Former NE Tarrant County Tea Party president Konni Burton succeeded Wendy Davis as a state senator for one term before beaten by Beverly Powell, a Democrat.  Her short time in the state senate was notable in two ways; first, Rice’s Baker Institute rated her as the most conservative in the senate, and second, she pissed off Trump over her confiscation reform bill (you know, where police take assets away from someone suspected of criminal behavior even if they were acquitted).  Trump threatened to “destroy” her career for disagreeing with him.  Apparently he succeeded, since she lost to a Dem.

Burton started looking for a new gig, and in 2019 started The Texan, an online “news” source she touts as:

“Dedicated to providing readers with fact-based news regarding issues, policies, elected officials, and campaigns, The Texan is the alternative to the narratives and spin that is so pervasive in news media today.  Seven out of ten Americans, when polled, believe the media knowingly spreads misinformation at least some of the time. The Texan is here to counter that misinformation and provide you with news you can trust.”

Before you burst out laughing at that statement, here’s their stated plan for the “news” service:

“The Texan provides straight news reporting so you can be an informed citizen.

• We do not publish political opinion
• We do not endorse candidates in any political elections
• We do not have an editorial board to publish editorial opinion”

Of course, she’s staffed her “news” service with Republican operatives for editing and reporting, and makes no secret of the “spin” she doesn’t like.  Not on the list of her targets for derision are Fox Noise, OAN, or Newsmax.  Her reporting is 100% rightwing, masquerading as serious objective reporting, just like her competitors.

This is just a Mini-Me of Fox Noise that also used to claim “fair and balanced” which is most certainly is not.  It doesn’t take long to unmask this thinly veiled attempt to camouflage a radically partisan effort to spin the news – all you have to do is peruse Burton’s open sewer of a Twitter feed. Where she tweets and retweets all the normal MAGA talking points.  The only good thing about The Texan is that they don’t take advertising, so it’s not cluttered up with ads for gold coins and prepper supplies.

Just what we need…more toxic bile and partisanship as if we don’t already have enough of that in Texas.

Phil Valentine; Jimmy DeYoung; Dick Farrel; Marc Bernier.  These four guys have several things in common – Syndicated hate radio talkers, anti-vaxxers, anti-science, racists, climate-deniers, religionists, and all dead.  Marc Bernier, who had dubbed himself “Mr. Anti-Vax” was the latest hate talker to have died after spreading disinformation on vaccines and conspiracy theories about the Coronavirus pandemic. His death, along with the others, not only demonstrates in real time the dangers of playing Russian Roulette with a deadly virus, but also lays bare the cesspool of disinformation they helped create and perpetuate.

Rush Limbaugh was the most significant figure in the rise of modern hate radio in the 90s, casting the Clintons as objects of hyper partisan hate, conspiracy theories, and grievance.  Remember the list of people that the Clintons supposedly murdered?  That vicious lie was so pervasive that it is now embedded in the DNA of political conservatives and formed the foundation of the idiotic Q Anon conspiracy theory culminating in a violent attack on the US Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the US government.

These four deplorables, included in a much larger group of deplorables like Alex Jones, feed a steady diet of anger, lies, distortions, gross exaggerations, conspiracy theories, and right wing red meat into a counterculture drowning in obsession and devotion to self-destruction.  Trump is one of the most successful politicians to tap into this counterculture which has formed the core of his base, dominating all of rightwing politics today and destroying what’s left of the Republican Party.  The ecosystem they enable has sickened millions, caused untold deaths, and is holding back the entire country from recovery from the pandemic.  These low budget hate talkers are the heartbeat of this ecosystem, pumping toxic disinformation into syndicated networks that is literally getting people killed including those doing the pumping.

I wish no harm to anyone, but it’s almost impossible for me personally to have any empathy for the self-inflicted death these hate talkers caused themselves and untold others, not to mention the financial burden of huge hospital bills left to their families to carry.  Is this the way nature cleans the gene pool?  That judgment is above my pay grade, but my observation is that this is exactly what’s happening; unfortunately they’re taking untold numbers of innocents with them, and that is nothing but tragedy in its purest form.  Perhaps all this senseless ignorance and death will drive at least some of their adherents to rethink their devotion.  We can only hope.

John Pierce is an attorney and defender of RWNJs, including 17 Capitol Hill insurrectionists, the Kenosha Wisconsin shooter Kyle Rittenhouse, and…wait for it…Rudy Giuliani.  He disappeared last week, and an associate from his law firm, the so called National Constitutional Law Union, lied to one judge that he’d been in an accident and then admitted to another judge that Pierce is hospitalized for COVID, on a ventilator, and unresponsive.  Pierce is well known as an advocate of right wing weirdos, has denigrated vaccines and protested against masking and social distancing.

Yet another rightwing weirdo is felled by his/her own stupidity.  This time, though, a lot of guys who also bought into The Big Lie are also unrepresented in federal court on charges related to the insurrection on January 6th.

Irony or Karma.  The answer to both inquiries is YES.

To add insult to injury, a guy named Abdul Ghani Marader has been named Afghanistan’s new president.  He was one of the founders of the Taliban in 1994 and brother in law to Muhammed Omar, the head of the Taliban who was forced into hiding by the US in 2002.  Marader was arrested and jailed in Pakistan by the request of the US in 2010.  Trump unilaterally released him in 2018 to negotiate the Doha agreement between the Taliban and US.  Since then he has consolidating his power especially after Trump surrendered to the Taliban at Camp David in 2020 and agreed to release 5,000 Taliban fighters.  On Monday, he waltzed into Kabul unopposed and immediately too up residence in the president’s palace after Ghani fled and the Afghan army delaminated in less than 10 days.

Trump seems to be the common thread throughout this entire catastrophe.  To make it perfectly clear:

• Trump released Marader in 2018
• Trump invited the Taliban (including Marader)  to Camp David in 2020, agreed to hand Afghanistan over to the Taliban and set May, 2021 as the date.
• As part of the deal, Trump released another 5,000 Taliban fighters from Afghan prisons.
• Trump then unilaterally withdrew half of US forces in December 2020, just before the insurrection, and the Biden inauguration.
• Trump trumpeted the withdrawal deal during his rallies in 2021, bragging about how he boxed Biden in.
• When the withdrawal turned into an easily predicted debacle, Trump immediately blamed Biden for the deal he had personally negotiated.

If you’re looking for anything else to be pissed at Trump about, this is it.

Before this week I had never heard of Jeffrey Clark.  Who’s Jeffrey Clark, you ask?  Clark is a Trump plant in the DOJ who conspired with him to insert the DOJ into The Big Lie.  Clark wrote the draft letter that he tried to get acting AG Jeffrey Rosen to sign alleging that the DOJ was investigating “various irregularities,” and, “…we have identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia.”  The letter urges the governor to Georgia to reconvene the state legislature to reconsider the certification of the election for Joe Biden and choose a different set of electors for Trump.  Luckily for democracy, Rosen refused to approve the letter.  After his refusal, Clark then conspired with Trump to fire Rosen and appoint him as acting AG so he could use the DOJ to complete a coup against the duly elected president.

Even as we watched the train wreck of Trump’s attempt to overturn the election with The Big Lie, we didn’t know how close we came to a coup enacted by Trump plants not only at DOJ, but also DOD and other agencies.  And the terrifying thing is that NONE of these officials have paid any price for their treasonous conduct as employees of the US government.  That’s the shameful part.

Today the DOJ ordered the IRS to release Trump’s tax returns to the House Ways & Means Committee, reversing one more Trump corruption of the department.  I’m not celebrating, but grateful we’re gradually taking back our government from the Orange Fascist.  I won’t be happy, though, until a jury reads a verdict of “guilty”.