Author: clearandpresentdanger

 

 

 

Here is a Google document of 150 gynecologists who will tie your tubes without asking if you have kids, your marital status, or any other questions — no matter your age. Its sorted into alphabetical order by state. https://t.co/5IGMN1GHNh

Part of the problem with Republicanism’s new insistence on elevating far-right cranks with their own far-right radio shows or podcasts is that there are tapes. These things are recorded. God help us, there are tapes, and every damn time the Republican base props up one of these crackpots journalists go back, review those tapes, and find out that wowza the person who now wants to be in charge of some critical infrastructure thing sure spent a lot of time, say, ranting about frog sexuality or the like. There are always tapes.

Republican Kristina Karamo is her party’s nominee for Michigan secretary of state. She’s backed by Donald Trump because of course she is. She wants to run the state’s elections. She has her own podcast. She thinks demon possession is a sexually transmitted disease. I’m not kidding.

The CNN investigation of her podcast history delivers that precious moment of history: “If a person has demonic possession—I know it’s gonna sound really crazy to me saying that for some people, thinking like what?! But having intimate relationships with people who are demonically possessed or oppressed—I strongly believe that a person opens themselves up to possession. Demonic possession is real,” Karamo said in 2020.

She also called abortion “child sacrifice,” a “very satanic practice,” and that’s of particular note because Karamo is an anti-abortion zealot who served on the board of a local crisis pregnancy center, one of the fake clinics that prey on Americans seeking an end to their pregnancy by instead feeding them disinformation and stuffing them into databases of pregnant Americans kept by anti-abortion groups for their own purposes.

Enough. I am so done. Why must we do this? Why must every recent election quickly decay into a list of ways the Republican candidate has proven themselves to be a conspiracy-addled crank?

You know what? If some American honestly believes that having sexytimes with someone who is demon-possessed may cause the demon to, uh, shoot into you instead, that’s fine! It’s a little confusing, to be sure: Does that mean the person you had sex with is now free of the demon? Does the demon split itself into two demons? Does the demon phone up another demon to possess you at the height of the intimate act? So if you have intercourse in some sort of holy Faraday cage, will that block the first demon’s call, thus sparing you? What are the parameters here?

The theological implications of possible demon mitosis aside, however, it does us no particular harm if some American believes in supernatural possession so long as they are kept far away from levers of authority. Very far. As far as possible. Believing that intimacy spreads demons is one thing, but at this point in America we are coming precariously close to having a Supreme Court cite dead Englishmen who believed in demon sex as reason why marriage laws must be rewritten to disallow sex between any two Americans not personally cleansed by an exorcist in advance.

Americans on the demon sex beat should stay in their lane: warning about demon sex. The last thing we need right now, however, is a Trump-promoting Trump-endorsed election conspiracy theorist as a Michigan secretary of state, and it is doubly bad to have to worry that a new pro-Trump state official might seriously be entertaining the idea that elections could have been stolen in part by new invisible swarms of sexually transmitted demons.

We are all very tired right now, and this is usually around the point where people start complaining that my commentary about the weird lady and her STDs is not being inclusive enough of people who Believe things, and that’s well and good but no. No, we do not have to respect people who believe their own little conspiracies and use them as reason to restrict the rights of others. You can believe that abortion is “satanic” if you want; until Justice Samuel Alito came along it was generally understood that you believing something was “satanic” was not sufficient grounds for demanding veto power over your neighbor’s medical decisions. I do not have to be nice to the Sexually Transmitted Demons lady; the First Amendment still says, for now, I am allowed to judge her based on the conspiracies she keeps.

Karamo has been an avid promoter of election conspiracy hoaxes, which is the sole reason Donald Trump gives a damn about her. This is disqualifying on its own, because it makes her a liar and a propagandist. That she believes she is allowed to lie and promote sedition-backing hoaxes because she believes Americans who do not agree with her specific religious zealotry are acting on behalf of demons does not make it better. It makes it much, much worse.

We don’t have to pretend that the Republican Party elevating conspiracy cranks is anything less than what it is. The party is lost. Whatever it once was, now it is just Republicanism, a conspiracy movement that elevates conspiracy over all else. The people who believe that unauthorized sex leads to demon possession are the same as the people looking to witch hunters to limit the rights of women, and both of them are the same as the people sneering with contempt at those horrified by gun violence, declaring that maybe the problem is that we don’t have good enough doors. Enough already. A single day of sanity would be a start; an entire week of it would feel like heaven.

Jen Kiggans is a GOP candidate for Congress in Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District, challenging incumbent Democrat Elaine Luria.

So — Kiggans went to a grocery store, picked a random item off the shelf, and used it to attack Luria.

Let’s count the ways that Kiggans is dumb, dumb, dumb:

• Tostitos are CORN chips, made from corn, not potatoes.
• Corn chips are a luxury item.
• Neither the President nor individual members of Congress have any influence over prices that manufacturers charge for their product.
• Picking out one random item from one random store roves nothing.
• Kiggans is a nurse — how did she graduate from nursing school with no more sense than this?

This is what passes for intelligence in Republican circles.  This woman is so stupid it burns.

 

 

 

 

 

The Republican Party was NOT made into a fascist party by Trump.  The Republican Party was already well down the road of Christo-Fascism, Trump just speeded up the process.

Trump’s attempt to subvert democracy was something he had said over and over again he was going to do, and indeed is a necessary feature of his entire conspiratorial white supremacist frame.

The whole idea of Trumpism without Trump is oxymoronic, because Trump is more symptom than cause. “Trumpism” is just shorthand for “chosen people” democracy American style, meaning white supremacy coupled with nationalist theocratic Christianity. The plutocrats who have traditionally controlled the Republican party were deluding themselves when they thought they could exploit the central motivating forces for contemporary conservatism without having those forces eventually take control of the party.

As Barry Goldwater told the Repubicans (or tried to tell the Republicans):

 

Jesus.pic.twitter.com/0HbahU9n8p

— Don Winslow (@donwinslow) July 6, 2022

 

On Wednesday, local news outlet WGRZ reported that former Republican Erie County Executive Joel Giambra has suspended his campaign for New York state Senate — and left the Republican Party altogether.

“In an email sent to friends and supporters, Giambra said he, ‘can no longer remain a Republican or continue with my campaign to seek the Republican nomination for Senator in the 61st District,'” said the report.

Giambra first began his campaign in February, with an endorsement from the Erie County Republican Party.

“I cannot stand with party leaders who double down in their support of the NRA after yet another mass shooting; who applaud the decision to take away a woman’s right to choose and who encourage the elimination of LGBQ rights; and who still believe that Donald Trump is their president,” wrote Giambra in his explanation for why he is changing his party affiliation.

This comes a few months after New Hampshire state Rep. William Marsh renounced the GOP and defected to the Democratic Party, citing Republicans’ promotion of anti-vaccine propaganda as the reason for his defection.

It also comes as several Republicans in Pennsylvania are planning to endorse Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro for governor, revolting against far-right nominee Doug Mastriano.

The school hysteria continues as right-wing parents criticize books dealing with racism and sexuality. As a result of the fights over controversial subjects, librarians have ultimately become the targets, a New York Times report explained.

In Florida, Texas and more than a dozen other states, the phobia manifested into bills in which LGBTQ+ teachers can no longer talk about their partners or family, or even post rainbow stickers. Students who are unsure of what to do as they struggle with their orientation or identity no longer have a safe space in schools. In some cases, LGBTQ+ alliances are being eliminated in schools after homophobic parents decided it was a grooming circle of impending abuse.

In Virginia, it’s racists who are being triggered by books that make them uncomfortable. Generations after slavery, white parents fear teaching issues facing people of color will make their children sad.

One New Jersey school became a target over books that right-wing parents claim are “grooming” children to become victims of pedophiles.

“This amounts to an effort to groom our kids to make them more willing to participate in the heinous acts described in these books,” said parent Gina DeLusant in a school meeting that was taped. “It grooms them to accept the inappropriate advances of an adult.”

“You can imagine our librarians feel scared, like their character was in question,” said Ami Uselman, the director of library and media services for Round Rock Independent School District, in Texas.

The overuse of the accusation of child abuse has become a key attack used by QAnon conspiracy theorists. Republican Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers said that supporters of former President Donald Trump were blasting loudspeakers outside his home calling him a pedophile.

“There were comments about library staff, calling us groomers and pedophiles and saying we needed to be fired, we need to be jailed, we needed to be locked up, that all the books needed to be burned,” said Tonya Ryals , former assistant director of the Jonesboro Public Library, in Craighead County, Arkansas. She quit over the attacks. “It got to a certain point where I thought, do I want to live here? Is this something I can subject myself to?”

Another librarian who worked for 18 years left her job after a parent lost their minds over the book “Lawn Boy.” Debbie Chavez met with the parent and recorded the conversation. She’s released the tapes on Facebook and was attacked, saying she was “grooming children.”

“It was so horrific to see that my words were being used as a rallying cry for the book censors, and to see that my conversation had been misrepresented,” she said. “And I was supposed to still get dressed and go to school and do my job.”

Read the full New York Times report of the librarians forced out of their jobs.

Tell me gain how the Constitution allows anyone who wants to do so  to walk the streets armed with a rifle that will rapidly fire high-velocity rounds and that is not legal for hunting in any state?