The ignorant Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis grabbed a lot of headlines this week, for refusing to give marriage licenses to same-sex couples on religious grounds. Naturally, swarms of right-wing panderers and Republican candidates rushed to her defense. On the world stage, the image of a drowned Syrian todler inspired an international wakeup call to the humanitarian refugee crisis. Then again, you'd have to actually be a human to recognize the sadness of it, and no one ever accused some of these right-wingers of being human. Here are five of the low-lights emanating from the right this week.
1. Ted Cruz says totally insane thing about Kim Davis right on cue.
Some people seem to think Ted Cruz is the smart, articulate guy in the Republican race for president. We guess they’re right, if by smart and articulate you mean completely insane.
Cruz had this to say about Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, on the day she was jailed for contempt of court for refusing an order to do her government job according to the law.
“Today, for the first time ever, the government arrested a Christian woman for living according to her faith. This is wrong. This is not America.”
Sane people realize Davis was not jailed for living according to her religious beliefs, and that in the real America, using your government job to violate the law, ram your beliefs down people’s throats and deny people their rights, is the actual First Amendment issue here.
Davis does her job according to “God’s law,” she told applicants to whom she denied marriage licenses.
Ummm, that's not going to fly.
Cruz says he “stands with Kim Davis.” And he does. He stands with people who use their power to deny others their lawful rights. Especially when they are Christian, his kind of Christian. “I stand with every American that the Obama administration is trying to force to choose between honoring his or her faith or complying with a lawless court opinion.”
OK, so that’s plenty of nonsense right there. Think about it: lawless court opinion?
Cruz kept cruising, though. “Those who are persecuting Kim Davis believe that Christians should not serve in public office,” he demagogued.
No, just no. Stringing the words together grammatically does not make them any less wrong or insane.
2. Palin gals cannot believe president had the audacity to come to their state.
Mama Bear Palin and daughter Bristol are recovering from the trauma of having the president insult them by visiting Alaska last week.
Also, what was with his itinerary? Sarah was very upset that Obama did not even visit one of the few glaciers in the world she claims is expanding. That would have cured him of his irrational belief in climate science, no doubt, and make him want to put on a parka. In a column she wrote for the Independent Journal Review, Palin also said Obama failed to visit oil workers during the trip. Her real gotcha moment was when she talked about the big carbon footprint the president left with his 33-car convoy. But wait, we thought she didn’t believe in that “junk science” about climate change.
Confused.
Bristol, too, was sooooooo upset about the entire thing, as evidenced by the number of exclamation points she used in a post:
President Obama is taking a trip to the Alaskan Arctic.
I wish we could add up how much this trip costs the tax payers dollars……….. They probably had to BARGE limousines here!!!!!!! They rented out an entire TOWER at our nicest hotel here? A TOWER!!!!!!!!!!
Shut down most of downtown Anchorage.. So many protesters here in Alaska this morning awaiting his arrival.. This is just a joke for us..
I’m completely dumbfounded by his trip here. Why again?
This is the second time Obama has visited Alaska during his presidency!!!!! Why is he persecuting them?!!!!!! On the whole shocking mountain renaming business, she said:
By the way, no one is buying the “Denali is what the Alaskans have called it for years” line. I’ve never called the mountain Denali .. and neither does anyone I know …
Well, actually, there was that time her mother called it Denali, very publicly, during the speech in which she announced she was resigning as governor, but...details, details.
3. Fox News doubles down on its disgusting characterization of Black Lives Matter.
Black Lives Matter...pretty innocuous claim. They matter. That’s all. Why is that even controversial?
Fox News and other conservatives hate it, and will use virtually any excuse to tear the activist organization down and convince viewers it is a hate group. Bill O’Reilly is devoting more and more air-time to that claim. Elisabeth Hasselbeck questioned why it is not being called such, and Geraldo Rivera tweeted the hair-brained thought again this week. After a Texas lawman was gunned down last week, allegedly by a lone black gunman, Fox trotted out its favorite anti #BlackLivesMatter lawman, Milwaukee Country Sheriff David Clarke, who is more than happy to blame the Black Lives Matter movement's anti-police brutality rhetoric any old time a police officer is killed. Fox really likes the optics of that, as Sheriff Clarke is himself black.
As Media Matters points out, Fox knows all about hate groups. The network regularly consults with several groups listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups, the virulently anti-gay Family Research Council, the virulently anti-immigrant Federation for Immigration Reform, which has white supremacist ties, and the rabidly anti-gay American Family Association.
So, yes. Fox News knows all about hate, and is more than happy to propagate it.
4. Rush Limbaugh demonstrates his special knack for being uniquely evil.
While the whole world wept at the image of the Syrian toddler drowned on the Turkish beach this week, Lord Voldemort’s doppelganger, Rush Limbaugh, took the opportunity to commit more verbal atrocities.
The horrific excuse for a human being decided it was a great moment to go after desperate people fleeing their war-torn homes in a piece of timing only he could think imaginable. They’re just looking for a handout, the human pot roast said.
“We are taking a record number of Syrian and other Middle Eastern refugees in record number now by presidential directive,” Limbaugh fabricated, adding that the number 300,000 was floating around his bile-strewn head.
Minor fact-check-y quibble here, as if facts are ever at risk of being revealed on Limbaugh. The U.S. has taken in about 1,500 Syrian refugees, according to the Guardian, which has noted that some senators are agitating for us to take five times that. Hmmm, five times 1,500... yeah, that’s about 300,000 if you round up.
Rush made it clear that he does not buy this whole "refugee" story.
"If they are fleeing war," he sneered, "why aren’t they happy to stop and live in Turkey? Or Greece?" (Minor detail again. Many have stopped in neighboring countries. Four million have fled.)
"They want the good life in Germany, Sweden, Turkey, Denmark," Limbaugh railed on. "That’s where all the benefits are. In Denmark, I think you can smoke dope all over the street. Or is that Amsterdam? They're human beings. They want the good life. The good life meaning big welfare benefits. A better life that generations of hardworking Europeans have built up is now being swarmed over by refugees."
Time to designate Rush Limbaugh a hate group.
5. Damon Wayans’ disgusting defense of Bill Cosby.
Unfortunately, actor and comedian Damon Wayans is throwing it all in with Bill Cosby, and accusing the nearly 50 women who have said Cosby drugged and raped them of engaging in a massive “money hustle.”
Absurd as that is, he’s not the first one to say it. No, to distinguish himself, he went further down the sexism path than most of Cosby’s defenders have gone, stunning the host of The Breakfast Club radio program, Angela Lee.
“I don’t believe he was raping,” Wayans said. “I think he was in relationships with all of them.”
He proceeded to call them “bitches” and described many of them as “un-rape-able.”
WTF Damon? That is deeply f*cked up misogyny that defies unpacking. He proceeded with a stunning array of horrifying and totally inconsistent statements.
Maybe a few of them are telling the truth, he said, and he hopes they get justice. If it were his daughter, he would kill Cosby. Wayans understands fame. Women just throw themselves at you. Cosby did not need to drug anyone. Oh, yeah, and Quaaludes were just what people took to get in the mood back then.
Another reason he does not believe it: “What’s the joy of banging someone who’s asleep?”
Lee replied: “I don’t know. You’d have to ask Bill Cosby.”
h/t: Raw Story
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