Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea! Flash! Those audio chatterboxes they call "The Professional Left Podcast" are taking to the airwaves tonight with a retrospective that'll curl your permanent wave!
From the swanky studios of downtown Springfield, Illinois, to your very own listening device comes "Nine Hundred Episodes in Sixty Minutes" — a piping hot sample platter of American political whoop-de-do spanning fifteen years of ballot box bedlam and legacy media failures that put the most corrupt man in American history in the White House! Twice!
To mark this 900th episode of their award-ready podcast, today, the Professional Left kids will be sampling every episode from the past 15 years that ends in a double-zero. A little something from 100th, 200th, 300th et cetera
Flashback to 2010! When the Fake Tea Party stormed Capitol Hill while President Obama's healthcare hullabaloo had Republicans reaching for the smelling salts! The midterms dealt the Democrats a shellacking that made the '29 crash look like a slight dip!
Also, 2011 saw wedding bells for our intrepid podcasters. But did they let their nuptials interrupt their podcasting? No, they did not!
The audio oracles take you through Mitt Romney taking a beating worse than Joe Lewis' punching bag! Obama's second inauguration had champagne corks popping in blue states while red states nursed their bourbons neat!
But – hold the presses! A corrupt, racist New York real estate crook with a coiffure that defied gravity and a former First Lady squared off in a campaign brawl that would make the Thrilla in Manila look like a Sunday school picnic! Donald Trump's November surprise left the pollsters with egg on their faces and their crystal balls in the repair shop!
Join them as the Blue Wave of 2018 washed over the House of Representatives like high tide at Coney Island! 2020 impeachment dramas hotter than a Broadway opening night, followed by an election showdown during a pandemic panic! Biden and Trump traded verbal haymakers while mail-in ballots flew faster than V-mail to the troops overseas!
Flash! January 6th, 2021 – the Capitol steps saw more action than the Normandy beaches with protesters storming the rotunda! The podcasters recall congressional hearings that made the Kefauver crime committee look like a bridge party!
The audio oracles highlight Supreme Court confirmations with more drama than a soap opera, and a 2024 campaign rematch that had Trump returning to Pennsylvania Avenue after Biden stepped aside and Harris stepped up!
That's a 15-year political roundup, as jam-packed with excitement as a three-ring circus. 900 episodes in the books, 900 more to go!
While this is not exactly a dip in ancient waters, now that legacy media
and Conservative media and Never Trump media have
collectively declared the Before Times to be strictly off limits to any
recollections that don't involve weeping over how shabbily Robert Bork was
treated or elevating Ronald Reagan to sainthood or carping about Abbie
Hoffman, there is no act of
You’ll-Never-Get-a-Gig-at-The-Atlantic-With-That-Attitude more transgressive
that profligately remembering stuff from back in the day.
So, since after 20 years at this coal face, there isn't a hope in Hell of me
ever, ever, ever being offered a writing gig at brick-and-mortar publication,
even if no one listens now just as no one listened then, that is exactly what
I plan to go right on doing.
So today, a snip from May 30, 2005. An open-letter of sorts (those were
big back in the olden times) to those chimeral Moderate Republicans who were
only ever visible out of the corner of your eye. Try to look straight
and they vanish like a fart in a firestorm.
Anyway, give it a read if that is your pleasure and then reflect on why it is
that, once Republicans acclaimed Donald Trump as their lord and savior, the
Liberals who have been sounding the alarm for decades that the Republican
party was on a trajectory towards something like this are still treated as
kooks and pariahs, while the Conservatives who were caught completely
flat-footed by the rise of Trump and who first swore that such a thing was
impossible, then swore that the rise of Trump was a fluke, then swore that is
was merely a fever which would pass once people realized yadda yadda, then
swore that Liberal were probably to blame .. how is it those people who
have such a long history of being so wildly wrong are now the once you see
larding the op-ed pages, the cable teevee panels and aver other mainstream
media platform?
And, not to get too meta on you, but if you are so inclined, reflect further
on the fact that, as the media was being colonized by recently-former
Republicans and us very inconvenient Liberals with our very inconvenient receipts being shoved into the corner, there
were a few of us who warned that, if the Left did not
loudly refuse to cede one inch of the moral high ground to the
Never Trumpers (who had spent the last 30 years making a living and getting monsters elected by calling us
dirty, commie baby-killers) -- that they could be welcomed as subordinate
allies but only after they conceded the obvious fact that Left had been right about the
Right all along -- that before you know it, any mention of the Before Time
would become taboo (No Fair Remembering Stuff), and voices on the Left would be shoved even deeper in the
corner while the legacy media would elevate or amplify people like David
French, Matthew Dowd, Rick Wilson, Michael Steele, Steve Schmidt, Charlie
Sykes, Tom Nichols, David Frum and David Brooks.
And as I recall, even as this was all happening right before our eyes -- even
as MSNBC was giving tens of millions of dollars worth of free promotion to
websites hurriedly cobbled together by recently-former Republican while
Liberal sites starved, even as credulous Liberals poured tens of millions of
actual dollars into the coffers of the Lincoln Project for ads that
accomplished nothing while Liberal sites went begging -- credulous Liberal
were scolding people like me for making a big deal out of it. After all,
I was told a 1,000 times back in 2017, 2017 and 2018, this was just a
temporary arrangement. It was just until Trump was gone. Then,
instead of using their newly-dominant positions in the media to scold
Democrats for not being Republican-lite, they would be told to go back to
their own party and clean up the awful mess that they had made.
...So to the many Moderate Republicans who are angling for their tiny
places in history – for the elementary school cafeterias and highway
on-ramps that they hope will one day be named for them – I would ask in
all seriousness just how in the Hell do you think history will judge
you?
At this point, you know the Administration was and is lying to you. You know that our children are dying for those lies and the treasure-house of
respect and honor that two centuries of successive Administration have
carefully stored up is now being pissed away into the sands of Iraq. You know that liars and thugs are being appointed to vital, high-profile
jobs. You know the courts are being packed with ultra right wing lunatics.
You are the same people and belong to the same Party that was more than happy to spend tens of millions of dollars going after Clinton on the whiff of
a hint of a suggestion of something untoward, and you were quite willing
to sit at that fishing hole and lob dynamite into it for seven long years
until you knocked something loose.
In light of that, what I don’t quite understand is how you’re going to
explain to posterity how you refused to bother to even investigate any of
this. How you’re going to sell “I never knew” and “I never bothered to
find out” to the history books as anything other that rank cowardice and
towering hypocrisy once the multiple, interlocking Bush Ponzi Schemes fall
apart, given how much evidence of wrongdoing is right there in front of you.
Well we all know how that turned out , don't we?
And now, just for kicks, here is the first two of the 76 comments on
that post (most of which were spam ads for auto loans and real estate -- it
was a different time). A reader wrote and I responded, as the pedant
that I am:
Anonymous said:
For history to judge a man harshly those writing it must render such a
verdict. The writers of history often reflect the thinking of a nation's
populace, prodded into a rumination heavily influenced by the sentiments of
the many. I don't see Bush suffering too badly under the microscope of
future historians. We are a nation of xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic,
militaristic half-wits. The citizenry mostly agrees with the psychopaths in
the White House. Our schools churn out millions unable or unwilling to read
or write. Most of the population is content to swill beer, ogle porn and
worship NASCAR drivers. These are the people historians will appeal to in
their tomes, exposing Bush as a murdering, criminal vulgarian? Please, it's
not going to happen. Think of the query "If a tree falls in the forest and
no one is around, does it make a crashing sound?". If historians judge Bush
badly but no one pays attention to their verdict have they made a sound?
driftglass said...
"The citizenry mostly agrees with the psychopaths in the White House."
You're wrong on three counts.
First, have a care slinging "most" around too easily. Around 49% of the
citizenry very definitely does not agree with the psychopaths in the WH, and
the margin of victory was around 100,000 votes in one state and not
millions. Furthermore, every measure of Administration popularity has been
dropping steadily since Christmas. Reality is slowly overtaking propaganda,
as it always does. Yes, a high percentage of the populace are superstitious
and bigoted and generally a waste of perfectly good carbon, but when wasn't
this the case, so...
Second, you misread history if you think that there were ever some bygone,
halcyon days when the average American whiled away his leisure time by
wading though Tacitus and debating Clausewitz with his friends over a beer
(swilled or otherwise.) Never happened. However, popularized histories have
always made it into the mass markets, from Shakespeare to Spielberg.
Third, I for one have nothing but nice things to say about the ogling of
porn, but as to NASCAR, I must admit, how anyone can pay rapt attention to
hour after hour of left turns stumps me.
Raymond Shaw Is the Kindest, Bravest, Warmest, Most Wonderful Human Being I’ve
Ever Known in My Life. Raymond Shaw Is the Kindest, Bravest, Warmest, Most
Wonderful Human Being I’ve Ever Known in My Life...
...Raymond Shaw Is the Kindest, Bravest, Warmest, Most Wonderful Human Being
I’ve Ever Known in My Life.
Raymond Shaw and his fellow soldiers were captured, tortured and brainwashed.
Noem, on the other hand and like all the other Trump lackies and boot-lickers,
did all of this to herself. Then she went to a plastic surgeon and
told him to give her a face to match the state of her mingy soul.
This week on The Professional Left, we're asking the question that's suddenly on everyone's mind: "Does motivated reasoning have any limits?" When a president accepts a $400 million jet as a "gift" from Qatar and his administration floats suspending habeas corpus, are we finally reaching a tipping point?
We'll explore why even some of the most devoted right-wing voices are squirming uncomfortably as Trump's corruption moves from the shadows into broad daylight. Is this his "Katrina moment," or just another Tuesday in America's descent into authoritarianism?
Join us for a deep dive into cults, corruption, and the Constitution as we continue broadcasting from the Cornfield Resistance. Plus, what a little-known DC Comics villain can teach us about the emotional spectrum of greed in politics today.
Links for this episode:
Oxford Research Encyclopedias, 'Motivated Reasoning and Politics' https://oxfordre.com/politics/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-923
Capitol Fax, Former Gov. Jim Edgar: Last hundred days ’scariest of my life’. https://capitolfax.com/2025/05/08/former-gov-jim-edgar-last-hundred-days-scariest-of-my-life/
The subject today is why persuasion no longer works, why the art of political
compromise is dead, who killed it, and why. And to do that, we’re going
to start off with a thing I did not know about until I was today
years old. That there are a few Christian churches out there that
canonize Pontius Pilate as a saint.
Which is wild.
Even if you're not a Christian, you've probably heard of Pilate -- the first
century A.D. Roman governor of the province of Judea
after whom "Pilates" is named who presided over the
sentencing of Jesus of Nazareth, just as he had presided over the crucifixion
of hundreds of men adjudged to have broken one Roman law or another. The
execution of Jesus was nothing out of the ordinary: just another, bog standard
example of Roman rule, handled in bulk with the speed and indifference of the
average big city traffic court on any given Monday.
And yet in the Coptic Church, and in some Ethiopian churches he’s considered a
saint. And not just any old kind of saint. They believe he and his wife
converted to Christianity and he was executed by the emperor, which makes him
a martyr.
Of course, this is all just goofy post hoc religious fiction, but so is so
much of the New Testament.
For example, there is zero chance that a high ranking roman army officer would
be attending the crucifixion of a handful of troublemakers and criminals, much
less declare out loud that "Truly, this was the Son of God!" And
yet, the gospel writers penciled in at least one (or possibly two, or maybe
they're the same guy) centurion -- a commander of 100 men -- in attendance at
this minor event.
If you want to know the long version of how and why Christian origin stories
got scripted this way, there is no lack of literature on the subject.
The much shorter version is marketing. Specifically, how to take
a minor Jewish apocalyptic cult and go looking for converts among much wider,
gentile audience. An audience that likes the brochure, but very
definitely weren't on-board with the whole "gotta convert and be circumcised
and keep kosher" thing.
Step 1: Have a vision that says the whole "gotta convert and be
circumcised and keep kosher" thing is no longer necessary. Come one,
come all! Credit that to the very active and prolific, Paul of
Tarsus.
Step 2: Since the wider, gentile audience you're trying to convert are
going to mostly be Romans, you start rewriting your origin story so that, even
though Jesus was a practicing Jew, the Jews become the villains.
They're the ones who shout down Pilates' offer to release Jesus because
Passover (this never happened,
and there was no such "custom")
The Barabbas episode is a well-known story in the Jesus Passion
narrative. But it has, however, been debated as to matters of its
historicity and viewed with suspicion on several grounds. The following
arguments are usually provided:
Beyond the Gospels there is no mention of this event in primary sources
for Pilate. There are a few sources attesting to Pilate’s governorship
over Judea. For instance, from Philo of Alexandria (C. BCE 20-50 CE) and
Josephus Flavius (c. 37-100 CE), historians have enough information to
learn about Pilate’s character and his attitude towards the Jews over whom
he ruled. Neither indicates the custom central to the Barabbas
episode.
Based on what Philo’s and Josephus’s sources tell us of Pilate, the
critic argues that Pilate would never have released a murderous
insurrectionist against Rome, let alone this be a custom. Rather, Pilate
was brutal and ruthless, and would use his soldiers to beat people into
submission. This perspective finds support. According to Philo, Pilate
“was a man of inflexible, stubborn and cruel disposition…”...
Moreover, for Pilate to release an insurrectionist would likely bring the
Empire down on himself, which Pilate certainly would not have wanted.
Conversely, the Romans slowly evolve into, if not the heroes, at least
sympathetic characters. The centurion at the cross. Pilate being
bullied into executing Jesus by a Jewish crowd. Matthew 27:24
When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar
was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I
am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!”
This first century propaganda push to shift the blame for the Romans arresting
Jesus as an insurgent against the Roman empire and executing him in accordance
with Roman law planted the seeds from which modern, murderous antisemitism
sprang. Matthew 27:25
All the people answered, “His blood is on us and on our children!”
But important as it is, such historical contextualisation is not enough
to deal with the legacy of Matthew 27:25 – the way in which it has been
weaponised against Jews, and ‘has haunted Jewish-Christian relations for
almost sixteen hundred years’.[3] The accusation that all Jews
everywhere, and down the generations, are ‘Christ-killers’ can be
documented from the mid-second century: Justin Martyr, in his
Dialogue with Trypho, told the Jew Trypho that at Christ’s first coming
‘he was pierced by you’.[4] And Melito, bishop of Sardis, preached a
powerful Passiontide sermon in which he rhetorically addressed ‘O lawless
Israel’, saying, ‘you cast the vote of opposition against your Lord … over
whom even Pilate washed his hands: for you killed him at the great
feast’.[5] Melito has been called ‘the first poet of deicide’, for
making the explicit claim that ‘God has been murdered. The King of
Israel has been destroyed by an Israelite right hand.’[6] Christian
anti-Judaism later fused with racial antisemitism, and the deicide charge
featured, for example, in the Nazi school curriculum.[7]
Note that last part about this grotesque perversion of the truth eventually
became so embedded in the culture that it was party of Nazi school
curriculum as you read this from
Reason magazine:
New Oklahoma Curriculum Requires Students To Learn 2020 Election Fraud
Conspiracies
The new standards are "the most unapologetically conservative,
pro-America social studies standards in the nation," according to State
Superintendent Ryan Walters.
n the new school year, thousands of Oklahoma students will be required to
learn about 2020 election fraud conspiracy theories as part of a new
curriculum developed by the state's controversial superintendent, Ryan
Walters. Walters, who has come under fire in recent months for an effort
to require Oklahoma classrooms to stock Bibles and display the Ten
Commandments, has said that the addition "empowers students to investigate
and understand the electoral process."
While it's not necessarily unreasonable to want students to learn about
the dispute over the 2020 election, the standards' framing of the
controversy (which turned up no evidence of election interference) and
Walters' comments about it make it clear that teachers are meant to shed
doubt on the veracity of the election.
"The purpose of the standard is simple: we want students to think for
themselves, not be spoon-fed left wing propaganda," Walters said in a
statement to The Washington Post in March. "Students deserve to examine
every aspect of our elections, including the legitimate concerns raised by
millions of Americans in 2020."
Put a pin in that terrifying development for one minute while I send another
fun Roman fact your way.
Did you know that, in Roman theology, emperors
could be declared divine? Well, of course you knew, because you watched I, Claudius, but maybe
some other's didn't. It's true. It's the original meaning of the
word "apotheosis". Through a formal vote in the Roman Senate an emperor or
other august person (usually deceased) could be elevated to the status of a
divinity.
These days there is a great deal of frustration and confusion abroad in the
land about why the Republican party has divorced itself, not just from
policies which the base never gave a shit about anyway, but from reason
itself. Why do they all believe such goddamn
stupid lies? Why do they persist in putting their
faith in the same liars over and over again even as the lies fall apart over
and over again?
Whatever happened to art of political compromise and the power of
persuasion?
The answer is that Republicans have left the realm of politics
altogether. Sure, Republicans still have titles and elected
offices and ribbon cuttings. And, sure, every now and then there is some
attempt to put on a show for the cameras about passing a bill or a
budget. But those are just the trappings and relics of an age that has
now passed, because they are no longer a political party.
They are a religion. And, yes, you'll hear a lot of critics (myself
included) calling them a "cult", so I won't quibble except to say that there
really isn't that much that separates a cult from a religion. A.I. Jebus
says it's more of a spectrum, and the distinction is often a matter of social
and cultural perception. For example, has the group gained recognition from
mainstream society as a religion? Some people still think of Mormonism
as a cult, most people would call it a religion?
Money is also a big consideration. Bring enough gold to the table, and
you can sit with the big boys.
Social acceptance is also a factor. Do you have enough people in your
tent to be recognized by the mainstream culture as a legitimate
religion. Consider that, in the 1st and 2nd centuries, there were
between 59 and 76 million people in the Roman empire. And at the
end of the 1st century, the number of Christians in the empire amounted to
nothing more than a rounding error.
Based on the modeling of Rodney Stark in
The Rise of Christianity, there were approximately 7,500 Christians by the end of the first century
(0.02% of sixty million people);
Rodney Stark in The Rise of Christianity has a very interesting model
that starts with 1,000 members of the Jesus Sect in 40 AD and projects a
growth rate of 40% per decade up to the fourth century. As Stark lays out,
this tallies with the available historical evidence, both the more
impressionistic kind,[1] and a remarkable study on the growth of
Christianity in Egypt, where we have the nearest approximation to births,
marriages, and deaths records in the Roman world.[2]
Starks model means the trajectory was, roughly[3]:
7,500 Christians by the end of the first century (0.02% of sixty million
people);
40,000 Christians by 150 AD (0.07%)
200,000 by 200 AD (0.35%)
2 million by 250 AD (2%)...
By 300 AD, there were six million Christians, and by 350 AD there were
approximately thirty million, with Christians now a clear majority of the
Empire.
Deciding at what point Christianity stopped being a cult and start being a
religion really comes down to a matter of taste, so whether you prefer the
term "cult" (since it sounds more transitory and personality-based) or "religion", something profoundly dark and disturbing that has been rumbling
around in the guts of the GOP for decades has finally emerged fully into the
open, and it is not a political party anymore. And now
that all internal opposition has been snuffed out and the faithful are in
command of their own media platforms, they are proceeding with even greater
vigor in doing what Republicans have been doing all along anyway: rewriting
history to suit themselves.
Just as the heroes and villains and martyrs of the Christian origin story were
rearranged to suit the changing needs of the expanding church, so too are the
heroes, villains and martyrs of the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021
terrorist attack on the American capitol being rewritten to suit the Right's
new religion.
It is now the official canon of the Church of MAGA that the 2020 election was
stolen, and any statement to the contrary is heresy that can cost you your job
with the regime. From Fortune Magazine, March 6, 2025:
Trump team tests job candidates by asking who won the 2020 election
The White House is giving potential job candidates litmus tests in
interviews to make sure they are sufficiently loyal to President Donald
Trump and his second-term agenda, according to people familiar with the
process.
Among the questions asked of multiple candidates: Would you be willing to
serve as a spokesperson for mass deportations? Which of Trump’s executive
orders is your favorite? Who won the 2020 presidential election? And which
Trump policy do you disagree with?
Job seekers are asked their views on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters
stormed the Capitol and tried to overturn the certification of Joe Biden’s
election victory. Trump pardoned hundreds of people convicted of crimes
linked to the assault, which killed at least seven people and injured 150
police officers. He has called the day’s events a peaceful protest.
The insurgents have been recast as hostages and heroes...
-- liberated from their durance vile by the divine intervention
of the godhead of their new faith --
-- which comes alongside promises of terrible retribution against the sinners
who dared to defy the servants of the godhead:
And of course, story of the traitor Ashli Babbitt who fucked around and found
out has been magically transformed into the tale of a Martyr to the Holy
Cause. From
ABC News:
DOJ reaches agreement in principle to settle lawsuit brought by family of
Ashli Babbitt
Babbitt's family sued the government in January 2024 seeking $30
million.
The Department of Justice has reached an agreement in principle to settle
a lawsuit brought by the family of Ashli Babbitt, a pro-Trump rioter who
was shot by a U.S. Capitol Police officer during the Jan. 6 Capitol
riot.
The details of the proposed settlement were not made clear during a
Friday hearing before federal Judge Ana Reyes, of the U.S. District Court
for the District of Columbia.
Babbitt's family members sued the government in January 2024 seeking $30
million for what they allege was her wrongful shooting death by Capitol
Police Officer Michael Byrd.
Here's what actually happened. Again from ABC News:
Byrd was cleared of any wrongdoing following an internal investigation
into the actions leading up to his shooting of Babbitt as she tried to
climb through a broken window that led to the House Speaker's Lobby, where
several lawmakers and their staff were sheltering from rioters.
And here's the official doctrine according to the infallible leader of the
Church of MAGA:
President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his solidarity with
Babbitt's family and called for "justice" for what he has said was her
"murder" at Byrd's hands -- in line with his broader vocal support for the
pro-Trump rioters who attacked the Capitol to overturn his 2020 election
loss.
In March, Trump said in an interview with Newsmax he wasn't aware of the
lawsuit brought by Babbitt's family but promised he would "look into"
it.
"I'm a big fan of Ashli Babbitt, OK, and Ashli Babbitt was a really good
person who was a big MAGA fan, Trump fan, and she was innocently standing
there -- they even say trying to sort of hold back the crowd," Trump said.
"And a man did something unthinkable to her when he shot her, and I think
it's a disgrace. I'm going to look into that. I did not know that."
As an emergent religion, the Church of MAGA checks all the boxes. It has
its saints and martyrs and a godhead.
It has has the Republican party's age-old contempt for the existing order of
things, and now, under Trump, that evil old temple is being torn down.
And in its place shall be a paradise on Earth for the faithful. Revelation 21:
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
Breaking with two centuries of political tradition, Donald Trump didn’t ask Americans to place their trust in each other or in God, but rather, in Trump.
Trump: 'We're going to become so rich, you're not going to know where to
spend all that money'
Miracles are now performed on a daily basis. Sometimes on an hourly
basis. Through faith alone, rising prices have stopped being a bad thing and become a good
thing. Who needs so many dolls and pencils anyway?
And who says they're rising anyway? Trump has declared that:
"The cost of eggs has come down like 93%, 94% since we took office, and
they’re pretty much normally priced now.”
Also I am told that somewhere out there in Real America gas now costs less
than $2 a gallon. From
CNBC:
“Gasoline just broke $1.98 a Gallon, lowest in years,” Trump said in a
post on his social media platform Truth Social on Friday. “Consumers have
been waiting for years to see pricing come down. NO INFLATION, THE FED
SHOULD LOWER ITS RATE!!!”
And once Trump had been re-elected, the Church of MAGA had it's very own
story of symbolic betrayal, death and resurrection.
Take a long look at the groveling deference and sycophancy of Trump's
cabinet and the Republicans in congress. Doesn't that look an awful
lot like an act of "apotheosis" -- of elevating Trump to divine status?
And now that it has its hands on real, state power, what would a new,
bloody-minded religion be without the declarations of jihad against
blasphemers and heretics. This is from the April 9, 2025 Presidential
Memoranda FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES
Title: Addressing Risks from Chris Krebs and Government Censorship
...Christopher Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), is a significant bad-faith actor
who weaponized and abused his Government authority. Krebs’ misconduct
involved the censorship of disfavored speech implicating the 2020
election and COVID-19 pandemic. CISA, under Krebs’ leadership,
suppressed conservative viewpoints under the guise of combatting
supposed disinformation, and recruited and coerced major social media
platforms to further its partisan mission. CISA covertly worked to blind
the American public to the controversy surrounding Hunter Biden’s
laptop. Krebs, through CISA, promoted the censorship of election
information, including known risks associated with certain voting
practices. Similarly, Krebs, through CISA, falsely and baselessly denied
that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, including by
inappropriately and categorically dismissing widespread election
malfeasance and serious vulnerabilities with voting machines. Krebs
skewed the bona fide debate about COVID-19 by attempting to discredit
widely shared views that ran contrary to CISA’s favored
perspective...
This July will mark the 100th anniversary of the Scopes Monkey trial.
Care to guess how many Christian evangelicals still refuse to believe
in evolution? According to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey indicated
that 66% of white evangelical Protestants hold a creationist stance,
believing humans have always existed in their present form.
What about refusal to believe in climate change despite the fact that the consensus of 97-99% of all scientists is that it is real and man-made?
Or belief that the Bible is the literal an inerrant word of God despite
mountains of historical, geological, paleographic,
forensic and chemical evidence to the contrary?
Like it or not, for the Right this stopped being a political contest over
policy questions a long time ago and became a Holy War against us
infidels and heretics on the Left. That’s what all of their culture
war bullshit adds up to: Church of MAGA articles of faith that their leaders
have told them, are under siege by us godless, commie
scum.
Long past time for Dems to wake up and stop pretending what is broken about
this country can be fixed by bringing a House resolution to a Holy
War.
In our 898th episode, we examine a puzzling question: why has political persuasion become seemingly impossible in America today? We explore how the landscape has fundamentally shifted beyond mere policy disagreements into something that looks surprisingly like religious conflict.
We connect historical patterns of how religious movements evolve and rewrite their narratives to what we're witnessing in contemporary politics. Drawing parallels between ancient religious transformations and today's political climate reveals why facts and evidence no longer seem to matter in public discourse.
Plus, we share two surprisingly uplifting stories from Salt Lake City and our hometown of Springfield, Illinois, where communities are finding creative ways to stand their ground against political extremism.
Join us for a thoughtful conversation about the religious dimensions of today's politics and what this means for the future of compromise in our democracy.
Rendition Gulag Barbie was scheduled to come here this morning so she could
stand in front of the Governor's residence and mouth off. So, along with
a number of neighbors and fellow travelers, I hied myself down to the the
guv's house to share in a spirited public expression of "Fuck Right Off" in
response to her presence.
But because she is a coward she never showed up. And you could clearly
see why. The guv's residence was decorated in "Due Process For All"
banners, and of the more than 100 people I saw at the thing, among all
the signs and clackers and cowbells and air horns, nary a single MAGA goof did
I see. Not one fascist-friendly face. Instead, turns out Rendition
Gulag Barbie was reduced to flying all the way here to skulk in an alley miles
away with a few of her fellow fascists before beating it out of town.
Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem a no-show at Governor's Mansion
Held press conference instead near the site of Emma Shafer's murder
On Tuesday afternoon, the Department of Homeland Security announced that
Secretary Kristi Noem would be visiting Springfield the following morning
to tout her "Making America Safe Again" agenda and speak out against Gov.
JB Pritzker's immigration policies and Illinois' status as a sanctuary
state. No time or location for her press conference was publicized,
but it was believed that she would make an appearance in front of the
Governor's Mansion at 10 a.m.
The Springfield Immigrant Advocacy Network, Illinois State AFL-CIO, 50501
Illinois and other activist groups began encouraging their supporters to
show up and stage a counterprotest. A crowd gathered in front of the
Governor's Mansion this morning, many with signs and some with their faces
obscured to conceal their identities, but Noem did not appear...
Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias held a press conference
across from the Governor's Mansion at 10:30 a.m. in response to Noem's
visit.
"The combination of cowardice, incompetence and cruelty is a very scary
mix," Giannoulias said. "So while I'm glad she's not here, we need to step
up as as a society, as a country and as a democracy to monsters like
Kristi Noem."
From The Dominican Sisters of Springfield, Illinois
Kristi Noem has no right to use Emma Schafer when her mother is across
town protesting her unconstitutional approach to immigration.
From my alderwoman:
The DHS and Feds picked the absolute wrong person to use as a prop today
in Springfield, IL. Her memory and her LIFE’S WORK will not be defiled by
the absolute ghouls who did this and those from our community who stood by
in support of doing this. In the words of our Governor, may they never
know a moment’s peace.
A message from her parents:
Of course the Springfield Immigrant Advocacy Network was there.
Can you spot me in this pic?
Well done, Springfield. After cowing Rendition Gulag Barbie into such a
humiliating public retreat practically in the shadow of one of her bosses
loudest and most effective critics (from
The Hill) --
Pritzker’s office mockingly calls for ‘all pet owners’ to beware ahead of
Noem visit
-- because I am a movie nerd, I can't help but think about what Sam Spade
sarcastically tells the incompetent gunsel, Wilmer, in The Maltese Falcon after easily stripping him of his ridiculously large guns:
Come on. This'll put you in solid with your boss.
She ran away. And you know how Trump loves it when his people make him look like a fool.
