Rep Madison Cawthorn made waves this past week when he claimed that he was invited to a Washington ‘Orgy,’ and had seen leaders that he has respected doing cocaine.
I suspect many who have been in Washington for numerous years are genuinely perplexed by this and wonder why they have never once been invited to a drug-fueled orgy. The answer of course is that they don’t hang out with right-wing Republicans as Madison does.
Who could he be talking about?
So far he has not named names.
Perhaps it was a party run by his far-right buddy Rep Matt Gaetz of Florida who is currently being investigated for sex trafficking a minor.
No, not so. This is Rep Madison Cawthorn, the guy with a well-established record for making stuff up.
In this case, he appears to have crossed a line. When Green and Gaetz say and do crazy stuff, their colleagues simply roll their eyes and ignore them because it only makes Green and Gaetz look bad. Cawthorn in this instance, without naming any names, has suggested it is them, and so they are up in arms about this. McCarthy, the Republican House leader has had “words” with him. I suspect some of those words might have had four letters in them.
The whisper is that when McCarthy confronted him, Cawthorn admitted some of his remarks had been untrue or exaggerated. Can I now paint you a light shade of “unsurprised”?
Hey North Carolina, (waves), yes, over here, look. You sent a clown to Washington and we now have a circus. Please see if you can sort that out in Nov.
Moving on, below you will find my usual selection of some truly bizarre claims that have popped up during the last 7 days. Each is laced with my snarky commentary and attitude. With my usual hat tip to my main source, Right Wing Watch, let’s dive in.
Enjoy.
COVID-19
Janet Folger Porter asserts that if Christians who have received a COVID-19 vaccine repent and pray, God will remove that “poison” from their body.
- Hey, this is win-win – get the vaccine to keep the pro-science folks like me happy, then simply pray it away to keep the anti-vaccine nutters happy.
- I do of course have to ask – if indeed “prayer” works to obliterate the vaccine, then why does prayer not work to protect the uncavvinated from COVID?
Stew Peters feels it does. This past week he says that only Christian prayer can protect people from COVID-19 because the vaccines were created by “the demonically inspired spawns of Satan”: “Look at these people. They are not even humans!”
- Personally I’m quite happy to be “not even human”. I’m rather fond of the protection I enjoy from a potentially fatal virus, primerally because I’m not f**king stupid.
- (Makes notes): Satan want to protect you and keep you healthy, but Jesus wants you to die and be with him.
- Number of people protected from COVID by Prayer – exactly zero. This might be a radical concept for some, but here it is – the virus does not check you prayer frequency.
Meanwhile disinformation guru Sherri Tenpenny declares this past week that it’s anticipated that “by the end of 2022, every fully vaccinated person over the age of 30 may have the equivalent of full-blown vaccine-induced immune-suppressed AIDS.”
- Vaccines cause AIDS is a new one.
- Her previous big prediction claim was that people would be getting autoimmune diseases from the vaccines “within a year”. She promoted that claim in February of 2021. Here we are, far more than a year later. That should tell all her followers everything they need to know, but apparently not.
- If you are wondering why age 30 is a magical number, it is perhaps because she thinks Logan’s Run was a documentary.
- Meanwhile, back in reality it is the unvaccinated who continue to die.
Racism
Stew Peters has a complaint: “Watching the hockey game on TV, and I have not seen ONE commercial with white people in it. The great replacement is not ‘conspiracy.’”
- Well, as the old saying goes – The only thing we have to fear is Fear itself … oh and also Stupid. We should be scared shitless of Stupid.
Laura Loomer Believes Her White Nationalist Views Will Get Her Elected to Congress
- She is right to believe that spouting racist views with get her some votes. Other racists will vote for her. It will also cause her to loose many many votes as well, so no, she will not be sitting in congress.
- Reminder: Her views are so toxic that she has managed to put together a rather impressive “banned” collection. Not only is she banned from the normal social media outlets, twitter, facebook, medium, etc… but he is also banned by Uber, lyft, paypal, and GoFundMe. Even the BitCoin 2021 conference banned her. However the cherry on her Ban cake is that CPAC banned her.
Truly Bizarre
Oklahoma State Senate candidate Jarrin Jackson pretended an old printer was a Dominion voting machine and shot it up … because ‘Merica.
- To make sure you “know” it is a Dominion voting machine, he had written “Dominion” on it with a black sharpie. Least you wonder, he was not doing a parody.
- He is from Oklahoma, the state where they use paper ballots and not voting machines. He does not appear to know that and so perhaps this senate candidate has never actually voted.
- The one thing I really don’t get is why he is wearing wonder women braclets.
Will Sommer @ The Daily Beast: Ginni Thomas’ Election Fraud Guru Claims He Arrested Pope.
- So yes, Ginni’s favorite conspiracy theorist is Steve Pieczenik. This is the guy that she urged the then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to look into his claims via her texts.
- This is the same guy whose various claims are deeply bizarre, for example his assertion that Pearl Harbor was a false flag operation, and his claim that he once arrested Pope Francis.
David Gilbert @ Vice News: Will Smith Slapped Chris Rock and QAnon Is Starting Conspiracies About It.
- The claim is that the smack was supposedly faked to distract the world from the “real horrors” of Hollywood actors trafficking children and drinking their blood.
- Other variations include, a claim that is was done to send a secret message; a claim that it was not the real Will Smith because the real one is dead; a claim that is was done to distract from the supposed Azov atrocity videos from Ukraine and that Putin is the good guy.
- In other words, whatever whacky idea you can dream up will be embraced as “truth” by these gullible QAnon fools.
Media Matters: Fox Nation host Lara Logan claims that Darwinism is a plot from “the Rothschilds.”
- Not just a random person, but the Host of Fox Nation is playing the ancient “The Jews Did it” antisemitic trope as a serious claim
- Side note Fact Check: Darwin was independently wealthy, he did not need to be funded by anybody.
- She has also claimed that the Rothschild family engineered the American Civil War, and the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and the John F. Kennedy assassination.
- She also just loves Putin because he purged all the … yes you guessed it … Rothschild money.
- Its a team effort, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) notably used Facebook to push the same antisemitic conspiracy theory about the Rothschild family and a supposed space laser. So yes, if you ever wondered, buying into ancient tropes like this is where her Jewish space laser claim came from.
- It is not actually a new conspiracy theory at all, they are simply recycling some very old conspiracy theories that go back centuries.
Ali Alexander declares that he doesn’t “condone illegitimate violence. Only legit violence.”
- What constitutes his “legit violence”? He says …“I think parents should be violent against strangers who talk to their children about sex stuff.”, so that would be teachers then.
Clay Clark, the organizer of the right-wing ReAwaken America Tour that has been traversing the nation for well over a year, is a conspiracy theorist who claims that “you’re using Satan’s tool every time you use Google.”
- To make his case, he literally uses what he claims is Satan’s tool. In other words, he just welcomed Satan into his church. Can we now claim that Clay Clark serves Satan?
- The claim is that the Google Chrome Logo is 666. He then talks about HR 666 which is actually HR 6666 and was introduced during the Trump administration.
- You can of course play this game in many ways. For example the Apple logo shows the forbidden fruit, hence is evil (Yes I made that up, but I’m sure many out there would run with it)
- It is perhaps about here that I can welcome you back to the satanic panic 80s
- In summary, using Google is evil, so hail ignorance, all praise ignorance. Then again, perhaps God wants you to use Bing.
Nick Fuentes admits that it would not be inaccurate to call AFPAC a “Christian-Fascist rally.”
- I don’t think he understands what the word “Fascist” actually means.
- Guy who says “Christian-Fascist rally, yea … but not Nazi” without understanding that the Nazis were literally fascists.
Pseudo Historian David Barton Is Constantly Unveiling New and Misleading Claims About American History
- His Claim: “the Constitution was “sent to churches” for ratification “
- Fact Check: the Confederation Congress sent a resolution to all 13 state legislatures instructing them to establish conventions that would then vote whether to ratify the Constitution. While most such ratifying conventions were held in the states’ legislative chambers, some were held in churches but purely for practical, not religious, reasons.
- Reminder – Barton’s bestselling history book was voted “the least credible history book in print”. Also the Christian conservative Discovery Institute, said in 2012 that Barton’s books and videos are full of “embarrassing factual errors, suspiciously selective quotes, and highly misleading claims“.
Lauren Witzke and Todd Coconato think “it would be a good idea for elected officials to have to be drug tested in order to write legislation.”
- Lauren is a subject matter expert on this. She herself was a former drug addict and also claimed that she ran drugs for Mexican drug cartels.
Michele Bachmann hosted a 5-hour seminar on the rise of global authoritarianism earlier this week. Among the topics discussed was the need for legislation “to fend off transhumanist developments … [and] make it illegal to surreptitiously connect somebody’s brain to the web using smart dust.”
- In Bachmann’s case she has clearly disconnected her brain from reality. That’s not new, she was always crazy and did crazy long before it became mainstream GOP policy.
Trolling by Far-Right Shock Jocks
Josh Bernstein says that …“Disney is basically the equivalent of a grooming and child sexual exploitation predator operation.”
- If you picture Josh yelling this from inside a padded cell then you more or less have this guy pegged.
The False Profit$
QAnon ‘Prophet’ Johnny Enlow Prayed Over and ‘Commissioned’ Three GOP Candidates
- I’m not exactly convinced that getting backing from a guy whose “prophecies” are consistently and persistently wrong all the time is a winning move.
- He “prediced” that they would win, no doubt using the exact same skills that enabled him to “predict” the Trump win in 2020.
Pastor Shane Vaughn has a message for all the “dummies” out there: “The dummies don’t even know that DONALD TRUMP can run his campaign from PRISON and once elected will be immediately released.”
- It’s not as simple as he thinks it is, it never is. Yes, you can run for office, but only if you are not disqualified by law from voting. There are just eight states that permit prisoners to vote. If it really happened, and I don’t believe it will, then it would get very messy.
Insights from the past week
- Ken Meyer @ Mediaite: Federal Judge Says Trump ‘More Likely Than Not’ Committed a Crime in Conspiring to Overturn 2020 Election.
- Mary Papenfuss @ HuffPost: Trump Touts ‘Massive’ Turnout At Georgia Rally That Journalists Say Was ‘Smallest’ In Years. [Trump lying about a crowd size is a long established tradition of his]
- Annie Gowen @ The Washington Post: A Jan. 6 pastor divides his Tennessee community with increasingly extremist views. [This is a deep dive into Greg Lock and the community he lives in. It’s an interesting read]
- Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley @ The Daily Beast: Inside Ginni Thomas’ ‘Insane’ Hiring Memos for Trump.
- Wyatt Massey @ Chattanooga Times Press: TBI investigating televangelist Perry Stone following sexual misconduct allegations.
- David Gilbert @ Vice News: The Right Has Gone Full QAnon on Disney.
WTF!
- Jon Skolnik @ Salon: D.C.’s house of horror: Multiple fetuses found at home of anti-abortion activist indicted by DOJ.
Good News Items
- Antoinette Siu @ The Wrap: Trump’s Truth Social App Plummets in Traffic, Sees 93% Drop in Signups Since Launch Week.
- Aaron Keller @ Law & Crime: Judge in Sandy Hook Case Holds Alex Jones in Contempt of Court, Orders Escalating Fines of $25,000 Per Day Until InfoWars Host Sits for Depositions.
- Joe Jervis: Sandy Hook Families Reject Jones’ Meager Cash Offer.
Quote of the Week
I don’t know who originated this one, but we all do look around and feel this …
I’ve come to a point in my life where I need a stronger word than fuck.
Meme of the week
Yea it’s an old one, but I thought you might enjoy it.
Meanwhile in Ukraine
Apparently digging defensive trenches in the highly radioactive Red Forest next to Chernobyl and then sitting in them was not exactly the smartest thing to do.
The name “Red Forest” comes from the ginger-brown color of the pine trees after they died following the absorption of high levels of radiation. It was then bulldozed and buried, leaving it as one of the most contaminated areas in the world today.
To be clear, this has not been independently verified.