I’ve clearly gotten into the habit of mocking Mike Lindell. With promise after failed promise, he is just so mockable, so how can I possibly resist. Last Tuesday he was scheduled to file an election fraud complaint with the Supreme Court that he has spent weeks hyping as a “historic lawsuit.”
What happened?
Yep, you guessed it – nothing.
I did predict that last week, I must have some amazing supernatural ability.
He did however publish his lawsuit document, and what it reveals is the degree of disconnect from reality that he is operating with …
Brad, A Reuters reporter, goes on to explain the problems here …
…it’s missing a few things you commonly find in lawsuits, such as a plaintiff and lawyers.
The claim seems to rely on an Electors Clause theory that the Supreme Court declined to hear last year and a state standing argument that it rejected when Texas sued. And until [insert Your State] agrees to file, the court wouldn’t have jurisdiction anyway.
Lindell’s complaint appears to have been written by the same lawyer who drafted Texas’ failed Supreme Court election-overturning lawsuit.
It claims that President Biden acted unconstitutionally by not fixing problems in the 2020 election, which 1) isn’t something the president can do; and 2) he wasn’t the president then.
Anyway, I read Lindell’s complaint. tl;dr:
* This is not an actual lawsuit
* The court already said it wouldn’t hear this stuff
* It’s a huge grab-bag of conspiracies, most of which have been known to be false for an entire year now
* An actual lawyer wrote this
Caveat emptor.
There is indeed a reason that no attorneys general was willing to put their name on this. Rather obviously some of them got quite excited and said they would sign on, but then when they read it they all ducked. No exceptions.
Lindell being Lindell has come up with a new conspiracy claim to explain why they all ducked. He claims the RNC pressured them to not sign up. Er … no Mike, that’s not the reason, the real problem is that your lawsuit is shit.
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. So, with a hat-tip to my main source, Right-Wing watch, it is time to dive in.
COVID-19
Outraged by vaccine mandates, radical right-wing conspiracy theorist Rick Wiles calls on the people rise up and start a “world war against tyrants”: “It is going to have to be a global revolution to crush them … so that they never get up and try this again.”
- Yes indeed, we simply can’t have people surviving the pandemic, they need to skip the vaccine and die.
- As for the idea of a “world war”, that was such a happy jolly occasion last time we simply must do it again. All those old enough to have participated have such fond memories of it all.
- Rick clearly thinks that the bible says “Curse them that want to bless you”.
Right-wing anti-vax conspiracy theorist Stella Immanuel tells those who have taken the COVID-19 vaccine that if they cry out to God in repentance, God will physically cast the Luciferian vaccine out of their bodies.
- Well hey, this works for me. Get the vaccine so that you tick that box, then later repent and pretend it is supernaturally gone. It’s win-win, this is schrodinger’s vaccine, you are both vaccinated and also not vaccinated at the same time.
Truly Bizarre
Mark Robinson Says Straight Relationships Are ‘Superior’ Because Homosexuality Serves No Purpose
- He appears to believe that the ‘only’ reason for having a relationship is to make babies.
- If indeed he is opposed to having a relationship with a guy then he should simply not have a relationship with a guy. He gets exactly zero say in what other people do … or is it possible that this Freedom loving guy only supports freedom for the things he believes and nothing else.
QAnon conspiracy theorist Dave Hayes says that former President Donald Trump will soon step up to save this nation: “Imagine how the public’s perception of society and politics will change watching Trump save the country for the third time and witnessing the exposure and prosecution of corrupt people.”
- There are two ever so tiny flaws here. The first is that Trump is corruption incarnate, and the other is that he has never saved anything except perhaps his bank account and his delicate ego.
MAGA pastor Jackson Lahmeyer is calling for the IRS to be abolished. (it’s at the 15:45 mark in the clip at that link)
- I suspect that both the IRS and the entire government might have a few objections.
- I do also wonder how he would propose we fund everything with no actual tax income. He has no answer to that.
Hemant Mehta @ Friendly Atheist: Christian Preacher: Jesus Walked Behind Me During a Sermon (and There’s Video).
- The reveal: Nothing actually happened. He was in a large auditorium, felt a breeze, then declares it was Jesus.
- His gullible audience lapped it up.
Christian Group Reposts List of “Naughty” (Supposedly Anti-Christmas) Retailers
- Least you wonder, “Nice” means they pander to “Christianity” and apparently “Naughty” means the retailers include everybody with greetings such as “Happy Holidays”.
- In other words, if you are Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or simply not religious, then according to them you are on their “naughty” list.
- They do this every year. It is a cut and paste last year’s list with a new date on it. They don’t even bother to actually fact check.
- Amazon, a place where vast numbers of us will actually shop, is not on the list as either nice or naughty. But Brooners, a single store in Michigan is.
- They believe, to use their words, that their list is …”Saving Christmas”.
- Fact Check: The only organization to every actually legally ban Christmas was Chistianity. It was a 1659 Puritan move.
Pastor Resigns After Telling Men “the Best Person to Rape is Your Wife”
- The full quote is “Gentlemen, the best person to rape in your wife“.
- “best person” would imply that there is some sort of hierarchy of people whom you can rape.
- The word “gentlemen” and “rapist” are usually not interchangable terms.
- The good news here is that this guy is now not a pastor. This stance within his sermon turns out to have been a career decision.
The False Profit$
Right-wing pastor Patrick Wooden predicts that the Bible will soon be outlawed because “the Bible and the LGBTQ+ movement cannot coexist.”
- This will be a bit of a surprise to the gay Christian community. Yes, that’s really a thing, here is a link to LGBTQ+ Theology 101.
- Right-wing pastors have been predicting bible bans year after year, yet it never happens. It never will, he is just pressing buttons to keep his flock rilled up.
- As a non-religious person I do actually strongly encourage people to actually read the bible. It is one of the very best arguments for Atheism.
- Pew have a set of questions about religion. The people who do best and score the highest are the Atheists and agnostics. The reason they reject religious claims is not because they don’t understand it, but rather because they actually do. It is their far better understanding of it all that leads them to doubt.
Pastor Hank Kunneman claims that “there was never a separation between church and state” and that “many preachers” signed the Declaration of Independence.
- Facts and Truth are not part of Hank’s agenda. He has a well-established track record of making stuff up.
- FactCheck: Only one of the 56 signers of the Declaration was a minister.
Am I “Persecuting” these people with this posting?
I’m building up to a quote here, a rather famous one.
A common narrative within some religious circles is that anything, and for some everything, that falls short of embracing every utterance of theirs as “truth” is “persecution”. Simply daring to doubt confirms that I’m the “hand of Satan”.
Translation: Yea, I get fan mail. Ho-Hum.
I should perhaps make something wholly transparent. While I myself am not religious, these postings are not about belief vs non-belief, nor are they about traditional right vs left, but instead, they are about decency, tolerance, and empathy vs intolerance, and crass stupidity.
People who believe for cultural and/or personal reasons, really are not the problem. The core concern arises when whacky crazy stuff threatens to impose itself by force upon all of us. That’s the line that is being crossed, and so it is there upon that line that I build my wall.
This of course is not a new wall, but rather is Jefferson’s.
I’m sure you are familiar with it all, but permit me to relay it anyway. The backstory is that an association of roughly about 26 churches in the Connecticut Valley wrote a letter of complaint to newly elected Jefferson in 1801. There existed a law put in place by Calvinist Protestants in Connecticut. They were complaining that it was infringing upon their religious liberty.
The response was Jefferson’s famous letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802.
Here is an extract, the core of it …
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
That is the only wall that we really do need to keep robust and intact.