1. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). As many media outlets have reported, John McCain does not want Donald Trump at his funeral … because … well, who the hell would? If anyone could make someone else’s funeral all about himself, Trump could. But that’s not good enough for Hatch. Proving that congressional Republicans — even the ones on their way out of Congress — will go to all possible lengths to bow and scrape before their ocher overlord, Hatch recently vomited this pabulum:
"Well, he's the president of the United States and he's a very good man. But it's up to [McCain]. I think John should have his own wishes fulfilled with regard to who attends the funeral."
When asked about McCain’s desire to keep Trump away from his memorial service, Hatch said, “I think it's ridiculous."
Look, Sen. Hatch. McCain wants to be remembered for his military heroism, his more than 30 years in the Senate, his maverick sensibility, even his defeat at the hands of Barack Obama — anything but his tenuous association with Trump.
Trump being at McCain’s funeral would be a little like playing the Benny Hill theme over the closing credits of Saving Private Ryan. McCain deserves to be honored, not sullied by the presence of Bone Spurious the Yellow.
2. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala). Wow! A double wammy from the irrepressible Mo Brooks. Brooks wants everyone to know that the real reason Republicans are running away from elections in droves, is not that their time is up. It’s not that they’ve transparently sold their souls to the devil. It’s not that they are frightened of being politically humiliated in an election. It’s because … they are afraid of left-wing assassinations. You know, like Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, Mahatma Gandhi and Jesus of Nazareth.
Explaining on “The Dale Jackson Show,” Brooks suggested that while there were a few factors, the threat of left-wing violence was a big one. He also said the “socialist Bernie Sanders wing of society” was pushing for a revolution that would lead to Maoist level of violence.
“There are a growing number of leftists who believe the way to resolve this is not at the ballot box but through threats and sometimes through violence and assassinations,” he said.
Rep. Brooks is the same guy who, when voting to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance, said that they should “live good,” and that would solve their problems.
Brooks is also the same guy who came up with the definitive explanation about the real cause of sea level rise. It’s not melting ice sheets, s mainstream climate scientists maintain, causing our oceans to rise, it’s the goddamn White Cliffs of Dover. Say what?
Brooks claims that erosion plays a significant role in sea-level rise. He said the California coastline and the White Cliffs of Dover tumble into the sea every year, and that contributes to sea-level rise. He also said that silt washing into the ocean from the world's major rivers, including the Mississippi, the Amazon and the Nile, is contributing to sea-level rise.
"Every time you have that soil or rock or whatever it is that is deposited into the seas, that forces the sea levels to rise, because now you have less space in those oceans, because the bottom is moving up," Brooks said.
I am fairly certain that the world's collected best scientific minds did not think about "what if, like, a bunch of rocks are just falling in" until just now, when Alabama Republican Mo Brooks thought it up. Or ever made calculations of how much silt is deposited annually by the Mississippi. Or made a back-of-an-envelope calculation on what the total sea level rise would be if the entire region of Dover, every picturesque bit of it, slid into the sea tomorrow. No, we have stumbled on something here. Perhaps the worldwide melting of land-based ice from Greenland to the Antarctic is not the culprit here, but ... rocks.
What will the brilliant Brooks think of next? A growing number of boats displacing water? How about whales, made more numerous by the international ban on whaling. Or maybe it’s simply that the earth is shrinking.
3. U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI). U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, you know-- the guy who got rich by finding someone to support him, has a pearl of wisdom for all the working single moms out there: If she wants to "increase her take-home pay” instead of having yet "another child out of wedlock" to increase her welfare windfall, she should instead "find someone to support her."
Johnson is quick to admit that he stole this incredibly sexist riff from his uber-misogynist pal, U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman. But some things are so awesome, that you just have to use them yourself! Some variation of this single mom marrying the government instead of a marrying real man has become a central talking point of Johnson's stump speech as he gears up for re-election.
As anyone who works and has kids would expect, Johnson and Grothman's modern redux of the "welfare queen" has been rated "Mostly False" by Politifact and was given “Two Pinocchios” by the Washington Post's fact checker. Why? Because it is a ridiculous notion to suggest that when you’re a single parent, working below the poverty line, that you would intentionally have another child to get more government assistance and "increase your take-home pay." Obviously, food stamps, health care and other government assistance don't come close covering all the expenses that come with having a child and what Johnson and Grothman fail to grasp in their misleading calculations of "income," is that children actually eat and children actually get sick-- the "increased income" they're talking about comes in the form of increased benefits that all (in most cases literally) get eaten-up by the children.
Which is why, as we still struggle to climb out of the Great Recession, during which a record number of people (including families headed by single moms) needed help in the form of food stamps and other government assistance programs, the birth rate in the U.S. camae to a screeching halt.
It's also important to point out that in the current generation of children, more than half will spend at least part of their childhood in a single-parent household and although most of these single-parent households are headed by women, most single women with children don’t receive government assistance we typically think of as "welfare."
Although Johnson is trying to conjure up images of the 1950s aproned housewife facing some sort of bizarro binary decision of either finding "someone to support her" or going on the government dole, that's simply not world that we live in. Today, Senator, most of the ladyfolks-- regardless of whether they are married or not-- are in the workforce. Period. In fact (you’d better sit down!) most new college graduates today are women and there are even more lady lawyers and lady doctors coming down the pike than men!
Of all the statements that demonstrate that Ron Johnson doesn't live in the same world as the rest of us, this one really takes the cake. Of course, what would we expect from someone who has never had to worry about job security and making ends meet, as he coos from the protective cocoon that his wife's wealthy family has built for him?
4. Thomas McInerney (Fox News Military Analyst). To give some indication as to how the nation's conservatives responded to John McCain's call to block Gina Haspel’s nomination as CIA director over her record and stance on torture, we look to Fox News. They have chosen demonization and mockery. Here’s what McInerney had to say:
“Well she can't use [torture] anymore because we have determined in Congress that it's not legal. The fact is, is John McCain -- it worked on John. That's why they call him 'Songbird John.'”
To be clear, I’m not a big fan of Senator McCain. He was a war hero, but his time in the Senate has been marked both by a now-forgotten scandal and by years of principled stands against a great many things that he reversed himself on after attempting to extract maximum publicity for those stances. But there is no evidence that McCain gave valuable information to his captors; there is prodigious evidence that he instead attempted to mislead them, as people being tortured often do.
If there is even a single person left in Fox management who has somehow retained a scrap of dignity, sneering at McCain's war ordeal with a pissant nickname suggesting otherwise should land Thomas McInerney an immediate and permanent canning from Fox News. Forever. This is not negotiable; the fellow is a garbage human being, and his opinions should henceforth be rendered irrelevant.
But that is where we are, on the Fox News channel. The Republican senator who survived torture as a prisoner of war is being mocked and sneered at, by the enforcers of proper conservative thought, for condemning conservative efforts to spread the practice as United States policy. That is where the new conservative cult has brought us.
5. Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. During a press conference, Abbott made this statement about the problems in our society that are illuminated by a mass shooting like the one that just happened in his state at Santa Fe High School.
"Every single time there's a shooting, everyone wants to talk about what the problem is. By now we know what the problem is: the problem is that innocent people are being shot, and that must be stopped."
The Republican Party has been known for its contentless character for some time. Usually, saying something so inane, so devoid of anything meaningful, is reserved for Party members like Sarah Palin or Louis Gohmert.
What can we expect Abbot and his Republican comrades to support? Gun restrictions? No way! We’re already hearing calls for armed teachers and administrators, armed officers on campuses, perhaps in every classroom, locked school doors, metal detectors and student backpack searches. Now that would make for a healthy learning environment.
6. President Donald Trump. I know, I said months ago that I would refrain from including Trump absurdities in the monthly competition—there would simply be too many to include. Besides, he is a certified ignominious character and there is little reason to further validate this reality. But sometimes, I can’t resist. Trump’s penchant to lie, deceive, misrepresent, misquote or just plain make things up is well documented, but the various whoppers he’s told about the Russian investigation—or “witch-hunt”as he calls it--are extreme, even for the Trumpster.
In his latest campaign to discredit the Meuller investigation, Trump tweeted:
“Clapper [Director of National Intelligence under Obama] has now admitted that there was spying in my campaign. Large dollars were paid to the Spy, far beyond normal. Starting to look like one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history. SPYGATE – a terrible thing.”
True to form, Trump was lying about what James Clapper said. Since the Trump tweet, Clapper has appeared on several news outlets to set the record straight: on “The View,” to the NY Times, on the PBS Newshour, to name a few. In a CNN interview, when asked in if the FBI spied on Trump’s campaign during the 2016 election, Clapper said:
“No, we did not. And that is a distortion of what I said. In fact, I have had an aversion to the use of the term, and I thought I made that clear.”
“and the important thing is here, what was this all about? Well, what it was about was trying to determine what the Russians were doing, were they trying to gain access, infiltrate political campaign. It didn’t matter what the—which campaign. And had nothing to do with spying on the campaign and it was about the Russians, which is what we should all be concerned about, to include Trump.”
In other words, Clapper used the word “spy” to describe intelligence gathering on Russian efforts to influence the election. Of course, Trump and his sycophant followers would distort what Clapper said. It’s part of their orchestrated campaign to discredit the investigation and distance Trump from any complicity. It’s part of their governing MO. We can expect no less.
___________________
And this month’s winner is:
No contest; it has to be the ignominious, two-timer, Mo Brooks. Case closed.
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