So this finally happened this past week on Wed July 10 …
Here is a her official statement on this …
…
The first impeachment resolution includes the following impeachment articles against Justice Thomas:
- Failure to disclose financial income, gifts and reimbursements, property interests, liabilities, and transactions, among other information.
- Refusal to recuse from matters concerning his spouse’s legal interest in cases before the court.
- Refusal to recuse from matters involving his spouse’s financial interest in cases before the court.
The second impeachment resolution includes the following impeachment articles against Justice Alito:
- Refusal to recuse from cases in which he had a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party in cases before the court.
- Failure to disclose financial income, gifts and reimbursements, property interests, liabilities, and transactions, among other information.
The Congresswoman maintains that such conduct—while under a Judicial Oath to “faithfully and impartially discharge and perform” duties and a Constitutional Oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”—warrants impeachment, trial, removal from office, and disqualification from holding future office in the United States of America.
…
Read the full text of the resolution filed against Justice Clarence Thomas here.
Read the full text of the resolution filed against Justice Samuel Alito here.
This is both freaking amazing and a truly excellent move in the right direction. Justices should not be able to operate with impunity, doing the bidding of wealthy donors, and accepting gifts along the way without then facing consequences.
Will it get to a vote?
Probably not, but that reality itself sends a very clear message in an election year that the Republican majority in the house are totally on board with the very blatant SCOTUS corruption.
Here is a bit more context. Did you also know that this follows the Senate Judicary Committee’s official referral of Clarence Thomas to DOJ yesterday?
Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Ron Wyden asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel to investigate the Supreme Court justice.
… Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who chairs the Judiciary subcommittee on federal courts, and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden of Oregon sent a letter last week asking Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel to examine whether Thomas violated federal ethics and tax laws when he didn’t disclose as income more than $267,000 of a loan that was allegedly forgiven in 2008….
OK, so let’s move on now. Once again below you will find my usual selection of some of the other truly bizarre and extreme claims that have popped up during the last 7 days. As always, each is tagged with my snarky commentary.
With my usual hat tip to my various sources, let’s once again dive into this very murky pool of raw absurdity and deeply cultish stupidity.
Guns
So yes, it happened. Let’s talk about guns … again.
We know who it was now. The Associated Press reports …
WASHINGTON, July 14 (Reuters) – The Federal Bureau of Investigation has identified 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks as the “subject involved” in the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, it said in a statement on Sunday.
Crooks, who was from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, was a registered Republican, according to the state’s voter records.
Not even old enough to be able to buy a beer either …
Once again the difference in character is stark …
Seriousness, soberness, condemnation, and empathy …
You know what comes now. It will be a torrent of multiple variations of … “It’s your fault for daring to criticise Trump in any way” rhetoric for the things he actually says, and does, and plans to do.
Nope, sorry, the batshit crazy rhetoric is all theirs, and the criticism of it all is both valid and solid.
Media Focus
Project 2025
The Trump team’s dishonest disavowal of Project 2025 suggests they’re afraid voters will be turned off by the clarity of its destructive agenda. More reason to keep the spotlight on what’s at stake this year.
- Fact Check: Rolling Stone noted, “Meanwhile, over at the Republican National Committee, at least seven of the individuals tasked with overhauling the party’s platform in anticipation of Trump’s second term in office have connections to Project 2025 — starting with Russell Vought, who was director of the Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s administration.”
- Columnist Will Bunch wrote on Sunday, “Republicans are in a state of panic now that voters are paying attention to Project 2025, their plan for dictatorship.”
If 900 pages is too long, then here is the distilled version for you …
“No no” says Trump, “Project 20205 is not mine, I am doing something completely different, mine is Agenda 47” … except …
So what about Trump’s claim that he knows nothing about Project 2025?
Fact check that BS and no matter which way you shovel it, you discover that Trump is, as usual, lying …
Another Project 2025 gem is its reverse Robin Hood move – take from you and me and give to the rich …
Meanwhile, there is some excellent pushback against Project 2025 now happening …
Here is that ad. It is only a few minutes long and is indeed truly excellent …
The RNC 2024 Platform
The actual content of the RNC 20204 Platform is very extreme …
- The link to Hemant’s analysis of it is here
However, what is even more telling is not just the actual words within their 2024 platform, but also how they got those words.
Traditionally, the RNC Platform Committee is very decentralized and also very democratic. It worked like this …
- Each state party elected two delegates to the platform committee.
- Sections of the platform were then worked on in subcommittees
- Finally, the committee openly met over several days to discuss, amend, and vote on the drafts, and that was broadcast on C-SPAN.
That’s no longer the case. It was instead a closed door, no-press, no C-SPAN fascist autocratic bulling session. No debate, no discussion. The text, drafted by the Trump campaign and some also written by Trump himself (with lots of uppercase letters), was rammed in. Delegates and observers were forced to give up their cell phones so they could not record the proceedings. Trump and RNC campaign staff held “vote yes” signs and took photos of delegates as they voted.
If you wonder what a second Trump term will look like, then wonder no more because the RNC committee got a taste of what happens to democracy if Trump wins.
Biden
Let’s be clear about this, Biden has always made Gaffs, but so has Trump along with most others. What is clear is that his integrity, intelligence and smarts are still all there.
If however such gaffs really are a deal breaker for you then here are a few questions to ponder over…
Even if you do have a Biden age concern, the alternative really is unthinkable, yet nobody is calling for Trump, the convicted felon and sexual predator, to stand down …
You’ve got to love Biden’s wisecracks against Trump. He’s 81 but still witty and sharp …
Christian Nationalism
Mark Robinson, the GOP gubernatorial nominee in North Carolina, claims that when the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 were at a stalemate, they went to church and “prayed for wisdom from God to finish the Constitution.”
- It’s rather telling that we are faced with an onslaught of fiction being embraced as fact by guys like this. For the record, this piece of Bartionism that does the rounds as fact never happened.
- Reminder: Via Robinson’s wikipedia page … he is Anti-Semite Anti-Abortion, Anti- Gay, Bankrupty x3, plus lots more. This is also the same guy who was encouraging people to commit political violence last week.
Rep. Michael Cloud asserts that those who are elected to office must hold a “biblical worldview” because so many of “the basic core principles” of how society should operate are found in Deuteronomy and Leviticus.
- Literally none of these people actually follow anything in Leviticus or Deuteronomy. Anybody saying stuff like this is telling you that they have never actually read these texts.
- It’s deeply bizarre to see the promotion of, not the Beatitudes, but Leviticus and Deuteronomy
- I mean seriously now, this is what they are promoting … sex slavery is just fine (Leviticus 19:20); … No tattoos (Leviticus 19:28); and much much more such as death for adultery, the ban on working on Saturday, and the bacon and shrimp ban.
Christian nationalist pastor Jack Hibbs also once again claims that Benjamin Franklin called for Congress to begin every day with prayer.
- There is a well known technical term for this claim that just one word encapsulates – bullshit. It is, of course, both totally wrong and entirely untrue, as RWW has explained over and over again. https://rightwingwatch.org/post/dutch-sheets-spreads-false-christian-nationalist-history/
Ryan Helfenbein of Liberty University’s Standing for Freedom Center declares that “God bequeathed this nation to us” and that “the idea that religion and politics do not mix is a lie the Devil came up with to keep Christians from running their own country.“
- The scary part is not that he said this, but rather that there are lots of room temperature IQ people who will believe him
- The idea of church and state separation, that he claims was cooked up by the devil, was actually created by the founding fathers of the nation. He is literally calling them “satanic”.
- When he says “us” he only means those within his specific religious club. People in all other religious clubs are out.
- The supposed divine right to rule the US was a claim made a couple of centuries ago by a certain anglo-saxon monarch. I honestly thought that we had resolved and dismissed such claims with the Treaty in Paris in 1783 … but apparently not.
- He also illustrates the problem with modern Christianity rather well. Many who embrace the title “Christian” don’t actually put into practise anything that Jesus actually taught. (Hint: My Kingdom is not of this world – John 18:36)
George Pearsons claims that Roger Sherman, signer of the Declaration and Constitution, declared that “the volume that we consulted more than any another was the Bible.”
- If still reading then you now know how this stuff now works. Sherman never said it.
- Mr Pearsons is actually married to Kenneth Copeland’s daughter, so even without promoting stuff like this his reputation is not exactly stellar.
Christian nationalism is running so rampant that some right-wing commentators such as Doug Billings has taken it to the next level by drawing parallels between the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and the death and resurrection of Jesus.
- Christian Nationalists … “Of course”. Actual Christians hearing stuff like this … “Say what?!”
- They really are getting nuttier by the day.
Stephen Wolfe, author of “The Case For Christian Nationalism,” declares that Jews should be “tolerated” but “we would not tolerate any action that would undermine that Christian nature of the nation”: “If we say that America is a Judeo-Christian country, then it can’t be a Christian country.”
- The Christian Taliban.
“Education”!
David Barton says that “if you’re educated, you know that the greatest single source, according to the University of Houston, that shaped the U.S. Constitution is the Bible. Thirty four percent of all their quotes surrounding the creation of that document came out of the Bible.”
- To be capable of embracing Bartonism as factual you need a very strong and deep lack of education.
- Religious Christian Nationalist Gaslighting 101: Not only is his claim untrue but Barton knows it is not true.
MAGA pastor Jackson Lahmeyer prayed over Oklahoma school superintendent Ryan Walters and heaped praise upon him for “bringing [God] back into the public schools, saying ‘Jesus, you are welcome in the classroom in the state of Oklahoma.‘”
- The problem with Lahmeyer’s “prayer”, which was for the audience and not God, is that he means his specific variation of indoctrination. Even amongst those that all claim to read the exact same book there is no consensus of understanding. That’s why we have literally thousands of denominations, each claiming that all the others are wrong and only they are right. Once you “let God in”, you are telling the world that you are giving special privileges to just one variation of belief.
- Meanwhile, any student is free to read the bible and pray all they want, but people like Lahmeyer never admit this truth. What was actually stopped by the 1962 act was schools forcing religion on all students, and that’s the line Walters now seeks to step across.
- What Oklahoma actually needs to be doing is to try something new … such as bringing education back into schools.
Oklahoma “Education”
The news from this past week is that Ryan Walters is striving vigorously to make Oklahoma the worst state in the country for education …
- Here is the full announcement — he says that it will align state standards with the “classical learning” model https://documentcloud.org/documents/2479
- Permit me to translate the term “classical learning” – No it is not about going back to Jane Austin and Ben Franklin, it basically means that “alternative facts” will become a required course. If you doubt that then check their committee membership, it includes Barton and Prager along with other deeply inappropriate individuals. The two I picked are both well-known promoters of religious propaganda and deliberate disinformation – See here for Barton, and see here for Prager.
Christian “Love”
Far-right Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon says that immigration must be ended because he had to explain to his daughter why there was a woman in “straight-up Hindu garb at our neighborhood swimming pool.“
- A white guy christian policing women’s clothes is extremely on brand these days.
- If faced with the actual Jesus, a brown guy from the middle east, then pastors like this would rapidly deport him without missing a single heartbeat (basically because guys like this have already had their hearts surgically removed by their whacky beliefs).
Weird
Nick Fuentes says that he needs a wife who, after he “justifiably” throws her through a wall, will apologize, clean up the mess, and make him a sandwich.
- Nick will never ever be getting married.
After failing for a third time in the last eight years to get elected to Congress, Mark Burns declares that “God is not done with me yet.”
- God has never had anything for this well-established liar and con man. Luckily most voters agree.
It’s pretty telling that Joel Webbon’s defense of his bigoted views is that they are the same views that were “held by any Christian before 1945.”
- Not really. Back then Evangelical types like him did not care about abortion, and instead were declaring that drinking alcohol was a sin. Oh and let’s not forget that Jim Crow and racism was just fine with many variations of Christian.
- Joel’s reputation is not that he is a guy making a moral stance, but rather that he is consistently and persistently an obnoxious and deeply toxic fuckwit. The actual high moral ground is not his intolerance, but rather is a very robust rejection of his rhetoric.
False Profit$
Self-proclaimed “prophet” Hank Kunneman is now blaming the Biden administration for the COVID protocols that were put in place in 2020, when Donald Trump was president.
- Gaslighting for Trump is fast becoming an Olympic sport for some
- For those that believe him, reality truly is an undiscovered country.
Self-proclaimed “prophet” Julie Green told Rudy Giuliani that God assured her that Giuliani will receive “total exoneration” and “your name will be fully cleared.”
- If Julie Green said it as a prophecy, then that’s a rock solid iron-cast guarantee … that it will not happen.
- Least you wonder, she said this on July 9 this past week.
- A little later in the week, as reported by many, Judge dismisses Giuliani’s bankruptcy claim. This now allows his creditors to seize his assets.
- Actions really are having consequences for him.
Tough Questions
GOP Candidate says he will take “tough questions” then immediately ducks when presented with one …
- Beyond the usual stuff, anti-abortion and also anti-gay, he also says he wants to see immigrants deported (For a bit of context on that, he himself is an immigrant and was born in Colombia).
Scam Alerts
Guidance below on how some of the really big churches manipulate people into giving them a lot of money, and yes, I can confirm that this really is how it works, I’ve seen it …
LOL
The Political cartoons Continue being Excellent
Here are 7 from the past week.
Finally…
Others who also go to MAGA rallys and talk to them find that they really are totally nuts …
- She said in the clip below (when asked about Trump’s age): … “John F. Kennedy, he’s still alive. John F. Kennedy, he’s over 100 years old…our vice president is John F. Kennedy Jr.”
Finally, given where we are now, this also resonates rather well …
