Oklahoma Rigs Process To Buy "Trump Bibles"

 

The Christofascist MAGAt running the school system in Oklahoma has a genius plan for spending taxpayer dollars to violate the First Amendment's establishment clause while lining a certain very un- Christian cult leader's pockets.  Gary Legum has the humorous, yet deadly serious, take:

Two wingnuts have recently faced very simple conundrums. Luckily, there is a simple solution to satisfy them and absolutely no one else.

First, Donald Trump needs a shitload of money, partly because he is a cheap grifter of the highest caliber who probably still has the first dollar he ever earned screwed into the floor somewhere, and partly because thanks to much of his grifting, he has legal bills that approach the GDP of several mid-size Latin American nations.

At the same time, Oklahoma’s Bible-humping, Libs of Tik Tok-loving state Education Secretary Ryan Walters needs a metric fuck-ton of Bibles to fulfill his requirement that every classroom in his state have one so teachers can explain to all the children, even the Jewish and Muslim and Hindu and Shinto ones, that Jesus is the only true God and they better embrace him posthaste if they don’t want to spend eternity back-stroking through the Lake of Fire or having red-hot pokers shoved up their urethras by a cackling and bloated Rhys Ifans, or whatever torments await them in the afterlife for not being Christians.

But these can’t be just any Bibles. When Walters opened bids to Bible vendors to supply Oklahoma’s schools with this First Amendment violation last Monday, he announced that the Bible he will choose must be not only a King James version of the Good Book. It must also be one that also contains copies of America’s Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance, and who the hell knows what else, maybe a lyrics sheet for Casting Crowns’ “Only Jesus” or all the “Left Behind” books, why not, might as well include all the sacred evangelical texts.

Luckily, there is a solution to both Trump’s and Walters’s problems: Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” Bible, which is based on the King James version, contains copies of America’s founding documents, and is endorsed by Trump, who licensed his name and image for use in selling the book. So he gets money, Walters gets his Bibles, all the children’s souls get saved, everyone’s happy except for lots of parents, lawyers, state officials, organizations concerned with maintaining the separation of church and state, and all the kids who are going to get Jesus shoved down their throats like a double dosage of Robitussin.

Of course, Walters has to pretend he’s not shoveling taxpayer funds into Donald Trump’s pockets, lest he draw the ire of state officials or voters or judges who might, despite the current Supreme Court’s efforts, still believe in the First Amendment’s governing of religion in publicly funded spaces. So this is an ostensibly open bidding process, albeit one that will only last two weeks instead of the usual four and has only one possible winner. And that winner is not going to be, say, Mardel Christian and Education, a vendor that sells 2,900 versions of the Bible, not one of which meets Walters’s requirements.

The “God Bless the USA” Bible costs $60 a pop and Walters wants 55,000 copies for a total outlay of $3.3 million. Which is a nice chunk of change to pull out of an underfunded education system, but can you really put a price on saving the eternal souls of every schoolchild in Oklahoma? You cannot...

This is a microcosm of how a kleptocratic, authoritarian national government under the Malignant Loser would operate.  It'll be a telebangelist- type money- vacuuming scheme on steroids from the minute the Malignant Loser would be sworn in.  Everyone, from the Heritage Foundation ("Project 2025" and Leonard Leo) to the vast right- wing noise machine and everything in between, will have an opportunity to dip their beaks into the Federal trough, as long as the cult leader gets his piece of the action. 

For the moment, it looks like there's some opposition brewing to Minister of Religious Edumacation Walters's plan:

It should be noted that Walters is facing a lot of pushback in his own state. A former Oklahoma state attorney general is pretty sure Walters’s policy violates state law. Also, school districts don’t necessarily have to follow this edict, since the state supreme court has said local school districts have control over their own curricula...

We'll see if Oklahoma's sheeple good citizens also have any say in how this unfolds.

(Image:  MAGAt Walters and Bible follower Trump / Office of Oklahoma State Superintendent, Brendan Smalowski, Getty Images)

A Watershed Week In American History

 

It's hard to remember if or when we had a week filled with more consequential events that the one just passed.  Consider:

-- The "disastrously intemperate" Republican Supreme Court's nullification of a 50- year precedent in overturning Roe v. Wade which stripped millions of women the right to control their own reproductive health and permanently damaged the Court's legitimacy;

-- The Court's nullification of a state's right to regulate gun safety, specifically New York State's concealed carry restrictions which have stood for over a century;

-- The Court's undermining a centuries old ban on direct state aid to the schools teaching religion, fundamental to the principle of separation of church and state;

-- Further evidence of the widespread conspiracy to overthrow the 2020 election, with testimony at the January 6 insurrection hearing from former Justice Department officials on the direct involvement of the Malignant Loser, his closest advisors and Republican officials from battleground states to forward fraudulent electors on January 6, 2021;  and of the "consciousness of guilt" inquiries about obtaining pardons by a number of the Malignant Loser's Congressional MAGA sedition caucus.

-- The first gun safety legislation in 30 years was signed by President Biden this morning, a small step in the right direction that was constrained by the unwillingness of the Republican Party to get out of the pocket of the National Rifle Rampage Association.

All of this, we are told, is on the ballot in November.  Expanding rights vs. restricting rights; sensible gun safety vs. reckless inaction;  a secular republic vs. a theocracy; truth vs. lies; democracy vs. autocracy.  The majority of the American public is behind the Democratic Party's position on each of these;  even Republicans sense the danger in their some of their most absolutist approaches (see below).  In just a week, we've seen how quickly the country can change for the worse, and why, yes, elections have consequences.  In every election at every level from now on, weighing anything other than these top line choices when voting is delusional ... and suicidal.

BONUS:  Heather Cox Richardson on the end of an era.

Cartoon of the Day

(click to enlarge)

American Talibangelist Kim "Dim" Davis had no business holding a public position if she can't separate her public, sworn duties from her "religious" beliefs.  But try telling that to right-wing theocrats who want to remove the separation of church and state.

(cartoon: Signe Wilkinson, via Gocomics.com)