May 22, 2021: Cyber Ninja Audit Drags - Right-Wing Lawmakers Clueless

 

5/22/21: If you watch right-wing news for amusement, no doubt you have heard of the big Arizona vote audit. According to the zany crew at One America News, and other far-right outlets, this recount of one county is going to blow the lid off the conspiracy to cheat Donald J. Trump out of 300 million votes, give or take fifty million. In other words, back that moving van up to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Joe Biden is leaving. Don and Melania are back, baby! (See: 5/19/21.)

Bamboo in the ballots???

 

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“I feel like we’re in this fantasy land. I still have yet to see any evidence [of voter fraud], and I don’t think it’s coming.”

 

State Senator Paul Boyer, Arizona Republican

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Unfortunately, as The Hill reported this week, even Arizona Republicans are growing weary of the antics of the Cyber Ninja crew, the organization hired to audit the vote in Maricopa County. 

First, the recount has dragged on longer than the Ninjas promised, and they’ve only counted a fourth of the votes. 

Second, they’ve been mocked mercilessly for their efforts to find bamboo in the ballot paper – which would “prove” that ballots were fake and shipped from China. Now former Arizona governor Jan Brewer, a Republican, has chimed in. “I think they should maybe just call it quits. I don’t think that it’s going to serve any purpose. It’s not going to change the election,” she said. “The votes have been certified. Biden is the president. It’s not changing. I say move on.” 

Apparently, Brewer doesn’t believe in bamboo bamboozling. Neither does current GOP governor Doug Ducey, who has insisted that the vote count in Arizona was accurate all along.

 

Even one Republican state senator, Sen. Paul Boyer, told The Hill he believes the audit has become an albatross for his party. 

“Who wouldn’t support an audit?” he asked rhetorically, while failing to mention that Maricopa had already conducted two official recounts. “But the way they’re doing it, it’s embarrassing,” he added. “It makes me embarrassed to be a state senator at this point. I feel like we’re in this fantasy land. I still have yet to see any evidence [of fraud], and I don’t think it’s coming.” 

Senate Leader Karen Fann, who initially insisted on the Cyber Ninja recount, has been forced to waltz away from her brainchild. 

This is partly due to the fact that the five members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors – which includes four member of her Republican party – have been threatening to file defamation suits against anyone who says the vote was fixed or that they conspired to break the law. Fann lamely admits, “I have said from the get-go I am relatively sure [we] weren’t going to find anything of any magnitude that would imply that any intentional wrongdoing was going on,” she told GOP lawmakers in a closed session earlier in the week. “I believe that we were going to find what we’ve known all along and some of the things is we could do a better job.” 

According to The Hill, this lame-ass recount idea is likely to cost the taxpayers of Arizona $3.3 million.

 

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SPEAKING OF LAME-ASS, can we insist that all Republican lawmakers take at least a basic course in U.S. history? 

In just the last few days, Rep. Madison Cawthorn has asked right-wing believers to imagine, when General George Washington asked the British to “capitulate” at Yorktown in 1781, that he had been wearing a mask. 

Well, said Rep. Bonehead, “that’s not who we’re descended from.” 

Apparently, Rep. Bonehead was not aware that a large French fleet had chased away a British naval force protecting the supply lines of the 7,000 Redcoats penned at Yorktown. Nor did he seem aware that Gen. Washington might not have had a mask – but did have more than twice as many men as the British commander. We had the enemy surrounded on the land side, too. 

George could have shown up dressed as Martha and demanded that the British surrender and they would have had to raise a white flag.

 

Meanwhile, we had another Marjorie Taylor Greene sighting. The imbecilic lady from Georgia appeared on the Christian Broadcasting Network and said that Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s rule, requiring members of the U.S. House of Representatives to prove they had been vaccinated before appearing on the House floor, brought to mind the Holocaust. “You know, we can look back at a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star,” Greene babbled, “and they were definitely treated like second class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany. And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.” 

Yes, exactly! Minus the psychotic dictator, the trains full of prisoners crammed in cattle cars, the gas chambers and furnaces for bodies, the sadistic guards, the summary executions, the towers and barbed wire, the mass starvation, the use of slave labor, the tattoo numbers, the medical experiments on twins, the forced sterilization of gays, and death on an industrial scale.

 

Not to be denied a place in the limelight, Sen. John Cornyn decided to weigh in on news that Loser Don, while president, had made a habit of spying on reporters that had the nerve to criticize his policies or personal behavior. The new team at the Department of Justice released records this week to show that Team Trump gathered phone records and emails from reporters at the Washington Post, CNN, and other news outlets considered unfriendly.

That meant President Biden felt the need to address the matter and go on record to say that he would never spy on news outlets while president. 

Missing the simplest possible point – that we do not want government leaders spying on practitioners of the free press, no matter who those practitioners work for or what they say, because the free press helps keep check  on our leaders – Sen. Cornyn offered up this snarky tweet.

July 8, 2021: Right-Wingers See Nazis Giving Us Vaccination Shots

 

7/8/21: The Delta variant of the coronavirus is spreading across the United States. The worst outbreaks generally are in states where vaccinations lag, and where people enjoyed voting for Trump. 

If we consult a list of the top jurisdictions for vaccinations, and cut the list off where rates fall below 50%, we have nineteen states that voted for Biden, Washington, D.C., which also went for Biden, and Maine, which splits electoral votes (so Trump got one) but also went for the challenger. 

Not the Orange Chump.

 

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IF YOU WONDER why vaccines might be lagging among Trump fans – even though Trump got one months ago – think: Idiots. 

Think: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Co.). Greene was at it again this week, comparing vaccinations to death squads, after making previous comparisons between mask mandates and Nazis. And then apologizing. And saying that a trip to the Holocaust Museum had opened her eyes. 

And then forgetting. 

As a former history teacher my rule is not to make Nazi comparisons unless there are gas chambers involved.

What real Nazis did.

  

Greene, however, sees Nazis lurking behind every parked car, mailbox, and shrub. Politico explains: 

Greene (R-Ga.) on Tuesday called efforts by the Biden White House to vaccinate more Americans against Covid-19 a “political tool” and likened the administration’s on-the-ground push to a Nazi paramilitary wing, the Sturmabteilung [or “SA”], often referred to as “brownshirts.”

 

People have a choice, they don’t need your medical brown shirts showing up at their door ordering vaccinations,” Greene wrote in response to a video of President Joe Biden describing a plan to offer vaccines door-to-door. “You can’t force people to be part of the human experiment.”

 

First, let’s pass over Rep. Greene’s glaring inability to differentiate between “order” and “offer.” 

In my role as former history teacher, let me explain who the “brownshirts” were. Here I will simply quote from “Hitler’s Black Harvest,” a reading I prepared for my seventh grade students. 

I believe Rep. Greene might have learned something by sitting in my class: 

“Force is the first law,” Hitler once said. … Long before he came to power, he organized the “Sturmabteilung” or “SA,” his own private army. These brown-shirted “storm troopers,” as they were called, were assigned one task. They must beat, silence, and even kill Hitler’s political opponents.

 

One infamous night, they went to work, stirring up the mobs and showing them how to murder Jews: 

Widespread violence exploded in November 1938 after a Jewish student attacked and killed a German official in Paris. In the dark hours of November 9-10, known since as Kristallnacht, or “Night of Glass,” German mobs attacked Jewish homes, shops, and synagogues. Thousands of businesses were looted. Two hundred homes were destroyed. Every synagogue in Germany was vandalized. Dozens of Jews were murdered, including one young boy who was thrown from a third-story window. In days to come the Gestapo arrested 26,000 Jewish men, women and children and carted them away to prison.

 

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NOT TO BE OUTDONE by Rep Greene’s boneheaded comments, Rep. Boebert cracked her knuckles this morning, and began wailing away on her iPhone. And out popped a tweet. And it was idiotic. Like her clueless colleague, Boebert decided to pull out the Nazi card to make a comparison. 

Out came a gem: 

Biden has deployed his Needle Nazis to Mesa County.

 

The people of my district are more than smart enough to make their own decisions about the experimental vaccine and don’t need coercion by federal agents.

 

Did I wake up in Communist China? 

(You woke up ill-informed and clueless, that much we know.)

 

Let’s go back to the assignment my students were tasked to read. Boebert might have gained from sitting in my class, too. 

First, we’ll ignore the comparison to “Communist China” she tries to make. For the 3,300 individuals who hit the “love” button on her tweet, allow me to direct them to the story of Tiananmen Square. 

For fun, we could even consider the time Donald J. Trump said it was cool that Xi Jinping had worked a little communist magic to ensure he could serve as “president for life.” Don thought that was great. 

Anyway, for Boebert, a little bit of information about Nazis and doctors: 

Soon no one was safe, whether Jew or not. The mentally ill were granted “mercy deaths” under a secret plan known as T-4. Handicapped German children were also marked for destruction. One SS doctor preferred to slowly starve such children to death. Most were taken from families and sent to government “hospitals.” There they were secretly gassed and their bodies buried. Homosexuals were also among the victims. Arrested and sent to prison, they wore pink triangles on their uniforms, just as Jews wore yellow stars. Terrible medical experiments were tried to “cure” them. Many died as a result. Most were simply eliminated. One victim was SS Commander Heinrich Himmler’s gay nephew.

 

He was gassed by order of his own uncle.

 

And: 

Terrible medical experiments were carried out by SS personnel. (“Black murderers in white doctors’ coats,” as one survivor labeled them.) There were tests to see how much cold a man could stand, so the German air force might design better jackets for pilots. Naked Russian prisoners were left outside in bitter cold. Others were submerged in icy water to see how long they survived. When body temperatures fell to 82.5 F, one doctor reported, death was certain, “despite all rescue attempts.”   Other experiments measured the effects of flying at high altitude. Careful notes show what happened to one Jew. Tested, without oxygen, at the equal of 29,400 feet, he “began to perspire and roll his head” after four minutes. After five minutes spasms began. Ten minutes: unconsciousness.

 

Thirteen. Death.

 

In fact, madness had no limits. SS doctors attempted bone transplants on prisoners, hoping new techniques might save wounded German soldiers’ lives. Jews were infected with malaria to test experimental drugs. Dr. Josef Mengele, known as “The Angel of Death,” was interested in blood transfusions. He often used twins in experiments. Once he sewed two together, connected their veins, and studied their combined circulation. Others used x-rays and drugs to cause sterilization of prisoners. Such methods, one researcher claimed, might provide Germany with “a new and extremely effective weapon” in the battle against “inferior peoples.”

What real Nazis were like.

 

Above, we have Nazis rounding up innocent victims. 

Below, we have nurses vaccinating people to protect them from COVID-19, and medical people getting the shot themselves. 

Only complete numbskulls would compare nurses and Nazis.

We would be remiss if we failed to mention Rep. Madison Cawthorn and Fox News commentator Tomi Lahren in regard to this idea that Nazis are coming to give us vaccines or force us to mask up on planes. First, Cawthorn decides to add a twist, claiming that the people Mr. Biden sends out to visit our homes will…take away our Bibles and guns! 

The idea that medical people might go door-to-door, offering vaccinations for protection freaks out the simple-minded lawmaker. “The thing about the mechanisms they would have to build to be able to actually execute that massive of a thing – and then think about what those mechanisms could be used for,” he hints darkly to a reporter for the Right Side Broadcasting Network.” 

Yeah. Think. They could come and give you a shot. 

“They could then go door-to-door to take your guns,” Rep. Cawthorn suggests. “They could then go door-to-door to take your Bibles.”

 

Since Cawthorn is gazing into the future and imagining what could happen, let me try my hand. 

They could come to your house and take away your dental floss. 

They could come to give you a shot, and take all your frozen lima beans. 

They could barge into your garage and take you hedge clippers. 

In reality, all they’re going to do is offer you a shot.

 

As for Lahren, she’s outraged over the idea that people on planes are required to wear masks. “There are so many good flight attendants out there, but there are some flight attendants out there that take their job as the mask police to extremes, becoming almost Nazis of the air. And it’s ridiculous,” she fumes. 

So, one final time, let’s go to the reading that I prepared for seventh graders who still had open minds, not just open mouths. 

Real Nazis made lampshades out of tattooed human skin. Real Nazis cut off the testicles of gay men to see if it would “cure” them of being gay. Real Nazis tried to get a suspect to give information by cutting off his mother’s head and carrying it into his cell. Real Nazis shot down thousands of prisoners during mass executions, and complained when their shoulders hurt from shooting all day. 

That’s what real Nazis were like.