https://babylonbee.com/news/dark-horse-c..._-ylfK02zb3mgnU

IOWA—In an unexpected twist for the Democratic primaries, surprise candidate Hiltasha Clintonov, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Russia, has been declared the winner of the Iowa caucuses.

The Terribly Tiny God of MAGA Christians
I feel sorry for professed Christians who support this President.

They have a profound and fundamental spiritual problem: their God is too small.

They passionately worship a deity made in their own image: white, American, Republican, male—and perpetually terrified of Muslims, immigrants, gay children, Special Counsel reports, mandalas, Harry Potter, Starbucks holiday cups, yoga, wind turbines, Science—everything. Their God is so laughably minuscule, so fully neutered of power, so completely devoid of functioning vertebrae that “He” cannot protect them from the encroaching monsters they are certain lurk around every corner to overwhelm them.

MAGA Christians sure put up a brave face, I’ll give them that. They shower this God with effusive praise on Sunday mornings, they sing with reckless abandon in church services about Him, they brazenly pump out their chests on social media regarding His infinite wisdom, they defiantly declare this God’s staggering might at every opportunity—but their lives tell the truth: They believe He is impotent and scared and ineffectual. You can tell this because they insist on doing all the things that a God-sized God would simply do as part of the gig. ..
https://johnpavlovitz.com/2019/04/11/the...35ad5LInF-yD-Hg

Lohnt sich in Gaenze zu lesen.

https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t...64b&oe=5EDABFB4

End the GOP
In order to save our democracy, we must not merely defeat the Republican Party.

There are two figures in the Republican Party who best represent the state of the GOP in the Trump era. The first, of course, is Donald Trump. The second is Roy Moore. By the time Moore defeated Jeff Sessions’s replacement, Luther Strange, in the Republican primary for Alabama’s special election in 2017, he had already been a minor celebrity on the right-wing fringe for nearly 20 years. He had been removed from the Alabama Supreme Court twice for refusing to comply with federal rulings. He regularly made statements disparaging Islam and homosexuality. He had been a proponent of the theory that Barack Obama had not been born in the United States and had led an organization that celebrated pro-Confederate holidays. True to form, Moore would go on to make comments suggesting an ambivalence about American slavery during his campaign—America was last great, he had said in response to a question at a rally that September, “when families were united—even though we had slavery, they cared for one another.” ...

... What we become in this decade and this century depends entirely upon what we decide to do with the Republican Party we have before us today. Either we will be a nation committed to prosperity and political equality for all—a new republic for the many and not the few—or we will not. Our choice is clear—and is, in fact, being made for us by the functionaries of prejudice and business as we speak. We must wrest that choice back and set the country forward. We must end the GOP.
https://newrepublic.com/article/156411/end-gop

Ein langer Artikel -und wie immer, lesenswert.

https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t...e6b&oe=5EC754CE

Ted Cruz tried to mock AOC's scientific knowledge – it didn't end well
The Texas senator tried to pick a fight after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called out Mike Pence’s coronavirus credentials
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020...ruz-coronavirus

Excellent AOC! This is exactly how you deal with these assholes.

https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t...fb1&oe=5EF9BA6D

Misinforming the Majority: A Deliberate Strategy of Right-Wing Libertarians
Many individuals who follow politics and journalists think that the right-wing playbook began with the Koch brothers. However, in her groundbreaking book, Nancy MacLean traces their political strategy to a Southern economist who created the foundation for today’s libertarian oligarchy in the 1950s.

Nancy MacLean: The modern extreme right wing I’m talking about, just to be clear, is the libertarian movement that now sails under the Republican flag, particularly but not only the Freedom Caucus, yet goes back to the 1950s in both parties. President Eisenhower called them “stupid” and fashioned his approach — calling it modern Republicanism — as an antidote to them. Goldwater was their first presidential candidate. He bombed. Reagan, they believed, was going to enact their agenda. He didn’t. But beginning in the early 2000s, they became a force to be reckoned with. What had changed? The discovery by their chief funder, Charles Koch, of the approach developed by James McGill Buchanan for how to take apart the liberal state.

Buchanan studied economics at the University of Chicago and belonged to the same milieu as F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises, but he used his training to analyze public life. And he supplied what no one else had: an operational strategy to vanquish the model of government they had been criticizing for decades — and prevent it from being recreated. It was Buchanan who taught Koch that for capitalism to thrive, democracy must be enchained. ...

... Today, operatives funded by the Koch donor network operate through dozens upon dozens of organizations (hundreds, if you count the state and international groups), creating the impression that they are unconnected when they are really working together — the state ones are forced to share materials as a condition of their grants. For example, here are the names of 15 of the most important Koch-funded, Buchanan-savvy organizations each with its own assignment in the division of labor: There’s Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Mercatus Center, Americans for Tax Reform, Concerned Veterans of America, the Leadership Institute, Generation Opportunity, the Institute for Justice, the Independent Institute, the Club for Growth, the Donors Trust, Freedom Partners, Judicial Watch — whoops, that’s more than 15, and it’s not counting the over 60 other organizations in the State Policy Network. ...

... There is great strength to be found in the simple truth that Buchanan and Koch came up with the kind of strategy now in play precisely because they knew that the majority, if fully informed, would never support what they seek. ...
https://truthout.org/articles/misinformi...SnpDn6Qk_phDLqI

Noam Chomsky: The Republican Party Is The Most Dangerous Organization In History
enowned linguist, cognitive scientist and historian Noam Chomsky says the Republican Party is a danger like no other.
Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Laureate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona, on the danger of the Republican Party:

"... If media were functioning seriously, every day the lead headline would be this amazing fact—that in the entire world, every country is trying or committed to doing at least something. One country—one!—the most powerful country in history—is committed to trying to destroy the climate. Not just pulling out of the efforts of others, but maximizing the use of the most destructive means.

There’s been nothing like this in history. It’s kind of an outrageous statement, but it happens to be true, that the Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in human history. Nobody, not even the Nazis, was dedicated to destroying the possibility of organized human life. It’s just missing from the media. In fact, if you read, say, the sensible business press, the Financial Times, Businessweek, any of them, when they talk about fossil fuel production, the articles are all just about the prospect for profit. Is the U.S. moving to number one and what are the gains? Not that it’s going to wipe out organized human life. Maybe that’s a footnote somewhere. It’s pretty astonishing. ..."

From Chomsky's March interview with the Institute for New Economic Thinking.
https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectu...6oWkBlW902IrvrE

Big-government conservatives mount takeover of GOP
But there are good reasons to believe it will end as soon as the next Democrat wins the presidency.

Crises nearly always create political upheaval. In recent history the catastrophes of 9/11 and the Great Recession both defined American politics for the decade that came after each event.
The crisis of Covid-19, which has already killed far more Americans than the 9/11 attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that were waged in response, seems likely to have a similar effect. And while the political impact of a deadly pandemic is by no means the most important question of the moment, the Trump administration’s embrace of a massive government intervention to cushion the economic impact of our national self-quarantine has intensified a debate on the right about Republicans and the role of government.

Anyone who watched the 2009 stimulus debate has to be flabbergasted by the Republican response in 2020. Back then, President Barack Obama struggled to pass a $900 billion bill even as his top economists believed the country needed a package several times that size. The Obama stimulus received no Republican votes in the House and three Republican votes in the Senate, including Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter, who soon joined the Democratic Party.

Congressional Republicans in 2020 have embraced $2 trillion — and counting — in stimulus with almost no resistance. Thomas Massie, the one House Republican who loudly questioned the initial package, was nuked by Trump in a tweet and the legislation passed with a voice vote in the Democratic-controlled chamber. ...

... It’s more interesting to muse about how this crisis might rewire Republican politics, but there’s a strong case for skepticism about how the pandemic will rewire conservatism. ...
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/27...takeover-210512

It won't. Because dishonesty, selfishness and greed defines who they really are. Nothing will ever change on that.

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
-John K. Galbraith-

Or, as somebody else put it so aptly:

GOP = Greed. Oppression. Piety.

Conservative Columnist Nails GOP With Coronavirus Analogy About Donald Trump
“Hypocrisy must be contagious because it has reached pandemic proportions in the Republican ranks,” wrote Max Boot in The Washington Post.

Conservative columnist Max Boot used an analogy about the coronavirus pandemic to highlight the hypocrisy of President Donald Trump and the GOP in his latest opinion piece for The Washington Post published Thursday.

Boot contrasted conservatives’ silence on Trump’s boast this week about building “the greatest economy in the history of the world” with their anger over a “far milder” comment that former President Barack Obama made in 2012 about businesses.

Boot noted how there was “of course, not the faintest flicker of outrage from the right” following Trump’s latest brag:

This is, by now, an old story. When you play this game — “What if Obama had done it?” — you quickly realize that most Republican talking heads and politicians are cynical hypocrites who will say anything for partisan advantage. They express no reservations about Trump doing on a much greater scale so many of the things that they bitterly denounced under Obama.

Boot, who quit the GOP following Trump’s 2016 election victory, suggested that “hypocrisy must be contagious because it has reached pandemic proportions in the Republican ranks.”
“Trump didn’t start the outbreak, but he is a super-spreader with a viral load of shamelessness,” the columnist concluded. “We need to run further clinical trials but, so far, not even repeated exposure to sunlight has cured this malady. Is there some disinfectant that Republicans can inject?”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/max-boot-...5b6995f13ff09b8

Nope. They can't. They have chained themselves to the mast of that ship called "Trumski Titanic"

Goodbye to Trump’s GOP: We’ve left the Republican Party and all other women should too
https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-o...4x5i-story.html

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYBjoX7XkAs5...pg&name=900x900

We Need to Speak Honestly About the GOP’s Evolution Into a Conspiracy Cult
One of the challenges in analyzing modern American politics is accurately describing the Republican Party without seeming unserious and hyperbolic. Major publications are understandably in the habit of presenting both sides of the partisan divide as being inherently worthy of respect and equal consideration, both as a way of shielding themselves from accusations of bias and as a way of maintaining their own sense of journalistic integrity.

Unfortunately, the modern Republican Party’s abdication of seriousness, good faith and reality-based communications or policy-making has stretched even the most open-minded analyst’s capacity for forced balance. Donald Trump’s own inability to string together coherent or consistent thoughts has led to a bizarre normalization of his statements in the traditional media, as journalists unconsciously try to fit his rambling, spontaneous utterances into a conventional framework. ...

...recently there has been a shift among GOP voters that is different not just in degree of virulence, but also in kind. For a host of different reasons, core Republican voters have begun to reconstitute themselves as a conspiracy theory cult devoted to beliefs that were once relegated to the farthest fringe–fictions that cannot help but end in civil conflict and violence if they fully become canon among conservative voters nationwide. This process arguably began as far back as Glenn Beck’s prominence on Fox News, but it has now blossomed into a grandiose collective paranoid fantasy. ...

... Cult experts like Steven Hassan have taken note of this, calling it exactly what it is: a cult built around manufactured realities, shared grievances and us-against-them insular extremism. The increasing dependence of Republican politicians on a shrinking, embattled white evangelical base already given over to faith-based belief systems and racism-tinged “city on a hill” ideology has only exacerbated the phenomenon. ...
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/05/23...onspiracy-cult/

'They're Afraid': GOP Ripped for Enabling Trump as McConnell Blocks Resolution Condemning Assault on Peaceful Protesters
"They're afraid of Donald Trump. And that leads to Donald Trump getting worse and worse and worse. It's appalling."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/0...tion-condemning

Can We Finally Stop Begging the Republicans to Grow a Pair? It’s Hopeless
Yes, a few criticized Trump for Monday night. But most of them ran for the elevators. As they always will. The party of Lincoln is dead, dead, dead.

June 1, 2020 is a day that will live in racial infamy. The Republican president of these United States became part racist Southern Governor George Wallace, part vicious police chief Bull Connor, and part law-and-order candidate Richard Nixon, circa 1968. The president of “We the People” of the United States unleashed tear gas and armed troops on citizens of Washington, D.C., who were assembled in peaceful protest. He did so under the cover of Attorney General Bill Barr, who ordered unidentified troops to unlawfully disperse peacefully assembled citizens.

How far the GOP has fallen.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/can-we-fin...ir-its-hopeless

IP Freely@HypersonicArt
Accountability?
Kindness?
Honesty?
Respect for women?
Racial equality?
Intelligence?
Charity?
Forgiveness?
Respect?
Tact?
Grace?
Teamwork?
Fortitude?
Courage?
Backbone?
Integrity?
Decency?
Selflessness?
Truth?
HELL NO! We are Republicans Supporting Trump!
8:27 AM · Jun 8, 2020

Are We All Trapped in Tom Cotton’s Authoritarian Wet Dream?
Lindsey Graham’s new, Trumpy bouffant. Bill Barr’s little authoritarians’ playbook. Tom Cotton’s status masturbation. They’re all featured on a very not-safe-for-Democracy edition of The New Abnormal, The Daily Beast’s podcast for a world gone off the rails.

As Rick puts it, “These guys are jacking themselves off like, well, why can't we have a spotter on the White House to call in the drone strikes on these hippie fields, the antifa.”

But that’s just the tip of the fuckery.

In Episode 14, Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson talk about Cotton’s “over the top” New York Times’ op-ed and how it is likely his ploy to be some kind of “savior” in the 2024 election, who comes in to restore chaos but also has a plan “to shoot everybody who fucks with [him.]”

“Tom Cotton represents the cutting edge of a Republican party that has abandoned the idea of limited government,” says Rick. ...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/are-we-all...arian-wet-dream

Rep. Denver Riggleman ousted in Virginia GOP convention
The first-term congressman became a target of conservatives after officiating a same-sex wedding in 2019.

Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.), who became a target of conservatives after officiating a same-sex wedding last year, was ousted Saturday by GOP voters in a drive-thru district convention.

Convention-goers picked Bob Good, a former county supervisor who ran to Riggleman’s right, especially on social issues, to be the party’s nominee in the general election. Good won the support of 58 percent of delegates who voted on Saturday, the district GOP chairman, Melvin Adams, said.

Good’s victory came after a day-long convention held in the parking lot of a central Virginia church. He ran as a staunch social conservative, campaigning on a traditional view of marriage, his support to make English the official language of the U.S. and to end birthright citizenship. ...
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/14...nvention-316589

Michigan candidate's daughter urges people not to vote for him in viral tweet
The daughter of a candidate running for a seat in the Michigan state House has drawn viral attention online after taking to Twitter earlier this week to plead with voters not to elect her father to office. ...

... Regan addressed his daughter's tweets in a lengthy statement posted to Facebook on Thursday afternoon, saying in part, "I am happy that she feels confident enough in our relationship to express her opposing thoughts so publicly" while encouraging her and others to voice their own opinions.
The candidate told The Hill on Thursday when reached for comment that he was not completely surprised by his daughter's words given their disagreements over issues like systemic racism, the existence of white privilege and Black Lives Matter. ...

The state House candidate added when discussing his and his daughter’s political differences that on a scale of 1-10, “I’m like the right wing, a 10, and she’s like a zero.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/50...or-him-in-viral

Now that is impressive.

Ich habe eine andere Vorstellung von Familiensolidarität, aber wokeness sticht wahrscheinlich Familiensolidarität aus.
Wenn mein Vater kandidieren würde mit Positionen, die ich nicht teilte, dann würde ich mich zumindest bedeckt halten. So viel Zusammenhalt sollte sein.

Ich würde auch nicht, wenn meine Tochter ermordet würde, mich für die Freilassung des Mörders einsetzen und diesen umarmen.
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/amy-bieh...-anniversary/2/

Mal ehrlich, wer wollte solche Kinder oder solche Eltern haben?

Wer unhinterfragbare grenzenlose Solidaritaet einfordern will, sollte entweder ein absolutistischer Diktator sein, oder er sollte sich einen Hund halten. Ansonsten ist da mit Ueberraschungen zu rechnen.
Insbesondere im Umgang mit selbstdenkenden, selbstbewussten, geradlinigen und freien Menschen.

Zu letzterem haben meine Frau und ich versucht unsere Kinder zu erziehen. Denn die leben ja schliesslich nicht fuer uns, sondern wir fuer sie.
In der Welt da draussen sind sie auch alleine auf sich gestellt und die Verantwortung fuer ihr eigenes Leben -ihre Werte, ihre Prioritaeten, ihr Selbstrespekt- liegt ganz alleine bei ihnen selbst. Und darauf galt es sie vorzubereiten.
Aus unserer Sicht. Eltern. Die Kinder sich ja im ueberigen nicht aussuchen koennen. They got to live with those that they were given. Ein Grund mehr Verantwortung der Eltern, das zu beruecksichtigen. They have no choice about who and what you -the parent- are -but as a parent you do.

Und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, dann leben sie noch heute. Amen.

USA Is In Trouble@SecularOutpost
Replying to @mccaffreyr3
I never thought in a million years I’d see a Republican President so transparently putting what’s good for Putin / Russia over what’s good for the USA.
This is surreal.
12:09 AM · Jun 28, 2020

Moderates have given up on the Republican party, leaving it to the lunatics.
It was 2014. In Kansas, moderate Republicans formed organizations calling for sanity to return to their party. They asked Democratic registered voters to re-register as Republicans “your primary vote means nothing as a Democrat, but you can save us from crazy Republicans” they noted. The idea was that the moderate middle would save the Republican Party. Over time, however, what the elected moderate middle discovered was that they would never be accepted within their Republican party, and face repeated challenges on their right flank.

Moderates hung in there, cycle after cycle, hoping that they could at least prevent the damn from breaking. The end result, however, wasn’t what they wanted. In 2018, Democratic candidates had success, and moderate Republicans failed to escape the primaries or struggled in a general election where a fired-up Democratic base ousted them from their position. In the two years since I see more of the same. Democratic-leaning voters who registered Republican to try and save a moderate who “just can’t be a part of that party anymore”, and in that situation, the Republican base primary voters are fewer, and far more conservative. Well, conservative isn’t the right word. They are just lunatics. Last night, in Colorado, an underfunded Qanon conspiracy supporting candidate in Lauren Boebert defeated Scott Tipton. NRCC says they will stand behind her. The reason is simple: because that is who their party is now. The Republican party isn’t just the party of Trump — it is the party of conspiracy theories, chain emails, and hyper-ventilating blame games. It is likely to get worse, not better. ...
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/7/...mpaign=trending

Conservativism is, at its root, all about being selfish
Seriously, that’s what it’s all about. So much of conservative thought (and especially libertarian policy) is about being selfish.
https://ventrellaquest.com/2020/04/27/co...VAypXEbsXHINxog