Trans de Agua

 

Pam Bondi calls Tren de Aragua "trans de agua" pic.twitter.com/2wLfuhKPHq

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 20, 2025

February 20, 2025

So, a funny/not funny thing happened in Colorado, where conservatives made up a thing where Venezuelan gangs were taking up whole blocks of apartments. Which meant of course, if that were true, the first place ICE would have to raid would be those occupied dangerous gang apartment scary no-go zones, right?

Right?

Well, they did! And SOMEHOW, everyone and their mother found out about it, and the op was even delayed for a bit? (Even though ICE raids are basically, just like, Tuesday, even during the Biden Administration.) But then they did the thing, with hundreds of guys. Like, a whole multi-agency thing. 

Anyway, I guess everything was very disappointing for the Trump Administration, because maybe there weren't as many arrests as they hoped? So they sacked the experienced acting head of ICE. People figuring out there would be a stepped-up ICE presence out there was definitely the result of "leaks". And Kristi Noem is ready to get out the polygraph tests to sniff out the real problem in why deportation preparations have broken down, promising to get you and your little dog too if you were a DHS employee responsible for leaking. (I may have made that last bit up.)

Big Men in Kids' Pants

 

Anyway, last night I didn't blog about Trump possibly referring to himself as a king over interfering with New York local politics over "congestion pricing" or with his daft, ahistorical and ignorant ravings over whether Ukrainian president Zelenskyy is a "dictator" (while Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia for a quarter century, and no, the temporary interregnum of Nukesy-Pukesy the Drunken Hate-America Elf does not count). I wrote a short science fiction story instead because it gave my brain a rest from what can only be described as imprecatory cursing bordering on being entered on several watchlists, from Homeland Security to St. Peter's. 

But my problem coalesced for me in the above picture of our US Vice-President, JD (Jimmy Donuts?) Vance, sitting there with his Little Lord Fauntleroy awkward short-looking trousers. Jello Dildo Vance never learned how to buy pants. When I say "Big Men in Kids' Pants" I am not talking about in a Matt Gaetz way or a Tate Brothers' way--although their pants truly also don't fit and make them look stupid and juvenile. Also, they fuck underage girls. (That's called "statutory rape" in law-and-order world.) 

I mean they have never learned to pull up their big boy pants and pretend they have a "crisis of manhood" when they have a crisis of not figuring out --not the "man" part--but the "adult" part. 

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are the real machers, so I will leave Vance alone for a minute--and he's used to it! And they never earned a callous between them. Billions of dollars, yes. Did a 70 hour week of physical on your feet pallet jack and register banging work-no. Never climbed poles, fought fires, worn a hardhat but never used the equipment but for show. Their work is investing. 

Rays of Hope for Democracy

 

Le Pen: "The policies I represent are the policies represented by Mr. Trump... They're represented by Mr. Putin."

And today, the French people rejected them.

Based. 🇫🇷 pic.twitter.com/Rk3P4IyBRR

— Joshua Reed Eakle 🗽 (@JoshEakle) July 7, 2024

Between yesterday's pushback against the far-right in France and the Labour Party win in the UK, I guess at least there are some things to feel good about, even while US politics is giving me the agita. Evil never rests though. Le Pen (and Salvini's La Lega) has some kind of Patriots for Europe thing cooking with Orban who had just gone sleazing off to visit Putin (not in a way that represents the EU).

Not sure how patriots of any stripe mooch up to Putin.

I have thoughts about that, and about how CPAC and Heritage seem to love, love, love Orban, too. But I think I will just be happy about the elections for a little while, first. 

CPAC and Dean Phillips--a Blogger's Dilemma

 

NEW: Dean Phillips told The Daily Beast that he doesn't remember receiving a max campaign donation from conservative financier Harlan Crow, but allowed that it was possible he solicited it personally. Me w/@JakeLahut https://t.co/7TTweHRhPR

— Roger Sollenberger (@SollenbergerRC) October 27, 2023

It used to be, I would enjoy (for my obviously not-healthy form of enjoyment) posting about CPAC, which is a thing that for me, culminated with this post here about how AFPAC and CPAC were like twinsies, and calcified with the realization that CPAC had gotten freaky as fuck all on its own. This little rightwing shindig is no longer what it was. And that's why instead of blogging about it at all, I'm blogging about Dean Phillips, because his candidacy is weirder, and therefore, more interesting to me. 

CPAC just has open Nazis running about, now. Matt Schlapp is a multiply-accused homosexual sex pest. People associated with CPAC just flat out say democracy is dead. It is now what they always played at--fascism for Chiclet heads. 

The candidacy of Dean Phillips is also weird, but in a different way: I don't know that Dean Phillips was always an op, but the robocall thing in New Hampshire is serious op energy. 

Which One, Sweetie?

 

Tulsi Gabbard was everywhere today, and it turns out, she isn't just on the short list for Trump's running mate, she's got a book! With Regnery! What is fun to me is, her Tweet about the book has the above title, and the Amazon picture has a different title:

The difference between "Why I Left the Democratic Party" and "Leave the Democrat Party Behind" is actually pretty unsubtle. The first suggests a personal decision and calls the party the preferred name: Democratic Party. The second version uses "Leave the Democrat Party". This is phrased like a command and a slight--Hey, you! Leave those Democrats. 

I do believe, and have believed, that Gabbard is a mess. But her "For Love of Country" so stimulates me: Which one? Syria? Russia? She says she left the Democratic party behind--and I am assuming it was because someone made a better offer. A better person than her once quipped that he didn't leave the Democratic Party behind, it left him. But has the Democratic Party changed at all--with respects to civil rights, to diversity and equality and LGBT rights--since she tried to run for the presidential nomination in 2020? 

CPAC Is Embroiled in a Schlapp Fight

 

"A senior board member who resigned on Friday urged an independent investigation into additional allegations of sexual misconduct against Chairman Matt Schlapp."

CPAC urged to probe more sexual misconduct claims against chair Matt Schlapp https://t.co/EvcGgHBOoC

— Michelangelo Signorile (@MSignorile) August 27, 2023

The problem with CPAC isn't whether Matt Schlapp is a closeted queer man, although it's starting to get fishy--but whether he's an abusive individual who takes advantage of others regardless of gender for his sexual gratification and is also a liar who uses organization funds for his own shit. The resignations of other CPAC officials and their claims indicate Schlapp is a problem, but I would say the other problem is the overcompensation CPAC has come to represent: The Orbanist, happily self-proclaiming "Domestic Terrorist" side of the organization. 

Why are we so extreme, CPAC? Something up? Because this looks like a troubled child organization acting out because things are bad at home with their leadership. 

You know what this reminds me of though? Veritas and Little Jimmy O'Keefe. Well, he used to be cute and young once, but he and Project Veritas went to pot, mostly because O'Keefe was a self-involved grifter. There always were warning signs. Right from the revelation that the ACORN nonsense was B-roll and smearing. The CNN fuckyacht? The weird wiretapping thing.  Wait, not that one, the other one. And the stolen diary. 

The right wing has just an awful lot of grifters. dark money slopping all over the place to support who all knows what, but they've also sometime got the little guys rooting for orgs that are fronting by whole freaks. 

It's something you think the hoi polloi on the right would be more interested in--since it's their investment, too. But they don't even care if their political party is lead by a grifting pussy-grabber, so I would be obviously expecting a lot. 

Ken Paxton Got Himself Impeached (UPDATED)

 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) impeached by Texas House of Representatives 121-23 pic.twitter.com/wlNtCgGlB2

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 27, 2023

I believe that is the Speaker of the Texas House Dade Phelan who was censured for being drunk on the floor but frankly, when I watched this without audio, I thought the man would have more slurring because I'm not saying I know drunk when I see it, but I have known drunk when I've been it. Drunk or sober, the count is what it is, and Ken Paxton got hugely impeached by the supermajority Texas House. This wasn't about liberals trying to get him, and this wasn't about RINOS trying to get him. This was about the creep of Ken Paxton's various problems becoming not just his problem, but the State Leg. problem, and they did not want that for themselves.

Genocidal Peas and Carrots

 

VIDEO THREAD: Tonight, fans of Nick Fuentes (who was kicked out of #CPAC for anti-semitism such as praising Hitler and Holocaust denial) gathered at the Residence Inn by Marriott National Harbor to see him speak across from CPAC.

The men yelled "Groyper! Groyper!" inside the… https://t.co/Mn0BpQxLma pic.twitter.com/6KzOe3DnTx

— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) March 5, 2023

 I noticed a year ago that there was nothing coincidental about Nick Fuentes and his America First/Groyper thing turning up near to hand with CPAC. It's all the more evident after Fuentes was Trump's supposedly surprise dinner guest last year. 

I've been paying attention to the Michael Knowles conversation about whether eliminating "transgenderism" from public life means eliminating transgender people from existing. And a lot of people asked the obvious questions--what happened when they decided to eliminate Jews from public life in the Third Reich, as Hitler did by legislating their freedoms away? They were made terribly visible, at first, as their lives were circumscribed. And then they were made invisible because to be seen was death. 

Trump at CPAC: Apocalypse or Trump

 

They aren't my people and it isn't my crowd, but I can't help but feel like the vibe is off at CPAC this year. Is it because of groping allegations against Matt Schlapp? Is it because come big name conservative figures like Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott and Mike Pence weren't there? (Or is it more like, this was a house packed for Trump, and they would not have been welcome?) 

This made Trump the real feature--the guy who was going to electrify the event. And, well. I don't know. I guess I'm used to his act. If it's the sort of thing you like, I guess you would like that sort of thing, but for me, I've seen him complain about how unfair things are for him (Ugh! His STRUGGLE!), make up stories that did not happen, and then wax apocalyptic as a part of his mythmaking to set himself up as an avenging angel against all enemies of the fatherland who will create a new America. 

Am I kidding? No. He says things like "they are not coming after me, they are coming after you" to his fan club so they will think of his plight as theirs. (He has stopped pretending there was any distance between himself and the 1/6 insurrectionists with a recording with the "J6 Prison Choir" to raise funds for the inmates.) He says, just as he did in his 2020 campaign, that if he doesn't win this time, "we" won't even have a country. And he promises he will be their retribution. 

But if he does win, he has such promises:

Trump has a little list of things he would like to create--new "Freedom Cities". Flying cars. A per-child stipend for the hero mothers...who will help build the great new baby boom.

Wait, what? Well, yeah. Baby bonuses. I feel like there will definitely be some demographic constraints (straight, married property owners) on who gets rewarded but, that's what the man said. Also, he will drive out the decadent art and architecture that is bringing us down. Strengthen the border. Send the National Guard into the big cities to fight crime. Probably continue to not support NATO. 

He says this is the final battle--it's his battle, not ours. He is old, laden with court-dates, twice-impeached, and even if he cannot admit it, lost very legitimately in 2020. His superfans at the diminished CPAC want him--fellow election-loser Kari Lake even kissed a portrait of him--but who actually needs him?  

(I don't know, but they will probably also need pardons or something.) 

The Darkest Timeline 2022 Roundup

 

As with last year, I feel like providing a year in review for the blog, but this year, I noticed a certain trend and I did not like it one bit! But it is my blog, and sometimes you can't ignore the things you see--actually, you just shouldn't. 

January:  IOKIYAR, or the Republican Permission Structure.  There is a goal behind Republican rhetorical devices, and they are loaded.

February: AFPAC and CPAC are Like Peas and Carrots.  GOP-ers and Groypers are practically peas in a pod. 

March: The Country is Held Hostage by the Fifth Dentist. How did one side of our politics become so conspiracy-theory-ridden?

April: "Free Florida" and "Don't Say Gay". The GOP wants old school bigotry to have a comeback and I sure the hell don't. 

May: Jesus, Guns, Babies, American Exceptionalism.  Wow. boiled it all down to the maple syrup of the thing. 

June: Jesus , Guns, Babies, SCOTUS:  As the Bible had written, so conservative justices would likely try to have it done. 

July: Who is Paying for Dinner?  Just some reasonable thoughts about SCOTUS and ethics. 

August: But They Keep Admitting It, Though.  Supposedly mainstream conservatism has gone out of its way to support domestic terrorism. I do not think this is sarcasm. 

September: TWGB: Everything Looks Worse in Black and White.  Trumpism is fascism. It is. It looks bad because it is bad. 

October: Genocide as Peer Pressure.  Eliminationism is like a gruesome bandwagon. There are ugly people trying to normalize mass death of "suspect" populations. This is fascism. 

November: They *Do* Want us Dead.  More on the eliminationism.

December: TWGB: They Aren't Joking.  They say civil war and worse like they mean it, and I think they do. 

I don't like this timeline. But these are the posts I've got. 

TWGB: They Aren't Joking

 

There's a funny thing about Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that if she and Steve Bannon were at the head of the 1/6 insurrection, they would have won, and they would have been armed: she says she was joking, now. But she certainly was not.  We know this because we know her record. She was explicit about what she stood for--talking about "the price of blood" pre-election.  We know in December 2020 she was at the White House meeting with other GOP electeds. We know some 1/6 insurrectionists actually were armed.  What she seems to be saying, and pretending to walk back, is that she would want more bloodshed of Capitol police and possibly her own colleagues in congress. 

Ha ha. The conservatives are getting better at humor, and the libs don't like it, indeed. (See latest iteration thereof.)  Actually, we know what "only joking" means to fascists. (Can't you take a joke? Why are you punching yourself? I'm not the problem, you have no sense of humor. etc.)

When the NY Young Republicans, who I used to think were just twenty-somethings who looked like forty somethings and had the values of the 1950s and wanted to undo the civil rights movement, has VDARE's Brimelow and Posobiec, I start to think we've got people in their thirties and forties who look like they are traitors and have the values of would-be herrenvolk and want to undo Reconstruction. 

So, color me pretty alarmed by that. Also alarmed by Justice Kavanaugh hanging out with the Schlapps, you know, the CPAC wanna-be domestic terrorist Orban enthusiasts. Just a Supreme Court justice hanging out in the most partisan and kinda-fash-leaning crowd, and we're supposed to shrug about that? (And shouldn't RW SCOTUS justices be more on guard about their propriety since we know they are cozy as hell with activists? I mean, Clarance Thomas' wife is a whole activist, which is as cozy as things get.)  

It isn't a joke. 

Putin Overreaches

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed papers to formally, but illegally, annex four regions in Ukraine — an area the size of Ohio — after what the West calls “sham referendums.”@nickschifrin reports. https://t.co/AuNEXtbqGD pic.twitter.com/Two8benxUN

— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) September 30, 2022

It's a funny old thing, Putin claiming he has possession of these regions and that they are inviolately Russian. The regions in question don't even really think that. Putin held a "gun to the head" referendum and forced an agreement to maybe consider Russia in charge of certain regions so that the people living there don't die. 

Much of his speech sounded like it was about culture war stuff crafted to appeal to a certain segment of the West--the kind that looks up to someone like Giorgia Meloni, or like Trump. He actually sounded a bit like he was jealous of Orban and his welcome at CPAC. No one should think what he is doing here boils down to concern about pronouns or liberal decadence.

It is a naked power grab and his claim to this area is without any merit at all. 

UPDATE:

Apparently, CPAC Tweeted, then deleted, a post referring to the territory Putin just illegally annexed as "Ukrainian-occupied" and the military aid the US is giving to Ukraine as "gifts".  The idea of the "free world" means nothing to them. 

The Far-Right in Europe is a Global Mess (UPDATED)

I don't want to think about what it means for Giorgia Meloni to break the glass ceiling of women in power in Italy when to me it sounds like the breaking of so much other terrible glass elsewhere. Perhaps a "Kristallnacht."  I do want to think about what it means when US Republicans think that she is a great example of the fight against Communism and the kind of politician we need more of, here. 

Scalise on Meloni: It’s interesting to see that Europe is leading the way by throwing out Socialists with Conservatives and great bold Conservative women like Meloni and Truss. We need to bring that kind of conservatism to the United States” pic.twitter.com/Ln7XHCe24v

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 25, 2022

Does he just not know the difference? Or is it true that "David Duke without the baggage" absolutely does want fascism right here, right now?  I can't help but think he does. She supports Viktor Orban of Hungary, the focal point of CPAC and Tucker Carlson's wretched White Power Hour. 

Is she the worst? I don't pretend I know. I know me and the spouse won't be comfortable visiting the homeland with this person in charge and hope the weird vagaries of Italian politics make a new vote a thing in a pretty basic tick tock. 

We are told the right succeeds because the left fails to do more than point out that the right exists and is terrible. But the right does exist and is terrible. I don't know what the left needed to do because unless a party is in power, they can do little to demonstrate their ideals. But there is always the idea of defining their morality and highlighting the difference. 

I don't know if that is enough. 

I don't know why knowledge of history is so limited it isn't already enough. 

UPDATE: If I were Liz Truss, I would hate this comparison so much I'd go out of my way to refute it, and I rather hope she does. 

UPDATE: A further introspection into what the US rightwing (and other right-aligned folks) see in Meloni might be summed up in this meaningless, but buzzword-laden speech that seems defiant against an unknown "them" that is trying to deny people their cultural and family heritage. No one is saying Meloni can't be a woman, a Christian. an Italian, a mother. What an absurdity! Can I proclaim myself a woman, an atheist, an American, and childfree? I do. The existence of other people and their experiences don't negate my own, they start conversations. 

But what is Meloni's answer to people who are different? LGBT people fear for their families with her in a position of leadership, because she would deny them their right to be themselves, to be parents, to have their legacy and authenticity. Every right-wing claim of victimhood is a confession about what they would do to others--always. 

CPAC: Mining the Kampf

 

What I need you to understand is that I stood here for about half an hour yesterday and this guy NEVER broke character

He wept sitting on the bench

He wept sitting on the floor

He tallied days on a chalkboard set up for the purpise pic.twitter.com/dgGag1Qcjn

— Laura Jedeed (@LauraJedeed) August 5, 2022

Oh, look!, It's the Walkaway stool pigeon Brandon Straka, who gave considerable help to the DOJ and is now doing performance art.  Also too, we can see the dear motherly comforter Marjorie Taylor Greene. She should have anointed his feet with spikenard and rubbed it in with her double-processed hair while she was at it. 

If anyone thought the Viktor Orban shit was going to be the principal shame of CPAC 2022.2: Fascism Boogaloo (no, actually....) Why no! It's the attempt to recycle the insurrectionists into martyrs (yeah, they love martyrs, these guys) and blame the FBI and DOJ and the 1/6 Committee for thinking a whole violent episode to try and overthrow the government is something worth prosecuting. (Rep. Andy Biggs suggested defunding the DOJ which is definitely "Defund the police" if I ever heard it.)

Every conservative who faces any kind of accountability is automatically a victim. Alex Jones is supposedly a victim. Trump is a victim. Everyone at CPAC is unfathomably stricken and can barely stand all their various oppressions. 

Rick Scott thinks the liberals are the real book burners. They aren't actually burning any books, while neo-Nazis are closing libraries, but whatever. Ted Cruz explores kiss my ass's gender as being outside of the binary by proclaiming kiss my ass's neo-pronouns as "kiss my ass". Kiss my ass has decided that "kiss my ass" better describes the entire vibe of kiss my ass's gender expression, which is neither male nor female but definitely has a whole lot to do with ass. (All across this land, English teachers are weeping because the previously understood definition of pronoun, it is no more.)  Matt Schlapp is also Team Fuxxor the Binary, considering USAself to be USA/USA's. I'll try to honor that. 

USA's partner, Mercy, has shown her quality to be strained. This whole event is a showcase of grievance, racism, and grifting.  And for what it's worth, if you thought you saw Nick Fuentes there, CPAC says you did not.  (Just like TPUSA, one never admits groping with groypers.) 

I will refrain from asking where is a ginormous meteor or sudden sinkhole when our idiot culture deserves one but look at these sideshow geeks. Just take them all in, in all their pugnacious and howling glory. Or at any rate, their salacious and growling gloryholes, where they pleasure their political id as if we can't see what they are up to. 

They are talking up their 1/6 antics etc. to themselves.  From the outside, how weird and cultish that seems! We should never fail to deride these bitter pitiful people. And never let them arise from their mental cells to strike out at our democracy like they did on 1/6 again. 

I've Seen the Future and It Is Mother

 

The genuinely stoked millennial in the selected picture is Trump-supported state senate candidate Jackie Eubanks, who does not think women should have sex outside of marriage or for other than procreative purposes and definitely should not have birth control.  Birth control is outside of God's moral order, which I guess he told her this one time at Bible camp, and now welp. Also too, you apparently can't have a successful society outside of Christianity. Sorry, most of world history. You are apparently entirely wrong for having existed outside of Miss Thang's experience. 

I'm being mean, but mostly because this moral scold is young enough to be one of my not-even youthful indiscretions. You are not young enough to be the welp of me and tell me when, with whom and for actual progeny!? I am going to fuck. Oh no. Jacky and her sock puppet Jesus are not the boss of my vagina. They can mind their own business. 

But Trumpism is apparently going full metal-mama on us. Matt Schlapp's response to whether Great Replacement Theory is a thing is to tie it to abortion--why don't we just stop white ladies from aborting the future? The white future. The future that isn't reliant on what Steve King spoke of as "somebody else's babies".  (Right up in Hungary where I guess democracy is dead and long live Orbanism? Anti gay, anti-minority, paranoid, declining? ) 

The answer to "white genocide" (which isn't happening, unless you count suicide by desperation and incel by having extremely bad internet habits--but none of that is imposed by the outside) is supposed to be women wanting to have children, but none of this culture is making me even think for a moment I missed out by not making white babies for this shithole culture. Whiteness isn't enough and making kids would be too much for me. Writing is my babies. People who don't read wouldn't understand that and that's why my blog isn't for them. And people who never woke up and cried that they had to get out of bed don't understand why I never wanted kids that I would have to make my body do shit for everyday when it was enough I did anything for me.

Fascism is making reproduction-capable people into baby factories and telling them they need to be happy they have a job.  It is telling disabled people they have to produce to be considered valuable. It is saying something is so special about motherhood that rejecting it is a sin. I sometimes wonder if I might be a good dad-figure to someone--I have lots of drinking and fighting and sportsmanship lessons to bestow. But the government should not tell people how to make their families. They should not tell people with uteruses they have to be mothers anymore than people with penises need to be fathers. We need to do these things for ourselves. And race is irrelevant to what makes a society--any society that hates and micromanages people is already fucked. 

TWGB: They Texted a Criminal Conspiracy?

 

He can call it a canard, but I say if it walks like a duck… https://t.co/BB4lsFmVvY

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) April 25, 2022

Apparently, some of the cast of characters featured in the over 2,000 text messages to Mark Meadows that CNN got a hold of were advised they were getting hung out, and that's great. They should have expected that. They were involved in trying to overturn an election. It is serious business. Now, I am starting with Matt Schlapp, who as far as I know is still taking CPAC to Hungary next month and really isn't deviating at all from who he's ever been:

(I stay mad about 2000). And I would venture to add--I don't think this was completely unexpected a violation of democratic values from the Republican party, the party of Watergate and the October Surprise and Iran-Contra, and Benghazi (yeah--I am calling the politicization of that tragedy solely about elections, not at all about justice for the slain or rectification of security issues).  I don't expect better from this party. I am a little shocked about how many Republicans sold their soul and allied their reputations to Trump, the amoral reality tv show pussy-grabber.

The GOP occasionally pretends they have standards. Their support for Trump has belied this and I will not ever let them live this down. He is corruption and amorality in a saggy skin-suit. 

So, while I can laugh with all of you at Perjury Traitor Greene being shown up about her confusion at whether martial law was ever discussed (or Marshall Law, as the illiterate case may be), it's nonetheless disconcerting that apparently, there was a GOP House group chat where martial law was very strongly recommended--just days before the inauguration. When the election of Joe Biden should have been a settled cause, and the imposition of martial law would have definitely been a full military autogolpe situation. (And yet we weren't unaware that this was part of the conversation at the time--it's just who all was saying it that was striking.) 

I think it's odd to contemplate that Jason Miller was both a voice of reason, asking if some of the election fraud claims were even plausible, while also being a monster who encouraged blaming the insurrection on antifa. 

And they did it for this sweaty, deluded chump who can't admit he lost a fair election despite all the lack of evidence that his election was stolen and blames his Vice-President and the Senate Majority Leader for what is ultimately his own failure to win the necessary number of votes.  This putz, who was just cited for contempt and is going to pay $10K a day (well, his fan club will pay it, I am sure) because he isn't releasing docs to the NY AG because his business affairs look bad, probably because they are bad.  Like, why should we think they aren't? 

Trump was a crook president, and he made crooks of his party. What else is there to know? 

AFPAC and CPAC Are Like Peas and Carrots

 

“I do not know Nick Fuentes. I have never heard him speak, I have never seen a video. I do not know what his views are so I am not aligned with anything that is controversial,” she said.

He’s behind you, congresswoman!https://t.co/kivga9Wyti

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) February 26, 2022

This is very funny, because this woman is clearly clued into the whole RW vibe: a Qanon, a friend of Alex Jones. She seemed to greet Fuentes warmly when she showed up, so, it feels weird that she, a fellow traveler with Paul Gosar, who made the AFPAC to CPAC circuit last year, is in any way confused about what she was doing there. Of course, she was just there to connect with der jugend and talk about Christianity. Her brand of white supremacy is theocratic. Why shouldn't we think she's just confused about the stupid things she sometimes does and says?

She's so busy after all. Being a thirsty dominionist stunt queen takes every ounce of her Crossfit enhanced fake weight pressing body builder shagging physique. And as Stew Peters would tell you, isn't that typical of such a RINO?

I think it's great that these things happen at the same time and basically down the street from each other, anymore, because you get to see the sort of fluid exchange of ideas between the two supposedly not at all being the same thing nope not hardly groups. Like, would Papa John Schnatter tell AFPAC that with the right PR he could have weathered the cancellation of saying the n-word like dozens of times? They might have laughed at, not with him, but CPAC listened while he said that, and also that Joe Biden somehow convinced Putin to launch an invasion of Ukraine to distract from stuff happening in the US.

Wow. Russia has probably invested billions with a b on this one and committed thousands of lives to somehow distract from Joe Biden's shit. You can't get a lot of people to say something that "edgy" out loud where people can hear, but CPAC drew that exact too racist to make pizza sort of moron. Cheers, CPAC!

General Lee, Surrendered

 

There was no good reason for the statue of a losing General on the wrong side of history to have so long stood, tempting history to set this metallic ass in its rightful place--off-stage. This is restorative history. This is correcting a myth (the noble General who fought for his home, not slavery) and undoing a harm caused by allowing that myth to perpetuate. The simple reality is, the South seceded because of slavery. The whole "states' rights" issue came down to only that: whether states could permit slavery or not. And whether non-slave states were obligated to be participants in cultivating, supporting and promoting that industry, being abettors of kidnapping and punishing those souls who yearned to breathe free. 

I want to take this moment to reflect on the disdain conservatives presently have for critical race theory, to talk about the Fugitive Slave Acts and the Dred Scott decision. See, the Fugitive Slave Acts decreed that black people were presumed to be slaves--laws were made compelling citizens to assist in the capture of runaway slaves (and any Black person could be suspect) and the basic due process permitted any citizen was explicitly denied to presumed enslaved persons. The Dred Scott decision held that Black people could never be treated as equal citizens because once enslaved, always of a different class. 

Some of Them Believe This Rot

 

Madison Cawthorn says today that Biden’s plan to send people door to door to offer vaccines is really a plot to confiscate people’s bibles and guns. pic.twitter.com/h6CPdJwv9t

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 9, 2021

Liberals already have guns and Bibles, we don't need yours. I know it's hard to figure out the line between the cynical propagandists who spread stuff like this and the gullible little baby birds who let this mash slide right down their gullets but, in this case--Cawthorn might be just that dumb.

Accidentally On Purpose?

 

I get that CPAC is about right-wing signifying, but the CPAC stage being laid out to resemble the Odal rune once used by the SS Waffen and preferred by some neo-Nazis over the swastika is a little bit....much, right? I mean, surely it's a dumb coincidence. 

Nope, we've been here before. The argument over "accident" vs. "on purpose" is partially about fucking with the libs, partially about letting the white supremacists (who would know what it looks like, even if regular folks don't) feel included. The way some fash or fash-adjacent person might flash white power hand gestures and then pretend they are just feeling A-OK. At some point, there is no benefit of the doubt left.

I mean, when Josh Hawley explicitly says he is paraphrasing a quote by Daniel Webster ("Union now, union forever") but changes it to "America now, America first, America forever", it's that little detail of three clauses that might make you hear echoes of George Wallace at first, but the insertion of "America first" is what drives it home for people with long memories.

But you know. Josh Hawley was just talking about our God-given rights not to be silenced when trying to argue about throwing out the votes of African American people, is all. Why are people so tense? It's like they think his kind of charisma-free use of that line of bullshit led to a pretty divisive um....domestic terrorist attack on our Capitol or something. 

You know who was also signaling pretty hard? Fellow scumbag insurrection-lover Ted Cruz, who when he wasn't joking about going to Cancun while his fellow Texans froze like the fun-loving chap he is, implied that white folks in Texas owning guns is why BLM didn't riot in Houston because he is the kind of guy who definitely loves Kyle Rittenhouse, I guess. 

Look, it could, very possibly, could, have been an accident that the stage took that shape. But when you stop and listen to the speakers, you can't mistake what they are. And if you were of a mind to forget, just think of Rep. Paul Gosar, Republican, insurrection enthusiast, CPAC attendee, and also an attendee at AFPAC down the road, which is a bit more explicit about the white nationalism. 

You don't have to know what an odal rune is to know what they're about anymore.

UPDATE:  Apparently, the Odal rune was an accident. The other fascist stuff was still on purpose.