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!

2. Florida Senator Marco Rubio. The quick-and-agile Rubio characterized former President Donald Trump taking top-secret documents from the White House when he left office as nothing more than a “storage” issue.

Although Trump is under Federal investigation for yet another of his illegal capers, Rubio insisted in an interview with South Florida’s NBC6 on Sunday: “This is, really, at its core, a storage argument that they’re making ... I don’t think a fight over storage of documents is worthy of what they’ve done, which is [a] full-scale raid and then these constant leaks.”

He also indicated that “behind all this” is simply a negative public relations campaign. Rubio said officials are “arguing there are documents there” at Mar-a-Lago, but they “don’t deny that he should have access to those documents.”

They do, in fact, deny he has the right to such access.

Under the Presidential Records Act, all White House documents, whether classified or not, belong to the public and are required to be turned over to the National Archives when a president leaves office. Trump would have as much access as other Americans, who would not be allowed to take documents home.

Rubio certainly had a different tone when it came to Hillary Clinton and handling classified materials back in 2016.  Here’s his press release from July 5th, 2016:

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) today issued the following statement regarding the FBI’s decision in the Hillary Clinton email probe:

“The FBI concluded what many Americans have known for quite some time, which is that Hillary Clinton’s conduct as Secretary of State and her mishandling of classified information was disgraceful and unbecoming of someone who aspires to the presidency. There is simply no excuse for Hillary Clinton's decision to set up a home-cooked email system which left sensitive and classified national security information vulnerable to theft and exploitation by America’s enemies. Her actions were grossly negligent, damaged national security and put lives at risk.

"Hillary Clinton's actions have sent the worst message to the millions of hard-working federal employees who hold security clearances and are expected to go to great lengths to secure sensitive government information and abide by the rules. They don't take their oaths lightly, and we shouldn't expect any less of their leaders.

"Hillary Clinton’s reckless and thoughtless mishandling of classified information is not the end of the story however. It’s only a matter of time before the next shoe drops and the nexus of corruption and controversy that has surrounded Hillary Clinton throughout her time in public office produces yet another scandal for the American people to endure. Given the consequential and challenging times in which we live, America simply cannot afford any more Clinton drama."

No surprise here. Republican double-talking hypocrisy has become a defining feature of today’s GOP.

3. Pennsylvania Senate Candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz. TV doctor turned Republican senatorial candidate Mehmet Oz has been tough to pin down on abortion. Exclusive audio reveals that Dr. Oz said during a tele-town hall earlier this year that abortion is “still murder” at any point after conception.

Oz claims to be “100% pro-life,” though as recently as 2019, he defended Roe v. Wade.

But now, The Daily Beast has obtained audio from a campaign event this May where Oz staked out his most extreme position yet, telling voters he believes abortion at any stage of development is “still murder,” including from the moment of conception.

“I do believe life starts at conception, and I’ve said that multiple times,” Oz said during the event, a tele-town hall held a week before the Republican primary.

“If life starts at conception,” Oz added, “why do you care what age the heart starts beating at? It’s, you know, it’s still murder, if you were to terminate a child whether their heart’s beating or not.”

He was answering an attendee who wondered how Oz could square his current anti-abortion stance with his statements from 2019, specifically that “the heart’s not beating” six weeks into a pregnancy.

The one-time surgeon explained that, at the time of the 2019 interview, he had been “concerned” about making sure anti-abortion laws could be enforced.

“My mother-in-law wrote a lot of the original pro-life literature in Montgomery County,” Oz told the conservative audience. “My argument in that radio interview was as a doctor, a heart starts beating at around nine weeks. So, I was concerned that if legislators picked a timeframe that’s not medically accurate, it would invalidate the law.”

Oz did in fact say something to that effect in the 2019 Breakfast Club interview. “If you’re going to define life by a beating heart,” he said, “then make it a beating heart, not little electrical exchanges in the cell that no one would hear or think about as a heart.”

The context in that 2019 interview, however, was that Oz was politically pro-choice.

He was “really worried,” Oz said during that interview, about the harmful consequences for women’s health if Roe were overturned.

He even took a shot at people who believe life begins at conception—as Oz now says he does.

“Just being logical about it,” Oz said then, “if you think that the moment of conception you’ve got a life, then why would you even wait six weeks? Right, then an in vitro fertilized egg is still a life.”

It’s not clear where Oz stands on abortion laws that might effectively also ban in vitro fertilization. According to his most recent financial disclosure, Oz and his wife hold between $1.5 million and $6 million of shares in Prelude Fertility, part of the largest in vitro fertility network in the United States—which is currently looking for a buyer.

The former daytime TV star’s squishiness on the issue has been a weak spot throughout his campaign, including during the Republican primary, where he scrambled to sell the MAGA base on his conservative bona fides. And his remarks equating early-stage abortion to “murder,” made weeks ahead of that primary, could complicate his ongoing efforts to appeal to the swing state’s critical suburban voting bloc, which, as noted by the Daily Beast, is “outside of where most Pennsylvania voters are,” and could be a strategic mistake in the general election.

It might not be so surprising that Oz finds himself in a hall of mirrors on this particular issue. His disgraceful campaign has been the equivalent of two drunk longshoremen trying to shave each other’s bums on a Tilt-A-Whirl. His dear friend and confidant Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who is outright appalled by Oz’s behavior during his campaign, calling him out over his election denialism, his campaign’s snide comments about his opponent’s health issues, and what he colorfully refers to as Oz’s “festival of fraudulence,” aptly sums up the Oz campaign:

“The man running for Senate is not Dr. OZ. This person is unrecognizable to me,” Boteach observed.

In a phone interview, Boteach bemoaned Oz’s embrace of Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, skewered the GOP Senate nominee over his positions on the Armenian genocide and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and denounced the campaign’s personal jabs against their Democratic opponent, John Fetterman.

Boteach seems perplexed that the guy who became rich in part by promoting snake oil on national TV would suddenly become so “morally depraved.” He joked that maybe Oz may have been kidnapped by “space aliens” who replaced the famous TV host with a morally depraved clone. But Boteach’s frustrations with the campaign are serious, as he says the run is a “disgrace,” “grotesque,” and a “festival of fraudulence.”

That just about says it all.

4. Republican Senator Lyndsey Graham. Top of Form

Having spent more than five years publicly debasing himself to prove his fealty to Graham really upped his game this month, promising widespread domestic violence if the Department of Justice dared to declare that no one is above the law:

And I’ll say this, if there is a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information after the Clinton debacle … there will be riots in the street.

Apparently Graham had no thoughts on Trump’s potential violations of The Espionage Act, or the various possible charges related to destroying, concealing, or falsifying documents, nor did he seem concerned about the “11 sets of classified documents ranging from ‘Confidential’ to ‘Secret’ to ‘Top Secret’ and ‘TS/CSI’ documents,” that would cause “exceptionally grave damage to the national security.” And he certainly gave no thought to denouncing such violence. So, let’s call it a promise.

Is there a more despicable hypocrite in politics as Lyndsey Graham?

5. Rep. Lauren Boebert. If you stare into Rep. Lauren Boebert’s eyes long enough, you’ll be inexorably drawn into an inky black abyss of primal emptiness—a pitiless void in which no light, linear thought, or glimmer of hope can find purchase. And if you stare even longer, you’ll see a meth den that used to be a Pizza Hut.

That was never more evident than on this month when Boebert “debated” her Democratic opponent for Congress, Adam Frisch.

And—hoo boy—the proceedings got off to a roaring start! Right at the top, Boebert accused the debate moderator, Edie Sonn of the Colorado Behavioral Healthcare Council, of secretly being against her. Because that’s what adults do—especially when they’re running for high office.

Here's how it went:

BOEBERT: “Before I agree to the rules, I do have one request for you. Edie, can you please disclose to the audience that you publicly supported my 2020 Democrat candidate, Diane Mitsch Bush, and can you please disclose any other roles that you have had with Democrat candidates in the past?”

SONN: “I actually do not recall giving any money to Diane Mitsch Bush.”

BOEBERT: “Not money, just support.”

SONN: “Come again?”

BOEBERT: “So I believe that this is relevant because when I was invited, when I received the invitation to the Club 20 debate, Club 20, CMU, and The Daily Sentinel said that they want to provide a nonpartisan forum tonight. Now, isn’t it true that you tweeted during the 2020 election, ‘Rep. Mitsch Bush, I’ve always been a supporter of yours’?”

SONN: “And the other part of that tweet said that I took issue with something she had said relative to her position on [crosstalk]. You know what, this debate is not about me, Congresswoman Boebert.”

BOEBERT: “I believe it is relevant because I think that it’s fair to everyone here to understand that Club 20 knowingly chose you to moderate this [debate]. [boos] I don’t think it’s fair to the audience or to you.”

SONN: “Congresswoman Boebert, this is not about me tonight, this is about you and your opponent. I am here to be the traffic cop while these panelists ask questions, and I respectfully ask that you agree to the terms of this debate. If you will not do so, then we can close things down right now.”

BOEBERT: “Edie, I do agree to the rules of the debate and I am glad that everyone is aware that Club 20 has not chosen a nonpartisan moderator. Thank you.”

Okay, well that was special. But she was just getting started. You see, she’s not just eternally persecuted, she’s also deeply—almost unfathomably—ignorant when she demonstrated in the debate that she was clueless about the 19^th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

Sadly, Boebert’s congressional district is so red she’s almost certain to win another term. But hey, maybe she can repulse enough people in other districts to move the needle for Democrats in tighter races. Or maybe a miracle will happen. Because whether Boebert realizes it or not, women now have an inalienable right to vote. And because of that, I feel a cold Roevember chill seeping into a lot of GOP campaigns.

6. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson. Johnson is getting out and about as his very tight election is on the horizon. He has made a grand ol’ career of lying and promoting terrible big business policies that harm not only his constituents in Wisconsin, but every American across the nation. In recent months, Johnson has flipped back and forth on issues so frenetically one could probably use him as an oscillating fan.

Just a few weeks ago, Johnson touted an endorsement fromBorder Patrol union president and conspiracy theory peddling extremist Brandon Judd. It wasn’t a surprise that Johnson would be proud aligning himself with racists and xenophobes—it’s the GOP brand these days. On Tuesday, Johnson went on Fox Business to speak with alleged personalities on that network, and accidentally gave the world a grand ol’ slip of the tongue while discussing white supremacy.

In the video, you can see Johnson saying that one of his colleagues at Homeland Security brought up the threat of “white supremacy” all the time, back when Johnson was the chairman of the Homeland Security committee. (He also tries to make it sound like he ran Homeland Security, of course.) Johnson goes on to explain, “And my ranking member would always be bringing up white supremacy which, you know, I condone… I, I mean, I condemn.”

In Ron Johnson’s defense, he’s a crap person, a terrible politician, and shouldn’t have been elected head of a household, let alone the Senate. Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel joked about the clip, calling the Senator’s use of words a “Fraudian slip.” That works well.

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And the September IGGY winner is:

Standing out from the September list of several previous IGGY winners, is the lying, snake-oil peddling, immoral hypocrite Dr. Mehmet Oz