I *still* support Trump

 By Joe Heller

("You should not honour men more than truth." ~ Plato)

Thank me for my service

By Ann Telnaes 

I stopped 8 wars

By John Deering 

The doomsday bomb

 By Tom Tomorrow

Trump derangement syndrome

By Drew Sheneman

Lunatic

 By Nick Anderson

Vaccines cause autism!!!!

 From Pat Bagley.

RFK junior is a noted anti-vaxxer, as well as being the new Secretary for Health.  He also has admitted to having a brain-worm.

Fifth Avenue

 By Bill Bramhall

Fiscal cliff

 by Bill Bramhall

They stole this election too

By David Horsey

The war on science

From ClimateCrocks

When major corporations realized that mainstream science was a threat to their business models, they began the now 50 year long global War on Science – mustering the vast resources of the richest organizations the world has ever known, and the most sophisticated psychological tools of influence, they have destroyed the ability for a large part of our population to distinguish what is real, and what is not.

They wanted us to believe that cigarettes are fine, that acid rain was overblown, and that climate change was a hoax, perpetrated by evil scientists who wanted to control us. They’ve been wildly successful, and that success has bled over into a number of related areas.

Financial Times (paywall):


It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when the Republican party became the anti-science party, but the process probably began in the 1980s, when the Christian right first emerged as a major force in conservative American politics.

Since then, the journey has been smooth and swift. In 1982, 50 per cent of self-identified Republicans told the US general social survey they had “a great deal of confidence” in the scientific community. Twenty years later 50 per cent had become 40, and last year just one-third of Republicans held that view, compared to two-thirds of Democrats.

It would be easy to dismiss this trend as merely exasperating — an obstacle to progress on climate change and a source of irritation at extended family gatherings — but over the past 18 months, the politicisation of attitudes to science may have directly cost as many as 60,000 American lives.
This is the stark implication of a new study from the Yale school of public health, which found that since Covid vaccines became widely available in the US, the mortality rate of registered Republicans in Ohio and Florida climbed by 33 per cent during America’s winter Covid wave last year, compared with just a 10 per cent rise among Democrats.

Since vaccines became available, Covid death rates are now almost three times higher in Republican areas than Democrat-dominated ones. With pandemics likely a recurring part of our future, anti-vaccine attitudes and the populist movements that carry them will continue to hamper public health campaigns across the world. But no developed country has a problem as entrenched and as lethal as the US.

The leader of the free world

 By Jim Morin

Bannon's trial for contempt of Congress started yesterday.  

My sweet precious

 By Andy Marlette

AR15: get back your mancard

 An ad designed for all those tragic men worried about their masculinity.  Toxic masculinity just keeps on damaging our society. 

Trump mental illness

 

The anti-vaxxers cry

There have been violent protests by "tradie" and far-right anti-vaxxers in Melbourne.  Their cry: "I don't want to put any fucken foreign matter into my body"

Note the beer bottle in his right hand!

Deflection with DeSantis

 A cartoon by Clay Jones.  DeSantis in the rabid-right, demented governor of Florida, who tries to prevent Floridians wearing masks and getting vaccinated.  The Republican Party has become unhinged.

Vaccination rates by country

 Herd immunity probably requires at least 70% of the population be vaccinated.  Only one country has reached that, though others are close.  It's instructive to look at the difference between Canadian ans US levels.  In Canada, all parties support vaccination.  In the USA, the Republicans and their QAnon allies maintain that Covid is fake, the vaccines dangerous, and that it's all part of a communist plot.  Demented.

The Rabid Right threat to democracy is nothing new

 The Rabid Right threat to democracy is nothing new.  I believe it's worse now, because the Republican Party has embraced doolally fringe theories like QAnon, whereas in the 60s, the then Republican Party shunned the John Birch Society.

From a fascinating Twitter thread by Seth Cotlar, who teaches history at Willamette University.  He looks at newspaper articles and letters to the editor from 1962.

Salem Statesman Journal, 29 January 1962. A commentator notes that ultraconservative "super-patriots" seem to be rising in number and influence, do they pose a greater threat to the nation than Communists?

 "Now for the rookie in the movement, everything falls into place--unless, of course, he knows some contemporary history."

The US right has always been at war with the Marxist "enemies of the people" who run the media.

Part 3 is on General Edwin Walker, a precursor in many ways to our current Q-warlord Michael Flynn.

Part 4. "It is worth pondering the possibility that [the John Birch Society], unwittingly, is following a Communist-inspired line to destroy Americans' faith in their most respected leaders and institutions."

Part 5 focuses on Strom Thurmond as the great hero of the ultraconservatives ca. 1962. Striking that the author makes very little mention of the civil rights/segregation part of Thurmond's national appeal.

Forgot to mention the interesting coincidence that the 1962 angry Christian Patriot letter writer was from Independence, OR...the hometown of recently expelled far right OR legislator Mike Nearman.

Sixth and final installment. Interesting how the author implies that the various ultra-right groups won't successfully join together because then they'd have to pool resources. IOW, for many, this was a lucrative grift they weren't about to give up.

I've only attached one pic of the texts Cotlar references, but the original twitter feed is worth visiting to see all the others.

Here's the Wikipedia article on the John Birch Society.  I noted with interest that the JBS was also anti-science (for example, promoting laetrile as an anti-cancer cure)   Crackpot unhinged loonies.  And the modern Right echoes all these dotty theories--even though Communism has been completely discredited and defeated.

 

Republican politics never takes a holiday

 A cartoon by Kevin Siers