Certifiably crazy Marjorie Taylor Greene does not understand the word “siezed”

United States Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) undermined her own attack on President Joe Biden’s immigration policies surrounding illegal drugs that have been intercepted by Customs and Border Patrol during a Tuesday House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee hearing.

“I want you to know that in 2020 there were 4,800 pounds of fentanyl seized by CBP. But in 2021, fiscal year 2021, it increased to 11,200 pounds of fentanyl was seized by the CBP. That is a direct result of Biden administration failure policies,” said Greene. “Now here we are in – to date, to date, fiscal, fiscal year 2023 – they have already seized 12,500 pounds of fentanyl. The Biden administration is failing this country by not protecting our border and securing our border, and stopping Chinese fentanyl from being brought into our country illegally by the cartels, and people are dying every single day because of it.”

 

Under the Biden administration, Customs and Border Patrol officers are seizing tons of fentanyl from couriers trying to smuggle the drug across the US-Mexico border, yet, Greene calls this a failure to protect our border.  She does not know what “seized” means.

 The word ‘seized’ when referring to the border, means something was taken at the border and not permitted to come into the US. So, the Biden administration has stopped more fentanyl from getting past the border and into America than the Trump administration.

Who is SD Gov Kristi Noem entertaining at a private state-owned cabin in the woods?

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s use of a historic, state-owned cabin has raised questions as the Republican evades transparency on who has stayed there and for what purposes. Valhalla, a secluded cabin built in 1927 by former South Dakota Gov. and Sen. Peter Norbeck that has since become state property, has been a regular fixture for South Dakota governors. Over the past three years, the cabin has received $120,000 in taxpayer upgrades, but citing open records, Noem has kept private about who is visiting and if the state is reimbursed. The Department of Game, Fish and Parks denied a request last month by South Dakota News Watch to view a list of Valhalla’s visitors, saying “no such record exists as no list is maintained.” The department added, “if this information were available, it would be exempted” under open record laws. However, the department had released a list of visitors in 2019, when asked.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/kristi-noem-doesnt-want-to-reveal-whos-staying-at-state-owned-valhalla-cabin


Gov. Kristi Noem hides guest list at historic state-owned cabin in Custer State Park

https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/politics/2023/02/26/gov-kristi-noem-hides-guest-list-at-historic-state-owned-cabin-in-custer-state-park/69937115007/

Stu Whitney
South Dakota News Watch

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, her family, friends and guests are the only people who can stay in a state-owned historic cabin in Custer State Park, and it’s unclear if the rustic Valhalla retreat is being used for political purposes.

Citing open records law, Noem’s administration won’t reveal who stayed there over the past three years or whether the state is reimbursed, despite more than $120,000 in taxpayer money being spent on property upgrades.

Noem, who was re-elected in November to a second four-year term, is on the short list of potential 2024 Republican presidential candidates and spent much of the past week giving policy speeches in Washington D.C…………………………………………


Could it be:

  1. A fugitive from the law?
  2. A boyfriend?
  3. 1 and 2
  4. Trump in hiding from the GA Attorney General?

Gym Jordan’s third trip to the border turns up . . . nothing

House Republicans, led by loudest maniac Jim Jordan, had high hopes of stealing some of President Joe Biden’s thunder after his historic surprise trip to Kyiv, Ukraine. “Oh, yeah,” you could hear them squeaking. “We’ll show him.” So in the best tradition of nativist, isolationist know-nothingism, they headed for the southern border to put on a show of hunting for the crisis of the hordes invading “our” country. What they got was … nothing.

“As they rumbled along the entry port of San Luis, a dam along the Colorado River and more desolate sections of the U.S. border between Arizona and Mexico, though, their search came up empty,” a reporter on the scene described. “Hours later, immigration officials would spot a group crossing north, but it was long after Congress members had retired for the night.”

This was part of what they’re calling a “field hearing” by the House Judiciary Committee, explaining Jordan’s, ahem, leadership. (Seriously, they need to rethink having this guy as their mascot. Does anyone, could anyone, find this guy compelling?) The “convoy” included “more than a dozen congressional Republicans, a large contingent of staffers and a handful of reporters.” Having turned the trip into some kind of sick safari, the group thwarted their own goal.

“Jordan’s group was told that around 4,000 immigrants cross the U.S. border near Yuma each day, but its conspicuous presence thwarted the expedition’s goal of spotting immigrants attempting an unobtrusive entry.” You don’t say. They did spot a bus parked across the border, however. No one came out of it to make a run for the border.

No Democrats participated in what ranking committee Democrat Jerry Nadler called a “stunt hearing,” though he did say that some Democrats from the committee would go to the border next month to to “hear from the community and government officials on the ground.”

The big convoy also help put the lie to the GOP’s government spending obsession. This is the third trip to the border by some contingent of GOP House members in the new Congress, with Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy having already gone to try to score points, as well as members of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

The Homeland Security Committee has what they’re calling a “border bootcamp” for Republican freshmen members, and the Oversight Committee has plans to go in the near future, too. That’s one way to stop illegal crossings: Just keep sending down convoys of GOP representatives to play border patrol.

All that’s pretty expensive. The GOP Judiciary Committee alone has requested $262,400 for travel this session. In 2022, with Democrats in charge of the committee, they spent $7,986.

When it comes to actual border policy rather than publicity and preening, they’ve got nothing. Or rather they’ve got an interparty fight, as Gabe Ortiz reported. Their first go at an immigration bill “was so extreme it derailed itself, after so-called Republican moderates refused to sign on.”

Guess who had an abortion ! Remember “19 Kids and Counting”?

Jessa Duggar Seewald revealed that she suffered a miscarriage over the holidays.  (In fact, she had an abortion.)

In the nearly 19-minute YouTube video, the 19 Kids and Counting alum, 30, shared the tragic journey of her latest pregnancy, from informing her kids about the new baby to dealing with the aftermath of the news that she had miscarried.

Jessa documented in one scene on camera that she had been concerned early on in the pregnancy because she had been “spotting” blood. She relayed that her family sang the devotional hymn “Day by Day” to cheer her up.

However, upon arriving at her next ultrasound appointment, the doctor broke the terrible news that the baby did not “look good.”

“Nothing could have prepared me for the weight of those words in that moment,” Jessa said. “At that moment I was just in complete shock. I didn’t have words. I just immediately started crying.”

She said her husband, Ben Seewald, put his arms around her as the technician left the room to let them “process through the loss.”

“We were just sitting there holding hands and crying, like, ‘what do we do from here,’ ” Jessa recalled.

“I feel like in some ways miscarriages can be so jarring because you don’t have clear signs of something going wrong,” she added. “I had minimal spotting for 24 hours, and that was it.”

Due to risks of complications with passing the fetus at home, she said she decided to check in to a hospital to perform a dilation and curettage procedure to remove the fetus from her womb.


. . . dilation and curettage procedure to remove the fetus from her womb.  A D&C.  Otherwise known as an abortion.

Wait until Trump learns about the pardon law in Georgia

Georgia is one of the few States where the Governor does not grant pardons. If Trump is convicted of a felony in Georgia he must request a pardon from the State Board of Pardons and Parole. There are five members on the board. But wait – – –  there is more good news.

  1. The Board has to follow certain rules that are long and complicated. Getting pardoned takes a long time in Georgia.
  2. You cannot request a pardon until you have completed at least 5 years of your sentences.
  3. People who request a pardon in Georgia have to go through a long, drawn- out process.

So, if Trump is convicted in Georgia on State felony charges, no president can pardon him because it’s State charges. No Governor of Georgia can pardon Trump because he does not have the power to do so.

And that is GOOD NEWS!!!!

Next month the new Grand Jury will be put in place in Georgia. They only serve for two months. They should return indictments fairly quickly because they only need to review the evidence of the Special Grand Jury. They don’t have to recall witnesses, go through the whole process again.

Trump has less than 60 days.

“Evangelical Christians” have a problem with what they are selling — no one is buying it

Christianity has a brand problem. If it were a corporation, brand managers would be scrambling to scrub public image—maybe by greenwashing or with corporate diversity trainings or by renaming their product, say natural gas instead of methane, or by coming up with a new catchy slogan. Or they might actually do something substantive, like ceasing to “gift” baby formula to poor moms or to use child labor in their factories. There are many ways to polish a brand.

Christianity’s recently launched He Gets US campaign—millions of people got a dose during the Superbowl—tells us two things: 1. Conservative Evangelical Christians care about their brand problem. 2. Some major Christian donors have decided, to the tune of $100 million apparently, to go with the greenwashing strategy rather than substantive change. And that combination provides a possible avenue for fighting back against some of the ugly objectives and tactics of the Religious Right.

The people paying for this ad campaign are the same ones promoting homophobia, advocating against reproductive healthcare for women, and funding politicians to protect the good old pecking orders: rich over poor, men over women, white people over everyone with more melanin.

Losing customers
Back when the world and I were young, Evangelical Christians were a politically diverse group. But Republican strategists recognized them as a potential political voting block. Hierarchical social structures within churches meant the strategists had to recruit only Church leaders, and those leaders would bring along their congregations. It worked for the Republican party, but at an enormous cost to Christianity as an institution. That is because right wing operatives were spending down Christianity’s good name by merging its brand with their own. The more Christianity came to be associated with ugly political priorities—and then crass power grab-‘em-by-the-pussies—the more young people fled the ChurchBy the millions. (Tangentially, Islam faces a similar brand problem and deconversion pattern wherever the Mullahs wield political force. Almost half of Iranians say they used to be religious.)

Losing money
Losing customers by the millions would be a problem for any corporate body—especially one with a product that people realize they don’t need when they actually take a good look. When there are better options, in this case secularism, people rarely go back to the same-old-same-old. The financial impact of deconversion is potentially huge. The Mormon Church may coerce tithes with visits from elders who review a family’s finances, but most protestant and Catholic sects rely on more subtle social and emotional pressures. Either way, market share requires mindshare. You have to get people in the door before you can pass the basket.

Losing prospects
But this isn’t merely a financial calculus. At some point, brand damage becomes a threat to identity. Evangelicals are evangelical. It’s part of the ideology. Go into all the world and make disciples of every creature. Unlike Judaism or Hinduism, Christianity is a proselytizing religion. Proselytizing (ok, coupled with colonization and holy wars) has been the strategy that allowed Christianity to spread across the planet. Missionaries may not explicitly recognize that they are recruiting paying customers who will trade cash for club benefits and afterlife services, but they do recognize that “harvesting souls” is a central commandment of their faith. For many, this mandate—called the Great Commission—is their version of praying five times facing Mecca. For some, it becomes an underlying feature in virtually every relationship: All non-Christians are potential converts; friendliness becomes friendship missions; feeding the poor becomes first-and-foremost a path to winning their souls. Evangelicals are a sales force, and as their brand becomes more and more soiled, it gets harder to do their job.

In need of a savior
Having spent down Christianity’s brand, the patriarchs of the religious right are uncomfortable with how far that has gone—the image, that is, not the substance. Most Americans used to think of the Bible as The Good Book, but not anymore. Most Americans used to think of Christianity (and religion more broadly) as benign, but not anymore. Jesus, though—the image of Jesus is relatively untainted. Even those who don’t buy into the idea of him being the perfect human sacrifice who saves our souls (Are you washed in the blood?) tend to believe that he was a good, wise, loving man. They think we know a lot more about him than we do, and what they think we know is positive. So, it totally makes sense that a $100 million rebranding and recruiting effort would center on the person of Jesus. Much of Christian theology is nasty, and the Iron Age texts in the Bible contradict what we now know about science, anthropology and—well, pretty much every other field of modern scholarship. This iconic personal Jesus is all they have left.

The fact that conservative Christians are spending $100 million on marketing Jesus means they are bad off and know it. It means they recognize the deterioration in their brand, and they feel desperate to turn it around. They have made the mistake of letting that desperation slip out, and those of us who would rather not return to the good old dark ages when the Church ruled the world can exploit that vulnerability. Their product sucks, and we need to keep saying so in every way possible. We need to make sure the general public keeps associating Christianity with what Christians are doing, not what they are saying: Those anti-abortion centers that dupe women into keeping pregnancies aren’t Crisis Pregnancy Centers, they are Church Pregnancy Centers. Fetal personhood isn’t a philosophical debate, it’s theology. Denying rights to queer folks and women isn’t conservative, it’s theocracy.

When people do ugly things that are motivated by religious dogma, we should name what’s going on. Conservative Christians are telling us that they can’t afford more brand damage. And maybe if their bad works keep getting exposed they will realize that the answer isn’t Jesus-washing; it’s substantive change.

Here’s a bit of really, really good news

In the town of Rifle, Colorado, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert’s Shooters Grill is being replaced by a Mexican restaurant!!! 

The restaurant, called Tapatios, recently applied for a hotel and liquor license at 120 E. 3rd St., Unit C,, according to the Rifle City Council agenda. The Glenwood Springs Post Independent reports the council unanimously approved the application at a meeting on Feb. 15.

Tapatios runs another restaurant in nearby New Castle,, where the menu features tacos, tortas, enchiladas, burritos and other fare.

Rep. Boebert was forced to close Shooters, a gun-themed eatery where the wait staff was encouraged to open carry, last summer after the building changed ownership. Milken Enterprises, a corporation headed by Mike Miller and Dan Meskin, took over legal ownership of the building in May 2022, property records show, and declined to renew the business’ lease.

https://www.denverpost.com/2023/02/24/shooters-grill-boebert-rifle-replaced-mexican-restaurant-tapatios/

“Oath Keepers,” “Proud Boys,” “III Percenters:” All a bunch of little boys living out fantasies

At some point in our lives we grow out of the childhood fantasy stage. Not these idiots.

I have been following the Proud Boys trial and reading the Proud Boys e-mails, public comments, and text messages. Same for the “III Percenters” and the “Oath Keepers”.  It’s unbelievable.

These idiots have always fantasized they are the true American patriots who would one day rise up like the Americans of 1776 and overthrow a tyrannical government. Then Trump showed up and played them for the childlike fools they are.

When Trump tweeted “Come to the Capitol, it’s going to wild!!”, they took that as verification their fantasy was real, coming true. In their e-mails, text messages, public and private comments  they were giddy with excitement. They were so happy they were going to repeat 1776. How in the hell can you repeat 1776? They actually believed they were going to take over the government.

I will never understand how grown men can be so stupid. It’s like they never grew up. I wonder if any of them have figured out Trump played them for the fools they are. Maybe they will figure it out as they sit in their prison cells for many years.

But then again, maybe not.  Ugly is skin deep but stupid goes all the way to the bone.