He may not get the Peace Prize, but he did achieve this

Two South County right-wing nuts win delegate slots to Republican National Convention

Lots of questions for Rhode Island Republicans to answer

By Will Collette

If you were wondering whether Rhode Island’s Republican Party had succumbed to Trumpmentia like the GOP nationwide, RI's April 2 Presidential Preference Primary provided an answer.

While, as expected, Trump (and Joe Biden) easily won, although both saw around 20% of primary voters vote for someone else or selected “uncommitted”, the more interesting results were seen in the vote count for individual delegates.

All of Rhode Island’s Republican delegates are pledged to vote for Donald Trump. Delegates pledged to other candidates, such as Nikki Haley, lost. That included prolific Westerly Sun letter-to-the-editor writer Scott Bill Hirst of Hopkinton who only received 751 votes out of 12,905 GOP votes cast.

The three slots for Congressional District 2 Republican delegates were filled by three peculiar choices. In order, the three elected were:

#1: Lacey McGreevey with 3,781. McGreevy was an unsuccessful Tea Party candidate for state Representative for South Kingstown in 2014 losing to present incumbent Kathy Fogarty (D).

#2: Justin Price with 3,749. Price was a Tea Party state representative from Richmond, first elected in 2014, the same year McGreevey lost. Price achieved national notoriety as an insurrectionist, MAGA devotee and far right crank. Incumbent Megan Cotter (D) ousted Price from office in 2022.

#3: Sean Todd with 3,326. Todd is a former East Greenwich town council member who first drew statewide attention for an incredibly sexist comment in 2017 that led to protests, calls for his resignation and ultimately his ouster from office in 2018.

All three are Trump delegates.

In Charlestown, 153 Republicans voted, giving Trump 86.9% which is higher than Trump’s margin statewide. 98 of them also picked Price over McGreevey.

These vote totals now justify challenging every Rhode Island candidate running as a Republican whether they support Donald Trump’s MAGA agenda: his national ban on abortion and punishment for any woman who gets one; his racism; his pro-Nazi, pro-Putin authoritarianism; his calls for violence and death for his opponents; His corruption and lies; And this is hardly an all-inclusive list.

If you are an “R” where do you stand on these issues?

Let’s take a closer look at the two top GOP vote-getters, Lacey McGreevey and Justin Price.

You may not remember McGreevey since she was only a blip on the political scene with her 2014 state rep bid. But I remember her well. Here’s how I wrote about her in 2014:

Progressive Charlestown: September 17, 2014

Kathy Fogarty will now go on to battle Lacey McGreevy (R) in the November 4 general election. I swear I am not making this up, and working hard to not make this sound sexist, but when McGreevy announced her candidacy, she gave her frequent efforts as a beauty pageant contestant as her main qualification.  

Sarah Palin also included this in her resume, but she also had Mayor of Wasilla and a view of Russia from her window to complete her qualifications.

 

From McGreevey's campaign website

Here’s how she describes herself in her campaign bio: “Lacey McGreevy attended South Kingstown high school then went on to Southern New Hampshire University with a double major of marketing and fashion merchandising. She currently works as a trade show consultant and helps to keep women safe with princess pepper spray.” [emphasis added and I am NOT making this up.]

Kathy Fogarty went on to win the Representative District 35 seat by thumping McGreevey by 16 points.

Here she is with The Donald. Where is Trump's left hand?

McGreevey pretty much fell off the political map after that, perhaps too busy home schooling her kid. She was an early Trumpnik, even posting a link to Amazon and a $20 Trump pool float ring. On her Facebook page, she has only increased her love for Trump and posted photos of her and Trump. In one of them, you’re left guessing where Trump’s left hand is.

So, do you think Lacey is going to try running for local office again? What exactly does she stand for other than Trump-love and Trump tchotchke?

Finally, let’s look at Justin Price and how renewed RI GOP support for him raises questions about where they stand, not to mention whether they plan to back him if he tries a General Assembly comeback.

Price was a part of what I called “The Revenge of the Swamp Yankees.” In 2014, three of the best members of the General Assembly – Donna Walsh, Cathy Cool Rumsey and Larry Valencia – were beaten by three right-wing nuts: Blake “Flip” Filippi, Elaine Morgan and Justin Price.

All three were hard-right, but Price was really out there. In his four terms as state Representative, Price accomplished nothing other than garnering state and national exposure for his positions not only on guns and taxes, but - believe it or not - “chemtrails,” an obscure right-wing conspiracy theory that contrails from high-flying jets are actually spewing mind-altering chemicals on an unsuspecting public.

If there was even a germ of truth to this, I guess Price must have been an early victim.

His great legislative achievement was winning passage of a bill to create a “geo-engineering” study commission" to study chemtrails and other far right boogeymen. The commission never met and of course issued no findings.

Absolutely none of this is true.

Price managed to top that by being one of several serving state legislators to participate in the January 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2000 election.

He responded to calls for his resignation by claiming that (a) he didn’t actually enter the Capitol building though he has never said how deep into the fray he went and (b) that he saw Antifa actually lead the attack.

Both claims are bullshit and here’s why.

I worked on Capitol Hill for 10 years out of an office in the United Methodist Building just across the street from the Capitol. I know the area well and how the Capitol Police set up security cordons. For major events, police “do-not-cross” lines are set well away from the building.

It is virtually impossible for Price to have not breeched those lines and certainly must have done so if we are to believe his claim that “Antifa did it.”

As for the briefly popular Antifa conspiracy claim, we now know beyond a doubt that the insurrection was planned by Trump supporters as well as right-wing militias and white supremacists including the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.

The Antifa theory never made sense since there is no reason the Left would storm the Capitol to overturn Joe Biden’s rightful election victory.

But Price also needs to account for his conduct and subsequent statements. His Antifa claim is either a lie or an admission that he breeched his own sworn oaths. 

As a member of the Marine Corps and as a member of the General Assembly, Price sworn oaths to uphold the Constitution and to protect the country from “all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

If he truly believed he saw Antifa (or for that matter anyone), attacking police and the Capitol Building, why did he rise to defend against these enemies of the nation? It was his sworn duty, and he admits he did nothing. So is he a liar or a coward? 

Can Rhode Island Republicans explain why this ignorant man is going to represent them at their national convention? Oh, oh, oh…wait, I forgot. Donald Trump. Never mind.

There Is a Great Replacement Going On

But It's Not What You've Been Told

MIKE LOFGREN  for forCommon Dreams

Very likely, the reader is wearily familiar with one of the memes that American right wingers endlessly repeat. It's called the Great Replacement: the claim that shadowy but apparently omnipotent elites are deliberately replacing the old stock (meaning white) American population with Third World foreigners.

The notion had its beginnings decades ago in the mental swamps of Southern segregationist politicians and continued in various iterations through white supremicist groups. 

Trump's election and the phrase's popularization by professional jackasses like Tucker Carlson made it into another of the Republican base's innumerable slogans.

The idea is bunk, and is easily understood as one more of the many myths designed to play into right wingers' persecution complex. But it is possible also to understand it as a kind of folk psychological projection of something that is indeed happening in the strongly Republican regions of the country inhabited by what Sarah Palin called "real Americans." 

It's not so much the Great Replacement as the Great Die-off. And Republicans are both its chief promoters and its main victims.

There was a time when at least some Republicans cared about the environment

Putting the “conserve” back in “conservative”

Peter Dykstra, Environmental Health News

Last Sunday, an influential British conservative sent up a red flag in the Times of London. Sensing a sharp turn in the policy direction of new Prime Minister Liz Truss, William Hague wrote “conservatives must always be environmentalists.”

In other words, the British Right is in deep trouble if it follows the path of America’s Right.

But — from Teddy Roosevelt to Richard Milhous Nixon to Ronald Reagan — it wasn’t always that way here.

So, in this sharply divided country, how do we get back to a time when millions of us don’t equate clean air with bad taste? Maybe a tour of more than a century of Republican history could guide us.

I remember

 

VIDEO: Remember Sarah Palin?

Sarah Palin was John McCain's choice for Vice-President in McCain's 2008 challenge to Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Many say Palin's unhinged right-wing politics paved the way for Donald Trump. Here is a new video from her - a message to Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, one of the few in the GOP willing to stand up against Trump. Here's Sarah's reaction in her own words.

 To watch this bizarre video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMtFeLKPcfc&t=6s

"The Chosen One?"

Rick Perry's belief that Trump was chosen by God is shared by many in a fast-growing Christian movement
Brad Christerson, Biola University and Richard Flory, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

In a recent interview with Fox News, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry stated that Donald Trump was chosen by God to be president. 

He said throughout history God had picked “imperfect people” such as King David or Solomon to lead their people.

Perry is not alone. 

A large number of evangelical Christians in the U.S. believe that God has chosen Donald Trump to advance the kingdom of God on Earth. 

Several high-profile religious leaders have made similar claims, often comparing Trump to King Cyrus who was asked by God to rescue the nation of Israel from exile in Babylon.

Many of these Christians are part of a movement that we call “Independent Network Charismatic,” or “INC Christianity” in our 2017 book.

Leaders such Rick Perry are connected to this movement. Eight years ago – in August of 2011 – more than 30,000 people cheered wildly when Perry, who was then a U.S. presidential candidate and Texas governor, came center stage at “The Response: A Call to Prayer for a Nation in Crisis” at Reliant Stadium in Houston. 

Perry quoted from the Bible and preached about the need for salvation that comes from Jesus. Many of the leaders who organized this event are the same leaders who claim that Trump is God’s chosen to advance the Kingdom of God.

We argue that INC Christianity is significantly changing the religious landscape in America – and the nation’s politics.

Museum pieces

Remembering the "Republican environmentalists" of days past

Peter Dykstra for Environmental Health News

EDITOR’S NOTE: Rhode Island once was home to two members of this now extinct species of Republican environmentalist: Claudia Schneider, former US Representative who now lives in Colorado, and former Senator and Governor Lincoln Chafee who just moved to Wyoming.  – Will Collette

The popular young history professor cut a profile that spanned generations. Add a jaunty fedora and a sleeve or two of ink to the horn-rimmed glasses, wavy mane and boxcar-sized sideburns and he could well be a 2000's slacker instead of a 1970's tree hugger.

Newton Leroy Gingrich, Ph.D. (left), taught the first environmental studies courses at his school. He advised the campus Sierra Club chapter and successfully raised hell against a proposed dam on the Flint River. And he aspired beyond the modest campus of West Georgia College.

By 1978, Gingrich was elected to Congress on his second try. Ronald Reagan's landslide victory in 1980 helped inspire the young Congressman's sharp turn away from green politics.

In 1995, he became Speaker of the House and shortly after, invented the modern government shutdown, and led a rightist rebellion that held green politics to be in extremely bad taste. Gingrich continued sporadic advocacy for unobjectionable causes, like saving Africa's gorillas.

His Congressional career imploded after the failed bid to oust President Bill Clinton. In 2007, he appeared in an ad beside new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to call for action on climate change. He later disowned the ad.

Newt Gingrich and his renunciation of environmental values is not a political exception. In the last 40 years, anti-environmental rhetoric and policies have swept the Republican Party:

A miracle, probably

What will it take on climate change?

By Peter Dykstra for the Environmental Health News

As the Florida Panhandle begins to recover from Hurricane Michael, the state's attention will turn to a big Senate race next month. Hurricane Michael may cast the deciding vote.

Term-limited Republican Gov. Rick Scott hopes to unseat veteran Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, and if he does, Democrats can kiss their hopes to take over the Senate goodbye.

Scott just completed a tour de force as the in-charge governor leading the emergency response to Michael. Like him or not, he's good at this. By contrast, Nelson is stiff and uneasy on TV. Fair or not, elections are decided by such things.

Scott is also a first-rate climate denier. In 2015, whistleblowers and former staffers for the state environment agency accused Scott of banning discussion of climate change in any state meetings or documents. Scott denied the charges.

For the past eight years, Scott has run a state experiencing rising seas, intense storms, and unprecedented algae blooms offshore. And this climate denier's political star may be rising. Go figure.

If he wins a Senate seat, Gov. Rick Scott will become the latest example of how climate denial is not a political liability.

Week 13 in review

Russia House

Will far-right crazies turn to violence if Trump doesn’t win?

Sarah Palin Calls for Executing Democratic ‘Cheaters’ On Election Day

By Stephen D Foster Jr 

Sarah Palin agrees with Donald Trump that Democrats will somehow cheat to help Hillary Clinton win on Election Day, and her final solution is to kill them.

In a post-debate rant on Facebook, America’s village idiot wrote that Trump is “wise” for refusing to say whether he will accept the election results on November 8th if Hillary Clinton wins.

During the debate, the Republican nominee said everyone will just have to wait and see because he wants to keep America in “suspense.”

His answer was outrageous and unpatriotic because if Trump chooses to reject the results on Election Day and claim that the contest was rigged, he would not only be causing a Constitutional crisis, his supporters have already threatened to attempt a bloody violent coup and an effort to assassinate Clinton.

But Sarah Palin is okay with this.

Book Review: Cutting-edge science, with cartoons

"The Madhouse Effect" explains climate science and politics in plain English

By Peter Dykstra for The Daily Climate

In the 1981 movie “Arthur,” Sir John Gielgud plays Hobson, a viciously sarcastic servant and confidant to Arthur Bach, a happy, drunken heir to a fortune.

In a desperate attempt to get the brain-addled Arthur to read something, Hobson says, “Here, take this magazine.  There are many pictures.”

He would have appreciated Michael Mann’s and Tom Toles’s The Madhouse Effect.  Mann, the climate scientist widely respected in his field but despised by climate deniers, and Toles, the Washington Post’s Pulitzer-winning editorial cartoonist, have turned in a solid, accessible explanation for those who haven’t yet gotten the memo on climate change.

And thanks to Toles’s pen, there are many pictures.

With some notable exceptions, scientists grapple with a universal problem: They tend to treat standard English as a second language, with a tendency to speak, write, and describe even the most fascinating fields of study in terms only another scientist could understand.   

Subjects like climate change and climate denial affect literally everyone, but their fearful impacts drive an audience away – even more so when communicated in a high-handed, exclusionary way.

In clear, mostly un-sciencey language, The Madhouse Effect lays out each aspect of the climate challenge from the basic science to public policy, future consequences, potential solutions, and the strange pathology of climate denial.

Quess who is the biggest liar?

Trump HAS made sacrifices

Democrats Reclaimed GOP Values and Made Them Better

Democrats seize the optimism that Trump surrendered.

By Richard Zombeck 

Thanks to Donald Trump, Democrats can now show America that they are the party of family values, business, patriotism, and national pride.

An unintended and, at least for the GOP, unexpected consequence, of having Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for president is that the Democrats seem to be poaching themes normally used by the right.

The joke’s on America – he doesn’t WANT to be President

Donald Trump Is Beginning His Exit Strategy

By Richard Zombeck 

Donald Trump does not want to be president. 

In fact, he never wanted to be president. 

His entire campaign has been a long con and a ruse to strengthen his brand and feed his ego.

Last week, Stephanie Cegielski, a strategist for the Make America Great Again super PAC published an open letter to Trump supporters on the website xoJane in which she details the original intent of Trump’s presidential bid:

Almost a year ago, recruited for my public relations and public policy expertise, I sat in Trump Tower being told that the goal was to get The Donald to poll in double digits and come in second in delegate count. That was it. The Trump camp would have been satisfied to see him polling at 12% and taking second place to a candidate who might hold 50%. His candidacy was a protest candidacy.

Cegielski then goes on to describe the events and circumstances that unfolded, surprising everyone:

But something surprising and absolutely unexpected happened. 

Every other candidate misestimated the anger and outrage of the “silent majority” of Americans who are not a part of the liberal elite. So with each statement came a jump in the polls. Just when I thought we were finished, The Donald gained more popularity.

Somewhere in the middle of the letter she gets to the brass tacks:

You can give Trump the biggest gift possible if you are a Trump supporter: stop supporting him.

He doesn’t want the White House. He just wants to be able to say that he could have run the White House. He’s achieved that already and then some. If there is any question, take it from someone who was recruited to help the candidate succeed, and initially very much wanted him to do so.

Nostalgia

McCain blasts "unqualifed know-nothings"

Slurp, Baby, Slurp

Donald Trump is pandering to Iowa voters and the ethanol industry.

By Emily Schwartz Greco

As the “lamestream” media, late-night talk show hosts, and Sarah Palin impersonator-in-chief Tina Fey lapped up the former Alaska governor’s first remarks to Donald Trump’s “right-wingin’ bitter-clingin’” supporters, one of her most hilarious lines didn’t get the attention it deserved.

Some Republicans are “even whispering they’re ready to throw in for Hillary over Trump because they can’t afford to see the status quo go,” 

John McCain’s 2008 running mate said. “Otherwise, they won’t be able to be slurping off the gravy train that’s been feeding them all these years. They don’t want that to end.”

Seriously?

Iowa, home to the first official contests for the major parties’ nominations, is the nation’stop ethanol producer. 

Saluting its corn-flavored gravy train is a rite of passage for presidential candidates courting Iowa voters like the ones at the Ames rally Palin was addressing.

And Trump, like every presidential candidate other than the libertarian-tinged Republicans Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, supports the government-pampered ethanol industry.