times reports. State Rep. Jim Walsh appeared with the symbol, notoriously used by the Nazis to identify Jews during the Holocaust, at an event that was livestreamed on his Facebook page. “It’s an echo from history,” Walsh wrote in a Facebook post showing a video of the event, which was spotted by the Times. “In the current context, we’re all Jews.” In an interview with The Seattle Times on Tuesday, Walsh would not say whether or not he believed that wearing the star was offensive. “Some people are offended by having to provide vaccine documentation at their work,” Walsh said. “I can’t control who is offended by what.” The comments mark a continued series of remarks by public officials comparing COVID-19 restrictions and vaccines to events during the Holocaust. U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) recently apologized for comparing Congress’ mask rules to the Holocaust after widespread condemnation and her visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

Read it at The Seattle Times

What color star should we make a#$%holes wear?

[Bact PhD]

Jul 1, 2021 0:22:35 GMT goldenvalley said:

What color star should we make a#$%holes wear?

Brown?

[andydp]

Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.

Euripides

I came across this Atlantic Article yesterday.  Seems there's a group of "liberal commie socialists" that's been trolling the MAGA world.  The best one they did is in the first part of the story.

Meet the Anti-MAGA Trolls – The Atlantic


Late in the evening on Christmas Day, the lawyer and Donald Trump loyalist Lin Wood tweeted an elaborate infographic stating his views about the upcoming U.S. Senate runoff election in Georgia. The final tally would be corrupted by Dominion voting machines, it said, and the only way to expose the fraud would be to boycott the election. That would “break the algorithm” by producing a result in which the GOP candidates would receive fewer than zero votes—and then the Supreme Court would have “no choice” but to overturn the presidential election, while someone would have no choice but to arrest Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, as well as Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler and the other GOP candidate, David Perdue. “I just want an HONEST election,” Wood wrote above the image. “Don’t you?”

The next day, on Reddit, the members of a vaguely leftist community called r/ParlerTrick started celebrating. One of them had created the infographic out of whole cloth, with the hopes that it would be picked up in right-wing internet spaces and persuade Trump supporters not to vote in the runoff. That Wood had come across it and shared it himself was a far wilder result than they could have hoped for. Still, most of them avoided breaking character in their posts. “We must have fair elections. We must know the Truth!!!” one wrote. “Let every nasty democRAT vote while true patriots stay home and trust the plan!” wrote another. The fact that Wood was calling for the arrests of various Georgia political figures was soon covered by Yahoo News, Business Insider, and other bloggy mainstream outlets, with no mention of the way the thought had been incepted into his tweets.

providenews.com/meet-the-anti-maga-trolls-the-atlantic/

[AnBr]

[AnBr]

Or the original Atlantic article. www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/07/meet-anti-maga-trolls/619332/

[goldenvalley]

Jul 2, 2021 12:50:26 GMT AnBr said:

Or the original Atlantic article. www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/07/meet-anti-maga-trolls/619332/

Well I guess that's how the Russians did it back in 2016 and in Europe earlier with regard to Brexit.

[LFC]

The non-stop clown show that is the GOP continues ... non-stop. They're not even pretending to have answers to real problems anymore because they have none.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and three of his Republican colleagues invited pop icon Britney Spears to testify before Congress amid her ongoing conservatorship battle that the GOP has embraced as one of its numerous culture wars.

In a letter dated Wednesday, Gaetz wrote to Spears that he and other Republican lawmakers acknowledge that she has been “mistreated by America’s legal system.”

“We want to help,” Gaetz wrote. “The United States Congress should hear your story and be inspired to bipartisan action. What happened to you should never happen to any other American. If you will speak to Congress, we are ready to listen.”

Gaetz said that he and Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Burgess Owens (R-UT) and Andy Biggs (R-AZ) share “deep concern” with Spears’ conservatorship battle and said that the pop star’s testimony “can blow that door wide open, giving hope to millions.”

“Your life, liberty, and happiness have been taken from you,” Gaetz wrote. “Please take advantage of the empowerment that public congressional testimony can unlock.”

If Brittany declines then it's at least one good indicator that she's sane.

[LFC]

Nine Insane Things GOP Reps Did That Kevin McCarthy Didn’t Give a Sh*t About

[LFC]

The purge of the unfaithful marches goose steps forward. All bow before Dear Leader, the real winner of the election!

The Alaska Republican Party on Saturday endorsed a challenger to incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), a fierce critic of former President Trump who voted to convict him during his second impeachment trial for “incitement of insurrection” earlier this year.

The Alaska Republican State Central Committee approved the endorsement of former state commissioner Kelly Tshibaka ahead of next year’s midterm elections in a 58-17 vote, according to the Anchorage Daily News.

In a statement, Tshibaka expressed gratitude for having the “strong support” of the Alaska GOP that voted overwhelmingly to endorse” her.

“I have pledged that I will be true to our shared, conservative Alaska ideals and be a senator upon whom they can depend to make every decision based on what is best for our great state,” Tshibaka said.

Tshibaka announced her bid for Murkowski’s Senate seat in March, and has been endorsed by Trump.

[indy]

I thought this was a pretty insightful culture war article: thebulwark.com/whos-waging-the-culture-war/

ETA: The other point, which he completely overlooked I think is that while, yes, the left may have moved further left recently but the right had already moved farther right. By cherry picking time windows, you can support nearly any argument you want to make on nearly any topic.

[LFC]

CPAC, the right's annual festival of crazy, never fails to disappoint.

During his speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last night, Trump proudly told the audience that he didn’t learn a thing when he got impeached twice.

- He contrasted himself with then-Attorney General Bill Barr, whom Trump said “became a different man” when Democrats talked about impeaching the official. “I didn’t become different. I got impeached twice. I became worse,” Trump said.

TPM has a number of tidbits coming out of America's barking at the moon crazy right or, as I like to call it, the Republican Party.

Several Republicans, including Freedom Caucus chair Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), were secretly recorded heaping praise on Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) for bearhugging the filibuster, thereby providing Republicans the perfect roadblock for Democrats’ progressive agenda.

• Biggs admitted that the GOP would be “dead meat” without the filibuster. “Thank goodness for Sinema and Joe Manchin,” he said.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), last seen being ousted from CNN, was also in attendance at the meeting, where he not only thanked Sinema for upholding the filibuster, he also directly emphasized the need to block “the people’s will.”

• Full quote: “We have a bunch of people running around, particularly progressives, who all they want to talk about is, well, let the people’s will be done. No, no, no, no, we don’t want the people’s will to be done immediately.”

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R), whose state was an utter disaster during the pandemic, chastised her fellow Republican governors at CPAC who dared to do something to not let that happen to their own states.

• Tsk tsk! “We’ve got Republican governors across this country pretending they didn’t shut down their states; that they didn’t close their regions; that they didn’t mandate masks,” she said during her speech. “Now I’m not picking fights with Republican governors. All I’m saying is that we need leaders with grit. That their first instinct is the right instinct.”

Oh and people at CPAC actually cheered the idea of Americans not getting the vaccine:

And under the label "You’re Almost There, Buddy":

PragerU
@prageru

Young people are enamored with "anti-racist" rhetoric because they think they are fighting racist systems in America. The TRUTH is they are fighting America itself and the very values the country was founded on.

I don't know about being almost there but perhaps he's, oh I don't know, three fifths of the way there.

[goldenvalley]

That PragerU quote is a Freudian slip if ever I saw one.

[LFC]

Jul 12, 2021 15:45:02 GMT goldenvalley said:

That PragerU quote is a Freudian slip if ever I saw one.

The comments are f***ing hilarious. I loved this one.\

[RichTBikkies]

Jul 12, 2021 15:40:21 GMT LFC said:

And under the label "You’re Almost There, Buddy":

PragerU
@prageru

Young people are enamored with "anti-racist" rhetoric because they think they are fighting racist systems in America. The TRUTH is they are fighting America itself and the very values the country was founded on.

I don't know about being almost there but perhaps he's, oh I don't know, three fifths of the way there.

12.3 non-Like gigaLikes

[LFC]

Snowflake Storm Alert!

White people didn’t pay their hard-earned tax dollars over the past four years so that public servant Michael Che can get away with calling the president a ding-dong. Thankfully, many patriots have told the FCC all about it.

As 360 pages of complaints to the Federal Communication Commission obtained by FOIA requests show, a legion of Saturday Night Live viewers called on federal regulators to step in and censor the Trump insults. Many believe that the late-night comedy program should not call Trump a “bitch,” “cracker,” an anti-Semite, nor a white supremacist. They should not expect to insinuate that the former president possesses a penis of below-average size, nor reference his mouth as Vladimir Putin’s “cock holster” UNLESS IT AND SPECIFICALLY MICHAEL CHE PLAN TO FACE A FEDERAL ASS-WHOOPING. If that’s not on the table, then maybe a lawsuit. Or death.

The forcefully punctuated complaints, first spotted by Motherboard and obtained by governmentattic, can be read in full here.

Before we proceed to the charges, the facts before the jury of television subscribers are these: Saturday Night Live is not taxpayer-funded; NBC is not CNN (a point of confusion); “Weekend Update” is not a real news program; the FCC isn’t affected by consumer boycotts; and even in states with capital punishment, SNL is protected to the right to a free and fair trial.

For a group so against government intrusion they sure are all about using government's power to punish those who make fun of their Dear Leader. Of course intellectually consistency (or even basic thought) is not their strong suit. Loudly and baselessly proclaiming they're victims is much more in their wheelhouse.

[Bact PhD]

Jul 13, 2021 21:14:22 GMT LFC said:

Snowflake Storm Alert!

White people didn’t pay their hard-earned tax dollars over the past four years so that public servant Michael Che can get away with calling the president a ding-dong. Thankfully, many patriots have told the FCC all about it.

As 360 pages of complaints to the Federal Communication Commission obtained by FOIA requests show, a legion of Saturday Night Live viewers called on federal regulators to step in and censor the Trump insults. Many believe that the late-night comedy program should not call Trump a “bitch,” “cracker,” an anti-Semite, nor a white supremacist. They should not expect to insinuate that the former president possesses a penis of below-average size, nor reference his mouth as Vladimir Putin’s “cock holster” UNLESS IT AND SPECIFICALLY MICHAEL CHE PLAN TO FACE A FEDERAL ASS-WHOOPING. If that’s not on the table, then maybe a lawsuit. Or death.

The forcefully punctuated complaints, first spotted by Motherboard and obtained by governmentattic, can be read in full here.

Before we proceed to the charges, the facts before the jury of television subscribers are these: Saturday Night Live is not taxpayer-funded; NBC is not CNN (a point of confusion); “Weekend Update” is not a real news program; the FCC isn’t affected by consumer boycotts; and even in states with capital punishment, SNL is protected to the right to a free and fair trial.

For a group so against government intrusion they sure are all about using government's power to punish those who make fun of their Dear Leader. Of course intellectually consistency (or even basic thought) is not their strong suit. Loudly and baselessly proclaiming they're victims is much more in their wheelhouse.

Those folks also forgot that their “FREEDOM” means they can also use this thing called an “ ‘OFF’ button” if they don’t like what they’re viewing.

[AnBr]

But other people might see it!

[LFC]

Jul 15, 2021 3:41:04 GMT AnBr said:

But other people might see it!

And you can't have that in a free society, right? Or something like that.

[AnBr]

Jul 15, 2021 14:33:31 GMT LFC said:

Jul 15, 2021 3:41:04 GMT AnBr said:

But other people might see it!

And you can't have that in a free society, right? Or something like that.

Think of the children!

[pnwguy]

Jul 15, 2021 23:10:58 GMT AnBr said:

Jul 15, 2021 14:33:31 GMT LFC said:

And you can't have that in a free society, right? Or something like that.

Think of the children!

You've got to think more like a Republican.  "4 week embryos are poisoned in the womb by these Satanists!  They can hear this filth when their mothers watch!!!"

[LFC]

On the old TRS site there was a thread about Republicans abusing the courts to file lawsuits against people who mocked them. Rep. Lauren Bimboebert (R-COlon has her head stuffed inside) is just the latest to join this form of intimidation, the most famous practitioner being Devin Nunes suing over a parody cow.

The press secretary for Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) on Wednesday sent an unreal “cease and desist” order to the creator of a parody website poking fun at the gun-toting, QAnon-sympathizing congresswoman, threatening further legal action if it isn’t taken down.

The parody website is amusingly light touch with its early-aughts blogosphere era simplicity in its criticism of the lawmaker. The homepage features a photo of Boebert, smiling below the label: “RACIST, QANON SYMPATHIZER” and includes blogposts about the lawmaker’s past arrest record, her cringey “short-lived” modeling career and more serious matters, like her past racist remarks about Mexicans.

The tone is similar to a simpler-times Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) spoof website: TED CRUZ FOR HUMAN PRESIDENT.

Toby Morton, a comedy writer, tweeted on Wednesday that Jake Settle, who serves as the press secretary for Boebert, emailed him to threaten “further action” if the parody website isn’t removed.

Toby Morton
@tobymorton

This is Jake Settle. Jake is the Press Secretary for @laurenboebert. Lauren told Jake to use his government email to send me a cease and desist order to take down my website, TheLaurenBoebert.com. Jake is not a lawyer. Jake is an idiot.

It is well established by the courts that parody is protected as freedom of speech. Of course the publisher of the site might be running running afoul of Poe's Law. There's a lot of reality there.

[goldenvalley]

Not sure where this belongs...from The Bulwark, a thought piece on the true forerunner to Trump...Pat Buchanan.

Picture this: In a clash and clang of antagonism toward the Republican establishment, a sizable portion of the base of the party congeals around a vociferous, divisive figure. He has little use for the American conservative creed, with its prudent devotion to preserving liberty by keeping government limited and by giving order and virtue their due. This rambunctious tribune repudiates both the substance and style of the Republican party—for decades the vessel for the conservative program—including its vigorous support for free trade and a decent international order. He professes indifference to the national debt, refusing even to contemplate any cuts in the generosity of big middle-class spending programs like Medicare and Social Security. The party’s inclusive attitude toward ethnic and religious minorities and its palpable respect for immigrants has no claim on him. His speeches infuriate both the Democrats and the GOP establishment, which only cements his bond with the base.

Not Donald Trump in 2016 but Pat Buchanan in 1992. A former White House aide to two Republican presidents, Buchanan had grown alienated from the party of Lincoln on account of its core philosophical premises and policy commitments. A quarter of a century before Trump declared his candidacy for the nation’s highest office on a platform of “America First,” Pat Buchanan beat the New York real estate mogul to the punch: “We will put America first,” Buchanan said in 1991. The previous year, he penned an essay for the National Interest titled “America First—and Second, and Third.” It reads less like the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan than that of populist Democrats from William Jennings Bryan onward.

Buchanan and Trump are alike in that:

So if not a conservative, what was Trump? He called himself a nationalist. But there was always an insuperable problem with this claim: American populism has long carried a heavy dose of nationalism that is not merely at odds with traditional American conservatism but also traditional American nationalism. This was arguably Buchanan’s greatest and most dangerous innovation. For nearly a half-century, American conservatives had believed that although the nation-state has been the laboratory of liberty, American nationalism was founded on a universal creed of natural rights. Robust internationalism in service of anti-communism colored the postwar conservative movement and the Republican party. Buchanan gave voice to an older, more provincial nationalism that had long been dormant on the American right—since 1941, give or take—and that enjoyed more respectability in certain quarters of the left.

Buchanan’s candidacy repays study not only for the light it sheds on the movement that eventually brought Trump into the White House, but to help discern the contours of the next populist insurgency to come. Buchanan’s platform was at once a deep howl of rage against the American system at home and the liberal order abroad. He represented a kind of fusion between Henry Wallace in foreign policy and George Wallace in domestic affairs. His populist nationalism was heretical in the American establishment as a whole, but—and this must be stressed—especially so in the Republican party.

Buchanan fingered the GOP’s preference for free-market economics and global trade as the cause of factories being shuttered in the industrial heartland, and he favored protectionism and a robust industrial policy to insulate American manufacturers and factory workers from the stiff winds of foreign competition. Convinced that liberal immigration policies were driving down working-class wages and dissolving social bonds, Buchanan also favored a more restrictionist policy, with a distinct bias against nonwhite, non-Christian foreigners. In this new Kulturkampf—literally: Buchanan invoked the term “cultural war” in his speech at the 1992 Republican convention—Buchanan sided with “forgotten Americans” and “conservatives of the heart.”

[indy]

Montana is passing a law that makes it illegal to require health care workers to be vaccinated. You are allowed to ask if they are and you can assume they aren't vaccinated if they don't respond. If you alter all your procedures, schedules, and routines to limit their access to other employees, staff, and patients, the law won't consider that 'discrimination' against them. In other words you are allowed to completely disrupt the entire hospital to accommodate their 'freedumb'. Jebus, we lived in a fucked-up world.

[LFC]

More sheep being fleeced. Gawd these people really are just dumb as f***.

The pro-Trump internet went wild on Wednesday for the Freedom Phone, a $500 smartphone that comes stocked with conservative apps and promises to liberate anyone else who buys it from Silicon Valley censorship. The American flag-branded phone was immediately promoted by a wide range of right-wing figures, including former Trump adviser Roger Stone, Jan. 6 rally organizer Ali Alexander, and pundit Dinesh D’Souza.

“I’m holding a freaking phone that is not controlled by Apple or Google,” conservative personality Candace Owens told her fans in an Instagram video. “We made the switch immediately.”

Despite being lauded by some of the right-wing media’s leading figures, though, the Freedom Phone’s buyers could be getting less than they expect for its $500 price tag. That’s because the Freedom Phone appears to be merely a more expensive rebranding of a budget Chinese phone available elsewhere for a fraction of the Freedom Phone’s price.