The Absurd GOP

[Silver]

Moved

[Fireball]

The best part of this is that these words came out of her own buccal sphincter and weren't spun in any way, by whatever news agency she may blame for twisting her words after the fact.

[Jehanne]

The best part of this is that these words came out of her own buccal sphincter and weren't spun in any way, by whatever news agency she may blame for twisting her words after the fact.

I suspect that she is (quietly) laughing all the way to the bank.

[Rev. Rye]

Am I allowed to be very concerned that the Republican Party seems to be operating in bad faith? As in, they would gladly let America get nukes by China or Russia or let the economy completely tank or devolve into a civil war as long as they can blame it on a democrat. McConnell the geriatric turtle is the worst of all. He set records for filibuster use and even filibustered a Supreme Court pick. They spent years complaining about how bad Obamacare was, but when they had a chance to repeal it, the only change they made is that they started calling it the affordable care act. They were all over the stimulus checks in 2020, until Trump lost the election and then it took a lot of arm twisting to get a few on board.

And I don’t doubt right wing “News” is why they’re so crazy. Either they feed the hysteria of it or they follow it’s talking points because they know they’re slaves to right wing media or they’re so crazy they’re genuine believers. Regardless of why, the insanity talk about on Fox News determines how they legislate.

How does a country deal with a political party who operates in such bad faith?

Let's face it, this has been a thing for years. David Roberts made a Twitter thread about how, back when the Supreme Court still had some legitimacy, Republicans made a challenge to Obamacare by saying that, because of a section of the law that mentions "an Exchange established by the State,” therefore the federal government can't subsidise healthcare premiums. This interpretation was pretty obviously not what was intended by the law, and this fact meant fuck-all to the conservative lawyers trying to challenge Obamacare. This happened in 2014, and now it's obvious that, for the Right, this is basically the foundation of their rhetoric at this point:

[Jehanne]

Historically, the interpretation of the Constitution has been a bit of a running joke. Consider the Louisiana Purchase; it was probably unconstitutional.

This is why the whole wagon train of Federalist reconstruction is a farce. The Founders themselves were literalists when such suited them; when it did not, they were happy to "interpret" the Constitution to suit the purpose of the moment, even though they were the ones who had written it!

[Silver]

Republicans think keeping kids as ignorant as possible is the key to academic excellence
LGBTQ Nation

As the GOP lurches toward authoritarianism, one of its key tactics is to suppress free thinking. What better place to start that effort than in the schools (and by extension school libraries)? It’s no surprise that schools have emerged as one of the key battlegrounds in the culture war.

But what’s less noticed is that in branding itself the education party, the GOP is actually the ignorance party. Republicans’ constant attacks on bogus controversies like critical race theory are just an excuse to dumb down the school curriculum. That’s because Republicans believe that schools are where children should be taught how to become Republicans if they are taught anything at all.

Two things are happening as Republicans go after schools. One is to focus on public schools and make sure that students learn a right-wing version of history. That involves eliminating groups that the right doesn’t like, like LGBTQ people. Florida’s Don’t Say Gay bill is an obvious example of erasing the visibility of non-approved groups from schools.

Then there are the bills that protect the tender emotions of white students. These so-called “divisive concepts” laws prohibit any discussion of race in the classroom that could cause students to feel “anguish, guilt or any other form of discomfort or stress.” In short, the bills are meant to denature history so that the ongoing quest for civil rights in the U.S. effectively ends with the Civil War.

Not content to remove current events and history from schools, Republicans have gone after other subjects as well. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) called for the removal of 54 math books because he claimed that they somehow slipped critical race theory into the multiplication tables.

Absent from any of this discussion is anything about academic standards or, you know, actually making students smarter. There’s a good reason for that. What Republicans are interested in isn’t making students smarter, it’s making them more Republican. Apparently, the way to do that is to keep them as ignorant as possible.

That’s where the second part of the plan comes in. Republicans have been pushing hard for “school choice,” which would use taxpayer money to fund private schools. This effort got a big boost from–you guessed it–the Supreme Court, which ruled in its last session that two anti-LGBTQ Christian schools in Maine were entitled to receive state funding.

As those schools proved, the curricula are not designed to educate but to indoctrinate. School choice options, like religious schools and, worse still, home schools, can be as political as they want. Indeed, a leading figure on the right–Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA–has started a chain of “anti-woke” academies based on “bedrock principles” that sound a lot like Trumpism.

Kirk has the perfect credentials for the job. He never went to college.

[Silver]

Marjorie Taylor Greene shares fake video & claims “it’s real”
LGBTQ Nation

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) shared a doctored video clip of President Joe Biden on social media to make him appear like Adolf Hitler.

“What we all saw tonight from Biden,” she wrote above the clip, which showed Biden with a Hitler mustache and swastikas on the red background. When played, the video’s audio was a part of a Hitler speech.

“I guess when President Butterbeans is frail, weak, and dementia ridden, the Hitler imagery was their attempt to make him look ‘tough’ while he declares war on half of America as enemies of the state,” she wrote, even though the “Hitler imagery” was edited onto the video of the president.

[Jehanne]

[The Architect Of Fate]

Marjorie Taylor Greene shares fake video & claims “it’s real”
LGBTQ Nation

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) shared a doctored video clip of President Joe Biden on social media to make him appear like Adolf Hitler.

“What we all saw tonight from Biden,” she wrote above the clip, which showed Biden with a Hitler mustache and swastikas on the red background. When played, the video’s audio was a part of a Hitler speech.

“I guess when President Butterbeans is frail, weak, and dementia ridden, the Hitler imagery was their attempt to make him look ‘tough’ while he declares war on half of America as enemies of the state,” she wrote, even though the “Hitler imagery” was edited onto the video of the president.

A woman who has made blatantly anti-Semitic remarks calling someone else Hitler...

[arewethereyet]

That woman just creeps me out on so many levels.