DECEMBER 2022 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Kanye West. Professional conspiracy promoter Alex Jones invited Kanye West onto his show today, one week after the rapper and anti-Semite, West arranged a Mir-a-Lago dinner meeting with Donald Trump that included notorious white nationalist and anti-Semite Nick Fuentes. That meeting roiled the Republican Party, as there are few names more synonymous with America's antisemitic far right than Fuentes. Meanwhile. Fuentes and others on the far right were giddy with their propaganda victory.

Jones presumably invited West and Fuentes onto his show as a bit of self-promotion. It immediately collapsed into antisemitic rants, praise for Adolf Hitler, and praise for Hitler's Nazi Party.

West claimed at one point that "300 Zionists" are in control of the media and the government, speculated on pedophilia and the Talmud, and ranted bafflingly about Israeli political figure Benjamin Netanyahu.

It was his repeated and explicit praise for Hitler and Hitler's Nazi movement that gained the most attention. "I see good things about Hitler also," West said, … We have to stop dissing the Nazis all the time." …"The Jewish media has made us feel like the Nazis and Hitler have never offered anything of value to the world."

West has also said:

"I don't like the word evil next to Nazis. [...] I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis."

"Woke culture is controlled by the Zionist media."

The sickest thing about West’s comments is that they accurately represent prevailing sentiment in the far right.

NOVEMBER 2022 IGNOMINIOUS ABUSRDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Ohio State Rep Bill Dean. According to Dean, there is “No great risk of dying from pregnancy.” People really need to stick to speaking about their expertise, and in some cases, not speak at all. Republicans across the country are speaking loudly and wrongly about reproductive health and, in at least one case, even body-shaming everyone who opposes the right wing’s ideas about bodily autonomy while doing so.

Dean doubled down on recent comments, calling rising U.S. maternal mortality rates a “myth” by blaming high maternal mortality on “lifestyle choices to do with abortions and weight.”

“I’m not a physician,” Dean began and should have stopped. “But,” he continued, “I would imagine, a lot of times, it’s the lifestyle of the lady that’s having the pregnancy,” he told the Dayton Daily News. “We also have the most obese people in the whole world. It’s just individual cases.”

The comments follow earlier ones in which Dean told the Dayton Daily News that “there’s no great risk of dying from pregnancy,” adding that ectopic pregnancy “doesn’t count.” Ectopic pregnancies, which account for about 2% of pregnancies, are the leading cause of maternal mortality during the first trimester. They occur when the fertilized egg implants outside the uterus. While Dean believes there’s no death risk associated with pregnancy, the reality is the U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among wealthy nations.

What's worse is that 80% of pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. are preventable. According to the CDC, these deaths are a result of high costs and limited access available to health care. Race plays a role in access to health care and disparities—Black people are three to four times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes than their white counterparts, and American Indian maternal mortality is also “disproportionately high” compared to their share of the population.

The stats are horrific, and the fact that a public official currently tasked with legislating the parameters of medical decisions is ignorant of them is even worse.

When asked by the Dayton Daily News about his stances on abortion last week, Dean defended them and said: “Pregnancy is a natural thing that women are made for. That’s the way God made them.”

He added: “The myth is that it is dangerous; it’s no more dangerous than living every day.”

Clearly, Dean has no idea what he’s talking about, I mean, he even admitted that he’s not a physician. So essentially, Dean believes that while there is no risk associated with pregnancy, the mortality rate of pregnant people is due to lifestyle choices and obesity.

While obesity does often impact health, there is no correlation between obesity and maternal mortality rates. Dean, who is no expert on the matter, is clearly making such claims to distract from the problem at hand and his lack of knowledge on the topic.

Dean also claimed that a majority of abortions are done for convenience, a claim his competitor, Democratic Ohio Statehouse candidate Jim Duffee, who is a doctor, pushed back against.

“Late trimester gestational abortions are almost never by convenience,” Duffee said. “They’re almost always related to life-threatening conditions for the mother or the baby, or severe chromosomal and genetic malformation that places mother and baby in danger.”

Would the general public approval of a woman’s right to choose, and understanding of health risks in pregnancy, turn the tide in Dean’s reelection bid against Duffie? Nah! Not in his red Ohio district. Duffie got swamped.

OCTOBER 2022 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC). In an opinion piece for the Washington Post, Sen Tim Scott (R-SC) says “Abortion is not the way to help single Black mothers.” First, can he get any more patronizing? Some guy, who has never had to worry about an unwanted pregnancy, swans into the room and tells women he knows what’s best for them. Second, how does removing a constitutional right benefit the person who loses it? Let’s look at his reasoning.

Scott starts with a hagiography of his mother, saying she worked 64 hours a week to raise Scott and his brother and to “keep food on the table and the lights on”. It makes you wonder where he stands on the minimum wage — spoiler alert, he is against raising it.

I am glad for Scott that he was able to benefit from the American dream — elevating himself from poverty to the US Senate in one generation. But anecdotes are not evidence. And children are not the best judges of the trials and tribulations of their parents, who usually put the best spin on difficult circumstances for their kids.

Next, Scott reports on remarks made by Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen. According to him, she said,

“I believe that eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy.” She went on to say how abortion affects “particularly low-income and often Black” mothers and how a lack of access to abortion “deprives them of the ability often to continue their education to later participate in the workforce.”

Scott was horrified. He asked,

“Was Yellen making the case for how abortion is good for America’s labor force?”

No, she was not. She clearly said that lack of choice hurts women because it could deny them educational and professional opportunities. But Scott chose not to hear Yellen’s respect for individual rights. Instead, he created a strawman argument — misrepresenting what Yellen said to criticize an argument she did not make.

Next, Scott goes on to write.

If abortion is our first and “best” answer to ensure that women and low-income families can thrive economically, the United States has reached one of its darkest times in our history.

Where is anyone saying that abortion is the “first and best answer”? Yellen was talking about choice because it is on everyone’s mind due to Alito’s rights-stripping, Roe-overturning opinion. Ask a liberal what will help “women and low-income families thrive economically” and they will talk about childcare, universal pre-K, parental leave, affordable higher education, and increasing the minimum wage. Scott supports none of that.

The hard truth is that the Supreme Court’s Roe-overturning decision takes away a right that American women of all backgrounds have been entitled to for 49 years. And they do not need a man, of any background, explaining how that is good for them. 

SEPTEMBER 2022 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC). Have you heard of RepublicanMD? It’s just like WebMD, except it’s based on GOP talking points instead of science. So, for instance, if your kid has rickets, WebMD might tell you to give her vitamin D supplements tout de suite, whereas, at RepublicanMD, the prescription for every affliction is always more upper-class tax cuts. Hey, it’s just common sense.

Of course, RepublicanMD is even more misleading when it comes to reproductive health care. Conservatives tend to be against sex education in schools, and, hoo-boy, does it ever show. It’s like they all learned about sex by watching dogs in their neighborhood give elliptical TED Talks about “late-term abortions” and “legitimate rape.”

The latest Republican womb-bat to stick his foot in his mouth is South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who recently sent out a fundraising email insisting that “if we don’t take back the Senate, Dems will pack the courts, give DC statehood, grant abortions up to 52 weeks, and Republicans will never win again.”

52 weeks? What on God’s green globule is this man talking about? I thought full-term pregnancy was 40 weeks. While a woman can’t be pregnant for 52 weeks, Scott’s idiocy seems terminal. For the good of the country, he should have his brain (if he has one) terminated immediately.

It would be nice, however, if the rest of Scott’s dystopian hellscape rambling would come to pass. Court packing, DC statehood? Why not? You can toss in Puerto Rico statehood in the mix.

This kind of doofus doctoring is all to common within the GOP. For instance, in 2019, when asked if incest victims could still procure abortions under a bill he was proposing, Alabama state Sen. Clyde Chambliss said, “Yes, until she knows she’s pregnant.”

Nuff said!

AUGUST 2022 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Carl Paladino, Former New York Gubernatorial Candidate.  Every foray into Paladino's campaign history reveals a racist, sexist, piece of work. He is currently running for a congressional seat in the Empire State and is endorsed by none other than the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, Elise Stefanik. The Buffalo businessman has been making some headlines lately for a slew of hot takes he’s had over the past month.

About a week after the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two teachers were murdered, Paladino posted (and subsequently deleted) a Facebook conspiracy screed implying that the mass shootings like those in Buffalo and Uvalde were not real or orchestrated by deep state operatives.  Before admitting that he did make the post, Paladino initially denied having shared the pathetic conspiracy theory, saying: "I don't even know how ti post of Facebook." 

After more pressure was put on him to “cowboy up,” as the gun enthusiasts love to say, like a true coward, Paladino offered up this backward-crawling explanation: "I just didn't remember the fact that I published it; I couldn't remember. It was written by Jeff Briggs, a good friend from Rochester. I published it because he is a friend."

Blame his “good friend?” In fact, Paladino has a new offensive set of remarks and ideas, first uncovered by Media Matters. Bottom of Form

According to the report, Paladino appeared last year on a weekly Buffalo radio show, called The r-House Radio Show, hosted by real estate executive Peter Hunt. Hunt was asking Paladino about how conservatives could get “roused” up in a state that votes predominantly blue. “How do you get people thinking about the possibility of change here in New York state and what that might mean ... for everyone here?”

Paladino begins by telling Hunt he was just thinking about this very topic “the other day.” Well, not exactly. See, according to Paladino, he was hanging out with some other good friends, and “somebody had mentioned on the radio Adolf Hitler, and how he aroused the crowds.”

Okaaaaaaay. Weird soundtrack for a group hangout, but let’s see where this is going.

Paladino sort of laughs with this worn-out white supremacist trope of a talking point. “And he would get up there screaming these epithets and these people were just, they were hypnotized by him. That’s, I guess, I guess that’s the kind of leader we need today. We need somebody inspirational.”

Someone inspirational. Like Hitler.

Paladino then makes a vague and somewhat rambling attack on “RINO-ism,” and Hunt quickly changes the subject to “deficit spending” in New York State.

It isn’t shocking that people like Paladino, and Trump before him, look up to Hitler and his supposed charisma. Decades ago, Ivana Trump did an interview with Vanity Fair and let the antisemitic cat out of the bag when she revealed that a book of Hitler’s speeches was the only book on Trump’s nightstand.

JULY 2022 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Herschel Walker, the Republican Senate Nominee in Georgia. When Walker began his campaign to unseat Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, the Walker campaign's main task was to play down Walker's history of domestic violence. As the campaign progresses, his handlers have a lot more cleaning up to do, which is not something Republicans are very good at—or, interested in.

Take the following: Walker’s involvement with a company that scammed American veterans (he falsely claimed he founded Patriot Support), his promotion of a scammy-sounding anti-coronavirus spray, his public lies about graduating from the University of Georgia (he even claimed he was in the top 1% of his class), his lying about working in law enforcement (he was an honorary Cobb County deputy, which is like being a junior ranger), his false claim about owning a lucrative chicken processing business, and, after “family man” Walker repeatedly criticized absent fathers in black households, his forced public acknowledged of having fathered two sons and a daughter with whom he is not regularly in contact. Add to this his suspiciously opaque supposed financial disclosures and his recent denial that former President Trump ever said the 2020 election was stolen, one can only conclude that Walker doesn't know anything about anything.

All right, so Herschel Walker is a liar and a hypocrite, a possible scammer, a political buffoon with a history of domestic abuse and a string of children he has so little involvement with that even his own campaign didn't know they existed. Fine. I think we could have all left it with "if you put a gun to your wife's head, you probably should forever be excluded from the United States Senate" but we're dealing with Republicans who don't blink at plots by a sitting Republican president to get his own vice president assassinated, they're not going to blink at any of this.

The depth of Walker’s ignorance never ceases to amaze. On Sunday, Walker spoke in front of the Hall County Republican Party. The group was small, and the speech revolved mainly around the enemy: China. That’s the country he claims created the COVID-19 virus and is to blame for climate change and a tax increase used to clean up the air.

Straying from his usual stump script, Walker started talking about the environment and climate change and how “[President Joe] Biden” began “getting rid of pipelines,” and “getting rid of our energy.” Then Walker explained climate change and the “Green New Deal” by saying that “We, in America, have some of the cleanest air and cleanest water of anybody in the world.” He then pivoted to describe how the U.S. is going to “pull from the ‘Green New Deal’… millions or billions of dollars cleaning our good air up,” and added that, “China and India aren’t putting anything into cleaning that situation up.”

“So all that bad air is still there. But, since we don’t control the air, our good air decide to float over to China bad air. So when China get our good air, their bad air gotta move. So, it moves over to our good air space. And now, we gotta clean that back up. While they’re messing ours up. So, what we’re doing is just spending money. But we’re not just spending money, we’re spending your money,” Walker says. And that is why Biden is raising taxes, he reasons.”

Enlightening!

Earlier in a monthly IGGY, I mentioned that Walker, if elected (the race against Warnock is virtually a dead heat), would be a shoe-in to join Louie Gohmert and Tommy Tuberville as one of the Three Stooge dumbest Congressmen. I’ll bet you could probably get Walker to play quietly in his office for at least an hour by giving him a copy of The Last Supper and telling him to find Waldo.

And now, he may be trying to earn the distinction of not only being a moron, but the Congress’ biggest fabricator, perhaps one of the greatest of all time, only one step behind the Trumpster..

SWEDEN ENDS TWO CENTURIES OF NONALIGNMENT

Sweden has not been involved in foreign wars since 1814. This long, successful record, maintained without the aid of foreign alliances, was instrumental in developing a tradition of neutrality and a general aloofness from active involvement in international affairs. This tradition of aloofness gradually diminished in the years after World War II as Sweden responded to the centripetal pull of European integration and its political, economic and security foreign orientations became increasingly internationalist in both their nature and purposes. Swedes liked to refer to this policy as "active neutrality."  Still, throughout the post-War years Sweden stood steadfast in avoiding military alliances with the aim of remaining neutral in any war.

JUNE 2002 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

Shakespeare wrote something like “It’s an ill day that brings forth the adder.” Well, you can count on a horrific Uvalde mass shooting to bring out Republican Adders, and they didn’t disappoint. Given the proliferation of many idiotic comments about guns and mass shootings, I will limit this month’s IGGY comments on the gun question.

1. Heather Ann Sprague, Republican Candidate for Maine’s House of Repersentatives. Evil deeds seem to always bring out IGGY-worthy absurdities. Thus, we get tortured explanations like the following, from Republicans who need to continually trot out fresh bugaboos to keep their base from questioning the wisdom of putting assault rifles in the hands of teenagers. You see, it’s liberal teachers who did it—at least according to Republican hopeful Heather Ann Sprague, who helpfully posted some of her transphobic thoughts on Facebook in the wake of the tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

According to Sprague, “Liberal teachers” are responsible for the mass shooting at a Texas elementary school that killed 19 children and two teachers.

In an apparent reference to a rumor on social media that has been debunked, Sprague claimed there were pictures online of the shooter dressed in women’s clothing, obviously a “confused” transgender kid.

“All I have to say is this is the result of what happens when kids are pushed past their limits. It’s obvious he was brainwashed in school by liberal teachers to think he shouldn’t be a male. If this crap doesn’t stop we will have more shootings because there are alot more confused, fed up and now mentally ill kids out there thanks to the #publicschoolsystem. THIS is why I have been TRYING to get the truth out about what the schools are doing to our youth because it’s DANGEROUS,” Sprague said in her post.

NBC news reported that a transgender woman’s photo was used to spread the baseless theory about the Texas shooter. The thread began on forum website 4chan and was spread by right-wing Facebook pages. Its falsity, of course, didn’t stop conservatives—including Republican Rep. Paul Gosar--from spreading it far and wide.

So, Sprague took unconfirmed information that felt comforting to her, and instead of researching it thoroughly, she immediately weaponized it in order to smear liberals and deflect responsibility from her own party’s shameful lack of action?

In another Facebook post, Sprague wrote, “I’ll go a step further and say the teachers that molded this kid into a #killer should be arrested for multiple MURDERS.” But not the person who sold the gunman two assault rifles with multiple rounds on his 18th birthday. Okay.

She also wrote, “more and more I cant help but think these shootings are on purpose to push gun control with the lives of babes. If they’re not getting shot they’re getting aborted. It’s disgusting and EVIL. If elected I will push to have armed guards at ALL our schools here in Maine.”

Of course, this is the same kind of muck conservatives stir up whenever there’s a mass shooting. They mix all that roiling sediment with our own righteous indignation in order to muddy what should be a pretty clear picture, and then they wait for the whole mess to settle down again—which it inevitably will, no doubt before Congress is spurred to take anything even resembling meaningful action.

By the way, Sprague is the only Republican running in her district, and will face incumbent Democrat Ann Matlack in the general election. So, voters, it seems, will have a pretty stark choice in this election between bullshit and reality. Let’s hope they choose wisely.

MAY 2022 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Rep. Matt Gaetz. Rep. Matt Gaetz, who is currently under investigation for having sex with a 17-year-old girl, and is the only member of Congress to vote against a law boosting the government’s human trafficking investigatory powers, has big thoughts on women who are upset about Roe v. Wade being overturned by the Supreme Court.

“How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, under-loved Millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats, and no bumble matches?”

The only way to make sense of the sicko Gaetz is to assume he’s using his soapbox to promote himself for a future media gig, except he’s so extreme Fox doesn’t even want him. That’s saying something. He’ll probably have to settle for a gig as a resident Trump flatterer at Mira Logo.

APRIL 2022 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Florida Senator Rick Scott and the RNC. GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has decided that the best way for Republicans to prevail in the midterms, and thus regain Congress, is to simply run against President Joe Biden and use inflation, mask wars, vaccine wars, and gas prices to defeat him. McConnell has decided not to release a competing Republican agenda—to have a plan Republicans will run on. Too bad, because that gives the guy he picked to head up the Senate Republicans 2022 effort, Florida Sen. Rick Scott, all the room he needed to go full-on fascist with his vision for America.

Politico got its hands on the Scott plan, and it is a chilling vision for the end of America as we know it. He calls it a plan to “rescue America.” It’s 11 points with 128 action items to fight the “militant left,” which “now controls the entire federal government, the news media, academia, Hollywood, and most corporate boardrooms.” Here’s what he says we militants are out to “change or destroy: American history, patriotism, border security, the nuclear family, gender, traditional morality, capitalism, fiscal responsibility, opportunity, rugged individualism, Judeo-Christian values, dissent, free speech, color blindness, law enforcement, religious liberty, parental involvement in public schools, and private ownership of firearms.” That’s just him warming up.

His 11-point plan is beyond radical and terrifying in its embrace of white supremacist, eliminationist principles and policy. It is also ridiculous. No. 1 is public education, where the Department of Education will be abolished and schools will “focus on the 3 R’s [sic], not indoctrination children with critical race theory or any other political ideology,” and where parents will “choose the school that best fits.” So that’s public funding of private, segregated, and preferably for Scott, Christian schools.

With that comes “color blind equality,” or Point 2. Because “we are all made in the image of God” and “dividing people by race, skin color, ethnicity, or country of origin” is “an immoral and corrosive habit of the woke crowd.” However, the brown people whose country of origin is not the U.S. can’t come through the southern border. Scott wants to not only build that wall, but to name it for Trump. Because of course he does. And he has no problem dividing out LGTBQ people, declaring: “Humans are born male and female, there are two genders, and to deny that is to deny science.” To that end, “No government forms will include questions about ‘gender identity’ or ‘sexual preference.’”

Poor people are going to have to fend for themselves, by the way. “No government assistance unless you are disabled or aggressively seeking work,” Scott declares, leaving retired people hanging. Does that mean an end to Social Security? Also, in a nod to Utah Sen. Mitt Romney’s infamous  47% of Americans are moochers rant, Scott declares: “All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax.” Elderly, disabled? Tough.

Having declared all Democrats “socialists,” Scott has a plan for us. “Socialism will be treated as a
foreign combatant which aims to destroy our prosperity and freedom,” which is pretty much a threat to imprison and/or execute a huge swath of the population based on their political beliefs. Because freedom.

Also, he’s got some pretty wild plans for government. First, what’s left of the IRS will be halved, both in funding and in staff. Everyone in government, elected and civil services, will be limited to 12 years in service. Just to make everything that much more chaotic, “All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years.” From the party that can’t manage to fund government from year to year. Also, he would: “Sell off all non-essential government assets, buildings, and land.” Bye bye National Parks.

Also, they’ll destroy the national and global economy. “Prohibit debt ceiling increases absent a declaration of war,” and “stop spending money on non-essential state and local projects until the budget is balanced.”

And of course, “we will protect the integrity of American Democracy [sic] and stop left-wing efforts to rig elections.”

Scott’s ideas are an amalgam of standard Republican economic principles—keep taxes low for the rich, punish the olds and poor—and batshit Fox News, MAGA culture warrior propaganda fueled by conspiracy theories.

There it all is: what Republicans really think about the majority of Americans and how they intend to “govern.”

No wonder McConnell didn’t want to put out an agenda; he knew it was going to be full of this kind of stuff. Too late, though. It’s been embraced by the Republican National Committee (RNC)—you know, the official Republican Party that said the Jan. 6 insurrection was “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political protest.”

Republicans have been good at telling people what they’re against. Now we know what they want to achieve and it’s terrifying. Wake up America!

MARCH 2022 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Senator Lindsey Graham. The hypocritical, deceitful Graham called for a “Brutus” or Stauffenberg” to rid the world of Vladimir Putin. I find this ignominious worthy for a couple reasons.

First, to the age-old debate of whether history makes the man, or the man makes history, let me say I lean to the side of history. Did Rome become better off without Ceaser? Had Hitler been assassinated, would the world be better off with Hess, Goring, or Bormann in charge? With Putin gone, would a successor be more reasonable? You get my point.

Second, official talk about killing Putin implies US support for regime change in Moscow. If you make a nuclear-armed enemy believe your strategy requires the end of their regime (or life), you are pushing them to nervous finger on their nuclear trigger. I’m reminded of Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet military who in 1983 was assigned to the command center that monitored Soviet early warning satellites over the US. During one of his shifts when Cold War tensions were running high (downed Korean airliner, revelations about nuclear winter) an alarm went off signaling that the Americans had seemingly launched five Minuteman ICBMs. Petrov had just a few minutes to decide whether to report the attack to the chain of command, which, under the tense circumstances, could have triggered a swift retaliatory strike. Fortunately for the US, Soviet Union, and the world, he decided to report the alert as a malfunction-a false alarm. Which it was: the satellite had misread sunlight reflecting off clouds as a missile attack.

Think about what would happen today with Russian nuclear forces on alert if a similar false warning were to occur. Would we be so lucky?

Lindsey Graham is one of the lowest of” humans”: a seemingly intelligent man who should know right from wrong, but time and time again defers to political expediency. His latest low life display was to announce he would vote against the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson after voting to confirm her when she was appointed to an appellate court. It doesn’t matter if he contradicts himself, speaks with forked tongue, or tells an outright lie, if it benefits him politically. He’s the epitome of what it means to be ignominious.

FEBRUARY 2022 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

NOTE: I know, I declared that because Donald Trump is a member of the Ignominious Hall-of-Shame his evil absurdities would no longer be noted in monthly postings. Though he's ineligible for a monthly IGGY, I can't resist including his latest.  

After Russian military forces began moving into Ukraine, while claiming that nothing like this would have happened under his administration (of course), Trump told a Tennessee talk radio audience that after watching the news after Putin declared the Donbas region of Ukraine to be independent and ordered Russian troops to storm the region for alleged “peacekeeping” purposes, Putin should be praised.

“This is genius,’” Trump recalled. “Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine, of Ukraine ― Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.” “So, Putin is now saying, ‘It’s independent.’ A large section of Ukraine. I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force.”

“We could use that on our southern border,” he added, before continuing with his praise. “That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re going to keep peace all right. No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy.”

“I know him very well. Very, very well,” Trump said. The fondness that Trump displayed for the Russian strongman over the course of his presidency and beyond has continues to baffle even some in his own party. Along with his general affinity with autocrats, and Putin in particular, didn’t you expect such a comment? I’ll lay you ten to one that the only thing Trump knows about Ukraine, let alone the Donbas region, is that it’s a place where Hunter Biden was doing “bad things, very bad things.”

1. Texas Senator John Cornyn. It doesn't get any more dimwitted than this. Last week, Cornyn claimed that Democrats' focus on protecting the right to vote was in response to a “manufactured crisis.”

To support that claim, he pointed to a Pew Research Center poll conducted just after the November 2020 presidential election that found more than nine in 10 voters said it was easy to vote in the election.

"More than nine-in-ten voters (94%) say that voting in the election this November was either very easy (77%) or somewhat easy (17%), while just 6% say that voting was very or somewhat difficult," Cornyn tweeted, quoting an excerpt from the Pew report.

Several hours later, Cornyn managed to finish his thought.

"Democrats claim there's a nationwide assault on the right to vote, but 94% of voters said voting was easy in 2020. This is a manufactured crisis designed to achieve political gain," he tweeted.

Seriously, how stupid does this guy think voters are? Sure, the GOP base is living in an alternate universe, but there's no need to convince them using a Pew poll. They'll soak up any old slop they're served.

Instead, the tweet seemed aimed at slightly swingier voters—an attempt to sell them on the idea that Democrats are making stuff up. Only Pew was talking about 2020, and the GOP's nationwide assault on voting rights began in the wake of 2020, precisely because Joe Biden flipped states that hadn't gone for a Democrat in decades.

So the Pew poll of 2020 holds no relevance whatsoever to the fact that GOP-led states have since passed a title wave of bills that seek to subvert the will of the voters.

That means Cornyn is either daft, or he's grown accustomed to the idea that voters are stupid and will believe anything you tell them. That may be true of the GOP base and Trump cultists, but it isn't true for some 60% of the country.

JANUARY 2022 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

NOTE:  Most of the comments on monthly IGGYs I've been receiving lately are forwarded as "anonymous."  Since most people commenting are long time subscribers committed, as I am, to free speech, I can only assume that viewers are confused about how to include their name. Let me restate instructions  on how to identify yourself:

First, type your comment, then in the "comment as" window, click the down arrow.  Among the options listed, click on "name/URL and add your name, then click "publish."  Once I accept the comment, it will be included at the bottom of commentary on the blog site. You can also notify me, if you wish, which will help me publish your comment quicker.

1. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. DeSantis has been trying to make a name for himself as a Republican willing to be a Worse Donald Trump, and he hasn't been missing a single beat lately in trying to out-Trump the former Dear Leader. He was quick to realize that Republican voters really, really wanted fake COVID-19 treatments, and while he ceded the "what if we somehow shoved a disinfecting light up everyone's ---" territory to Donald, he went all-in on hydroxycholorowhateveride, then switched to becoming the nation's top promoter of monoclonal antibody therapies after the state's hydroxywhatever stockpiles were proven utterly useless.

DeSantis has, in fact, been touting extremely expensive monoclonal antibody treatments as preferable to being vaccinated against Covid. Imagine his fury, then, as the emergence of the omicron COVID-19 variant turned those drugs from expensive-but-plausible early treatments to utterly useless.

The FDA announced this month that it will be revoking the emergency use authorizations for regeneron and Eli Lilly-manufactured monoclonal antibody treatments. The reason for the reversal is straightforward: While the therapies did appear to have some merit in fighting earlier COVID-19 variants, they have proven to be ineffective in combating the omicron variant now responsible for over 99% of new U.S. Covid cases. They've been tested; they don't work. The FDA, therefore, is withdrawing emergency use authorization for now so that people aren't being treated with drugs that the FDA and the companies themselves agree aren't useful.

The point of treating sick Covid patients is to make them less sick, after all. The point isn't to load them full of treatments that don't work so that scientifically illiterate political figures like Ron DeSantis can boast to their fans that they know the secret cure for our pandemic troubles.

As you can imagine, Ron is extremely furious that he has once again centered his political ambitions on a miracle cure that turns out to not do a damn thing, and because Ron is a Republican, and therefore a hoax-promoting fascist, he is instead insisting that this is all a trick, the FDA is doing it to spite him and to hurt Florida, and he's going to make sure Florida's many, many seriously ill Covid patients are pumped full of the two treatments even if he has to sue the federal government to make it happen. .

And, that is not all. Commenting on a speech where he railed against testing for the Coronavirus, DeSantis raised eyebrows when he asked whether people got screened for illness prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Now think about it," DeSantis said Friday. "Before Covid did anyone go out and seek testing to determine if they were sick? It's usually you feel like you're sick and you get tested to determine what you maybe have come down with."

Sorry, moron. Preventive screenings for numerous diseases, including sexually transmitted infections and forms of cancer, are common even in people who do not have any symptoms of the disease. Even DeSantis’ wife advocates for preventative cancer testing and talked about her own breast cancer diagnosis.

Someone needs to tell Governor Shit-for-Brains that new discoveries cause behavioral changes. Before polio, did anyone go out and seek the polio vaccine? Before cancer, did anyone go out and seek mammograms, colonoscopies or pap smears? Before fire, did anyone go out and seek to boil water? 

What a man! The same man who allowed one million COVID-19 tests to expire in a warehouse. Do we need more evidence that DeSantis’ brain has been separated from his cerebral cortex? And, this imbecile has serious presidential ambitions. He has all the credentials for the GOP.