As we wind down our annual review of the most outrageous things we heard from the right over the past 12 months, the remaining quotes fall into our Potluck Nuttery category. We will have a second round of Potluck Nuttery tomorrow. (Click here for previous posts on what we heard from the right in 2015.)
“We had Confederate Heroes Day before there was a Martin Luther King Jr. Day, why can’t they change theirs? I have no problem with them both being celebrated on the same day because most of the people who celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day don’t celebrate Confederate Heroes Day.”
– Reta Brand, director of the Texas Society Order of Confederate Rose, on a proposed bill by Texas state Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, to change Confederate Heroes Day to the more inclusive Civil War Remembrance Day.
“Hiroshima is coming. Greg Fenves will rue the day.”
– Kirk Lyons, a lawyer for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, on the removal of the Jefferson Davis statue at the University of Texas at Austin campus.
“There is a penalty to be paid for what the beatniks, who morphed into the hippies [did]. You say what do you call the hundred and ten million people who have sexually transmitted illnesses? It’s the revenge of the hippies! Sex drugs and rock and roll have come back to haunt us.”
– “Duck Dynasty’s” Phil Robertson, on who is to blame for the spread of sexually transmitted infections.
“My goal is for everyone to be abstinent until they are married.”
– Texas state Rep. Stuart Spitzer, R-Kaufman, speaking in favor of his budget amendment to strip $3 million from HIV prevention programs and shift the funding to failed abstinence-only education programs.
“We in our lifetimes potentially could see Jesus Christ returning to earth and the rapture of the church. We see the destruction, but this was a destruction that was foretold. … We are literally watching, month by month, the speed move up to a level we’ve never seen before with these events. Barack Obama is intent. It is his number one goal to ensure that Iran has a nuclear weapon.”
– Former Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann, warning that the biblical end times are near and that President Obama is at fault.
“Today’s Democratic Party has decided there is no room for Christians in today’s Democratic Party. There is a liberal fascism that is going after Christian believers.”
– Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaking at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition summit.
“You know, I understand a lot of the concerns raised by a lot of citizens about Jade Helm.”
– U.S. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, empathizing with right-wingers paranoid about standard military exercises in Texas and other southwestern states earlier this year.
“Once I observed the map depicting ‘hostile,’ ‘permissive,’ and ‘uncertain’ states and locations, I was rather appalled that the hostile areas amazingly have a Republican majority, ‘cling to their guns and religion,’ and believe in the sanctity of the United States Constitution.”
– U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, further feeding anti-government paranoia by giving his interpretation of maps being used in the Jade Helm 15 military training exercises earlier this year. A Pentagon spokesperson reiterated, “We are not taking over anything.”
“Is there something about the left […] that is obsessed with sex? ISIS is executing homosexuals — you want to talk about gay rights? This week was a very bad week for gay rights because the expansion of ISIS.”
– U.S. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in a meeting with local leaders in Beaumont, bristling at being asked several questions about his stance on the freedom to marry for LGBT people.
“No, but I think I would do pretty well. I know the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. I know World War II was started Dec. 7, 1941. I know what the Civil War was fought over.”
– Texas state Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington, apparently believing World War II began after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Zedler had filed a bill that would require all high school students to pass a civics test before graduating.
Maybe we could ask Mr. Zedler when in his opinion WW1 started and see whether he is consistent. If he answers ‘April 1917’ then he is. Of course it cannot be a World War without the US being part of it.
Btw, The Chinese argue that WW2 started with the Japanese aggression against China and complain about the Eurocentric view that put the beginning at 1939.
Imo the Chinese at least have a point one could reasonably discuss.