U.S. Politics

[Rick Plant]

Marjorie Taylor Greene tells far-right Catholics their church is ruled by Satan



Last Thursday, on the eve of testifying in a lawsuit that seeks to prevent her from running for re-election, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the legendary or notorious Georgia Republican, granted an hourlong interview in her home to an unlikely outlet: the far-right Catholic news organization Church Militant, which for years has positioned itself as one of the noisiest and most outlandish partisans in the Roman Catholic Church's ongoing fight with itself. Greene is an evangelical Protestant, not a Catholic, but Church Militant is making the most of this opportunity, and has featured segments of the interview all week, starting with its opening video on Monday, entitled "Marjorie for Pope."

In the interview, Greene rehashed old beefs, described herself as a victim of Jan. 6, said the United States is so sinful she doesn't understand "why God hasn't destroyed us" and — most exciting for Church Militant — suggested that Satan is controlling the Catholic Church.

That might sound like a claim that would offend most Catholics, but Church Militant is not most Catholics. Originally founded as Real Catholic TV by former CBS News producer Michael Voris in 2008 to offer a more orthodox depiction of Mother Church than is found in pop culture fare like "The Da Vinci Code," the organization grew increasingly strident and at odds with the formal church, until the Archdiocese of Detroit, where it's located, successfully blocked it from using the word "Catholic" in the outlet's name.

These days, Voris describes the website as an apostolate trying to preserve authentic Catholicism in the face of a church hierarchy he describes as an "international crime syndicate" run by a gay cabal. In his crusade against the church, Voris has launched two coalitions for what he calls "canceled" and "persecuted" priests as well as an anonymous network he calls "the New Catacombs," comprising clerics who denounce "the evil in the hierarchy."

In 2020, Church Militant pronounced itself the home of "the red-pilled laity" and became such a vitriolic supporter of Donald Trump's re-election campaign that Voris warned that a Biden presidency would result in faithful Catholics being declared "illegal" and "hunted down" and said that if any viewers considered Trump too "crass" to support, they'd better not complain when they were "herded onto the trains headed for the camps."

The Church Militant site calls itself the home of "red-pilled laity" and warned that a Biden presidency would end with Catholics "herded onto the trains headed for the camps."

After cheering on the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol, last summer Church Militant brought disgraced former "alt-lite" personality Milo Yiannopoulos into the fold. He had recently declared that returning to the Catholic faith had helped him become "ex-gay" — similar to Voris, who in 2016 publicly repented for having had same-sex relationships and committed to live a "chaste" life — and that he was planning on opening a Catholic conversion therapy clinic in Florida.

After starting as a columnist, by last fall Yiannopoulos was hawking Virgin Mary icons and CDs of himself reading from the books of Psalms and Proverbs on Church Militant's home shopping channel. He even appeared on behalf of the group in a Baltimore court as Church Militant fought to hold a protest rally outside the annual gathering of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. When the protest took place last November, Yiannapoulos served as emcee, pairing jokes about gay culture with homophobic slurs as he egged on the audience to chant "Lock them up" at the bishops meeting next door.

This February, Yiannopoulos also facilitated Greene's appearance as the honored "surprise guest" at white nationalist Nick Fuentes' third America First Political Action Conference. At that gathering, Greene greeted the crowd of 1,200 white nationalists as fellow "canceled Americans," and told them they had been "handed the responsibility to fight for our Constitution and stand up for our freedoms and stop the Democrats who are the Communist Party of the United States of America." In the aftermath of that colorful event — which featured chants in support of Vladimir Putin, calls to hang political enemies, abundant "great replacement" theory and Fuentes praising Hitler — Greene defended her appearance as an effort "to break barriers and speak to a lost generation of young people" who had "gathered to declare that Christ is King."

In a tweet on Monday, Greene referenced Yiannopoulos again, seemingly in response to the news that Elon Musk had bought Twitter, calling on unseen forces to "bring back" her personal Twitter account as well as those of Trump, COVID skeptic Robert Malone, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Yiannopoulos and the entire "canceled nation." It's fair to speculate that Yiannopoulos helped facilitate Greene's interview with Church Militant as well, in which Voris praised her as "the lioness in the Congress, defender of traditional values, America, all of that," and suggested that she might become the next speaker of the House.

In the interview, MTG did what MTG does. She insulted Joe Biden, claimed that Speaker Nancy Pelosi had forbidden members of Congress from using "pronouns and family names" such as "mother" and "grandparent," recounted confrontations with fellow lawmakers and Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg, and described efforts to address the student loan debt crisis as "Satanic." Here's the logic on that one: "When people think they don't have to be responsible with their money and they can just borrow as much as they want and not have to care about giving it back, that is Satan destroying rules."

This interview was recorded just before Greene's appearance in a lawsuit challenging her eligibility to run for Congress again on the grounds that she supported the Jan. 6 insurrection. So she protested, predictably enough, that she too was "a victim" of Jan. 6, since she'd been evacuated from the House chamber as well. The lawsuit, which is unlikely to be successful, is based on a provision of the 14th Amendment, written in the aftermath of the Civil War, which holds that people who have sworn an oath to protect the Constitution and subsequently support an insurrection are barred from holding any political office in the future.

But in the interview, Greene showed herself willing to be party to another civil war: the one within the Catholic Church, which for most of the last decade has pitted conservative American Catholics against a pope they consider too liberal to be legitimate, as well as against much of the rest of the global church.

After asking Greene how she gauged the "spiritual character of the United States right now" — the question that prompted her to wonder why God hadn't destroyed America yet for its failure to end abortion — Voris guided her into issues within Catholic World, taking specific aim at the church-affiliated aid organization Catholic Relief Services, which has recently been targeted by conservative Catholics for its work to help immigrants at the southern border.

"What it is, is Satan's controlling the church," Greene responded. Catholics and other Christians who cited biblical mandates to "love one another" by taking care of migrants, she continued, were "perverting" both the meaning of the Bible and the Constitution.

Greene argued that Christians who cite the biblical mandate to "love one another" by caring for migrants and refugees are "perverting" the Bible and the Constitution.

Instead, Greene argued, the U.S. government should cut off all aid to Central American countries until they repatriate any citizens who have immigrated to the U.S. "We should hold those countries accountable. 'Oh, I'm sorry, Guatemala, you're not getting a check this year because you've sent X number of thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions of people to illegally invade our country as if they're an army,'" she said. "'We won't be able to send you your foreign aid until you bring your people back."

As for the Catholic Church, she continued, "The bishops of Catholic Relief charities and services, they should be all in support of that…. If the bishops were reading the Bible and truly preaching the word of God to their flock… and not covering up child sex abuse and pedophilia, that would be loving one another, would have the true meaning and not the perversion and the twisted lie that they're making it up to be."

Greene isn't the only political figure to have visited Church Militant, despite its marginal reputation. Onetime Trump adviser Steve Bannon has been a frequent guest. Former Newsmax host Michelle Malkin, who has openly associated with white nationalists, spoke at the group's November rally in Baltimore, charging that U.S. bishops' aid to immigrants was part of their larger agenda to "destroy the historical American nation." In the fall of 2020, just weeks before the election, Trump's Federal Election Commission chair Trey Trainor talked with Voris in a lengthy interview in which he described the election as a "spiritual war." This year, Church Militant has interviewed a number of right-wing Catholic candidates for higher office, including gubernatorial candidates Dan Cox of Maryland, Ryan Kelley of Michigan and Jim Renacci of Ohio, as well as Missouri Senate candidate Mark McCloskey, who became internet-famous for waving a gun at Black Lives Matter marchers in the summer of 2020.

"What I find interesting about Church Militant's increased focus on promoting far-right politicians and influencers is that, a year and a half after the 2020 election, the alliance between reactionary Catholic media and the Republican Party seems to have only grown stronger," said Mike Lewis, founder of the website Where Peter Is, which tracks the role of the far-right within the Catholic Church.

"In a lot of ways, a significant part of the U.S. Catholic Church resembles today's Republican Party," he continued. "I think that Greene and her advisers see in this group a small but motivated segment of her base." As for Church Militant, he continued, "the benefits are obvious. When [Voris] gives attention to politicians, especially well-known figures like Greene, he raises his own profile and gets attention in the mainstream press. He's trying to expand his audience, and he's going to do that more effectively if he interviews fewer Catholic figures and more national figures."

"There used to be a genuine 'ecumenism of the barricades' among culture-war believers, like the old First Things crowd in the Richard John Neuhaus days," said David Gibson, director of Fordham University's Center on Religion and Culture, referencing the ecumenical Christian right magazine that helped cement the partnership between conservative Catholics and evangelicals. "But they were believers." Greene and Voris, by contrast, he continued, "seem to be political performers following a script more than scripture. They are so alienated from their respective faith communities it is hard to see them as evangelical Protestant or Roman Catholic. They seem to be trying to pump each other up more than pursuing some actual goal."

https://www.rawstory.com/2657223200/

[Rick Plant]

'We've heard the tapes': Billboards taunting Kevin McCarthy to 'stop lying' pop up in congressman's district

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy may have received a standing ovation from his GOP colleagues in Washington on Wednesday, but his constituents back home in California have a different picture of their representative to observe.

The Huffington Post reports that the conservative group Republican Accountability Project (RAP) has put up six billboards in McCarthy's home district to remind residents that the congressman was caught in a lie last week when he denied saying he had never considered asking former President Donald Trump to resign in the wake of the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection.

The billboards say, “We’ve heard the tapes, Kevin. Stop lying about January 6th."



Last week, McCarthy tried to deny a New York Times report about the resignation contemplation. But just hours after he issued that denial, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow played the audio recording of him saying exactly that. The recording also captured McCarthy saying he had "had it" with Trump.

“In a focus group I recently conducted with Ohio Trump voters, no one had heard about the McCarthy tapes,” RAP executive director Sarah Longwell said in a news release. “So we’re going to jumpstart that conversation, starting in McCarthy’s district.”

The Republican Accountability Project, a group of never-Trump conservatives, has been working against GOP lawmakers who supported and enabled the former president. The organization has taken out TV spots, digital ads and billboards, and has placed McCarthy in its online “Hall of Shame.”

The billboards will be up for two weeks.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kevin-mccarthy-lying-billboards_n_626a45c0e4b04a9ff897ddf7

[Rick Plant]

President Biden
@POTUS

"Since I took office, our economy has created 7.9 million jobs and unemployment has dropped to 3.6%. It’s historic.
 
Our economy has gone from being on the mend to being on the move.

A vial of insulin costs drug companies $10 to make, but families pay an average of $683 a month for it. It’s ridiculous.
 
That’s why I’m fighting to cap the cost of this lifesaving drug at $35 a month.
 
I urge Congress to send a bill to my desk."

https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1519041082767650818

[Rick Plant]

Rep. Eric Swalwell @RepSwalwell

"There’s no more being polite. Our children are running for their lives because Republicans block gun safety laws. Republicans are the party of mass shooters."

https://twitter.com/RepSwalwell/status/1518998201407348736


Police release statement on video of gunfire interrupting youth baseball game in N. Charleston

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - A parent’s video shows children ducking for cover Monday night as gunfire erupted during a youth baseball game in North Charleston.

North Charleston Police say they are actively investigating the shooting. Police spokesman Harve Jacobs said police responded to Pepperhill Park in the 7600 block of Brandywine Road where gunshots had been reported.

A police report released Tuesday states witnesses told responding officers that a “large group” of teenagers pulled into the parking lot and began fistfighting. Witnesses then told officers the teenagers began shooting at each other before they fled in their vehicles where it appeared shots were fired from one vehicle towards another, the report states.

Mayor Keith Summey watched a citizen’s video of the children on the field during this incident, and was “appalled by what he heard and saw,” Jacobs said.

Assistant Chief Greg Gomes is shocked by the video and horrified at the events that took place, he said.

“He vehemently denounces this violence and is outraged at those responsible for putting so many innocent lives in danger,” Jacobs said.

North Charleston Police promised to investigate the incident “to the fullest extent of the law and will do everything in their power to locate and arrest the individuals involved in this heinous and reckless act.”

“We will leave no stone unturned in bringing these suspects to justice,” Jacobs said.

“Witnesses indicated that multiple vehicles pulled into the parking lot, where a physical altercation took place, followed by dozens of gunshots,” Jacobs said. “Several youth baseball games were underway when this incident occurred.This incident tonight had nothing to do with the Park, youth athletes, parents or coaches. Thankfully no injuries were reported.”

Blake Ferguson was recording the game as his son was on the pitching mound at Pepperhill Ball Field. Ferguson’s video captured the sound of multiple shots, sending children and officials running for cover. Ferguson said he heard between 50 to 75 shots and believes the gunfire happened in the parking lot.

The gunfire began at approximately 8:45 p.m., he said. Lori Ferguson said she heard the booms and initially thought someone was setting off fireworks.

“And then all of a sudden, boom, boom, and ‘Get down, everybody, get down!’ And you’re at a park. My kids are not with me directly and you just see everybody scattering,” she said. “And my son’s on the pitcher mound by himself and it was just the most traumatic thing as a mother, as a citizen of this city, that you just feel helpless. I felt completely helpless.”

After the shooting ended, Blake Ferguson said multiple parents’ vehicles had been struck by gunfire.

Lori Ferguson said police responded to the park to investigate where the shooting occurred, but said officers did not come onto the ball field to check on the families or escort them off the field.

“But nobody ever came and checked like, ‘Hey, are these kids okay?’” she said.

The incident, she said, left her children shaken, even after they were back home.

“Now, I understand we could walk down the street, something could happen. We could be at church, something can happen. One-hundred percent understand that,” she said. “My kids asked me where the police were to protect them. They didn’t want to take a shower, in our own home, because now they’re traumatized by what happened tonight.”

North Charleston to form ‘safety plan’ for city parks, playgrounds

Police planned to meet Tuesday morning with city recreation staff to formulate a safety plan “to ensure that our city’s youth can feel safe when playing on our parks and playgrounds,” Jacobs said.

“We will also make arrangements for the children, parents, coaches, and volunteers who were affected by this event are provided with the resources necessary to assist them in dealing with such a traumatic incident,” Jacobs said.

He said the police department has spoken with the Dee Norton Children’s Advocacy Center to help provide those services.

Games scheduled at the field for Tuesday will be canceled while these plans are finalized.

Video showed children taking cover as gunfire began

Watch:

https://www.live5news.com/2022/04/26/gunfire-interrupts-youth-baseball-game-north-charleston/

[Rick Plant]

Thanks to President Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we are set to boost green jobs and curb emissions by plugging old oil and gas wells!

U.S. to boost green jobs, curb emissions by plugging old oil and gas wells

Government sets aside $4.7 billion to stop wells leaking methane

Many abandoned well locations are unrecorded, unknown

Sealing them properly could create tens of thousands of jobs



CLEVELAND, Ohio, April 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - For years, the smell of gas wafting through the grounds of the Franciscan Village senior housing facility in Cleveland was a joke among its residents, although they did not realize where the odor was coming from. A few months ago they found out.

An old gas well left unused since the 1950s had broken its clay plug, and methane and other chemical compounds were seeping out, just a few dozen feet from the three apartment buildings making up the 176-unit independent living facility.

“There were a couple of chairs back there, and I’d just sit around and read or listen to the birds, and it was beautiful. And all of a sudden, you’d go, ‘Oh my god, I’ve got to leave,’” said Susie Black, a resident for nearly eight years, recalling the nasty smell.

This year, construction at the facility uncovered the leaking well - and prompted quick action.

Curtis Shuck, chairman of the nonprofit Well Done Foundation that has been plugging the well, pointed to two nearby buildings, both just 30 feet (9 m) away.

He was squatting under a large rig that would be used to drill out the culprit: a shallow hole with an old, six-inch (15-cm) metal pipe going down perhaps as far as 2,700 feet - no one was sure, he said.

For the first time, the U.S. government is giving such old wells major attention in an effort to curb environmental pollution, reduce climate-heating emissions of methane, and create green jobs.

In November, it allocated $4.7 billion to tackle the problem of the orphan wells nationally.

This month officials released final guidance on how states could start applying for the money.

Already 26 states – almost every one with documented orphan wells – have indicated they intend to apply for the grants, according to the Interior Department.

There are tens of thousands of old wells on federal lands nationwide, and at least another 130,000 on state and private lands, according to department official Steven H. Feldgus.

But, he told a congressional hearing last month, "the actual number is probably much higher".

The full number is unknown because for decades energy companies were not required to maintain or even record where their capped wells were located.

Adam Peltz, a senior attorney with the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), said there could be up to a million in total across the country.

Government officials, green groups, oil service workers and others are now expecting a stampede of action throughout the coming decade, with implications for local economies, groundwater contamination and climate change.

A federal program to plug a half-million wells could create as many as 120,000 specialized oil and gas industry jobs, according to 2020 research from Columbia University and Resources for the Future, a think-tank.

The Well Done Foundation has already been doing this work for a few years, pioneering a funding approach that uses carbon credits linked to curbing the wells’ methane emissions.

That morning, it had received its plugging permit for the Cleveland site – a process that would probably take a small crew a week or two.

Shuck, who set up the foundation in 2019 after three decades in the oil and gas industry, wrapped a large bag around the top of the pipe and timed how long it took to quickly inflate with escaping gases.

“This one is averaging about 5,000 cubic feet per day - a lot of impact to the environment,” he explained.

Oil and gas development in the United States began in the mid-19th century in Pennsylvania, noted Peltz of the EDF, and since then about 4 million wells have been drilled.

Operators have long been required to plug wells once finished, but “the system hasn’t worked right", he added.

Most of the new federal money will now go to the known backlog of orphan wells, but some will also help track down lost wells using drones, landowner reports and more, said Peltz, who helped write the new legislation.

“These wells are everywhere, in every kind of urban, suburban and rural setting. Around 9 million people live within a mile of these documented orphaned wells,” he said.

Other funds will seek to bolster preparations for plugging the 1 million wells still active today, up to three-quarters of which are already producing low volumes, Peltz said.

Energy production is today one of the largest drivers of changing land use in the United States, said Matthew D. Moran, a biology professor at Hendrix College.

Most oil and gas wells are on private land, so companies typically lease the rights to drill, and after the wells run out, the rights revert to the owner, he said.

“In many cases, an abandoned pad might be an acre in size, and nothing is going on. It’s an abandoned piece of land, and restoring it costs money,” he explained.

Last year he and other researchers estimated it would cost about $7 billion to restore 430,000 well sites on 800,000 hectares nationally - but found the financial benefits of doing so would be about three times higher.

Factoring in harder-to-quantify effects such as rising property values and attractiveness would yield even more - altogether adding up to probably five or six times the cost, the team estimated.

“We think that’s pretty concrete and direct to the economies in these places,” Moran said. “We consider this an investment.”

WORK FOR DRILLERS

Back in Cleveland, Keith Moore was getting ready to do what his family has done for decades: drill oil and gas wells.

He has not drilled any new wells since 2014, however, with changing economics making small-scale operations unprofitable, he said.

Instead, for years, he and his crews have been doing the complicated work of plugging old wells.

“We un-drill them, that’s the best way to describe what we do,” he said, standing next to his equipment at the Franciscan Village site.

There was no formal record of the well here, said Donnald J. Heckelmoser Jr., chief executive of LSC Service Corporation, which manages the property.

“We always knew something was there, but never knew it was an orphan well,” Heckelmoser said.

Its discovery halted the construction of a new atrium that will cover the landscaped yard area, but with the capping underway, Heckelmoser felt the project was getting back on track.

As someone who oversees multiple properties and seeks to develop more affordable housing in the Cleveland area, he now knows what to do should the situation arise again.

“There’s a solution, and luckily we were able to find that,” he said.

After drilling out the well to its full depth, the hole is filled with concrete, which can take a few days to weeks, said Moore, who will do 15 to 20 such projects this year.

He recalled plugging wells in some crazy places, including a highway and a school gymnasium.

“If you took a shotgun and shot a map, that’s how many wells are left to be capped,” he said. "They’re anywhere and everywhere.”

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/us-boost-green-jobs-curb-emissions-by-plugging-old-oil-gas-wells-2022-04-27/

[Rick Plant]

Catholic League calls on Congress to sanction Marjorie Taylor Greene after she linked church leaders to Satan



On Thursday, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights released a statement calling on Congress to sanction Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for her recent statements attacking the Catholic Church.

"Greene has a history of offending African Americans and Jews, so bigotry is something that is apparently baked into her," wrote Catholic League President Bill Donohue in the letter to House Ethics Committee leaders Ted Deutch (D-FL) and Jackie Walorski (R-IN).

"The time has come for her to be either reprimanded or censured," Donohue added. "Her irresponsible behavior has already caused her to be removed from committee assignments. Accordingly, her burst of anti-Catholicism now demands stronger sanctions against her."

Greene, who has said she grew up Catholic but is now an evangelical Protestant, stirred controversy earlier this week when she claimed in an interview with Church Militant that the Catholic Church is "controlled by Satan," citing the work of Catholic charities that help immigrants in the United States, and the Church's history of covering up clergy who have committed sexual abuse of children.

"The Church is not doing its job, and it's not adhering to the teachings of Christ," she said in that interview.

The comments have drawn rebuke from other right-wing commentators, like Erick Erickson, who called Greene's attack on Catholics "inexcusable."

Greene, who has promoted QAnon conspiracy theories, was already stripped of her House committee assignments last year after the emergence of social media activity in which she appeared to endorse the killing of prominent Democratic politicians for treason.

https://www.rawstory.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-catholic-league/

[Rick Plant]

CNN's Jim Acosta throws Marjorie Taylor Greene's words back in her face during contentious exchange



Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) got into a heated exchange with CNN reporter Jim Acosta after he confronted her with her past text message where she floated declaring martial law to keep former President Donald Trump in the White House.

"Did you send a text asking the president to declare martial law?" Acosta asked her as the two of them walked down the street in Washington D.C.

"You know, I don't recall those being my text messages," Greene replied.

Even though Greene couldn't say for certain whether she'd really sent the text in question, she nonetheless grew very defensive about it and accused Acosta of mischaracterizing its contents.

At issue is the fact that Acosta's initial question implied Greene directly pushed for a declaration of martial law, whereas the actual text message shows she merely floated it as a possibility.

Acosta then took out his phone and read her text aloud.

"In our private chat with only Members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall law [sic]," Greene wrote on January 17, 2021. "I don’t know on those things. I just wanted you to tell him."

Acosta then tried to ask her why she would even think of bringing up martial law more than ten days after Congress legally certified the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Greene, however, flew into a rage at him.

"You're lying!" she said. "You know why people don't like you? Because you're a liar! Why do you want to lie on television!"

Watch the video at this link: https://twitter.com/i/status/1519758033294925824

[Rick Plant]

Republican Paul Gosar tweeted a meme used by neo-Nazis on Holocaust Remembrance Day

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Republican Congressman Paul Gosar posted — and later deleted — a meme rooted in violent and racist online culture that was praised by neo-Nazis and white nationalists.

Gosar’s social media postings on Twitter and Gab featured a picture of the Prescott Republican with a red filter that is part of the meme movement known as “DarkMAGA,” an aesthetic that evokes a dystopian view of the world and pushes for former President Donald Trump and other conservatives to be more violent and hardlined with their rhetoric.

Read more here: https://www.azmirror.com/2022/04/27/on-holocaust-remembrance-day-paul-gosar-tweeted-a-meme-used-by-neo-nazis/