This is Toby Sumpter with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021.
Today you will hear Biden warn us about dictators, the House is debating (or not debating) another couple trillion dollar stimulus bill, does AOC have competition for radical views to her right?, Carol Swain warns the country about Marxism and critical theory seeping into classrooms, of course, we have a Psalm of the Day.
Remember: If you have a news story you think we might need to cover, please send articles and links to news at crosspolitic dot com. And in case you haven’t heard, your favorite new news aggregator just came online: DeftNews.com brought to you by CrossPolitic and the Fight Laugh Feast Network. DeftNews.com.
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Biden Says Only Dictators Issue Executive Orders
Just in case you weren’t listening closely or in case you were listening closely and are wondering if our sound producer goofed, that was President Biden during his presidential compaign on a loop, saying the same thing three times. What’s funny and striking is that Biden in the first week of being elected chose to issue 32 executive orders. Compare that to Trump’s 4 executive orders, Obama’s 5, and Bush’s 0.
Meanwhile in congress, the House is debating another massive spending bill and…
Rep. Chip Roy Had a Thing or Two to Say
https://twitter.com/CalebJHull/status/1357070564695961600?s=20
Larded up for political purposes…
I really appreciate Rep. Roy’s passion, but I have a suggestion: Take off your mask, Rep. Chip Roy.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1357071186677690376?s=20
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced Wednesday that the House Democrats are moving to oust Rep. Greene from her committee assignments for her embrace of QAnon conspiracy theories and violent political rhetoric. The House Rules Committee was meeting Wednesday to address the possible removal from two committees with a vote on the full house floor likely on Thursday.
An NPR story adds to the list of conspiracies: She’s denied that a plane hit the Pentagon on Sept. 11; supported the idea that the Parkland school shooting was a “false flag” operation meant to usher in tighter gun laws; seemed to agree that Hillary Clinton was recorded “filleting” a child’s face.
Greene has also “liked” social media posts that called for executing “deep state” FBI agents, or that advocated removing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with “a bullet to the head.” Greene supports QAnon and has said Muslims do not belong in government.
Comparing AOC and MTG?
In recent days, pundits and commentators have compared Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) from New York to the freshman Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG) from Georgia.
But Zack Beauchamp over at the Lefty-site Vox says comparing Marjorie Taylor Greene to AOC is ridiculous:
On these metrics, there’s a categorical difference between Ocasio-Cortez and Greene.
Ocasio-Cortez promotes policy ideas that are controversial, but the sort of thing people of good faith can disagree about. You may think the Green New Deal or Medicare-for-all are bad policy, but they’re not necessarily unreasonable — ideas so absurd that believing in them is itself evidence of a kind of irrationality on the believer’s part.
[But hold on, let’s stop here, Zach, you gave those policies nice names but you didn’t explain them. Remember, AOC’s Green New Deal advocates for reducing bovine flatulence because, you know, global warming. And Medicare for all might as well be called diapers for all – the government taking care of your health from cradle to the grave, diapers for all. Bad policy? Yes, absolutely, but those are only “reasonable” ideas among people who are already off their rockers. While Zach can only call Greene’s views “ideas so absurd that believing them is itself evidence of a kind of irrationality…” but that’s what abortion is, that’s what sodomite marriage is, that’s what crossdressing and gender mutilation surgeries are, that’s what insisting that sexually-troubled men be allowed in women’s lockerrooms and bathrooms is. Utterly absurd.]
Beauchamp continues: Greene, by contrast, has been one of the most vocal supporters of the idea that Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election, to the point where she wore a “Trump won” face mask on the House floor in early January. [Gasp.] On her Facebook page, she has expressed far more absurd and even bigoted ideas, including the notion that the Pentagon wasn’t hit by a plane on 9/11 or the idea that Muslim immigration to Europe is part of a Jewish plot to destroy white Christian Europe via “miscegenation.”
When we say Ocasio-Cortez represents the “left flank” of the Democratic Party, what we mean is she has policy views that are well to the left of the median voter. When we say Greene is on the “right flank” of the Republican Party, we aren’t talking about her policy views on health care or LGBTQ rights. It’s not actually clear whether she’s all that extreme on policy, especially given how far to the right the GOP is in general.
[Oh how broadminded and tolerant of you, Mr. Beauchamp. But all of this is another example of the Overton Window principle in public discourse. The Overton Window is that range of acceptable, debatable topics. Beauchamp is saying that views about healthcare and sexuality are debatable among reasonable people, but saying the election might have been stolen is insane. But Christians and sane people everywhere need to refuse this offer of common ground. It’s not common ground. It’s a set up. It’s a trap.]
Just a little more from Beauchamp: … we are saying she is part of a coterie of Republicans who are untethered from reality — so thoroughly ensconced inside their own informational bubble that they believe things that are objectively false and even dangerous to democracy. Greene may be an extreme example, but the general problem is much bigger: Lead birther Donald Trump was president until recently…
[Untethered from reality… believe things that are objectively false and dangerous to democracy… It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. We cannot have this conversation when chopping babies up into a little pieces is called health care and sending men into women’s locker rooms is called democracy. Heh. And don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying everything that MTG has said or believes is true, but on the whole, there’s a whole lot more to work with if we can get the central things straight like what is a human being, what is a boy or a girl, what is marriage.
And the last thing on this is the all the cool-shaming that is being done. The goal here in articles like this and many other comments and spin in media is talk as though the majority of the country has moved along with them onto this other planet. But Christians need to stand their ground a laugh. Boys are not girls and girls are not boys, and babies are precious in the sight of God, and marriage is one and one woman, and the government needs to get out of the healthcare business. That is the business of families and churches and free enterprise.]
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Dr. Carol Swain Says BLM Does Nothing Beneficial for America or Racial Justice
https://www.foxnews.com/media/carol-swain-black-lives-matter-curriculum
Psalm of the Day: Psalm 100
https://open.spotify.com/track/3RqT4wHofkEjkN2cJPCzS2?si=sVB-FRmVSVGyuCuHuEGHSQ
Amen. That’s Psalm 100 from Brother Down which you can find on Spotify, on their album Old Paths New Feet.
The Psalm begins by calling All people on earth to praise the Lord, sing to the Lord and rejoice and then the final verse concludes:
For why? The Lord our God is good.
His mercy is forever sure.
His truth at all times firmly stood.
And shall from age to age endure.
Why do we need the Psalms because despite shifting Overton Windows, God is good and His truth stand firm. The insanity of the left and the conspiracies of the right cannot make His mercy budge. You need to sing the Psalms because you need to reminded that all people on this whole planet will one day sing to the Lord. The earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. How full is that? How wet is the Pacific Ocean?
This is Toby Sumpter with Crosspolitic News. You can find this and all of our shows at Crosspolitic.com or on our app, which you can download at your favorite app store, just search “Fight Laugh Feast”. Support Rowdy Christian media, and become a Fight Laugh Feast Club Member and get your very own Fight Laugh Feast t-shirt and access to all the talks at our first annual Fight Laugh Feast Conference as well as many exclusive behind the scenes interviews as well as our very own Worldview Shotgun Series. We still have a few Fight Laugh Feast tumblers left for club members at 25$ a month or more. Go to FightLaughFeast.com. Have a great day.