Thursday, February 8, 2024

News bits: American CN theocracy; Vapor wins minds; Fact check update

The Friendly Atheist reports about something that has been a cherished Christian nationalist goal for years, namely Christian supremacy: 
Republicans in Arizona have introduced a bill that would ban Satanic displays in public spaces. It comes months after a Satanic display in the Iowa Capitol sent conservatives reeling, leading one man to vandalize it. (Just last week, he was charged with a hate crime.)

Titled the “Reject Escalating Satanism by Preserving Essential Core Traditions (RESPECT) Act,” SB 1279 would alter the law by adding the following line to three different parts of the state statute: 

SATANIC MEMORIALS, STATUES, ALTARS OR DISPLAYS OR ANY OTHER METHOD OF REPRESENTING OR HONORING SATAN MAY NOT BE DISPLAYED ON PUBLIC PROPERTY IN THIS STATE.

The bill was introduced by Sen. Jake Hoffman, a first-term senator and former member of the State House most (in)famous for being one of Arizona’s fake electors back in 2020 [i.e., he is a traitor].

Bills like this, though, aren’t introduced because there’s any chance of them passing. They’re introduced to placate conservative Christians who fantasize about living in a theocracy. They’re a reminder that Christians like Hoffman believe they’re superior to people who don’t share their faith, and they intend to use the government to codify that belief into law—or at least send that message.
We all knew this day was coming. One day one of these laws will pass and lawsuits will challenge this up to the USSC. At that point, the USSC could go full-blown Christian Taliban theocratic and establish Christiniaty as the supreme religion in the land. At present, that prospect looks to be at least 6 years off in the future, assuming it ever comes. After all, short of an outright declaration of supremacy, there are ways to make Christianity the supreme religious bigot in America. 
_________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________

An article The Hill published discusses the candidacy of RFK Jr. for president:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is poised to be a spoiler in the 2024 presidential election. In a poll conducted late last year, he was supported by 22 percent of respondents and a greater number of independent voters than either President Biden or former President Trump. In January, Gallup reported that 52 percent of Americans view him favorably, a higher percentage than either Biden (41 percent) or Trump (42 percent) received.

These results no doubt reflect the popularity of the Kennedy name and dissatisfaction with the likely nominees of the major parties; ....

Kennedy has declared, without evidence, that government officials knew that vaccines cause autism but “knowingly allowed the pharmaceutical industry to poison an entire generation of American children”; vaccines are “the only medical product that is not safety-tested prior to licensure”; chemicals in the water supply are “drugging” children and influencing transgender identity; Wi-Fi and 5G cause cancer; HIV is not the true and only cause of AIDS; more school shootings happened following the widespread use of Prozac and other anti-depressant drugs; COVID vaccines contain microchips to keep track of individuals and are “the deadliest vaccines ever made”; the COVID virus is “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people and the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

Early on, he stated that anyone who wanted to close the U.S. border with Mexico was “probably a xenophobe and maybe a racist.” More recently, in a conversation that involved Elon Musk, he promised to “try to formulate policies that will seal the border permanently.”
The article goes on at length with other examples of RFK lies and blither. He is a QAnon-level conspiracy crackpot, but despite that millions of Americans see him favorably. The question is who might be spoil the election for, DJT or Biden? That is not so clear. 
_________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________

PolitiFact reports about something most Americans probably already knew:
We published our 1,000th rated fact-check of Donald Trump.

In classic Trump fashion, he claimed in his New Hampshire primary victory speech Jan. 23 that Democrats used the COVID-19 pandemic to "cheat" in the 2020 presidential election. Unsurprisingly to our regular readers, his claim was Pants on Fire.  
American fact-checkers have never encountered a politician who shares Trump’s disregard for factual accuracy. 

Hot pants Don -- he is on fire!


_________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________

The New Republic reports about the extreme partisan cynicism that killed a border deal they all wanted:
Shocker: Republicans Admit in Private That They Killed a Good Deal

Democratic Senator Michael Bennet says GOP colleagues have privately confessed that the now-dead immigration deal was the toughest one they’d ever get

In an extraordinary spectacle, virtually all Senate Republicans joined together Wednesday to block a bipartisan bill that would have given Republicans much of what they wanted on border security. Why? Because Donald Trump told them to.
The bad faith and ill-will that authoritarian radical Repubs operate in could not be much clearer. But, some sources are reporting that Putin is happy with this outcome. Killing the border deal also killed US military support for Ukraine. In the coming weeks, Ukraine is expected to weaken and then begin a slow collapse as it runs out of military supplies and personnel. Russian vengeance will be brutal. It will be a genocide on a par with what the Nazis pulled off in the 1940s.

No comments:

Post a Comment