Far right wing Republican, Mike Nearman, a state representative in Oregon was expelled last night in a 59-1 vote for recklessly endangering the lives of representatives in special session by opening a locked side door allowing armed insurrectionists in the building last December protesting COVID-19 restrictions.  Nearman is a nut tied to all kinds of goofy conspiracy theories including signing on to our own nut, Ken Paxton’s, idiotic lawsuit to overturn the Oregon presidential vote.  Republicans had been slow walking the “investigation” of Nearman’s misconduct when a video emerged of him plotting with the insurectionists the week before the attack to let them into a locked door, and that is precisely what he did.  The evidence was so plain that even Republicans couldn’t ignore it and then unanimously voted him off the island.

There’s no question that Nearman is a bad guy.  He’s also facing criminal charges for his actions and one can only hope the judge in that case throws the book at him.  THIS is how you treat elected officials who support insurrection and lawlessness.  The same standard needs to be applied to those in DC who aided, abetted, and encouraged the attack on the US Capitol on January 6.  The morons who attacked the Capitol that day were too goddammed stupid to have done that on their own.  Insiders, and by that I mean elected officials and their staffs, helped them with the goal of delaying  or even stopping the certification of the Electoral College vote.  Elected officials, including the Vice President, could have easily been killed by said morons.  Those officials also must have the book thrown at them including jail time.  That’s how you put a stop to this nonsense.

Must read.  A great article today by Jennifer Rubin the the Washington Post about stopping right wing myth making.

The Texas Association of Realtors is having their annual conference at the beginning of September.  Surprisingly, they’re using some common sense by making the conference virtual; good for them.  But their common sense, apparently, stops there.  They’ve invited a national political figure for their keynote speech on the subject of “Unity and Leadership”.  Take a wild guess who the speaker will be…give up?  You should because on a list of 1,000 people to discuss unity, you’d never think of this guy.  Said speaker is Trey Gowdy.  Yes, THAT Trey Gowdy, he of goofy hairstyles and baggy suits, is going to speak to Texas realtors about his groundbreaking work on unity and leadership.

Recall that Trey Gowdy led the House investigation of the tragic killings of US ambassador to Libya and 3 other Americans during a terrorist attack on the American Consulate at Benghazi.  Gowdy led that mudslinging, falsehood hurling witch hunt for two and a half years, including an 11 hour marathon grilling of Hillary Clinton, publishing an 800 page report that basically said the attack was tragic and no fault of anyone in the US government except for maybe the Republicans in Congress who had slashed the security budget for the State department during the Obama administration.

Gowdy probably ranks in the top ten of divisive, cynical Republicans from the Obama era who took a leading role in the Benghazi investigations.  He was also a proponent of the culture wars brought on by the Teabagger wave that he rode into office in 2010 after defeating mainstream Republican Bob Inglis in the South Carolina primary that year.  He also rode the Trump wave in 2016, even being floated as AG early on, but ended up on the trash heap of disappeared Republicans after he criticized Trump for falsely accusing Obama of “spying” on his campaign.  That ended his career in Congress and he now is apparently trying to stay relevant by trying out the minor speaking circuit.

That brings us back to the Texas Realtors’ #ShapingTexas conference.  As I heard earlier today, “Asking Gowdy to speak about unity is like inviting Putin to speak about American democracy”.  This is what happens when right wing politics are mainstream as it is in Texas.  Organizers will probably be shocked that most people would be offended hearing from Gowdy about “unity”.

One of the Fall’s biggest movies premiers is First Man, a biographical/action movie about Neil Armstrong.  It screened last week at the Venice film festival to rave reviews and Oscar talk.  A movie about one of our biggest 20th century heroes complete with jets, rockets, and spaceflight?  Cool, eh?  Not so fast, bucko, we have to go through the Patriot Test.  Uh, oh, the movie left out the actual planting of the US flag on the moon.  Trigger The Outrage Machine.  Now, for context, only a couple of hundred people have seen this movie so far; it doesn’t release until October 12, but right wing screamers from Breitbart to Twitter to even Marco Rubio have whipped up The Outrage Machine and turned the movie into a political hot potato over leaving out a flag planting scene.  Again, NONE of the people screaming on social media have actually seen the movie, and apparently not even the trailer, since our beloved totem was even featured in that.  Have a look:

Those who have actually seen the movie say the flag is all over it, and even shown in the moon scenes.  Ryan Gosling, who plays Armstrong in the film, said that the the story depicts “human achievement” more than simply American, which, in fact, is the way Armstrong himself saw it.  They chose to focus on Armstrong’s story, not only American culture.  And to some, that is the unforgivable sin.

So where is the outrage coming from?  It’s coming from radical partisans (who haven’t seen the movie) using bullshit to whip up anger of the base using the excuse that Armstrong’s biography wasn’t All-American-Flag-Wavingly-Jingoistic enough.  Oh, and that Gosling is a goddam Canadian daring to play an American hero.  That all adds up to blasphemy against Jingo, the All Seeing God of all things nationalistic.

The whole controversy is manufactured from whole cloth to only piss off the base.  What does the base do?  They get pissed off, of course, and light up social media with fake outrage over nothing.  And that’s how it works.