The right-wing distraction machine has shifted into high gear. Now Republican presidential wannabe Ted Cruz is seizing on the bizarre notion, advanced by fringy right-wing ideologues, that the alleged Planned Parenthood shooter, Robert Lewis Dear, is a trans woman.
And he’s doing so as a way to distract from the increasing evidence that Dear’s terrorist assault on a Planned Parenthood clinic might just possibly have something to do with abortion.
Here’s what Cruz said earlier today, as reported by the Texas Tribune.
“The media promptly wants to blame him on the pro-life movement when at this point there’s very little evidence to indicate that,” Cruz said.
When a reporter reminded Cruz it has been reported Dear made a comment about “baby parts” while being apprehended, Cruz retorted, “It’s also been reported that he was registered as an independent and a woman and transgendered leftist activist, if that’s what he is. I don’t think it’s fair to blame on the rhetoric on the left. This is a murderer.”
That’s right. Cruz wants us to think that it’s as silly to conclude that Dear is anti-abortion as it is to conclude that he’s a “transgendered leftist activist.”
Cruz is also fighting against the notion that an armed assault on a Planned Parenthood clinic that left three people dead should be called terrorism.
Asked if we could call the shooting an act of domestic terrorism — as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has — Cruz again urged caution about drawing conclusions from the shooting at this point.
“I would call it a murder, and we’ll see what the facts are,” Cruz replied. “It was a multiple murder of what appears to be a deranged individual. And it was horrific, it was evil, and we’ll find out more out about the facts, but I don’t think we should jump to conclusions.”
Nothing to see here!
H/T – Thanks to AnAndrejaPejicBlog, the first person to let me know about this
Also, Carly Fiorina is making my brain go to bad bad places, so a necessary palliative:
Anisky — Duggar cover up, I think.
“to stop abortion for ANY reason after five months”
I know it’s about the least relevant point I could make, but do this people not grasp that abortions that far along are almost always of wanted children? That these women aren’t deciding pregnancy was a mistake, but are mourning a child they where picking names for? Of all the fucked up ways to try to ban abortion, targeting mothers being forced to abort for their own health/life, or because the child they want is never going to survive… it’s a new fucking low. I can’t imagine being in the position to need an abortion at that point, to tell someone in that position that the doctor is wrong, it’s murder even if, say, the baby has no brain… I’m gonna stop, before I violate comment policy on violence, let’s just say she should have to tell these women, each and every one of them, that, when they’re in a location miles away and the only way to get there is over a path of legos
In cheerier things relating to that period of pregnancy — my ex-FWB’s niece decided to be three months early. That was August, she finally went home a couple weeks ago. Still just breaking 4 lbs, but she’s doing wonderfully. (No recent pics, sorry)
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uJMDG7nC3ck/UbVv0873OlI/AAAAAAAAOP0/Br9Es9FMsq4/s1600/ikea-garden-gnome.jpg
I may not be american enough, but how does the shooters gender or politics factor into the facts? there was yet another tragedy and once again a Nation in mourning. Eventually the gun issue needs to be addressed – “deranged leftist” or “domestic terrorist”
Am I allowed to be so cynical as to hope this whole thing makes Republicans take a popularity hit?
@Argenti
“I know it’s about the least relevant point I could make, but do this people not grasp that abortions that far along are almost always of wanted children?”
They don’t care. She wants to stop abortions that far along for ANY reason, even if the result is the death of both the mother AND the child. It’s Savita Halappanavar all over again.
These people claim to care about life, but in reality they are nothing but toxic to humanity. Authoritarian assholes like her disguise their quest for domination under pretty, empty slogans.
To Cruz et al., it doesn’t matter that this is a lie. Once it’s out there, enough of The Base will believe it because it confirms their worldview and they won’t hear their Trusted Media Sources make any noise when it’s disproved; for some people (the ones you can fool all of the time, I guess) it will forever provide a convenient explanation of an otherwise unpalatable fact. Just another brick. If you want to keep a populace living in an alternate reality that best suits your interests without messy facts intervening, this is how you do it. And, from everything I’ve heard about Cruz, he knows exactly what he’s doing and is doing it cynically and deliberately.
@mrex:
“Authoritarian assholes like her disguise their quest for domination under pretty, empty slogans.”
…and the thing is that it’s pretty and palatable to the mushy middle for now, when she hides the same endgame as every other GOP candidate in the GOP Clown Car: to stop abortion for *any* reason.
I’m betting no matter who the nominee on the right, this “after five months” will be the eventual slug quote they use in the general. Fiorina has a bright future as a party operative in the GOP, and this campaign seems to be testing the waters of a lot of what seems to the average voter to be different thinking from the rest of the field. My grandmother, the bluest of blue liberals, has occasionally found herself (momentarily!!!) buying some of the sloganeering Fiorina is coming up with, an unlike the others who seem to be repeating other peoples’ material, Fiorina seems to be doing her own lines, which makes her see much more real than the rest of the Clown Car.
mrex — yeah, I know, but it’s fucking infuriating. You want to claim you’re against abortion cuz it’s murder? Be consistent at least and don’t decide that removing a dead body from inside a living one is unacceptable when, and only when, it’s one that got there via pregnancy. Actually, no, that’s not even right, cuz the handful of other ways you can have such a thing occur are also pregnancy related, so it really is just when the living person is a woman who dared to have sex… resulting in a child… she intended to give birth to… but can’t. They want to be so damned pro-“life”? Go figure out a way for parasitic twins to survive, or, idfk, prevent the conditions that caused the pregnancy to go ass over teakettle?
Or pretty much make any argument at all that acknowledges that sometimes, actually, abortion is the only way to save at least one life. But right, she doesn’t count, my bad.
…I need cats in boxes again now
Big cats, big boxes
http://youtu.be/J11uu8L8FTY
Yeah, get your story out there first. That way, chances are better that’s what people will remember. And the base will always believe you because it feels right to them.
As for Carly Fiorina’s no-abortions-after-five-months policy, it reminds me of a certain housemate I once had who was both elderly and abusive. (She owned the house.) She kicked me out for grins and giggles. For her it was fun; for me it was less fun trying to find a new home in a tight, expensive housing market. At any rate, when moving day came and I moved my stuff from my bedroom to the moving van, she shouted at me, “One trip! One trip!” Meaning that I was allowed to make one trip from the bedroom to the van with my stuff. Of course, the move required about thirty trips. I have only two arms. She kept screeching her mantra while I moved: “One trip! One trip!” I could see the thought balloon above her head: “My rule will sound reasonable when I speak of it to others. What could be bad about such an efficient rule?” This rule, if not examined closely, might sound completely reasonable.
The only problem with either woman’s policy is reality.
Some brain bleach: https://archive.org/details/EsquissesdeYcor00Bine
Full, high quality, scan of Esquisses décoratives by René Binet. An art deco sketch book from around 1900, exploring the use of ornamentation forms inspired by the symmetries found in biology. (See also, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kunstformen_der_Natur )
It is soothing.
Fiorina is a great example of failing up.
Seven hells! How much energy can one person dedicate to refusing to see the reality of the world around him, that he’s willing to flat out make up lies that implicate his political rivals? There’s decades of precedence for radical right anti-abortion shooters at OB clinics. Decades.
BRB, googling emergency bunnies.
Scientific research generally requires logical thought and ability to accept the results of experiments rather than clinging to one’s original assumptions. So you see the problem.
@katz:
The Republicans have already taken all the popularity hits they’re going to, I suspect. Any rats who have not left that particular sinking ship are not going to be persuaded to change their minds by simply things like reality.
On the other hand, as the Republican party slowly dies, we may hopefully see the pro-forced-birth position become political suicide among more moderate people. Which would be a good result.
“Muslim shooter: whole religion guilty
Black shooter: whole race guilty
White shooter: mentally troubled lone wolf
Gotta love that double standard.”
Yep. And (probably) male perpetrator of domestic violence against women and (apparently) forced birth enthusiast: must have been a woman.
(Though it is kiiiind of a stretch for the right to admit a transwoman as a woman, but hey who wants to logic when you can other?)
And here i was thinking ignorance and denial had already peaked….
@spacelawn:
Ignorance and denial will, I fear, never peak. If someone can find a way to use them for fuel, we’ll rocket up the Kardashev scale within weeks.
Sorry for the OT, but I have to share this video The Guardian made about our racist political party, the Sweden Democrates, and their (former) youth group:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/nov/23/meet-the-young-supporters-of-swedens-far-right-video
Mindboggling stuff, and close to home for me (literally). The guy outside the Central Station, playing the musical instrument (xylophone?), is someone I give money to every week. The café they go to is where I have coffee several times/week. The residential area where the racists feel “unsafe” is literally less than 10 minutes from where I live. It’s amazing how they can be so convinced they’re in mortal danger by just visiting this place, while I’ve lived here for years and haven’t felt unsafe a single time (except for in the laundry room when it’s really dark and there might be monsters hiding behind the dryer).
It really is impossible for me to understand how they think.
@dhag85:
Maybe they’re afraid of you?
On the bright side, being falsely labeled and remembered as a liberal transwoman is probably a fate worse than death for Dear.
@Kale
@EJ
MIND = BLOWN
“I may not be american enough, but how does the shooters gender or politics factor into the facts?”
Terra – how are they not relevant when someone makes an attack on a service providing abortion? I am not American but to me it IS absolutely relevant – right wingers everywhere often attack services that directly benefit women, if they believe the services to be ‘anti family’ or in some way immoral.
And I don’t think that this is relevant to the gun control debate either – the problem wasn’t that he had a gun, the problem was that he was prepared to use lethal force, the gun simply being a tool.