I appear to have fallen into the habit of opening my weekly update with whatever lunacy Mike Lindell, Mr Pillow, has been up to in the past week. The latest update there is that on Wednesday, Smartmatic filed to have Lindell’s lawsuit against them dismissed. Because of the election-was-stolen lies he has been promoting, they sued him for defamation – $1.3 billion. He in turn counter-sued. It is that counter suit they now seek to have struck down because it is so utterly daft. Their argument is that Lindell is on a “crusade without a claim“. Their dismissal filing notes the following…
“Presenting fiction as fact outside the courtroom can result in a defamation lawsuit. Presenting fiction as fact inside the courtroom should result in dismissal and sanctions, The First Amendment allows Mr. Lindell to espouse his fictional views about the 2020 US election outside the courtroom with the understanding that he will face legal consequences for doing so. But the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do not allow Mr. Lindell and his attorneys to present fictitious claims inside the courtroom.”
Lindell’s appointment with the brick wall of reality is coming closer and closer with each passing day.
So what else happened this past week?
Below you will find my usual selection of some truly bizarre claims that popped up during the last 7 days. With a hat-tip to my main source, Right-Wing watch, it is time to dive in and laugh at the raw absurdity of it all.
COVID-19
When it comes to the pandemic, common sense has become so god damn rare amongst the MAGA crowd that finding it would be akin to finding somebody with a super power.
Michael Snyder warns that vaccine mandates are a precursor to the Mark of the Beast: …“All of this sounds eerily similar to what we witnessed back in the 1930s. The people who are doing this to us have taken their masks off, and they are showing us who they really are. These are such dark times, and I have a feeling they are about to get a whole lot darker.”
- The fact that he thinks vaccine and mask mandates, designed to keep people safe, are equivalent to slaughtering millions in gas chambers tells us a great deal about his disconnect from reality and not much else.
Rick Wiles has a message for those who support COVID vaccines: … “You are a new Nazis. … We went to war to stop the Nazis. We have to go to war now to stop these Nazis. [Anthony] Fauci is America’s Josef Mengele.”
- You heard it here first folks … supporting the idea of people not dying from a preventable disease means that you are apparently a Nazi.
Robin Bullock is not a fan of vaccine requirements: .. “There’s a place where the sun don’t shine you can put that.”
- Hey Robin, thanks for volunteering to be vaccinated. You appear to have a bit off a misunderstanding, it goes in your arm, not up your arse, you don’t appear to understand how vaccines are given.
Hemant Mehta @ Friendly Atheist: Joshua Feuerstein, Who Said Jesus Made Vaccines Unnecessary, Now Has COVID.
- This is becoming a very very common theme song.
Pastor Jackson Lahmeyer, who is also an election candidate, declares that Dr. Anthony Fauci “needs to be fired, arrested, and convicted for crimes against humanity.”
- Because apparently evidence-based public health policies are, in his eyes, a crime.
- I’m not sure he actually believes this, he is simply tossing out rhetoric that is designed to harvest votes. He previously sold vaccine religious exemptions and made lots of money that way, so here he is double-dipping and using it to get votes as well.
Lauren Witzke reports that “the war on my mind still wages” as she recovers from COVID-19, which has convinced her that it is “a demonic bioweapon probably created in the pits of Hell.”
- Getting sick with COVID really can be bad. If only there was some way she could have protected herself.
- She has, not too long ago, got over her addiction to opioids. She had no problem consuming stuff that did her a great deal of harm, but vaccines, designed to save her from what she is now enduring, that’s a hard no.
- Reminder – this is the lady who previously ran drugs for Mexican Drug cartels, claimed the earth was flat, and also asserted that COVID was both satanic and also did not actually exist. A rather natural career progression was to stand as the official GOP candidate in 2020 for Delaware.
- I’ve never really been able to wrap my head around her believing that COVID is Satanic and also that it does not exist. These are mutually exclusive claims, you really can’t embrace both ideas at the same time, yet somehow she does.
Stella Immanuel recounts how she almost caught COVID-19 but destroyed the virus by screaming and releasing a “Holy Ghost hand grenade” against it.
- This is actually a very testable claim. All she needs to do is to pop into the nearest hospital and detonate her anti COVID “Holy Ghost grenade” and so demonstrate that it really works.
- I’d advise not holding your breath waiting, Stella believes rather a lot of deeply weird stuff. For example that space aliens are manipulating us, and STIs are really caused by demons.
Jackson Richman @ Mediaite: Tucker Carlson Claims Getting Covid-19 ‘Feminizes People.’
- I bet you though you had already heard every single weird COVID claim there is.
Truly Bizarre
Daniel Politi @ Slate: GOP Lawmaker Posts Christmas Photo of Family Holding Guns Days After School Shooting.
- Yea … I saw this one myself and thought WTF! … it was only a few days after the shooting.
- Here is his tweet, and yes the correct response when seeing it is “Jesus” (not in the religious sense).
- Cool … let’s start with the second amendment then.
- As an aside, would this by any chance be the same Pastor Mark Burns that was the subject of a special CNN report back in 2016. They confronted him on camera about the fact that his entire biography was totally fake. He storms out leaving the CNN crew behind in his own church, claiming they were persecuting him for trying to do good. He might perhaps be familiar with Proverbs 19.9 – “whoever pours out lies will perish.“
- The interview is indeed deeply humiliating … for him … and totally hilarious for the rest of us, so here it is.
Hemant Mehta @ Friendly Atheist: MAGA Cultist Robert Jeffress: The Biden Admin is the “Ungodliest” in History.
- You have to admit that he really does have balls to be able to stand up and say this when Biden’s predecessor was the utterly incompetent, corrupt pussy-grabbing liar (That’s not a political statement, it is a matter of public record).
- His justification is that Biden is pro-choice. The Anti-Abortion thing is in fact very recent. Prior to the late 1970s, most evangelicals were also pro-choice. It was only adopted to deflect away from their rejection of racial integration. His stance is there as an emotional button to keep the evangelicals distracted from the truth – they have embraced an ocean of lies as “truth” and have been successfully manipulated and corrupted.
- Fact Check 1: Biden is probably the most religiously devout president this century and perhaps the last as well. For his entire life he has attended Catholic Mass every week.
- Fact Check 2: Kamala Harris is Baptist and leans upon her faith a great deal.
John Guandolo claims he left his position with the FBI and launched his Understanding The Threat organization after former President Barack Obama defunded the work he was doing for the government.
- Um, not exactly. He was seducing and having sex with confidential sources of information and also other FBI agents. That’s not exactly aligned with their code of ethics. When he realised that the bureau’s Office of Professional Responsibility was about to catch up and interview him, he ducked and resigned.
Jarrin Jackson declares that Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw is “a godless commie.”
- Fact Check: Dan is classic GOP … anti-abortion, COVID is exaggerated, pro gun, pro Trump, election was stolen lie, etc… oh and least I forget, Methodist. So why the relegation to Jarrin’s naughty step?
- The one thing he did also do, was to criticise the the Freedom Caucus, and calls them “performance artists”
- Needless to say, Jarrin is so far to the right that he would consider Genghis Khan to be a soft socialist.
Sam Sorbo says that she pulled her son out of public school when he was in second grade because “he was learning how to be a bully” because they were teaching him about evolution: “Evolution is survival of the fittest. And what is that? That is bullying.”
- Sigh! … She appears to be doing her very best to ensure that her next generation remains as ignorant as she is.
- Evolution is descriptive, it explains why there is a diversity of life. It does not tell anybody what to do.
Conspiracies
Lin Wood says that Tucker Carlson, Dan Bongino, Sebastian Gorka, Charlie Kirk, Sean Hannity (and possibly Michael Flynn and Marjorie Taylor Greene) are all members of “the deep state.”
- Lin has cranked his paranoia dial way up to 11
- To observe these folks turning on each other is truly excellent news.
Rob Boston @ Wall of Separation: Christian Nationalists Remain Eager To Fight The Mythical ‘War On Christmas.’
- Apart from these folks, and Bill O’Reilly who lost his Fox Megaphone because of his sexual assaults, nobody actually gives a toss. People are totally free to do whatever they want. There is no “War on Christmas”.
- It is deeply ironic to see neo-puritans claim there is a war on Christmas. The only ban to ever exist for Christmas was by religious Puritans in 1659
The False Profit$
The crazy shit for this week from Pastor Shane Vaughn – Obama Became President Because He Was Chosen by ‘Demon Powers’
- The guy who goes to church every week was (checks notes) .. “chosen by demon powers“, but the pussy grabber who lies every time he opens his mouth, and only cosplays being religious, is apparently the chosen one, a messiah.
Johnny Enlow strives to complete with Shane. He claimed that people are lost in “the fog of war” and therefore can’t see the truth that for the last year, Donald Trump has actually been president of the world: “The proof will be forthcoming.”
- Achievement unlocked; “President of the World” is indeed a claim that does take crazy to an entirely new unexplored level.
- Steve Shultz mostly nods his head in agreement and says “wow”. Not even a hint of “WTF” appears to have crossed his mind as Jonny’s claim gushed out. I do wonder if he simply mutes his speaker and then nods randomly saying “wow” when interviewing nutters.
This week’s final quote
If you are ever personally faced with stuff like the above, then it may in fact be best to consider this quote …
‘It’s hard to win an argument with a smart person, but it’s damn near impossible to win an argument with a stupid person.’
Bill Murray
You basically have several options.
- Bite your tongue, roll your eyes, and move on. Yelling at them will make no difference.
- Ask Questions … “What leads you to think X?”. “Do you think that Y is a reliable trustworthy source?” etc… Basically nudge them away from emotional reactions and more towards thinking about it analytically.