QOTD -- We Did Nazi That Coming (OK, We Did)

 

"People everywhere are fed up with the Radical Left’s insane agenda. Italians just took their country back. America is next." -- House Republican Minority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (Fascist-LA), on (yes) Twitter last month (September 26).  The Italians who "took their country back" are an assortment of parties with fascist roots who garnered less than a majority (44%) of the votes cast.  Some of you might remember the high- ranking Republican saying in 2002 that he was "[former Ku Klux Klan leader] David Duke without the baggage."  Well, that recent Tweet certainly confirms that, and tells us all we need to know about the Christofascist Republican Party.

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Will Bunch in the Philadelphia Inquirer discusses the recent Nobel Peace Prize given to Filipino journalist Maria Ressa and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, as both a warning and a "do better" for American journalists:

It’s fitting that — thanks to Friday’s Nobel Peace Prize — world history will likely cherish Ressa, Muratov, and their brand of death-defying journalism far longer than it will remember the totems of modern U.S. media like recently retired Washington Post editor Marty Baron — whose uninspiring response to the threat to democracy posed by Donald Trump was, famously that “we’re not at war … we’re at work” — or the New York Times’ Dean Baquet, who doesn’t see journalism as activism but something he blandly calls “sophisticated true objectivity.”

Huh? [snip]

For all the Beltway journalists so eager to restore a breathless access journalism and the most cynical, “savvy” form of politics-as-a-game news coverage, the embrace by both the Nobel committee and the wider world of the more daring vision of journalism as a chief weapon in the war against rising neo-fascism — the stance so boldly adopted by Ressa and Muratov — ought to serve as a wake-up call. [snip]

The future of American democracy depends, frankly, on whether journalists stop burying their head in “the work” of balanced-but-misleading reporting and admit that, yes, actually, we are at war. We need to glom onto Maria Ressa’s vision — that when the truth is under attack, truth-telling is not a clinical science. Journalism is activism.

Sadly, due to the existential need to get clicks, ad dollars and subscriptions, we don't see the basic business model of American journalism changing, with the occasional exception for an investigative piece that makes a splash but is soon forgotten.  How far from their examples our "journalists" are.  

Speaking of American "journalism," Fox "News" recently celebrated its 25th anniversary.  Washington Post media critic Eric Wemple takes a few well- deserved swipes at the one institution news sewer that can claim responsibility for the poisonous, divisive, downward- spiraling state of American politics today:

If nothing else, Fox News had a talent for self-promotion, even before there was anything to promote.

“Fox News Channel to stress fairness” read the headline on the July 1996 story the Houston Chronicle published in the run-up to the Oct. 7, 1996, launch of Fox News, under the management of network chief Roger Ailes and News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch.

It’s not too late for a retraction, Houston Chronicle!  [snip]

... It’s one thing to corral a constituency; it’s quite another to poison that constituency. We won’t belabor the extensive and atrocious misadventures of Fox News, which this blog and many, many other sources have highlighted to our mutual exhaustion. There’s enough to fill a mammoth website.

For the sake of brevity, we’ll just highlight a development that so happens to coincide with the big 25th anniversary: The ongoing lawsuits against Fox News by voting-tech firms Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems. Both of these companies claim they were the subject of false coverage in the aftermath of November’s presidential election, and both sued the network for the efforts of key hosts — Sean Hannity, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Lou Dobbs (who no longer has a show on Fox Business Network) are among the offenders — to associate their work with election-rigging. [snip]

It’s a machine, in other words — promoting lies, and then reporting their traction as national news. That’s what Fox News has done with the vocal plurality of Americans in its corner, 25 years running.

Their business model is stoking white grievance, racial hate, fear, all in service to their cult leader in his on- going coup.

On that on- going coup, laying the foundation for the next coup -- voter suppression laws, gerrymandering, allowing legislatures to overturn election results, etc. -- requires the willingness of elected Republican "leaders" to maintain the Big Lie.  Rep. Steve Scalise (Coup- LA) at your service:

The House’s second-ranking Republican, Rep. Steve Scalise, repeatedly refused to say on Sunday that the 2020 election wasn’t stolen, standing by Donald Trump’s lie that Democrat Joe Biden won the White House because of mass voter fraud.

More than 11 months after Americans picked their president and almost nine months since Biden was inaugurated, Scalise was unwilling during a national television interview to acknowledge the legitimacy of the vote, instead sticking to his belief that the election results should not have been certified by Congress.

“I’ve been very clear from the beginning,” he said. “If you look at a number of states, they didn’t follow their state-passed laws that govern the election for president. That is what the United States Constitution says. They don’t say the states determine what the rules are. They say the state legislatures determine the rules,” the Louisiana congressman said on “Fox News Sunday.” 

These are human weasels (no offense to weasels).  In Scalise's case, his description of himself as KKK leader "David Duke without the baggage" tells you exactly who he is.

This is the sub- moronic cult leader they're so desperate to re- install in the White House:

A new book reports that former President Donald Trump asked his top intelligence official to investigate an absurd conspiracy theory that Chinese thermostats changed votes in the 2020 election.

In an excerpt from the soon-to-be-released Betrayal by ABC News’s Jonathan Karl, which was shared on Sunday’s edition of This Week, the former president was said to be “intrigued” by the theory – which was presented to him by Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who Trump wanted to install as acting attorney general.

“[Clark] believed that wireless thermostats made in China for Google by a company called Nest Labs might have been used to manipulate voting machines in Georgia,” Karl wrote. “The idea was nuts, but it intrigued Trump, who asked Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to look into it.”

Some tinfoil hats should take care of it!  Also, Jeffrey Clark, the skunk willing to subvert the Department of Justice to cast doubt on the validity of the 2020 election, appears to be as nuts as his cult leader.

Lastly, for the best collection of links to posts from around the Internet, please visit Infidel 753's link round- up, which appears to get more comprehensive every week.  Keep it coming; we can handle it!.

Today's Cartoon - White Supremacist Party Edition

(click on image to enlarge)

(Rob Rogers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

As the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid/ White Supremacist Party continues to try to minimize the fallout from the scandal surrounding House Majority Whip Rep. Steve "David Duke Without The Baggage" Scalise, Lamar White, Jr., the person who first broke the story of Scalise's speaking at a neo-Nazi event in 2002, tells us how the Republican-orchestrated coverup continues.

To quote White House spokesperson Josh Earnest:

There's no arguing that who Republicans decide to elevate into a leadership position says a lot about what the conference's priorities and values are.  Ultimately, Mr. Scalise reportedly described himself as "David Duke without the baggage." It will be up to Republicans to decide what that says about their conference.

We already know what it says, thank you anyway.

Today's Cartoon - White Supremacist Party Edition

(click on image to enlarge)

(Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

An honest mistake, of course.

BONUS: From Charles P. Pierce:

I happen to be in New Orleans at the moment, and the local political scene is roiled up over Congressman Steve Scalise and his inability to be surprised by the fact that so many of his friends sleep on bedsheets that have eye-holes.

How's That Republican Rebranding Coming Along, White Supremacist Edition (Cont.)

Now that Weeper of the House John "Mr. Tangerine Man" Boehner (Eunuch-OH) has thrown his full support (and that of the House Republican leadership) behind Republican Majority Whip and racist vomica Rep. Steve Scalise (Confederate-LA), additional jack-boots are hitting the floor:

This is what I remember about the first time I met Steve Scalise nearly 20 years ago: He told me he was like David Duke without the baggage. 

I was a new reporter covering Jefferson Parish, and Scalise, now the majority whip in the U.S. House of Representatives, was just starting out in the Louisiana Legislature (I’m going from memory, but the exchange obviously stuck with me). It would be several years before I would fully decode just what he meant by the sentiment, which is similar to statements he would later make to at least one Washington news outlet, and what it said about Jefferson Parish and Louisiana politics. 

The “baggage,” of course, was Duke’s past, his racist and anti-Semitic views and his former role as a KKK grand wizard. Scalise disavowed Duke then, as he did once again this week, when blogger Lamar White Jr. revealed that Scalise had spoken in 2002 at a meeting hosted by a Duke-founded white nationalist group. 

But the other part of the sentence, the part about their similarity, was the rub. Scalise may have been naïve about how to express himself to a newcomer, but he was already a savvy politician who knew that, even though Duke had lost the governor’s race a few years earlier, Duke voters were still around. And those Duke voters also were potential Scalise voters. (our emphasis)

Oops.

So, far from being the naive candidate as he's tried to portray himself, "David Duke Without The Baggage" Scalise knew all about who he was courting when he spoke at the white supremacist, anti-Semitic European-American Unity and Rights Organization in 2002.  Of course, this should come as a surprise only to people who've been in a coma or a cave since the days of Richard Nixon, Lee Atwater and all the other implementers of the Republican Southern Strategy.

Kudos to Lamar White, Jr., and to Stephanie Grace for exposing this small-bore Confederate racist for all to see.

UPDATE:  We're sure "David Duke Without The Baggage" Scalise didn't know about this, too.

UPDATE II:  More on how "David Duke Without The Baggage" Scalise is well within the spectrum of the Republican base.

How's That Republican Rebranding Coming Along, White Supremacist Edition

From the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle:

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the House majority whip, acknowledged Monday that he spoke at a gathering hosted by white nationalist leaders while serving as a state representative in 2002, thrusting a racial controversy into House Republican ranks days before the party assumes control of both congressional chambers. 

The 48-year-old Scalise, who ascended to the House GOP’s third-ranking post earlier this year, confirmed through an adviser that he once appeared at a convention of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization. 

That organization, founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, has been called a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Scalise claims he didn't know at the time it was a white supremacist group, which would make him the only person in Louisiana who didn't know David Duke was a notorious racist and former Ku Klux Klan leader.