Oh Fiddlesticks, Did Three Witches Give Charlie Kirk The Poops?
It could happen to you.
Recently we remarked that it's easy to forget there are grown adults who literally believe that at any given time, there are demons and angels in the sky doing swordfights over whether they can tempt you into masturbating while you're on the toilet. Literally believe this. They call it "spiritual warfare," and it's a thing you'll hear a lot in certain kinds of churches. The notion came up after the Grammys, when Sam Smith and Kim Petras went to their local Party City and said "Give us the sexy devil costumes, we have some conservative Christians to mess with."
That night, Charlie Kirk tweeted a video of their performance with the words "Definitely not a spiritual war." As if he was saying something self-evident, that obviously it definitely was a spiritual war, which meant the angels and the demons were in the sky doing Fight Club and trying to tempt sinners into touching each other's underwear parts. A bit later, he tweeted "The Devil. Brought to you by Pfizer..." Because, you see, it was the Devil (capital letters, that is his name), and it was brought to you by Pfizer (vaccines!111!1!!!).
Also on that Grammys night, weirdo plagiarist Benny Johnson from Newsmax tweeted, "Is there a demonic gathering Pfizer won't sponsor?" As if Pfizer was just on a streak of sponsoring demonic gatherings. Because the vaccines !111!1!!! are the demonic gathering.
A bit after that, Benny shit his pants about how Joe Biden was going to do "Satanism" at the State of the Union.
These are not grown-up belief systems, for grown-ups. But they are very spooky!
Now watch Charlie Kirk talk about how three witches (3) came up to him once, started saying stuff at him, and just after that he got very sick. Did three witches (3) give Charlie Kirk the poops? Or was it more of a head cold thingie? What did the real literal actual witches do Charlie?
“Three witches came up and they started saying stuff at me. And maybe it was a coincidence, maybe it wasn’t, but I got super sick right after that. [...] That was pretty chilling. And so, uh, they came into the church. [...] Obviously, I believe that those unclean spirits are subservient to truth, to Christ, and to the one God. [...] By the way, some of you in our audience say 'I do those things and I’m fine.' OK. Great. Terrific. Be careful with that. Those things can be portals into some really dark things.”
Obviously he believes unclean spirits are subservient to Jesus, obviously. Therefore, if we are interpreting Charlie Kirk's theology correctly, if the witches are going make him poopy, it's because Jesus allowed it.
Charlie said it happened in January 2021 in New Mexico, a very pagan place. He was at a church talking about anti-gay bigot stuff. There were witches and they talked to him!
The context to this is so weird, y'all. Extreme right-wingers have decided that Emily Kohrs, the foreperson of the Georgia grand jury, the one who's been on a media tour blabbing and needs to stop doing that, is a literal actual witch. Charlie Kirk found her Pinterest and there was witch stuff on it. Charlie says witches are the kinds of people serving on "many juries" now.
He said in the video that people were emailing him to say don't make fun of witches, they have a lot of power, and he said that's NOT TRUE, they don't have a lot of power, but "they do have some." And that's when he explained what happened to him, with the three witches (3) who talked to him.
The jury foreperson witch claim made it to Jesse Watters on Fox News, because he looked at Kohrs's Pinterest just like Charlie Kirk did. “She’s a wiccan, it looks like, and now she’s leading a different kind of witch hunt.” Watters interviewed some white weenus conservative activist named Ned Ryun, who said, “It’s the chef’s kiss that somehow this forewoman is a witch involved in leading a witch hunt. What are the odds?” Charlie said to his own viewers, "To make her the face of this entire political witch hunt — witch hunt!"
Sometimes they all make the same hilarious joke.
And of course Benny Johnson. Oh bless his heart, he's going through some things.
Benny said:
And if you don't believe me that we're fighting a spiritual battle between darkness and light, that is exhibit A. Weird demon-possessed girl coming after Donald Trump because she's believed all of the filth and propaganda that's been vomited into her face by the media.
Again, it's easy to forget that some grown-ups think these things are real.
Now, is this a very sad and pathetic attempt to discredit the grand jury in Georgia that made recommendations to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on whether Donald Trump and all his friends should face charges for trying to overturn the election in Georgia? Yes.
Poor Charlie tells his viewers in the video above that the case is very weak -- he's such a legal mind, very educated -- but just in case, he and his friends are spreading these desperate stories about the foreperson of the jury being a Pinterest witch. Of course, Kohrs doesn't actually make the decisions on indictments, that's Fani Willis. But Kohrs really does need to shut up, and the halfwit CNN-type media needs to stop enabling it.
But Charlie and all are doing this because they and their listeners are the kinds of people who believe in spiritual warfare.
And we guess Charlie believes witches can give you the shits if they want, but only if Jesus signs off on it, because they're powerful but not that powerful.
You betcha.
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Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders Unveils Education Plan: Hike Teacher Pay, Wreck Public Schools
Win ... win?
Fresh off her incomprehensible culture wars rant about the State of the Union Tuesday night, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced a big new policy plan for education Wednesday, featuring a big increase in teachers' starting pay and a full-on voucher program that would radically shift taxpayer dollars from public education to private and charter schools, just like rightwing opponents have wanted for decades. But for the teachers left in the gutted public schools, the pay raise would probably help some.
Here are the basic elements of Sanders's plan to reform/dismantle schools:
- A universal school voucher plan, phased in over three years, that would give parents public funds to use at private schools, charters, or even for homeschooling.
- Repeal of a "Teacher Fair Dismissal Act" that offered very minimal job protections to teachers
- Restrictions on how schools will be allowed to discuss race and gender
- $50,000 minimum pay for teachers
- Up to $10,000 in merit pay
- Forgiveness of student loans for teachers who take jobs in "high need" areas
- "Streamlined early childhood education programs," which we can't find any details on. Aerodynamic toddlers?
- Sending 120 reading coaches to schools that need reading improvement
- $500 in tutoring grants for K-3 students who don't meet literacy benchmarks
- "Dual diploma" program in high schools, to encourage students who prefer entering the workforce after high school instead of college
There's actually some good stuff in that plan, as long as you ignore the toxic steaming shitwad at its core. No, we mean the voucher policy, not Sanders.
At the presser announcing the plan, Sanders said that making sure all children get a quality education is "the civil rights issue of our day, " meaning that parents should be able to use public funding to get their kids out of public education and let them learn evolution instead of Gender Indoctrination, obviously.
“The longer we wait to reform our failing schools, the more future generations we’re condemning to a lifetime of poverty,” she said. “I promised to be the education governor and I’m proud to deliver on that promise only a month into my term.”
It's the classic rightwing approach to governing: If there are problems with a government program (or if you can claim there are), the solution is to blow it up and give taxpayer dollars to private companies, which will just naturally use the money more wisely until they get caught defrauding the grant program. Then you cut the public funding and tell people who needed the service that government never fixes anything, so people should pay for mail service or education or healthcare themselves and not expect Mama Government to come and solve all their problems.
Sanders also announced that once the program is rolled out as actual legislation in a week or so, it will include new limits on how schools will be allowed to teach about race and gender, because what part of "Arkansas" did you not hear? Sanders said she wants schools to not teach children "what to think, but how to think," which clearly means how to think only about race and gender in ways the state approves of. Sanders had already issued an executive order banning the teaching of "critical race theory," but there's always the danger that some white child might read a book about Wilma Rudolph and get the impression that segregation is bad. Just another reason to spend public money on private church schools that got their start as literal "segregation academies" as part of the campaign of "massive resistance" to the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
Fortunately, kids won't learn about that history anymore, because it's woke indoctrination.
The real mystery meat in the plan's school lunch shit sandwich will be the new "Education Freedom Accounts" that will
provide state funding for parents to enroll their children in public, private, parochial schools or homeschool, Sanders said. The program will be rolled out to “at-risk” families first and be available to all families within three years.
State Rep. Brian Evans, chair of the state's House Education Committee and who's been involved in drafting the legislation, said he thinks the full GOP caucus will eventually support the bill, even if some foolishly cling to the obsolete notion that public schools are important to their communities.
“I think there are some Republican members on both ends of the General Assembly that think about their communities back home. What are the cornerstones of those communities? In many instances, it’s the public school system,” Evans said.
“I think they’ll get over the line, but right now they’re just a little bit hesitant until they see the exact particulars of the bill just to make sure that the benefit and the gain is going to outweigh any potential risks to their communities.”
He may simply need to show some Libs of TikTok videos of teachers with purple hair to scare them, and maybe remind them that "community" has the same root as "COMMUNIST."
The Arkansas Advocate explains that the Freedom From Those People Accounts would, as Sanders describes them, amount to about 90 percent of the per-student funding that would ordinarily go to public education, or about $7,350 this school year. It would also provide funding for transportation and would "remove the caps on the number of charter schools or school choice transfers."
State Sen. Breanne Davis (R) took pains to make clear that this is the most liberty-est reallocation of public funds to private schools possible, because freedom, liberty, individualism (on the public dime), and also Luntzing It Up:
We call it a parent empowerment program because honestly when you say vouchers or school choice, that’s not really accurate because schools aren’t choosing. [...] It’s parents and families choosing a school that meets their kids’ educational needs.
We have to fault the Advocate just a teensy bit for not demanding Davis provide an example of anyone, anywhere, who thinks "school choice" involves a school making a choice, while also failing to note that charter schools and privates absolutely are doing the choosing, and do not in fact have to accept your kid's dumb ass — or your kid's disabled ass, or wrong religion ass, for that matter. Also, it's not a democracy, it's a REPUBLIC.
House Minority Leader Tippi McCullough (D) said that Democrats would oppose any "omnibus" bill that paired the private education vouchers with increased teacher pay and other funding to help kids in need of extra support, noting that cramming too many things in one bill might violate the state constitution. Plus, there's that school-wrecking elephant in the room.
“Even if there are some things that we would like to support, or could support, [we] just can’t do it because the voucher part of it’s going to be a systematic dismantling of the public school system in Arkansas,” she said.
The Advocate notes that in previous legislative sessions, a "coalition of Democrats and Republicans from mostly rural areas have blocked several voucher bills in committee," and clearly that's what McCullough is hoping can happen again if the vouchers are considered separately from the good stuff, like the pay increases. Arkansas currently has the fourth-lowest minimum teacher pay in the US, at just $36,000 per year, and raising it to Sanders's proposed $50,000 would put the state in the top five in the nation. That would be pretty good, as long as the price isn't getting rid of public education.
Also too, the Advocate notes that while Sanders didn't mention it in her presser, her proposal would repeal the "Teacher Fair Dismissal Act," which requires schools to notify teachers by May 1 each year whether their school districts plan to rehire them for the coming school year.
If teachers are dismissed, they are entitled to a written statement of the reasons why their contract is not being renewed, and they have an opportunity to appeal their termination to the school board.
Well dang, that sounds like it could slow the process of firing teachers because they were seen going into a movie theater showing Everything Everywhere All At Once or marching in a Pride parade two cities away.
[Arkansas Advocate / 40/29 News]
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Montana Republican's Bill Banning 'Scientific Theories' In Schools Every Bit As Dumb As It Sounds
Banning evolution seems so nostalgic!
A newly elected Republican member of Montana's state Senate has introduced a bill that would prohibit public schools from teaching scientific theories, because as anyone knows, a theory is just a wild guess at reality that nobody can actually prove is true, like the "Theory of Evolution" or the theory that Joe Biden is an unstoppable affability bot from Mars that can't stop smiling and saying "folks" until it completes its mission of installing socialism or at least good roads.
Both are equally valid, because theories aren't facts, according to the bill's sponsor, state Sen. Daniel Emrich, a good Christian fellow whose Twitter feed includes posts pushing election denial, accusing Hillary Clinton of supporting "exicuting human babies," and asking what crime babies ever committed to deserve a death sentence. He's very pro-life, as you can also see in a tweet mocking a teenaged girl's obituary because she was "fully vaccinated." The man knows science, clearly. Did we mention Emrich was homeschooled? It seems relevant somehow.
Emrich testified Monday to Montana's Senate Education and Cultural Resources Committee that he simply wants students to know what a "scientific fact" is, and that, as he understands science, theories are mere speculation. Students, he explained,
must know the difference between scientific fact and scientific theory. Whereas a scientific fact is … observable and repeatable and … if it does not meet this criteria it is a theory and is defined as speculation as for higher education to explore, debate, test and ultimately reach a scientific conclusion — fact or fiction?
That's actually the introductory text, minus the whereases, of Emrich's bill, Montana SB 235. It's remarkably short for a bill that could upend how all science classes in the state get taught — if the bill passes, which seems pretty darn unlikely. The bill explains that "Science instruction may not include subject matter that is not scientific fact."
To that end, the bill specifies that the state board of public education "may not include in content area standards any standard requiring curriculum or instruction in a scientific topic that is not scientific fact," and that school superintendents and district school boards must make sure that all instructional materials, including textbooks, "include only scientific facts." The bill also notes that it would be "strictly enforced and narrowly interpreted,” although it appears not to include any criminal penalties, at least not in its current iteration.
No, we don't have any idea how you'd actually teach about anything in science without mentioning what a scientific theory is (one definition: "a structured explanation to explain a group of facts or phenomena in the natural world that often incorporates a scientific hypothesis and scientific laws"). And since you could only discuss facts and not the theories that make sense of them, you probably wouldn't be able even to distinguish between a scientific theory and a hunch or wild speculation. Isolated, nontheoretical facts only, like the observation that COVID-19 is a respiratory disease, but no nonsense about how vaccines work, because nobody knows, except that they don't work anyway and will kill you like that fully vaccinated girl. That's what facts are.
For some reason, Monday's hearing was full of students and teachers who opposed the bill, most likely because they have already been indoctrinated with godless "science" and its made-up theories, and want more of that demon-knowledge. Just look at these clearly theoretical people!
Daniel Farr, who spoke on behalf of the North East Rural Schools Alliance, said that it’s impossible to talk about things like geology and rock formations without talking about the theory of plate tectonics.
Braden Burkholder, a scientist, used the example of erosion, which is a scientific fact and something his young daughter is learning now.
“Here’s the thing — geological theories are key to understanding why erosion happens, when it happens, where it happens and how to mitigate it,” Burkholder said.
Also too, a tip of the rhetorical cap to veteran science teacher Rob Jensen, who won the 2019 Presidential Science and Math Teaching Award, who testified remotely, saying the bill "makes the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial … look like a period of enlightenment." And then a standing ovation for his sign-off at the end of the hearing, when he said, "Oh, and a special shoutout to the quantum theory for making this Zoom call possible."
Several students also testified, like seventh-grader Greysen Jakes, who said the bill would "put students like me at a disadvantage if we were to pursue a career in science because I would not have learned many of the concepts my peers had."
Even so, few ideas are so terrible that they have no supporters, so precisely one person spoke in favor of the bill, a law professor named Patrick Gould, who works in South Korea. He explained that the only way we can know things is from direct observation or from the Bible, and that advocates of theories like evolution — especially theories that are exactly like evolution — just "make it up, it's fabricated. That’s fraud from a legal perspective, that’s fraud and we should not be teaching children anywhere fraud," Gould said.
Oh, he had a LOT to say, especially on the classic creationist "were you there?" canard.
There’s not one person in the room that I’m looking at right now, and there’s not one person I’ve ever seen or known of that was there when any of these events supposedly occurred. [...] No one was there with Big Bang, no one was there with creation. No one was there when the first bird flew. No one was there with any of these events.
We could point out that one could say the same of miracles of Christ, but we already know from being on the Internet for five minutes that the answer is "But you atheists won't allow that to be taught in school either, CHECKMATE, LIBS." As to whether any historical event can be taught, that's history, not science, GOTCHA AGAIN.
Also too, Chris Noel from the state Office of Public Instruction said that if the bill were to pass, it would mean "significant" revisions to state science standards, which aren't currently up for review, and that could incur pretty substantial costs; Noel noted that adopting new standards in any curriculum typically requires multiple years. Emrich said that if it came to that, the bill's effective date could be revised to align with scheduled standard reviews.
Plus, of course, there'd be the slight cost of trashing every single science textbook in the state and replacing it with textbooks that include only facts without any theoretical frameworks, which as far as we know don't exist.
But Emrich also disputed a legal note prepared by legislative staff, which said the bill might violate Montana's constitution by taking powers away from the state board of education. Emrich explained, Nuh-uh:
I think this is a healthy discussion that has a purpose in actually taking and making the scientific community, the educators, evaluate their curriculum and actually making sure it actually meets the scientific standard that was set forth, well, generations before I was on this Earth
We'd point out that the development of scientific theories also predates the freshman state senator from Great Falls by a few centuries, too, but that's just, like, our opinion, man. The committee took no action on the bill Monday.
[Montana Public Radio / Montana SB 235 / Daily Montanan / The Helenair / Image: Background by NASA/JPL; Science Twilight Sparkle by Friend of Wonkette Pixelkitties]
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Anti-Drag Laws Spreading Like Kudzu, So Here Are THIS WEEK'S Stories About Straight Christians Abusing Kids
We're going to need to do this more often.
And now back to your regularly scheduled War on Drag Queens.
Arkansas's state Senate has just overwhelmingly passed SB 43, a bill to ban drag shows by reclassifying them as "adult-oriented businesses" that therefore cannot be seen in public. The head of the ACLU in Arkansas is expressing concern that the language of this bill, as written, would make it so a trans person wouldn't be able to perform in any way — "karaoke, poetry reading, Church choir, school play, pride event" — without running afoul of the law.
The bill's sponsor, Republican state Senator Gary Stubblefield, says that is just a bunch of poppycock, as the bill requires a "drag performance" to be aimed at "the prurient interest." No, this would not ban Shakespeare, he says. At least one state senator who supported the bill said it probably would apply to gay pride parades, though. Now the bill goes to the state House, and then presumably to Sarah Huckabee Sanders's desk, so she can use the magical powers granted to her by the voters of Arkansas to take a giant shit on innocent trans people and drag queens.
Meanwhile in Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano, most recently known for his utter failure to get Pennsylvania interested in electing a fucking wackjob like him as its governor, has announced he plans to intro a bill banning all drag shows in public places or on public property, which would effectively ban them at pride events. A memo from Mastriano uses the phrases "adult-oriented business" and "the prurient interest," just like the Arkansas bill. This shouldn't surprise you, as bigoted state laws are often written by outside hate groups and copy/pasted all over state legislatures.
Also, Republican state lawmakers aren't particularly well-known for having their own ideas or being experts at reading or writing.
But if Republican conservative Christians are going to continue to escalate their eliminationist Nazi-style campaigns against LGBTQ+ Americans, and if they're going to keep saying they're doing it to protect children, then we will never stop pointing out that kids are in far more danger of being sexually abused/assaulted around conservative Christian pastors and youth group leaders than they are at drag events or by drag queens or LGBTQ+ people in general.
JoeMyGod aggregates on a daily basis headlines from around the country about (mostly) white, heterosexual conservative Christian leaders who have been accused, tried, and/or convicted of raping and otherwise sexually abusing children.
So while any interested parties are free to go make a list of all the LGBTQ+ people who have been accused/tried/convicted of abusing kids, we'll use Joe's site to find all the headlines about conservative Christians abused of those and other sex crimes.
These are just from the past week.
Former Virginia pastor gets 20 years for child pornography
Ex-adviser to Monaco’s royal family sentenced to 3 years in Philly child porn case(he's a Catholic priest)
Tennessee Christian school principal indicted on 11 new child sex charges after 2022 arrest
Coquitlam church 'therapist' jailed for six years for historical sex crimes
Youth pastor, hospital director among 46 men arrested in North Texas sex trafficking cases
Former Catholic school teacher sentenced to 6 years behind bars for assaulting children
State College man convicted of child rape sentenced to at least 20 years in prison(he was a pastor and a children's minister, and the victim was a year old)
Chesterfield County CA says new info received in John Blanchard case, will bring in special prosecutor(the megachurch pastor was previously charged with child sex solicitation)
Former Flowood Youth Pastor Pleads Guilty To Child Exploitation Charges
Today is January 25. Those stories take us back to January 18.
One week. Nine unique stories with a common theme, namely that conservative Christians are the people who assault and abuse children.
We've cheated off of JoeMyGod's aggregation before, in response to a woman in Maury County, Tennessee, who shouted at a homophobic asshole county commissioner named Aaron Miller that "I've never been sexually assaulted at a drag show, but I have been at church. TWICE. The men told me it was MY fault." That week there were six stories.
Yeah, there's a problem in America, and there are certainly people children need to be protected from.
It ain't drag queens.
Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter right here!
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