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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 10:19:13 GMT
This should scare the bejesus out of true Americans. Aside from racism this (christofascism) is at the core of today's conservatism.The Family: It's Not About Faith, It's About Power | Official Trailer | NetflixExposing the Secret Christian Group Seeking Political PowerThom Hartmann Program Published on Sep 5, 2019
‘The Family’ is the oldest Christian Conservative Organisations in Washington D.C. and very secretive. Their goal is not to use Christian feelings to help the poor and the needy, but to concentrate on the ‘key’ people such as politicians and businesspeople.
Jeff Sharlet was part of the organisation and has published books on his findings. Jeff joined Thom to reveal all and whether this is a cult.Will The Trump Administration Bring On The New Crusades? (w/Guest: Jeff Sharlet)Thom Hartmann Program Published on Dec 15, 2016 Thom speaks with journalist and author Jeff Sharlet, author of "The Family" - about the Christian fundamentalists who Donald Trump has included in his administration and the reasons we should all be concerned.
Buy The Family, by Jeff Sharlet on Amazon: amzn.to/2iqQx33
***** ABOUT THE BOOK They insist they are just a group of friends, yet they funnel millions of dollars through tax-free corporations. They claim to disdain politics, but congressmen of both parties describe them as the most influential religious organization in Washington. They say they are not Christians, but simply believers.
Behind the scenes at every National Prayer Breakfast since 1953 has been the Family, an elite network dedicated to a religion of power for the powerful. Their goal is "Jesus plus nothing." Their method is backroom diplomacy. The Family is the startling story of how their faith—part free-market fundamentalism, part imperial ambition—has come to be interwoven with the affairs of nations around the world.
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 10:19:40 GMT
I just heard Dennis Prager of Prager U whining on the Glen Beck Program that Google/Youtube is censoring and demonetizing some of their 5 minute propaganda pieces of which there are hundreds. He and Beck are up in arms that a private corporation like Google can stifle conservative voices just because they are conservative. But it is conservatives like Beck AND Prager that were ecstatic when bakers and other small businesses won court cases allowing them to censor and refuse to serve SAME SEX COUPLES. Does anyone see the hypocrisy in this?PragerU sues Google, YouTube for 'censoring' conservative videosBY HARPER NEIDIG - 10/24/17 05:22 PM EDT thehill.com/policy/technology/356966-prageru-sues-google-youtube-for-censoring-conservative-videos
PragerU, a conservative educational site, is suing Google and its subsidiary YouTube, accusing the video site of censoring its online videos because of their political leanings.
The company filed the suit on Monday, saying that YouTube had been “restricting” some of their videos, which cuts them off to viewers with certain parental settings and prevents them from generating ad revenue.
“Watch any one of our videos and you’ll immediately realize that Google/YouTube censorship is entirely ideologically driven,” Dennis Prager, PragerU founder, said in a statement.
“For the record, our videos are presented by some of the finest minds in the Western world, including four Pulitzer Prize winners, former prime ministers, and professors from the most prestigious universities in America,” he said.
The lawsuit claims that Google and YouTube had told PragerU that the restricted videos were found by content reviewers to be “inappropriate” for young audiences.
The conservative site denied that the videos were improper or violated any of YouTube’s policies, and said in the filing that the explanation is “an obvious pretext to justify illegally discriminating against PragerU because of its conservative political perspective and identity.”
PragerU launched a petition demanding that YouTube remove the more than 30 videos from the restricted setting.
The list includes provocative titles like “The most important question about abortion,” “Where are the moderate Muslims?” and “Is Islam a religion of peace?”
The lawsuit alleges that YouTube’s content policies are vague and lack “objective criteria,” allowing the site to get away with cracking down on conservative voices.
“They are engaging in an arbitrary and capricious use of their ‘restricted mode’ and ‘demonetization’ to restrict non-left political thought,” Prager said in his statement. “Their censorship is profoundly damaging because Google and YouTube own and control the largest forum for public participation in video-based speech in not only California, but the United States, and the world.”
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 10:20:00 GMT
Dennis Prager and his faux "university" PragerU can bitch, moan, and bellyache about how much Google and YouTube are supposedly "censoring" so-called "conservative" websites like his, but he doth protest way too f***ing much. I still get these ads for Trump's re-election campaign and the f***ing Epoch Times at least once a day when I try to watch anything on YouTube. Prager is such a typical bellyaching right-wing snowflake; and I say this from the bottom of my heart (LOL).
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 10:20:25 GMT
Those involved are blaming the divisive rhetoric coming out of the USA from conservatives and Donald J Trump. Has anyone noticed the number of dictators and authoritarians mimicking what we hear from Trump and the cons in this country? There was a radio discussion about this on BBC News. One only need go here for proof: ronstadt.proboards.com/thread/5464/deplorable-nation-tyranny-minorityTrudeau forced to wear BULLETPROOF VEST due to ‘security threat’ 13 Oct, 2019 07:30 / Updated 3 hours ago www.rt.com/news/470819-trudeau-canada-bulletproof-vest-violence/
Liberal leader and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attends a rally during an election campaign visit to Mississauga, Ontario, Canada October 12, 2019. © REUTERS/Stephane Mahe
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was seen sporting a bulletproof vest during a campaign stop in Ontario, reportedly after a credible threat was made against his life. The move is nearly unprecedented in Canadian politics. Known for his fondness for hand-shaking, Trudeau was notably less accessible to the 2,000 supporters who came to hear him speak at a rally in Mississauga, Ontario on Saturday. Photographs of the Canadian leader show Trudeau wearing body armor under his shirt as security personnel escorted him through the crowd. Tellingly, his wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, was scheduled to introduce him before he gave his stump speech – but she failed to appear on stage.
The precautions were put in place after the campaign was made aware of a credible security threat, according to the CBC. Although the campaign event went smoothly, such security concerns are almost unheard of in Canadian politics. Unlike its neighbor to the south, there is almost no history of political violence in Canada.
Trudeau faces a tight election on October 21, with the Liberals neck-and-neck with the opposition Conservatives, led by Andrew Scheer.
In a tweet, Scheer said that it was “very upsetting” to hear that Trudeau had to wear a bulletproof vest. “Threats of violence against political leaders have absolutely no place in our democracy,” he wrote.
While many on social media were similarly upset by the news, some members of the Twitterati speculated that the security threat was a ruse to drum up sympathy for the embattled prime minister. Several netizens even blamed Scheer for dividing the country and stoking the threat of political violence.
twitter.com/Danielle2671
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 10:21:00 GMT
Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversationby Andrew Marantz
From a rising star at The New Yorker , a deeply immersive chronicle of how the optimistic entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley set out to create a free and democratic internet--and how the cynical propagandists of the alt-right exploited that freedom to propel the extreme into the mainstream.
For several years, Andrew Marantz, a New Yorker staff writer, has been embedded in two worlds.
The first is the world of social-media entrepreneurs, who, acting out of na�vete and reckless ambition, upended all traditional means of receiving and transmitting information.
The second is the world of the people he calls "the gate crashers"--the conspiracists, white supremacists, and nihilist trolls who have become experts at using social media to advance their corrosive agenda. Antisocial ranges broadly--from the first mass-printed books to the trending hashtags of the present; from secret gatherings of neo-Fascists to the White House press briefing room--and traces how the unthinkable becomes thinkable, and then how it becomes reality.
Combining the keen narrative detail of Bill Buford's Among the Thugs and the sweep of George Packer's The Unwinding, Antisocial reveals how the boundaries between technology, media, and politics have been erased, resulting in a deeply broken informational landscape--the landscape in which we all now live.
Marantz shows how alienated young people are led down the rabbit hole of online radicalization, and how fringe ideas spread--from anonymous corners of social media to cable TV to the President's Twitter feed. Marantz also sits with the creators of social media as they start to reckon with the forces they've unleashed. Will they be able to solve the communication crisis they helped bring about, or are their interventions too little too late?
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 10:21:28 GMT
The conservative movement is still an elaborate moneymaking ventureThe story of FreedomWorks' big Glenn Beck payout encapsulates the right-wing media
ALEX PAREENE JANUARY 7, 2013 5:45PM (UTC)
The conservative media movement exists primarily as a moneymaking venture. As Rick Perlstein explained in the Baffler, some of the largest conservative media organs are essentially massive email lists of suckers rented to snake oil salesmen. The con isn't limited to a couple of newsletters and websites: The most prominent conservative organizations in the nation are primarily dedicated to separating conservatives from their money.
FreedomWorks, which is funded primarily by very rich people, solicits donations from non-rich conservative people. More than 80,000 people donated money to FreedomWorks in 2012, and it seems likely that only a small minority of those people were hedge fund millionaires. And what are people who donate to this grass-roots conservative organization funded mostly by a few very rich people getting for their hard-earned money? In addition to paying Dick Armey $400,000 a year for 20 years to stay away, FreedomWorks also apparently spent more than a million dollars paying Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh to say nice things about FreedomWorks, in order to convince listeners to send FreedomWorks money that FreedomWorks would then give to Limbaugh and Beck. It's a pretty simple con. Beck, meanwhile, also has a subscriber-based media operation, in which people pay his company money for access to programs where Beck expresses opinions that he was paid to hold. He also spent years telling everyone to buy gold from a company that pays him and defrauds consumers.
As Armey admitted to Media Matters, FreedomWorks at this point essentially raises money for the sake of raising money. It exists to bilk "activists." Armey at least has the courtesy to be embarrassed by this:
"If Limbaugh and Beck, if we were using those resources to recruit activists and inform activists and to encourage and enthuse activists, that's one thing," Armey explained. "If we are using these things to raise money; one, it's a damned expensive way to raise money; and two, it makes raising money an end on to itself not an instrumental activity to support the foundation work that our organization does."
Armey also said the relationship with Beck expanded to include rallies that were co-sponsored by Beck and FreedomWorks, and included appearances by FreedomWorks President and CEO Matt Kibbe.
Armey said he objected to these events, dubbed FreePACs, because they often charged admission to FreedomWorks activists.
A review of promotional information for the events found $20 was a standard donation requested at some of the locations, while a Dallas, TX., FreePAC last summer charged prices as high as $971.
But Armey is basically alone. No major right-wing media figures ever speak out against the widespread practice of constantly bilking credulous old people. Newsmax, a company whose email list is regularly given over to blatant get-rich-quick scheme hucksters, publishes basically every major and minor conservative columnist (and Lanny Davis). Newsmax pays to syndicate their columns, and their stature lends the site credibility. None of them ever complain. No one on the right criticizes the Newsmax business model. It seems to be semi-common knowledge that major conservative media figures sell their endorsements. No one says it's deceptive. No one says Dick Morris should stop marketing his various ventures on Fox, all the time.
This complete contempt for the audience is unique to the right-wing press -- if the Huffington Post made its money selling snake oil, liberals would complain. The recent trickle of complaints about the major nonprofit money-making groups, like FreedomWorks and CrossroadsUSA, has come solely because those groups failed to win the election. If Romney, or even a couple of Senate candidates, had won, no one would mind that the two groups enriched their boards of directors on the backs of tens of thousands of small donors. Right-wing reaction to Armey's admission to Media Matters has thus far been outrage ... that Armey talked to Media Matters.
The problem this presents for the movement, beyond the threat of eventually bankrupting the people who give it power, is that the business of money-making, for consultants and media personalities and Herman Cains, is at this point getting in the way of the business of advancing conservative causes. The groups exert massive influence, and they only ever push the Republican Party to get more extreme. Apocalyptic hysteria is much more effective at getting people to open their wallets than reasonable commentary. There are a lot of people whose livelihoods depend on keeping lots of conservatives terrified and ill-informed. The groups that exist to raise funds raise more funds when they endorse the crazier candidate.
So even if you don't particularly care that regular conservative Americans are constantly being scammed by their media apparatus, you should still worry about the influence of the scammers. The fact that there is a lot of money to be made in acting like Michele Bachmann is part of why the House seems poised to blow up the U.S. economy. The fact that conservatives have that much contempt for their own true believers neatly explains how they govern when they actually have power.
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 10:21:57 GMT
Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers27 February 2009 www.newscientist.com/article/dn16680-porn-in-the-usa-conservatives-are-biggest-consumers/ By Ewen Callaway
Conservative states spend most on porn (Image: Raymond Gehmann/Corbis)
Americans may paint themselves in increasingly bright shades of red and blue, but new research finds one thing that varies little across the nation: the liking for online pornography.
A new nationwide study (pdf) of anonymised credit-card receipts from a major online adult entertainment provider finds little variation in consumption between states.
“When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more the same than different,” says Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School.
However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.
“Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by,” Edelman says.
Political divide Edelman spends part of his time helping companies such as Microsoft and AOL detect advertising fraud. Another consulting client runs dozens of adult websites, though he says he is not at liberty to identify the firm.
That company did, however, provide Edelman with roughly two years of credit card data from 2006 to 2008 that included a purchase date and each customer’s postal code.
After controlling for differences in broadband internet access between states – online porn tends to be a bandwidth hog – and adjusting for population, he found a relatively small difference between states with the most adult purchases and those with the fewest.
The biggest consumer, Utah, averaged 5.47 adult content subscriptions per 1000 home broadband users; Montana bought the least with 1.92 per 1000. “The differences here are not so stark,” Edelman says.
Number 10 on the list was West Virginia at 2.94 subscriptions per 1000, while number 41, Michigan, averaged 2.32.
Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year’s presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama.
Old-fashioned values Church-goers bought less online porn on Sundays – a 1% increase in a postal code’s religious attendance was associated with a 0.1% drop in subscriptions that day. However, expenditures on other days of the week brought them in line with the rest of the country, Edelman finds.
Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don’t explicitly restrict gay marriage.
To get a better handle on other associations between social attitudes and pornography consumption, Edelman melded his data with a previous study on public attitudes toward religion.
States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement “I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage,” bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement “AIDS might be God’s punishment for immoral sexual behaviour.”
“One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you’re told you can’t have this, then you want it more,” Edelman says.
Read more: www.newscientist.com/article/dn16680-porn-in-the-usa-conservatives-are-biggest-consumers/#ixzz644rBEhqt
Journal reference: Journal of Economic Perspectives vol 23, p 209 (pdf) www.aeaweb.org/jep/index.php
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 10:23:35 GMT
CUCK Official Trailer (2019)
CUCK TheFilm
In Theaters/VOD October 4th VOD NOW www.cuckthefilm.com www.cuckthefilm.com/
CUCK is a gripping fly-on-the wall character study and psychosexual thriller tracking an isolated and lonely young man as he is indoctrinated into the online echo chambers of Alt-Right Ideology and hate. Touching on several topical nerves, CUCK gives a raw, unforgiving glimpse into a dark world that hides in plain site.
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 10:24:00 GMT
Former alt-right member wants to prevent others from joining these hate groups | Nightline
ABC News 6.8M subscribers Samantha is sharing her story in hopes that she can serve as an example and a warning to others to not join alt-right groups. “I never thought of myself as a racist person but I was,” she said.
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 10:24:29 GMT
The Cult of ConservatismSunday June 14, 2015 · 8:20 AM PDT www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/6/14/1393167/-The-Cult-of-Conservatism
I was trying to find a way to describe what the GOP has become lately and I guess the best word I could come up with is a "cult". It's no longer a party of ideas and free thinking is not allowed or encouraged. In the last 15 years the republican party has been corrupted and taken over by a smaller and smaller group of businesses and rich people who write their laws and tell them how to think. There is no better example of this than looking at the laws they pass, most are written by corporations themselves or small groups that control the GOP through money or fear.
If you notice when republicans take over a state they always pass the same laws, maybe a few words are changed by the laws remain the same. These laws include voter restrictions, "religious freedom", "right to work", anti-union and finally anti-environmental laws. Most of these laws are the same and most can be traced back to a few groups like ALEC and the Heritage foundation. This is the party who let the oil/gas companies write the EPA laws under Bush/Cheney and let the banks write the credit card, bankruptcy laws.
The cult is easy to join but if you don't follow their many rules or beliefs you're labeled a "RHINO" and no longer allowed in the group. God forbid you do something to offend them, they will throw you under the bus faster than you can say Reagan. If you dare speak out they have a propaganda network that can destroy you in a heartbeat consisting of Fox News and talk radio they wage a unified campaign that doesn't stop until you're out of the group.
To be in the cult of conservative you need to Believe
Muslim is a violent religion and all evil is done by them
Christians are persecuted for their beliefs
Reagan was a great president and a true conservative
Gay people are second class citizens
that if you are successful you did it on your own but if you fail it's the governments fault
people are poor because they are lazy
Minorities are never the victim
Helping a corporation is capitalism but helping feed a starving child is socialism
Conservatives do no wrong and if any negative news is reported it's the "liberal media"
Republicans are for small government and less debt (both lies)
Everyone has same chance to succeed if you're parents are rich or were homeless
Money = happiness
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 10:25:21 GMT
The Cult of Conservatismwww.democraticunderground.com/1251194374 So I'm in day 3 of no electric. Gave the baby a bath this morning by heating water in our fireplace. We have some downed trees in the neighborhood, but nothing too serious. Others haven't been so lucky. As we all know, large portions of New Jersey and lower Manhatten literally lay in waste.
Thousands have lost everything they own, many are still stranded in flooded towns - cold, hungry and scared. Some have been killed, some are still missing.
I haven't had a television, and have had to conserve my cell phone power for an emergency. So my only news has come by way of a little battery operated radio tuned into our local 24/7 news station.
I was very pleased to hear how focused and on top of everything the President has been, and was even happier to hear Chris Christie, who I am no fan of, not only handling the situation in our neighbor state so well, but doing so in such welcoming and thankful coordination with Obama and FEMA.
As my wife, kids and I finally fell asleep last night, all of us cuddled on the floor in front of the fire, I was very comforted to know that President Obama was going to do everything possible for those who needed it, and even allowed myself to ponder that perhaps out of this tragedy will come some bipartisan good will from our friends on the right.
Well, it took all of 10 minutes back in the real world, by way of getting in my car and leaving the house for the first time in 4 days, for me to realize that once again I was only kidding myself.
A few minutes into my drive, I turned on the radio, and out of curiousity flipped to the most popular am radio talk station in Philly, which of course is 100% conservative.
The host, whose audience includes the millions of people in Philadelphia and Jersey Shore who are still dealing with the aftermath of the most devastating storm in history, wasn't talking about how to help, wasnt giving vital data about food drop offs or red cross locations, wasn't pulling the people together with inspiring stories about our incredible first responsers and brave neighbors all working together....he was furiously ripping into President Obama over Benghazi. That's right...Benghazi.
Specifically, he was saying that the president is only stepping up to the plate with Sandy because it's good PR before the election, but he had no problem letting our people die in Benghazi.
Next, he railed about Chris Christie, openly stating how deplorable it was that he lavished praise on Obama and FEMA, going off on the damage that does to their message and even potential presidential election chances.
And conservative caller after conservative caller agreed whole-heatedly. My heart sunk.
I remember the days after 9-11 all too well, when Republicans were in charge and the democrats in the minority. I remember the potential "politics" of such an event not even crossing my mind for many months. I remember being proud of Bush, a man I despised, and standing behind him when he stood on that pile of rubble with the bullhorn. We were all Americans for a good long while.
Yet the right couldn't wait for the Benghazzi bodies to be cold before blaming the President. They couldn't wait for Sandy's waters to recede, or the missing people to be found before politicizing the catastrophe and attacking the president with full force.
I generally try to give my political opponents the benefit of the doubt, that they care about people and the country just like me, only disagree with how to address our problems.
But it's becoming undeniable that conservatism is more a cult then political philosophy, a disease of the mind that removes one's humanity, placing hatred of others and the desire for power above all else.
I shudder to think what the right would have done if Obama were in office for 9-11. If Obama lied us into Iraq. If Obama sanctioned torture and illegal detentions. If Obama shred the Bill of Rights with the Patriot Act. If Obama sat on his hands during Katrina. If Obama sank our economy the way Bush did...
The fact is, it's unthinkable, Obama would have been drug out and hung on the White House lawn if any one of those things happened, and everyone knows it. Hell, the guy passed a republican healthcare plan and they are ready to do so.
All I know is these are the people who will take charge, with a perceived mandate, if Obama loses. I can't think of anything more terrifying.
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 10:25:49 GMT
Trumpism Is Just an Offshoot of the Real Cult: Modern Conservatismwww.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a21348890/trumpism-is-just-an-offshoot-of-the-real-cult-modern-conservatism/ Need proof? Take a gander at Iowa's Steve King.
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE JUN 13, 2018
I don’t mean to keep beating this tin drum as loudly as I have been, but I think it’s important to keep reminding people that the current president* is an aberrational modern Republican only in the crudeness of a) his rhetoric and, b) the way he wields his power. (Also, he’s something of a nut, which, in my experience, transcends politics anyway.) For example, as was pointed earlier on Wednesday, Tuesday night’s Republican primary results in various states pretty much preclude any serious attempt by Republican office holders to throw a spanner into the crazy that is dominating our politics at the moment. This morning, on MSNBC, this is what Joe Scarborough had to say on the subject.
“It has devolved into a cult. Primary voters in the Republican Party have devolved into a Trumpist cult.”
That’s a word that’s getting tossed around a lot these days. Retiring Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, opined that his party is in the thrall of “cult-like behavior,” while longtime Republican activist and cable TV megastar Rick Wilson says that the word cult “isn’t strong enough” to describe what’s going on. This makes Corker the moderate, I guess.
Getty Images
Now, to be clear, I don’t disagree with any of this. We are seeing politics on one side of the aisle turning into a cult, but, alas, that cult is modern Republicanism. Trumpism is merely one breakaway sect of it, and, truth be told, it hasn’t broken away all that far. After all, Corey Stewart got nominated for the U.S. Senate from Virginia not because of his loyalty to the president*, but as an adherent to a far older cult with which the GOP was quite content to be a part of over the previous four decades: the cult of the Confederate States of America.
Another example: as the results were rolling in Tuesday night, Congressman Steve King, the Republican crackpot who represents the Fourth Congressional District of Iowa, took it upon himself to retweet a famous British neo-Nazi named Mark Collett. From the Times of Israel:
“Europe is waking up… Will America… in time?” King, a Representative from Iowa, tweeted on Tuesday, linking to an anti-immigration tweet from Mark Collett. Collett is one of Britain’s most high-profile white nationalists and is a self-proclaimed Nazi sympathizer. He is the former chairman of the youth division of the British National Party, a British ultra-nationalist political movement. Collett was ousted from his party in 2010 over an alleged plot to murder the BNP’s-then leader. He was questioned by police and released on bail.
This is hardly the first time King has shown his pasty white arse on this topic. There was the famous calves-like-cantaloupes line concerning undocumented immigrants. There was the time he smacked Chris Cuomo’s gob into the East River. And there was this moment from the 2016 Republican National Convention that I, for one, will never forget.
Anyway, at the moment, Steve King is running for re-election. He won his Republican primary with north of 75 percent of the vote and is odds-on to return to Congress for the 17th consecutive year next January. And he is plainly a big, racist bag of nuts. Why aren’t the people who keep sending him back to Congress acting cultishly? How does King’s running buddy from Crazytown, Louie Gohment, keep getting elected? There must be sensible conservative—even very conservative—Republican alternatives to these two galoots. The only conclusion to be drawn is that the voters are electing them because they are the right kind of public embarrassments. How is that not cult-like behavior?
Then there is this great clip from Nicolle Wallace’s MSNBC show on Tuesday, when our charming host loses it completely while discussing the very weird junior-high video project that the president* showed to Kim Jong-un at their meeting in Singapore prior to his discussing his love for beachfront property in the DPRK. Anyway, guest Elise Jordan, who once worked for the campaign of Rand Paul, whose followers never have been known to behave cultishly, shared a laugh with Wallace:
“Could you imagine, as communications director at the White House, if you had overseen putting together a video like that?”
“No!” Wallace replied.
Well, as a matter of fact, when Wallace was working communications for the re-election of President George W. Bush, that White House comms shop produced a now-legendary video for the 2004 White House Correspondents Dinner in which C-Plus Augustus made happy-fun-jokes about looking for the WMDs in Iraq, the fake casus belli for the war into which he’d lied the country. Listen to everyone laugh, applaud, and rattle their jewelry. Such fun! If only the 849 Americans who died actually looking for those weapons that year had been around to enjoy the show!
There is a cult here, no doubt. But, damn, so far, the deprogramming looks like a long project.
Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page here. CHARLES P. PIERCE Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 10:26:18 GMT
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 10:26:45 GMT
While this is a Republican "thing" it seems to be a more "conservative" mentality thing...a character flaw these tribalist have.Carl Bernstein Issues Ominous Warning To GOP Over 'Amazing' Donald Trump SupportHuffPost Lee Moran,HuffPost 3 hours ago www.yahoo.com/news/carl-bernstein-gop-senators-warning-trump-075432059.html
Carl Bernstein on Friday called out Republican senators’ “amazing” support of Donald Trump, warning the party will be judged for “many, many years” over what its lawmakers do in a possible trial of the president.
“There’s very little interest in the truth by the president’s Republican defenders which is a really terrible thing given the grievous nature of the president’s corruption, his illegal acts that have now been demonstrably made apparent through the impeachment hearings,” the famed Watergate reporter said on CNN’s “OutFront with Erin Burnett.”
Bernstein said it currently appeared that the GOP-controlled Senate would not vote to convict Trump if he is impeached by the Democratic-controlled House over the Ukraine scandal.
“The Republican Party is really also on trial in the Senate,” he said in video shared online by Raw Story. “And we’ll see if there’s any breaking of ranks. And right now, it doesn’t appear that there is going to be. But I think it will be many, many years that the Republican Party will be judged for what it does in this trial of Donald Trump.”
Elsewhere on the show, Bernstein described Trump as “untruthful in ways and to an extent that had never been dreamed somebody holding the Oval Office could be.” “But I keep coming back to the amazing support of the Republican Party in Congress for this president,” he said. “That’s the juncture we’re at. Hopefully, someone in the Republican Party of influence is going to break this logjam.”
Check out that clip here:
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 10:27:12 GMT
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