Nikki Haley Pledges Allegiance To MAGA And The Desperation For Which She Stands
Sad!
Nikki Haley's running for president, we swear! This noble endeavor demands that she tell Republican primary voters precisely what they want to hear. For instance, there's no such thing as a "glass ceiling" that limits advancement for women. Sure, there's all sorts of peer-reviewed data confirming the existence of said "glass ceiling," but if Haley wants to become the first woman president, she needs to proudly declare that women don't know nothing. That's the preferred Republican explanation for the obvious workplace gender gap.
This country functions as intended and is awesome! Republican voters don't want to hear otherwise. It's so divisive and distracting from the party's unifying drag queen bans.
“I think a lot of times for the past few years, we’ve been told how bad we are,” said Erick Myles, a retiree from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who is white and was attending Haley’s town hall in nearby Marion. “That just isn’t the way to build a country.”
Donald Trump ran and won in 20216 on an "America sucks now" platform, and his 2024 campaign is even more nihilistic. But we all know why that was different.
PREVIOUSLY:
Tucker Carlson Backs Don Lemon Over 'White Liberal' Nikki Haley, So That's How Her Campaign's Going
PSA: It Is Possible To Talk About Women You Don't Like Without Being Sexist About It
Yeah, So Nikki Haley Has Pretty Much Always Sucked
Haley is obviously aware that she's a minority woman, and she notices when a man suggests she's "past her prime." However, that's not the dreaded "identity politics," as she explained on Bari Weiss's podcast. "It's just loving who you are. I love being a woman. I love my heritage. I love how I was raised, and I love how it has made me who I am today.”
That ... kinda sounds like "identity politics." Republicans freaked out when Black people expressed love for their heritage during the Super Bowl. The only heritage Republicans believe matters is white Confederate AMERICAN heritage.
Haley seemed back on the MAGA message this weekend at a campaign event in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. She declared, "America’s not racist. America’s blessed, and all our children need to know how blessed we are. They all need to be saying the pledge of allegiance every morning.”
That wasn't a flub, either. It's apparently part of her stump speech. She reaffirmed her nationalistic zeal at a separate event.
HALEY: Our kids needs to be saying the pledge of the allegiance when they start their day so that they know to love America.
Mandatory recitations of words is not how children learn to love anything. What a sad, desperate person Haley's become. What she's suggesting is a well-established violation of the First Amendment, which admittedly fits seamlessly with the rightwing attack on public education.
However, she'd reverted back to "identity politics" at her Myrtle Beach event when she smacked back at CNN anchor Don Lemon, who is not running for president. (He's since apologized for his sexist remarks about her.)
“I’m in my prime,” she said. “Every woman in this room knows what being in their prime is.” She made similar comments in Nevada, Iowa: “By the way, I am in my prime. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise."
Trump meanwhile is known for his unapologetically sexist remarks. He told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt recently that Haley "just couldn't stay in her seat" and she "suffers from something that’s a very tough thing to suffer from. She’s overly ambitious."
After the midterms, Fox News assholes blamed single women for the downfall of their wonderful rightwing civilization, but Haley seems not to have noticed that, either. Maybe she watches CNN exclusively or she's a giant hypocrite.
[Washington Post / Myrtle Beach Online]
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Noted Bible Explainer Alan Dershowitz Says Prosecuting Trump VERY VERY Un-Bible!
Alan Dershowitz's Bible theories ain't got no panties on.
The hits keep coming as all these white conservatives try to explain why their god king perhaps being held accountable for some of his many crimes is the worst injustice ever. As expected, they are starting to speak of Donald Trump as an actual suffering messiah or savior, and you just know they're writing fapping fan fiction about him rising again on the third day. You know they are.
Alan Dershowitz, the greatest lawyer in the world, who was supposed to be speaking at the library in Martha's Vineyard until fascism happened, spoke with Charlie Kirk yesterday about the tribulations their Lord is experiencing, and it was there that they concluded that prosecuting Trump is verily and forsooth against the Bible itself.
It was a very intellectual conversation they were having, and Dershowitz was explaining how Donald Trump has never committed any crimes ever. It's not fair to prosecute Trump for his perfect calls in Georgia, you can't prosecute him for telling his followers to overthrow the government PEACEFULLY, and you can't prosecute him just for stealing and willfully concealing classified documents because WHATABOUTBIDEN and WHATABOUTPENCE. Alan Dershowitz is a very fine lawyer, according to Alan Dershowitz.
Then the conversation got Bible-y.
CHARLIE KIRK: One of the reasons why I think this is really powerful, professor, is that you and I have lots of political differences. And — but we both agree that the justice system, as it's designed in America, if it's properly enacted, is beautiful and is the standard of the world. And — but there are threats to our civil liberties beyond just getting Trump. Can you talk about how this is bigger than Trump, about if you're able to do this to political opponents and dissidents, it sets a bad precedent, it allows prosecutors to go above and beyond, and it actually makes us less free?
This is a conversation between Charlie Kirk and Alan Dershowitz about political persecution.
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Without a doubt. There was the South American dictator who said, for my friends, everything, for my enemies, the law. You can use the law to get anybody as Justice Jackson said. Or as the KGB head said, show me the man and I'll find you the crime. This is the worst example in my 60 years of practicing criminal law, of targeting somebody for prosecution and then rummaging through the books, giving people immunity and trying to concoct a crime that doesn't exist.
It is the worst one. Oh, the rummaging they had to do, to find a crime Donald Trump may have accidentally committed in the course of performing His daily miracles.
DERSHOWITZ: And if this is allowed to succeed, none of our liberties is safe.
First they came for the people who tried to overthrow the government and stole classified documents and incited terrorist attacks against America and paid off porn stars to keep stories from coming out just before the election, and I said nothing, because I was too foolish to see how this was also an attack on my civil liberties.
Alan Dershowitz saw it.
Maybe you have to be a person who kept their panties on during a massage at Jeffrey Epstein's house to understand.
DERSHOWITZ: You know, today it's a Republican who's a target, tomorrow it's a Democrat. And the day after tomorrow, it's your Uncle Charlie or your nephew or your niece. There'd be no limits on what prosecutors can do to their political enemies.
When they haul your niece away, you'll say if only I had stood up for Donald Trump when Alan Dershowitz told me to.
DERSH: They're going to do it to people who are running against them for DA next. And it's just such a violation, not only a violation of American law and civil liberties, it's actually a violation of the Bible. The Bible instructs judges two things: Don't take bribes, that's obvious. But the number one thing is don't recognize faces. And that's —
KIRK: That's exactly right. Yes, yes. Do not favor anyone in a court. Yes, that's exactly right. Yes. Continue. Sorry.
Yes, yes, that's exactly right, yes, it is against the Bible to prosecute Trump like this, because it is recognizing faces.
Obviously there is no chance Trump ever took bribes either, so we won't even speculate about such things.
DERSH: No, that's — and that's why it violates every core of American values. So, I — this is one of the worst prosecutions I have ever seen.
Ever.
DERSH: Believe me, I've seen some bad prosecutions, some good ones. I've seen guilty people acquitted and innocent people convicted. But I've never quite seen a prosecution like this, where you had to staple together two unrelated statutes, one federal, one state, violate the statute of limitations, violate the rule of law, and concoct a crime.
Had to violate all the things and just concoct one!
Oh well, we're not convinced. Guess Alan Dershowitz is not a very persuasive lawyer. Let's bury Donald Trump under the jail and throw away all the shovels, because fuck him!
It's morning in America!
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Who Is Posie Parker And Why Is She The Worst?
Please do not confuse her with Parker Posey, who is the best.
This weekend, there was a whole bunch of drama in the land down under when a whole bunch of Nazis showed up to an anti-transgender "Let Women Speak" rally in Victoria, Australia, did a whole bunch of Nazi salutes all over the place, and carried a giant banner reading “Destroy Paedo Freaks.”
They were eagerly welcomed by participants, some of whom even took cutesy pictures with them. The Nazis were at no point told to go home or to stop Heil-ing Hitler.
On the bright side, they were all outnumbered about two to one by counter-protesters.
Lady who spoke at Posie Parker's event taking a smiling selfie in front of neo-Nazis.
The event itself was organized by a woman named Kellie-Jay Keen, aka Posie Parker — not to be confused with the beautiful and talented Parker Posey, who is a national treasure and very much not a professional hatemonger — who you may have seen trending on social media.
GIF by Alex BedderGiphy
So Who The Hell Is She?
Keen is a British lady who goes around doing some kind of half-assed Marilyn Monroe drag and screaming about how trans people are coming for her rights as a woman. Her right to vote? No. Her right to work? No. Her right to have an abortion? Nah. Her right to have her own credit card? Nope. Her right to have a bank account? No. Her right to fair pay? Nope, not that either.
As with other "gender critical feminists," her big issues are having to share physical spaces with trans women and the general fact that transgender people insist upon existing even though she's told them "no."
She's A Feminist? Really?
"Wait a second," you are perhaps thinking right now, "Why would feminists be hanging around with Nazis?"
Well, it's not really clear that she is a feminist, and I don't mean that in a gatekeeping, No True Scotsman kind of way. I mean that her only cause is not wanting to share dressing rooms with trans people, and if that makes one a feminist, then Matt Walsh is a feminist, which he obviously is not.
However, as unfortunate as this is, a lot of transphobic bullshit did start with certain kinds of radical feminists. Initially, they were called "TERFs," meaning Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists" a term invented by cisgender radical feminists who simply did not wish to be conflated with the kind of radical feminists who hated trans women and wouldn't let them come to their special music festival. They didn't like the term, specifically because they did not feel that they should be considered their own separate thing within the sphere of radical feminism, and so came up with the term "gender critical feminist," which does not actually make any sense. Clearly it was a bit of a rush job.
Now, women who have no interest in feminism and frequently align themselves with the far right and extreme misogynists (like the admitted domestic abuser Keen posted an interview with Monday morning) will still call themselves "gender critical feminists" just because that's the term they settled on.
She made it very clear at her rally yesterday that she is totally okay with a man strangling a woman if that woman is interrupting someone giving a speech.
Opposing actual violence against women, as opposed to hypothetical violence against women, is kind of the lowest feminist bar there is.
Who Were The Nazis?
The 30 or so Nazis who came to the rally were members of a group called the National Socialist Network, which was created by the merging of two other far-right groups, the Lads Society (seriously) and the Antipodean Resistance. Mostly they go around taking pictures of themselves doing Nazi salutes everywhere.
The leader of the group is Thomas Sewell, who previously led the Lads Society and in 2017 tried to recruit Brenton Harrison Tarrant — the perpetrator of the 2019 Christchurch mass shooting — to join, but was turned down. It was comparable to the Proud Boys in the US in that Sewell initially pretended it was simply a totally mainstream "fitness club" for men in hopes of getting men who were not Nazis to join up so that he could turn them into Nazis.
Is This Usual? Like Does She Usually Pal Around With Nazis?
Yep! This wasn't some one-off, "Oh my goodness who could imagine Nazis would show up to our nice rally that is definitely just about letting women speak!" situation. Keen has done interviews with far-right extremists such as white nationalist YouTuber Jean-François Gariépy, a move her supporters largely applauded. Because, hey, Nazis deserve protection from trans people, too (not kidding, that was the actual justification).
She's also been supportive of far-right weirdo Tommy Robinson, Norwegian Holocaust denier Hans Lysglimt Johansen, and has been in cahoots with the far-right Heritage Foundation in the United States.
Oh! And one of the speakers at one of her recent rallies approvingly quoted Hitler.
UK Guild of Hypnosis Practitioners (UKGH) chair Lisa Morgan said:
Do you know the big lie? The big lie was first described by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf.
The big lie is such a big lie that ordinary people like us think, ‘Well, that can’t be a lie because I would never tell such a big lie as that. We only lie in small ways.’
The big lie, well there is one big lie going on, and it was begun by men in the early part of the 20th century. It began when they had an erotic fantasy and they decided they were going to sell us the big lie – and what is the big lie?
The big lie is that trans women are women. But they’re not are they? They’re men and we know that.
Hot tip: If you don't want people to think you are a Nazi, don't quote Hitler. Or hang around with Nazis. Or take selfies with them when they come to your rallies.
What Is She Doing?
Right now she's basically traveling the globe holding "Let Women Speak" rallies, which largely feature women giving speeches about how it's unfair that transgender people exist.
In a video introduction on YouTube, she explains that she is doing this because of how sad it is that women in the US have no right to "say a woman is an Adult Human Female." Are they thrown in prison? No. But they're not "taken very seriously' and that is basically the same thing.
It’s just very chilling that a woman doesn’t have the right in the US to basically say a woman is an Adult Human Female. It’s permitted for her to be intimidated, lose her job, be screamed at, shouted at and basically not taken very seriously. And I think it’s really, really frightening.
But most women if they speak, they feel … just empowered. Which is a word that gets used a lot and actually I don’t even like it that much, but it is completely fitting that these women have been desperate to say these things, and then they get to say them.
I find it very hard to believe that there are women going around "desperate" to say trans people don't exist, who haven't ever been able to say that before. Because certainly we see a lot of people saying these things everywhere, just about as often (if not more so) as people with other points of view. Hell, they practically have their own ongoing op-ed series in the New York Times.
Clearly the issue here, as it so often is with hatemongers who pretend they are victims, is that people don't agree with them and they feel that is the same thing as being "silenced."
Which, you know, it's not.
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Let's All Smile And Nod At MAGA Threats That Prosecuting Trump Will Make Him Boss Of Us Forever
It's their delusional fantasy. They're the ones who have to work through it.
There are several genres of right-wing reactions developing to Donald Trump's impending first arrest and indictment. One we heard this weekend, notably from Mike Pence, was that it's appalling Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is doing this right now, what with the CRIME WAVE. As if that's not code for "how can you possibly arrest Donald Trump as long as Black people still exist?"
In this post let's talk about a threat and a fantasy we're starting to see a lot of from these MAGA morons. This tweet and Twitter poll encapsulates it nicely:
Oh you betcha, we are sure there are millions people out there who voted against Trump twice, but upon his arrest will fall in love with him and pledge allegiance forever.
Elon Musk made the prediction, which sounded more like an incel threat, that if Trump is arrested, he "would be re-elected in a landslide victory." He was responding to another tweet that made the very same prediction/threat. It's intended to try to intimidate people, a flaccid way of trying to pre-justify a "Look What You Made Me Do"-type conclusion.
This is obviously bullying abuser behavior. But that's where we come to the fantasy.
It's the silliest of fantasies.
The threat is that if Donald Trump is held accountable — for his decades of criminal behavior, for inciting a terrorist attack against America, for trying to overthrow the government to steal an election, and God knows what else — then YOU'LL SEE, HE'LL BE THE BOSS OF YOU NOW, IN A LANDSLIDE!
The fantasy this is predicated on is that there is some silent majority out there in America that would be activated in the event of his arrest. No matter that such a silent majority has yet to show up every other time it's been threatened. The notion that there are these masses of people who could be convinced to love Trump or care what happens to him or have sympathy for him under any circumstances. The unrealistic fantasy is that if Trump was on fire, passersby actually would piss on him.
It is delusional.
There are many examples of this genre, but Marjorie Taylor Greene's reactions are some of the most ludicrous, for obvious reasons. Here's an example:
"[T]he silent majority has two feelings right now about the current regime. Fear and anger."
Okeydoke, crazy person!
In a statement so illiterate it seems like it was written by Trump himself, Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik says Democrats are doing this because they "cannot beat President Trump at the ballot box." You know, as if we hadn't already beat the shit out of him in the 2020 election, and kicked most of his candidates' asses in the midterms, as if America doesn't jump at every opportunity it has to humiliate him.
Trump himself is babbling that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg should be arrested for "election interference." As if anybody actually believes this is the only way he could be beaten in 2024.
Greg Sargent makes good points in this tweet, responding to Elon's threats:
Donald Trump is the most hated and laughed at person in the world, perhaps in human history. Indeed, the only thing he may be the best at is being a sad, unimpressive, world-historical loser. Nobody is coming to save that guy.
Sure, he has his die-hard idiots, the ones he appears to be trying to incite into committing new violence for him. The ones talking about creating a "patriot moat" around Mar-a-Lago to prevent his arrest. We will never stop laughing if that happens, but there's no guarantee that even that impotent elite strike force will show up. Nothing is coming that's going to change whatever is on its way for Trump, in the slam-dunk indictment coming from the Manhattan DA or any bigger ones that follow.
Here is the cold, hard truth, at least as far as we reckon:
Most of the world's reactions to a Trump indictment will fall somewhere on the spectrum between shrugging of the shoulders and outright celebration. That's the Overton Window right there. We can talk in other posts about how it's not "good" per se to be living through a time in history when the former US president is being indicted and maybe eventually imprisoned. (This wouldn't be our first time at that particular rodeo if Gerald Ford had had the courage.)
But all the same, we are pretty sure a bunch of MAGA people's sad fantasy bubbles are about to be burst in dramatic and cruel fashion, by all the onlookers who either don't care or see Trump being held accountable as long-overdue justice.
We're afraid we're just going to have to smile and nod at these people who think they can intimidate Americans with threats that if Trump is held accountable, we'll be sorry, because then Trump will be elected Jesus-For-Life, and did they mention you'll be sorry?
And as reality dawns on them, as they watch their savior being hauled away never to rise again on the third day, we're afraid we're going to have to just let them cry it out.
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