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This Week In Crazy: We Wish You A Joyous And Very Secular Late Autumn Period

This Week In Crazy: We Wish You A Joyous And Very Secular Late Autumn Period

It’s that non-denominational, post-Halloween, pre-New Years period again. How are you planning to celebrate the War on Christmas? 

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. Raheem Kassam

It’s the week after Halloween, which means we’re already deep into the Winter Holiday season.

I call it the “Winter Holiday season,” and not the “Christmas season,” because I am — as you may have guessed — a foot soldier in the secular army, battling for the soul of the Western World.

Taking the “Christmas” out of Christmas is just one of the many ways me and my Baphomet-worshipping, Feminazi cohorts have worked to dismantle the cultural pylons that sustain this homogeneously white and Christian empire we call the West.

One of our latest and most insidious tactics to de-Christianize the late-autumn period has been to whitewash (or rather redwash) the yuletide imagery from those festive coffee cups Starbucks traditionally switches to every November to coincide with the explosion of aural misery you and your caroling kind call “Jingle Bell Rock.”

Unfortunately for us, Breitbart’s Raheem Kassam has spotted the gambit, and he isn’t having it. In a post entitled “War On Christmas: Starbucks Red Cups Are Emblematic Of The Christian Cultural Cleansing Of The West,” Kassam tracks the descent of these cups’ adorable design from that of a “Christmas-oriented product” to the massacre of Western mores we have before us today.

Over the last six years, Kassam writes, Starbucks has steadily removed the Christmas elements from the cups — scrubbing the Nativity-evoking stars and Christmas pine tree branches, and replacing them with snowmen and snowflakes — which, while not strictly speaking “Christian,” at least “resembles something mildly festive and Western.” And now this year we have before us a “monstrosity” — behold: A Bare. Red. Cup.

Starbucks Launches Exclusive Canadian Red Cup Pre-Order (CNW Group/Starbucks Coffee Canada)

Godless joe.

“The only thing that can redeem them from this whitewashing of Christmas is to print Bible verses on their cups next year,” Kassam writes.

“And no,” he contends, “I’m not ‘reading too much into it.'”

ViaBreitbart

Next: National Religious Liberties Conference

4. National Religious Liberties Conference

As long as we’re on the subject of the erroneous Christian persecution complex, we should acknowledge that there are arenas of more consequence than vessels for eggnog lattes where this fallacy plays out.

To wit: the three presidential candidates who have worked most diligently to position themselves as our nation’s last best hope for a Christian theocracy — Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and Bobby Jindal — will be attending the National Religious Liberties Conference this weekend, in an apparent effort to shore up their support among far-right evangelical Christians.

As if any of them needed to establish their bonafides with this lot.

In the last debate, Jindal made clear who his base was, advising his supporters that “We believe that the tomb is open,” heralding a new day for the country he wants to lead. Woe to any non-Christian Americans living under President Jindal, who made “religious liberty” one of the early touchstones of his campaign for the White House. (You have the liberty to follow Jindal’s religion, you see.)

And you might remember the little tug of war between Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz, angling for the media to recognize each of them as Kim Davis’s #1 fan

Well, the National Religious Liberties Conference is being hosted by Kevin Swanson, an extremist pastor, who, according to Right Wing Watch, has argued that Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant and a communist and has advised that women on welfare should be treated as war plunder and accordingly forced into prostitution. But that’s all!

[Swanson] wants the government to apply Old Testament law in all matters, thinks birth control turns women’s uteruses into “graveyards for lots and lots of little babies,” spoke up for Uganda’s “kill-the-gays” bill, sees constant threats to recruit his daughter to become a lesbian from Disney movies and Girl Scout cookies, and describes homosexuality as a satanic “disease” that causes natural disasters.

This is the guy the GOP contenders want in their corner — but I guess they need to blame natural disasters on something. 

ViaRight Wing Watch

Next: Michael Savage

3. Michael Savage

Conservative radio shock jock and Guinness record holder for most violations of Godwin’s Law, Michael Savage, has never been one for subtlety or sanity. And he’s made some remarks recently, which are basically a vintage Savage roundup of his laziest and looniest historical comparisons and lowest possible blows.

He refers to President Obama as “this thing in the White House,” and reiterated his familiar talking points: namely, that we are living in a “dictatorship,” and that “Nazis Nazis Nazis Nazis Nazis Nazis.” (Or something like that.)

His latest rant is in fact only notable because the radio host can now be seen, as well as heard. Joining NewsmaxTV’s Steve Malzberg for a video gab session, Savage promoted his new book Government Zero, which he says is “selling like hotcakes” — despite the fact that “a very big figure in the media” informed Savage that he has been “blacklisted.”

During the interview, Savage called for Americans to stand up against the “radical, insane leftwing agenda,” and declared that we need to convene a Nuremberg-style trial — a “Wichita People’s Trial in America” — to try President “Barry” for his crimes against this country.

Savage even goes off on an extended rant against the… oh, you know what? You can watch it yourself.

ViaMediaite

Next: Tony Perkins

2. Tony Perkins

It’s been some time since Tony Perkins graced this page. Perkins, you might recall, is the president of the Family Research Council (FRC), a lobbying group which “often makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The fact that the FRC has argued that gay people are sexual predators, while also employing degenerate reality star Josh Duggar as their executive director, ought to give them an occasion for a little introspection — but their campaign continues unabated.

The folks at Right Wing Watch this week reported on a fundraising letter that Perkins transmitted as a response to the president’s decision to call for an end to ineffective and harmful “conversion therapies” for young gay people.

Per RWW, the letter urged

supporters to help them stop “sexual brainwashing of our children by our government” and thwart Obama’s plan “to get as many American children into the funnel of the sexual revolution as possible and make sure there’s no possible escape.”

“We cannot stand by and allow the President to force his radical sexual agenda on our children,” Perkins says in the letter, which also includes a glossary of definitions LGBTQ terms packaged as “offensive material.”

You can read more of excerpts from the letter here.

Next: The Defeat of HERO

1. The Defeat of HERO

For a country trending toward full equal rights for LGBTQ citizens, this Tuesday dealt a dispiriting setback, when Houston voters opted to reject an anti-discrimination ordinance that would have prohibited discrimination in areas like housing, employment, and city contracts on the basis of age, race, sexual orientation, disability, and gender identity (among other characteristics).

Opponents of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) zeroed in on one element that wasn’t even written into the legislation — a fearful and unsubstantiated notion that, if the referendum passed, men could “pretend to be women” in order to use women’s restrooms. And they used that discredited canard to wage what Houston mayor Annise D. Parker (who is lesbian) called a “deliberate campaign of lies,” which ultimately proved successful in killing the ordinance.

Hungry for a victory in a year that marked the legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide, right-wing commentators, conservative Christians, and Republican opponents of the proposition (including Texas governor Greg Abbot and his lieutenant governor Dan Patrick) proceeded to giddily jump on HERO’s corpse.

Patrick told reporters that the measure’s 61-to-39-percent loss showed that “liberal, leftist ideas of the Democrats — led by this mayor and led by Hillary Clinton are going to be rejected,” and that the vote “had nothing to do with equal rights.”

In his column, Todd Starnes declared that the “bullies lost” and that it was a “good night for religious liberty.”

Sean Hannity repeated the myth of the “bathroom bill” propagated by the proposition’s opponents on his Wednesday radio show, saying that had it passed, it would have “forced” girls “to share bathrooms and showers with biological males who identify themselves as female.” Audio below courtesy of Media Matters:

And American Family Association spokesperson Bryan Fischer, presumably frothing with glee, declared that the defeat of the “gender-twisting ordinance” (as he characterized it) was a signal that “America isn’t dead yet,” but cautioned that efforts like HERO, which “are falsely advertised as ‘equality’ bills… when they are the exact opposite” should be “a reminder that America must choose between the homosexual agenda and religious liberty because we cannot have both.”

A New York Times editorial, criticizing the hateful rhetoric of HERO’s opponents, offers a succinct reply: “In time, the bigots are destined to lose.”

—

Image: melissa brawner via Flickr 

Check out previous editions of This Week In Crazy here. Think we missed something? Let us know in the comments!

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Secretary Of State Colin Powell Also Used Personal Email Account

Secretary Of State Colin Powell Also Used Personal Email Account

by Matt Wilstein, Mediaite.

Republicans have been jumping all over a report from The New York Times that claims Hillary Clinton exclusively used a personal email account to conduct business while serving as Secretary of State for the Obama administration. But now, it turns out that at least one of her predecessors from the Bush administration did the same.

In a statement to Politico, an aide to Colin Powell, who served under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, confirmed that he too relied on a personal email account and did not know of any rules preventing him from doing so.

The statement from Powell’s camp reads:

He was not aware of any restrictions nor does he recall being made aware of any over the four years he served at State. He sent emails to his staff generally via their State Department email addresses. These emails should be on the State Department computers. He might have occasionally used personal email addresses, as he did when emailing to family and friends.

He did not take any hard copies of emails with him when he left office and has no record of the emails. They were all unclassified and mostly of a housekeeping nature. He came into office encouraging the use of emails as a way of getting the staff to embrace the new 21st [century] information world.

The account he used has been closed for a number of years. In light of new policies published in 2013 and 2014 and a December 2014 letter from the State Department advising us of these polices, we will be working with the department to see if any additional action is required on our part.

This precedent was acknowledged by a Clinton aide, who responded to the Times report by saying, “Like Secretaries of State before her, she used her own email account when engaging with any Department officials.”

As for Powell’s successor, Condoleezza Rice, a source close to her told Business Insider that she did not use a private email address during her time in Bush’s cabinet, but that may have been because she “barely used email” at all.

“Secretary Rice rarely used email during her tenure at State. On the very rare occasion she did, her State Department email was the vehicle for official communication,” the source reportedly said. “She did not use personal email for official communication as Secretary.”

However, in another statement released Tuesday to that same site, State Department deputy spokesperon Marie Harf said Clinton’s successor, John Kerry, is “the first Secretary of State to rely primarily on a state.gov email account.”

This article originally appeared on Mediaite. You may also enjoy these Mediaite stories:

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Photo: jdlasica via Flickr

Mitch McConnell’s Obamacare Comments Were Not A ‘Gaffe’

Mitch McConnell’s Obamacare Comments Were Not A ‘Gaffe’

by Evan McMurry, Mediaite.

In last night’s Kentucky Senate debate, Democratic challenger Alison Grimes declined again to answer whether she voted for President Barack Obama, while Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called Kentucky’s health care portal Kynect “fine” and suggested Kentuckians could keep their their state exchange.

In the epistemologically agnostic world of national political media, these two are both “gaffes” of equal weight:

Nonsense. Grimes’ refusal to answer the question certainly doesn’t speak well of her as a candidate, but it’s a political mistake, not a policy one. McConnell’s comments, on the other hand, constitute a deliberate obfuscation on the health care policy of his state.

McConnell said Monday night:

“Kentucky Kynect is a website. It was paid for by a grant from the federal government. The website can continue, but in my view the best interests of the country would be achieved by pulling out Obamacare root and branch.”

More:

When pressed on whether he would like to keep Kynect, McConnell continued to argue that Kentucky officials could continue the state exchange “if they’d like to.”

“States can decide whether or to expand Medicaid or not,” he said. “It’s a state decision.”

When asked again if he personally was endorsing the continuation of the state exchange, McConnell responded, “Yeah, I think it’s fine to have a website.”

As multiple critics have pointed out, that makes literally no sense. Obamacare is the foundation of Kynect, and repealing it would end federal subsidies on the health plan enrollment side and federal funding on the Medicaid side, leaving Kentucky with a shell of its health care expansion. This is to say nothing of the individual mandate, the fulcrum of the law that keeps insurance pools diversified and rates controlled. The law, the Medicaid expansion, and the exchanges are all complementary and mutually reinforcing, something McConnell only pretends not to understand.

What’s behind McConnell’s awkward attempt to like the website but not the policy that enfranchised it? It has entirely to do with Obamacare’s undisputed success in the state. Kentucky was one of the few red states to actively participate in both the health exchanges and the Medicaid expansion, with the former netting almost 100,000 enrollees and the latter signing up over 300,000, newly insuring about 10 percent of the state. Kynect’s functionality has been held up as a template for states like Oregon that are saddled with dysfunctional websites.

The success is mirrored in the popularity. Obamacare is underwater with Kentucky residents 33-57, but Kynect is popular, as is Governor Steve Beshear, who spearheaded it.

This has put McConnell in a tight spot. His attempts to downplay the ACA’s success in his state have exploded in his face, meaning he must find a way to be for a state program but against the national law it implements. Hence he praised the “website” at the Kentucky debate but squirmed out of the larger policy implications. That’s not a “gaffe”; it’s a blatant refusal to honestly address the future of his constituents’ health care.

This article originally appeared on Mediaite. You may also enjoy these Mediaite stories:

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Rand Paul Rails Against ‘Autocrat’ Obama in Value Voters Speech

Rand Paul Rails Against ‘Autocrat’ Obama in Value Voters Speech

by Andrew Kirell, Mediaite

Shortly after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) exited the 2014 Value Voters Summit stage, his colleague Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) took the podium to rail against the “arrogance” of President Obama and suggest social conservatives and libertarians can work together, rather than be deeply opposed.

“Some seem to believe you must choose either liberty or virtue — that to be virtuous you can’t have too much liberty,” Paul told the conference. “That is exactly wrong. Liberty is absolutely essential to virtue. It is our freedom to make individual choices that allows us to be virtuous.”

The senator also played to the socially conservative crowd, discussing abortion a great deal: “The debate isn’t really about whether government has a role in protecting life. The debate really hinges on when life begins.” He added that, as a Christian, he will stand up for the defenseless, including both the unborn but oppressed minorities around the world.

Like his opening act, Sen. Cruz, the Kentucky senator discussed the story of Meriam Ibrahim, the Sudanese Christian who sought refugee with the U.S. Embassy after being sentenced to death for marrying a non-Muslim man.

Video of Paul’s remarks below:

Screenshot: YouTube 

This article originally appeared on Mediaite. You may also enjoy these Mediaite stories:

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