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.

DECEMBER 2021 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

The Ignominious Absurdity of the Month (IGGY) award used to be called The Bonehead Absurdity of the Month. I used the word “bonehead” because I thought the utterances selected were largely products of stupidity or ignorance. Coming to believe that the people I selected were not just ignorant, but downright evil, I decided to change bonehead to ignominious, hence was born The Ignominious Absurdity on the Month. This shouldn’t imply, however, that ignominious individuals are not also ignorant; in reality, there is a close affinity between the two, as some of this month’s selections will attest.

1. The Usual Suspects. It’s become habitual that certain persons will repeatedly distinguish themselves as IGGY candidates. This month, Reps. Jim Jordan, Matts Gaetz, and Marjorie Taylor Green put their ignorance and stupidity once again on display. If we can’t require IQ tests as a prerequisite to serving the US House of Representatives, at least we should require an MRI of their brains to check for nougat. It’s the least we can do for the American public. The nougat brains of Jordan, Gaetz and Green showed their tangle of glitching neurons when commenting on the Covid virus.

First, Jordan’s brilliant observation: “Real America is done with Covid-19. The only people who don’t understand this is Fauci and Biden.”

Done? As the year ended, there were over 580,000 new cases in the U.S., the highest on record.  Worrisome projections about the new Omicron variant suggest Jordan must have been absent when brains were passed out.

Next, Gaetz: “Still the best vaccine we’ve found is mother nature’s vaccine, it’s contacting the virus that’s what has provided the greatest, most durable, protection over the longest period of time.”

Sorry Matt, scientific research has revealed that people who have had Covid are not immune to getting it again, especially, apparently, from the Omicron variant.

The immutable Taylor Green apparently thinks cancer is somehow analogous to COVID-19. In her words: “Every single year more than 600,000 people in the US die of cancer. The country has never once shut down. Not a single school has closed. And every year, over 600,000 people of all ages and races will continue to die from cancer.”

Apparently, Georgia’s Greene missed a few days of school—including the day all Peach State schools are required to set aside once a year to teach something other than creation science. So, the nougat-brained Green thinks cancer is somehow analogous to COVID-19, a communicable disease that continues to spread, evolve, and kill innocent people across the globe.

It’s a tragedy that so many people still die of cancer each year. But what we haven’t done in the face of this ongoing crisis is demonize effective treatments, politicize basic precautionary measures, or relentlessly attack one of the world’s foremost experts on the problem.

Obviously, there’s a significant difference between cancer and COVID-19. Let me see if I can puzzle this one out. Hmm. No luck. Guess I’m just too obtuse.

NOVEMBER 2021 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala). On Sunday, an article in Rolling Stone reported that both Republicans members of Congress and their staff met repeatedly with organizers of the Jan. 6 insurrection to plan protests around blocking the official tallying of the Electoral College vote. This month, the Montgomery Adviser reported that Brooks denied helping to plan the rally, saying that he had not had any  involvement in fundraising for the rally, and only showed up to speak “because the White House asked him to do so.”

In a phone interview, Brooks seemed quite sure that his hands were clean when it came to the rally and the violent and deadly assault on the Capitol that followed. "If you’re talking about someone participating in meetings, setting the agenda, raising the money,” said Brooks, “I don’t know of anything that suggests my staff as doing that stuff.”

But speaking to reporters on Monday afternoon, Brooks walked that statement back a critical distance. Speaking to CNN’s Melanie Zanona, Brooks continued to claim that he had not attended planning meetings for the event, but said, “I don’t know if my staff did ... but if they did I’d be proud of them for helping to put together a rally lawful under the First Amendment at the ellipse to protest voter fraud and election theft."

Which is certainly made more interesting by how, back in July, Brooks told Slate that he was aware there was a likelihood of violence at the rally. “As a consequence of those warnings,” said Brooks, “I did not go to my condo. Instead, I slept on the floor of my office. And when I gave my speech at the Ellipse, I was wearing body armor.”

An article from another Alabama television station, WKRG, has Brooks making the statement about purchasing a Glock after a more general statement about the threats that he receives as a member of Congress. Which makes this seem like less connected to the Jan. 6 event.

During that interview in July, Brooks refused to say who had given him the heads up on what was about to happen. Or provide details on that warning. But those would be excellent questions for the House select committee on Jan. 6.

In a statement to WAFF in Huntsville, Alabama, Brooks later claimed that he had “zero warnings of any kind” about violence from Trump supporters and only wore body armor because he was concerned about “the risk of threatened violence by BLM and ANTIFA.” Brooks also hinted that he might have been carrying a weapon at the rally, saying: “As a consequence of these threats, I have body armor, a concealed carry permit, and purchased a Glock to go with them.”

According to the original Rolling Stone article, at least one of those involved in planning the January 6 rally has been in communication with the select committee. That organizer is apparently now a cooperating witness, sharing information about the members of Congress and their staff who helped plan events on Jan. 6. That organizer specifically mentioned that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was present at meetings, and that others—including Rep. Paul Gosar, Rep. Lauren Boebert, Rep. Madison Cawthorn, Rep. Andy Biggs, Rep. Louie Gohmert, and Rep. Mo Brooks—either attended themselves or sent “top staffers.”

If Brooks’ statements seem to constantly skate the edge of self-contradiction and encouraging violence, they fall solidly in the speech Brooks made to the insurgents gathered before him on the Ellipse the morning of January 6. On that morning, Brooks’ didn’t tell them to storm the Capitol and engage in violence. He only told them, “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass. Our ancestors sacrificed their blood, their sweat, their tears, their fortunes and sometimes their lives to give us, their descendants, an America that is the greatest nation in world history. So, I have a question for you. Are you willing to do the same?”

He didn’t tell them they had to stop the electoral count. He only told them, “Today, Republican senators and congressmen will either vote to turn America into a godless, amoral, dictatorial, oppressed and socialist nation on the decline, or they will join us and they will fight and vote against voter fraud and election theft and vote for keeping America great.”

He didn’t tell them they had to attack the Capitol, he only called out to the crowd, “Will you fight for America?” before saying, “We, American patriots are going to come right at them!”

It seems clear that Brooks had staffers—at least—involved in the pre-planning of Jan. 6 events. It’s clear that he had foreknowledge that violence was likely, if not certain. It’s clear that on Jan. 6, Brooks helped deliver that violence by informing the crowd that the nation would be lost if they didn’t act immediately. And it’s clear that every day since then, Brooks has continued to blast the Big Lie about election fraud, even as he has hedged his own claims to stay just this side of obvious sedition.

Is this the last straw in Brooks’ worthiness for a Hall-of-Shame induction?

OCTOBER 2021 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

ANNOUNCEMENT: Ted Cruz, Rudy Giuliani, Tucker Carlson AND Louis Gohmert are four irredeemable evildoers who have appeared repeatedly as monthly IGGY candidates and winners (Carlson and Gohmert appear again this month). In a quiet ceremony after picking up dog shit in my backyard, I inducted the four of them in the Phronesis Hall-of-Shame. This means that their ignominious actions and utterances will not appear in any future IGGY listing. Their membership is well-earned—and long overdue.

Near misses for induction included Senators Mitch McConnell and Ron Johnson, Representatives Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Mo Brooks, and Marjorie Taylor Green, and Governors Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott. Strong future contenders include Senators Mike Lee, Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema. Feel free to recommend additional worthy candidates.

1. Representative Elise Stefanik. House Republican Conference chair Elise Stefanik wouldn’t dare call out Jan. 6 insurrectionists and their failed attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. After all, that’s how she got her current gig. So, she’s instead stooping to calling undocumented immigrants the actual insurrectionists—and echoing a white supremacist conspiracy theory in the process.

“Radical Democrats are planning their most aggressive move yet: a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION,” Elise for Congress claimed in one Facebook ad last week, according to Zachary Mueller of America’s Voice. “Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.” Just days later, Stefanik doubled down.

“After national press attention condemning Stefanik's use of the white nationalist 'replacement theory' in her Facebook ads warning of an ‘election insurrection’ ... she has doubled down and is STILL running these ads,” Mueller tweeted. “In total, Stefanik paid Facebook to show these xenophobic dog-whistle ads to over a million Facebook users, all but 5% of whom lived outside New York with the majority being over the age of 55,” he wrote last week. “Stefanik is not using these ads to communicate a message to voters in her district,” he notes. “Instead, she is targeting older Americans across the country who react positively to online racialized fear-mongering.” Replacement theory seems to resonate.

This white supremacist belief has more recently found a home on Fox News via Tucker Carlson. It also found a home among the House Republican caucus way before Stefanik’s disgusting ads, echoed by Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry in April.

“For many Americans,” The Washington Post reports Perry said during a hearing on Central American migration, “what seems to be happening or what they believe right now is happening is, what appears to them is we’re replacing national-born American—native-born Americans to permanently transform the landscape of this very nation.” Like the Post noted, never mind that it was Perry, like Stefanik, who sought to “transform the landscape of this very nation” by supporting overturning the election. Facts, smacts.

Among the national press attention that slammed Stefanik’s ads came from her hometown newspaper, which “offered a scathing response” to her rhetoric, HuffPost reported. “Quite a choice of words, of course, considering that the country is still suffering the aftershocks of the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington by supporters of Mr. Trump who tried to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election,” The Times Union Editorial Board said. “The Harvard-educated Ms. Stefanik surely knows the sordid history and context of this.”

That suggests that Stefanik should know better, and indeed, Stefanik is on the record criticizing Trump in the past. “In fact, at times Stefanik sounded practically like a Never Trumper, as she called on Trump to recognize that Russia had attacked the 2016 election to help him, urged him to release his tax returns, and assailed him for his comments about women,” Mother Jones reported in May. Some might argue that Stefanik is a weathervane adjusting to whatever winds are necessary to hold onto power. Or maybe, just maybe, Stefanik’s now finally showing us exactly who she is.

SEPTEMBER 2021 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

Sorry this is arriving late, I was out of town.

1. Senator Ron Johnson. Even before the January 6 insurrection by supporters of former President Donald Trump, Senator Ron Johnson was pushing the Big Lie that Trump was somehow cheated out of a second term.

As chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Wisconsin Republican used the December 16 session to raise doubts about the legitimacy of the 2020 election. In a lengthy, if largely fact-free, statement to the committee, he claimed that alleged irregularities could be grouped into three categories: “1) lax enforcement or violations of election laws and controls, 2) fraudulent votes and ballot stuffing, and 3) corruption of voting machines and software that might be programmed to add or switch votes.”

“In the time we had,” Johnson babbled, “it was impossible to fully identify and examine every allegation. But many of these irregularities raise legitimate concerns, and they do need to be taken seriously.”

That declaration was, of course, false. So outrageous was the senator’s hearing that The New York Times headlined its report, “The election is over, but Ron Johnson keeps promoting false claims of fraud.”

No surprise there. Johnson is the king of false claims—on everything from Covid-19 cures to tax-policy votes that invariably end up benefiting the senator and his campaign donors.

Johnson’s amplification of the Big Lie fostered the fantasy that the presidency was being stolen from Trump. Now, however, there’s reason to believe that Johnson’s been knowingly lying about the Big Lie.

On Sunday, when he spoke at a Republican event in Wisconsin with Lauren Windsor, a progressive activist who posed as a conservative and taped a conversation with Johnson, the senator said, “I think it’s probably true that Biden got maybe 7 million more popular votes. That’s the electoral reality. So to just say for sure that this was a stolen election, I don’t agree with that.”

Windsor is a self-described “progressive pugilist swamp-slayer” who has gained prominence over the past decade with multiple exposés of conservative hypocrisy, and, as executive producer of the political web show The Undercurrent, has distributed a tape of the conversation on social media. Johnson said during what he apparently thought was a private conversation, “There’s nothing obviously skewed about the results.” He even told Windsor that Trump lost because he had underperformed as compared to other Republicans. “If all the Republicans voted for Trump the way they voted for the Assembly candidates, he would have won,” said the senator. “He didn’t get 51,000 votes that other Republicans got, and that’s why he lost.”

Still, Johnson continues to peddle Trump’s Big Lie—even going so far as to support a bogus audit of the election results that has been promoted in recent weeks by Trump-aligned Wisconsin legislators. The audit will cost Wisconsin taxpayers $680,000.

Let us hope that Johnson’s big lie will follow him like stink on a skunk when he seeks a third term—should he decide to run.