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This Week In Crazy: Farewell to Iowa

This Week In Crazy: Farewell to Iowa

Trump’s depressed Iowa fans, Michele Bachmann’s wild-eyed prophecies, and the revenge of Cliven Bundy! Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the loony, bigoted, and hateful behavior of the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:

5. Cliven Bundy

The three-week siege of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge ended with the arrest of Ammon Bundy and some of members of his self-proclaimed “militia,” as well as the death of one of his accomplices. And while federal agents are all but begging Bundy’s remaining co-occupiers to peaceably remove themselves from the premises, Ammon’s daddy Cliven, who knows a little something about facing down federal authorities and getting his way, has decided to inflame the situation with an insane letter.

Bundy has put officials on notice in a certified letter to the Harney County Sheriff (he also copied Oregon governor Kate Brown and President Barack Obama, as well as “Internet to the World”) that his son’s merry band “WILL RETAIN POSSESSION OF THE HARLAN COUNTY RESOURCE CENTER” [emphasis, all of it, in the original]. In the letter he claims to speak on behalf of all people of Harney County (never mind that the elder Bundy is a resident of Bunkerville, Nevada), and demands that all federal and state authorities clear out of that region.

Bundy letter

Click to enlarge

Bundy posted to his Facebook page the letter, which is as sure to actually accomplish his goals as it is to help his son’s case:

Notice to Harney Co. Sheriff.Share share share…..

Posted by Bundy Ranch on Monday, February 1, 2016

Hat tip Daily Kos

Next: Sore Loser Trump Fans

4. Sore Loser Trump Fans

Before he leapt into his fit of hysterics about do-overs and fraud, Donald Trump was uncharacteristically gracious about becoming a total loser in Iowa. But his followers were not.

Trump’s biggest fangirl, Ann Coulter, took to Twitter in the moments following The Donald’s loss in the Iowa caucuses to proclaim that her anointed one was actually the “leading GOP vote-getter tonight, among natural-born-American candidates.”

She also blasted Fox News for providing an explainer on how caucuses work, a gambit she said was an attempt to keep Trump supporters (presumably first-time caucus-goers) from coming out:

That was just part of the many-tentacled conspiracy unfurled by the media-political establishment to keep Trump from winning the Hawkeye State, apparently. His fanatics also began promoting a rumor — started by Breitbart — that the Microsoft app used to tally votes had given a huge boost to Marco Rubio.

Assembling online under the banner of the hashtag #MicrosoftRubioFraud, the Trump Twitterati connected the dots between Microsoft’s financial support of Rubio, their vote tallying site’s partial failure in some districts (due to overuse), and the triumphant showings of Ted Cruz and Rubio (who still came in third after Trump, but never mind).

Also, Reuters gathered up the tears of Trump supporters and put them online for all to see:

Next: Michele Bachmann

3. Michele Bachmann

Improbable onetime Republican candidate for president Michele Bachmann sounded her trumpet for the End Times (again).

In a radio interview last Saturday, Bachmann laid out her case for why turmoil in the Middle East, coupled with our evil president’s satanic ambition, would envelop the Earth in Obama’s dark dominion during its final fiery days.

Per Right Wing Watch:

“I believe that [Russia and Iran] are positioning themselves so that someday they could invade Israel to be able to take over the vast stores of oil and natural gas that Israel is controlling,” she said, adding that “this very unique new partnership between Iran and Russia in Syria” with the support of China “lines up with scripture.” All of these powers, she said, are seeking “a global world order to keep their game going into the future and to support them if they would invade against Israel.”

And who will lead this global world order? Why, none other than Obama.

This is a recurring theme with Bachmann, who espies portents of the Armageddon in every news clipping. Last November, in another radio interview, Bachmann enjoined Christians to make their merry way down their end-of-the-world bucket list and begin converting as many Jews as possible. “We’re seeing the fulfillment of scripture right in front of our eyes,” she said.

Hat tip and audio courtesy Right Wing Watch

Next: Linda Harvey

2. Linda Harvey

Meet Linda Harvey, president of the Ohio-based Mission: America, an anti-gay, anti-trans advocacy group, whose tenets hold that “homosexuality is not normal and natural” and that America is a “gravely ill” nation that can only be saved by “the blood of Jesus Christ.” It may surprise nobody that the Southern Poverty Law Center considers them a hate group.

In a column titled “Is Your Pastor Apologizing to LGBT Anarchists?” published on WND Wednesday, the homophobic activist attacked not gay rights activists — that would be too easy — but Christian pastors who don’t share her particularly virulent strain of intolerance. In some respects, this is even more vile.

Harvey has previously blasted LGBT activists as the “Gaystapo,” and decried their “fascist” bid for equality. Now she has set her ire on pastors who, she says, are too accommodating in their views — namely, any religious leaders who are the slightest bit tolerant and still have the temerity to call themselves Christian. It isn’t enough for the former ad exec to tear down gay men and women. She needs to redefine Christianity as a whole.

If you happen to know a man or woman of the cloth guilty of any of the following, send them Harvey’s way. She knows how to sniff out a bad Christian.

Do they, for instance, ever — gasp— apologize to gay people for the centuries of intolerance and violence they have suffered at the hands of Christian institutions? They shouldn’t, Harvey says — such “apologies are unnecessary because broad claims of victimhood are exaggerated to put Christians on defense.”

Or do they ever try to wheel out the fallacious “‘Christ includes everyone’ heresy.” Malarkey! In the Gospel of Linda, Christ does not welcome gay people with open arms because “We cannot treat these depravities like neutral traits or disabilities requiring sympathy.”

Perhaps you know a pastor who has been hoodwinked by “the civil rights ploy.” Marriage equality is not something we need to strive for anymore, because, she writes, it “was achieved at creation, because males marry females and vice versa. Have you ever heard your pastor teach the congregation this one simple talking point, grounded in Scripture? Stating this doctrinally essential fact overcomes the main ‘gay’ claim.” What a wonderful privilege to be Linda Harvey, for whom all the admissible facts and data in the world were revealed millennia ago.

It is one thing to stake your personal bigotry on a narrow interpretation of your faith; it is another thing to say yours is the only true version of that faith.

Next: The Cruz Crew

1. The Ted Cruz Christian Right Coalition

The Religious Right helped secure Ted Cruz’s victory in Iowa, so perhaps it’s worth taking another look at who these people are and what they stand for.

Luckily, both Media Matters and Right Wing Watch have been keeping their fastidious eyes on the long list of far-right conservative activists and lobbyists, as well as the extremists media personalities, who have been lining up behind Cruz.

Media Matters’ Daniel Angster described the lineup at Cruz’s last rally in Iowa:

Cruz’s rally featured seven speakers including anti-gay activists like CEO of The Family Leader Bob Vander Plaats and Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson as well as Iowa’s Rep. Steve King (R). However, it was the presence of radio hosts Glenn Beck, Michael Berry, and Steve Deace which best illustrated the divisive nature of Cruz’s platform.

Robertson, stumping for Cruz Monday, railed against the “depravity” and “perversion” of gay marriage. (The prurient 69-year-old has a nagging preoccupation with sexual practices, warning CPAC-goers last year that STDs are the “revenge of the hippies.”)

And it’s not as if the Texas senator just shrugs these people off. Each endorsement is broadcast with an enthusiastic release, touting the endorser’s true “spiritual commitment.” At times, Cruz even borrows some of their most extreme rhetoric — such as his appropriation of the idea of a “rainbow jihad,” an image coined by radio talker Deace to describe the LGBT rights lobby.

It makes sense that Cruz would attract luminaries of the extreme religious right since, as Right Wing Watch’s Bryan Tashman writes, “he has vowed to implement their agenda with promises to defy the Supreme Court on gay marriage, consider engaging in anti-gay civil disobedience, sign sweeping anti-abortion legislation, go after Planned Parenthood, appoint ultraconservative justices to the bench and block threats to religious liberty of Christians, which he says are rampant in America.”

An incomplete list of radical pastors and far-right extremists who have thrown in with Cruz includes doomsday cultist Mike Bickle, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, American Family Association mouthpiece Bryan Fischer, and Family Leader founder Vander Plaats (among many others).

If anyone is heartened by the results in Iowa, and wishes to see in Cruz a quieter, more palatable alternative to the bombastic Trump… don’t deceive yourself.

—

Image: DonkeyHotey (via Flickr)

Check out previous editions of This Week In Crazy here. Think we missed something? Let us know in the comments!Get This Week In Crazy delivered to your inbox every Friday, by signing up for our daily email newsletter.

This Week In Crazy: Beware The Gaystapo Goon Squad!

This Week In Crazy: Beware The Gaystapo Goon Squad!

Homophobes, misogynists, bigots… what a wonderful world. Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the loony behavior of the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:

5. Kim Davis

This is just getting ugly. The right of same-sex couples to get married in all 50 states, which was enshrined in the SCOTUS ruling in June, continues to be obstructed by a cluster of obstinate local government officials and the special interest groups that back them in court. And now — even after losing in court — a clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky named Kim Davis is doubling down on the “religious liberty” bunk and ignoring a federal judge’s order to begin issuing marriage licenses.

This is the same county clerk who was the subject of a video that went viral in July, showing a gay couple attempting to get a marriage license and getting blown off by the craven bureaucrat. The ACLU subsequently brought an action against Davis, and on Wednesday a federal judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, ordering her to resume issuing licenses — a ruling conservative Christians say “advances the homosexual agenda.”

Davis was represented by Liberty Counsel, a law firm that advocates for anti-gay, anti-abortion policies, and is considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. They issued a statement Thursday saying: “Kim Davis did not sign up as a clerk to issue same-sex marriage licenses. Her job duty was changed by five lawyers without any constitutional authority. At a minimum, her religious convictions should be accommodated.”

In his opinion, U.S. District Judge David Bunning said that Davis’ Constitutional right to practice her religion was not at all under threat from same-sex couples, writing:

[Davis] may continue to attend church twice a week, participate in Bible Study and minister to female inmates at the Rowan County Jail. She is even free to believe that marriage is a union between one man and one woman, as many Americans do. However, her religious convictions cannot excuse her from performing the duties that she took an oath to perform as Rowan County Clerk.

On Thursday, however, she refused to obey the judge’s order (she had previously ignored Kentucky governor Steven Beshear also). And she isn’t even the only clerk in Kentucky doing this — let alone the country.

Next: Ted Nugent 

4. Ted Nugent

Mike Licht via Flickr

Speaking on Bill Keeler’s radio show Wednesday, “Freedom drenched killer American music” aficionado Ted Nugent weighed in on the whole fracas that erupted when Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump made crass remarks about Fox News host Megyn Kelly’s menstrual cycle after she grilled him during last Thursday’s GOP debate.

The Nuge said he was a “big fan” of Trump since he believes in “bold, aggressive, unapologetic truth,” and that he’s not a fan of Kelly since she pretends to be a member of the status quo — “either that or she’s just getting stupid.” Bottom line, quoth Nugent: “Donald Trump is the good guy, currently Megyn Kelly ain’t.”

Of course his remarks about Kelly were not at all limited to her journalistic competence or politics: “Sometimes when I’m loading my magazines,” he said, referring to ammunition, “I like to just look at her. And I usually sit naked on the couch dropping hot brass on my stuff.”

Media Matters has a rundown of Nugent’s long, sad history of misogyny. But it’s okay. Even if he manages to alienate every woman on Earth, he’ll always have his guns.

ViaMedia Matters

Next: Erick Erickson

3. Erick Erickson and RedState

Naturally, Nugent wasn’t the only misogynist troll to weigh in on the Kelly/Trump row this week. But at least Nugent is consistent. Erick Erickson, editor-in-chief of the right-wing blog RedState, is a hypocrite.

First Erickson banned Trump from the conservative candidates’ summit he organized last weekend on account of the billionaire businessman’s comments, saying: “No legitimate candidate suggests somehow a female asking questions is doing it because she’s hormonal.”

Then Erick “I’m Not One To Judge” Erickson turned around and published a featured blog post from one of his site’s contributors, which claimed that Hillary Clinton lacked a “unique selling propostion [sic] beyond proving even a homely woman can sleep her way into power.”

Media Matters highlighted Erickson’s double standard — that some women you’re allowed to target, and others you aren’t — and his habit of making sexist remarks, while providing a link to the original post.

RedState‘s response to Media Matters highlighted the central dilemma of calling attention to trolls — at the end of the day, you’re really just feeding them. (We suppose we are guilty of this too.)

Screen Shot 2015-08-13 at 4.20.07 PM

Yes, as a matter of fact, we did.

ViaMedia Matters

Next: Pat Robertson

2. Pat Robertson 

PatRobertsonScreenshotConservative televangelist Pat Robertson is blowing hard gusts of hate this week, calling same-sex marriage part of a “flood of evil” that threatens to overwhelm the United States.

In a recent edition of The 700 Club for the Christian Broadcasting Network, Robertson asked viewers: 

Who would’ve thought, 30 or 40 years ago when we began, that the Supreme Court would’ve said that homosexuality is a constitutional right? Who would’ve thought that the Supreme Court would’ve said marriage between homosexuals was a constitutional right? Who would’ve thought that the slaughter of babies, over 55 million of them, would’ve been declared a constitutional right by the Supreme Court?

Who would’ve thought after 55 years of broadcasting at CBN, Robertson would still be spewing the same closed-minded trash?

Who would’ve thought nearly $57 million would be donated in 2014 to CBN, the same company whose founder and host questions whether members of the LGBTQ community have the right to live openly in the United States?

Who would’ve thought any person who has been alive as long as Robertson — 85 years — would still not have learned that love wins?

The mad would-be prophet of the airwaves also said this week that only the draconian Biblical laws in the Book of Leviticus dealing with homosexuality apply. God-fearing, heterosexual Christians, need not worry, Robertson says. Jesus fulfilled all the laws for Christians, and apparently paid all Christians’ tabs.

Just be sure to love God and love your neighbor as yourself, Robertson added.

But what if your neighbor is gay, Pat?

Since the Bible seems inconclusive, should we consult the Supreme Court?

Next: Linda Harvey 

1. Linda Harvey

Linda Harvey is the president of Mission: America, an Ohio-based conservative Christian, anti-gay, anti-trans advocacy group, which believes that “homosexuality is not normal and natural” and that America is a “gravely ill” nation that can only be saved by “the blood of Jesus Christ” Oh, and the Southern Poverty Law Center considers them a hate group.

Harvey is a former ad exec who started the group in 1995, their site says, “after years of being ‘part of the problem.’ Lord, forgive us.”

She’s also a blogger for the perennially cracked WND, where in a post published Tuesday, titled “‘Equality Act’: Gaystapo’s Latest Attack,” she rips into the “fascist attempt” of the “gay lobby” to dismantle the First Amendment to the Constitution, and lays out her case against the “Equality Act,” which, according to the Human Rights Campaign, would “guarantee explicit, permanent protections for LGBT people.” The horror.

Harvey’s not having any of that. In nearly 1,000 words of verbal ipecac, inveighing against “Christ’s enemies,” the “sexual anarchy lobby,” “homosexual advocates,” and “gender-bending people,” she describes the act as “tyranny” and a “weapon of revolution” against American Christians of conscience. “Christianity,” she says “is now a target to be obliterated.”

Unpacking her ignorance, she writes:

If you support religious liberty – or say you do – you cannot support the “Equality Act.” It kills religious liberty. And an amendment won’t fix it…

[…] “LGBT” pressure groups do not dictate Christian doctrine, first of all. Our Almighty God has already done that. And they define “discrimination” as any opinion they don’t like, even if the view is based on reality.

Homosexuality is not inborn – it’s not like race – and the behavior is harmful to individuals and societies. These identities and attractions do not characterize separate types of “persons” (as the Obergefell majority ruling incorrectly assumed). So they are not defensible under the 14th Amendment.

[…]  We must not let them do this. This bill should be Priority No. 1 to defeat this year, next year and as long as it takes. Everyone needs to make it clear to congressional representatives that this fascist attempt to dismantle the First Amendment, to defy parental authority and to drive Christians out of jobs simply cannot happen.

Harvey concludes by saying that the “so-called ‘Equality Act’ is not about equality – we already have that. It’s about calling evil good, calling sin a right, and about punishing and silencing the voices of morality and faith.”

It is encouraging to hear that “we already have that,” Ms. Harvey. We’re not exactly sure who gets to be included in your particular “we,” but if you could just step down from that soapbox you think is Sinai, you might find that equality is actually a lot more elusive in this country than you think.

Photo: Glenn Halog via Flickr