The sheer embarrassment that is Madison Cawthorn, continued

Apparently "focusing on comms" means just making shit up:

Speaking on the House floor on Thursday to criticize the Biden administration's handling of the economy, Cawthorn said, "It was Thomas Jefferson that said, 'Facts are stubborn things. And whatever may be our wishes, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.' "

This is a famous quote from John Adams, not Jefferson. (Cawthorn omitted two of Adams' words in the quote.) Adams uttered it in 1770 while serving as defense lawyer for British soldiers who had been charged with murder in the Boston Massacre.

Using my Jeff Foxworthy voice: "If you go to the trouble to memorize almost an entire quote, but you get the author of the quote wrong, you just might be an idiot." It's also noteworthy that Adams did not rely on facts in his defense of the British soldiers, he used racism and hyperbole to attack the character of the people who were shot by those soldiers. But back to Maddy and his tortured history:

Judge rips Trump for continuing election disinformation

The NC GOP needs to pay close attention to this:

A U.S. judge said there is a risk that Donald Trump's supporters could still carry out attacks similar to the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, noting the former president's "near-daily fulminations" about his election loss have not subsided.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson made the remark in a written decision on Wednesday explaining why she would continue to jail Cleveland Meredith Jr. while he awaits trial on charges that he texted about "putting a bullet" in U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's head.

Recently the NC Republican Party announced that Trump's speech(es) at their 2021 Convention would be open to the public and media outlets, and you can bet he will spew more of this "election was stolen!" garbage once that mic is turned on. That convention begins 3 days from now, turning Greenville into a circus town. More from the judge:

Justin Parmenter on the GOP's "indoctrination" conspiracy theory

Grabbing a quote and running with it:

The Iredell County legislator ignored the overall point I was making about the challenges the pandemic has wrought for teachers and students, directing his tunnel vision at my opening words: “Not long ago I was leading a discussion about environmental pollution with my 7th grade English class…”

For McNeely, this line, which I “prominently displayed” in the state’s three largest newspapers, exposes a sinister plot to deviate from state standards in support of the leftist agenda.

I'm actually seeing this more and more with Conservatives these days. If they seem to be "listening intently" to what you are saying, don't make the mistake of assuming they're interested in the point you're driving at. They are simply waiting for some kind of "gotcha" element to pounce on, however trivial or out of context it is. It is intellectually weak to do this, and riddled with logical fallacies. But they don't care about stuff like that. Back to Justin's message about the proper approach to teaching:

Madison Cawthorn takes credit for funding he opposed

How can you tell if he's lying? Because his mouth is moving:

The official account for Cawthorn, the 25-year-old Republican from Hendersonville, tweeted Tuesday afternoon that he was “happy” to see needed money go to four health clinics in his district that help vulnerable residents. Not only that, he was “Proud to see tax-payer dollars returned to NC-11.”

As Cardinal & Pine previously reported, Cawthorn skipped the vote to give a speech to conservative activists, where he criticized the bill as a waste of money and a handout that would foster laziness and dependency.

Dude is shameless, just one lie after another. Apparently "focusing on comms" is code for saying anything, regardless of the truthfulness of it. Here's more on Madi's lust for media exposure:

Racism and Lies: The NC GOP's disgusting campaign tactics

henry&leon.jpg

Their rise to power in 2010 is nothing to be proud of:

In 2010, McCollum’s prison mugshot appeared on a flier the North Carolina Republican Party mailed to voters. The ad attacked Democrats who’d supported a measure to allow death row inmates the chance to present evidence that their convictions were tainted by racial bias. It suggested that if voters supported Democrats a flood of death row inmates would be let loose.

“Meet your new neighbors,” the ad said on the front, with McCollum’s picture on the back. Next to it was a menacing description, some of the type in red capital letters: “Get to know Henry McCollum. He RAPED AND MURDERED AN 11 YEAR OLD CHILD.”

Understand, it was racist ignorance like that which resulted in Henry's and Leon's wrongful imprisonment in the first place. Also understand, after investigators were presented with strong evidence they were likely not the ones who raped and murdered an 11 year-old girl, their lack of concern for finding the real perpetrator left children in that community vulnerable. But there is a lot of shame to go around in this sad tale:

Fact-checking the fact-checkers

Stop trying to read their minds, there's nothing there:

Budd said about 9% of Biden’s stimulus plan “is actually going to COVID, meaning 91% of it is not even COVID-related.” In the first part of his statement, Budd accurately describes the proposed spending on efforts to combat the virus itself.

However, he’s wrong to suggest the rest of the bill isn’t related to COVID-19 at all. He may disagree with how much the bill would spend on unemployment insurance and other financial relief efforts. But the bill does aim to address the financial cost of the pandemic. His statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details. We rate it Half True.

Understand, the second clause of that sentence is a conclusion of what is exposed in the previous clause. The word "meaning" proves that was his intent. Yes, people can draw the wrong conclusions from a set of facts, but that's not what happened here. The fact-checkers themselves concluded that Budd meant the following:

The sheer embarrassment that is Madison Cawthorn

This little before and after tells you all you need to know:

"Get ready, the fate of a nation rests on our shoulders, yours and mine. Let’s show Washington that our backbones are made of steel and titanium. It’s time to fight."

“I don't feel I had any responsibility for them attacking the Capitol,” Cawthorn said. “It was despicable. They are thugs.”

This guy is so deeply, madly in love with himself he needs to get a room. With a strong lock on it:

Fact-checking in a post-fact GOP fantasy world

Might just be a wasted effort:

Add North Carolina’s governor to the list of politicians accused of hiding from the public. During campaign season, Republicans on several occasions accused Democrats of hiding in their basements amid the coronavirus pandemic. That trend continued the Sunday after Christmas, when the North Carolina GOP tweeted about Gov. Roy Cooper.

“Democrat Governor @RoyCooperNC has not left the Governor's Mansion since the start of the #COVID19 crisis,” the party tweeted on Dec. 27.

Okay, this is more extensive than what I posted yesterday, but I wasn't really fact-checking something that was so obviously incorrect. I just wanted to use their own evidence against them (prior Tweet). But since Paul went to the effort:

A desperate Trump is relying on fringe fraudsters to make his (non) case

Scraping a hole in the bottom of the barrel:

Powell told courts that the witness is an expert who could show that overseas corporations helped shift votes to President-elect Joe Biden. The witness’s identity must be concealed from the public, Powell has said, to protect her “reputation, professional career and personal safety.”

The Washington Post identified the witness by determining that portions of her affidavit match, sometimes verbatim, a blog post that the pro-Trump podcaster Terpsichore Maras-Lindeman published in November 2019. In an interview, Maras-Lindeman confirmed that she wrote the affidavit and said she viewed it as her contribution to a fight against the theft of the election.

This "expert" is a real piece of work. Not only has she (continuously) vastly inflated whatever academic credentials she may actually have, she has taken Stolen Valor to a whole new level:

UNC alum Sidney Powell has lost her mind

If she hasn't been disbarred yet, that needs to happen post haste:

At the Nov. 19 news conference, before a national television audience, she asserted that “communist money,” the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and a manipulated computer algorithm were all connected in a secret plot that had altered potentially millions of ballots and stolen the election from Trump.

In an interview two days later with the conservative outlet Newsmax, she said she had been given evidence — which she said she could not disclose — that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican and an ally of the president, had taken bribes and conspired to orchestrate Trump’s defeat.

Yeah, I mean, no. I don't trust Brian Kemp as far as I can throw his limousine, he pretty much stole his own election from Stacey Abrams. But if anything, he would have helped Trump cheat in Georgia. But it's a bunch of BS anyway, apparently part of Powell's very own grift campaign:

BlueNC

Republican liars