Who Needs Scientific Objectivity, We Have Marjorie Greene And Ronny Jackson
Two of the most brazen, outrageous right wing conspiracists in Congress are both certain, without proof of course, that China created the COVID-19 virus in a laboratory and set it free on the world.
But who needs objectivity? The two were named to the new House committee to get to the bottom of the origins of the COVID-19 virus or at least the Republican version of the truth. If a committee was ever going to be weaponized, look out for the nuclear fall-out from the COVID-19 committee.
Meanwhile, a Texas congressman and fellow denizen of the lunaverse said that President Joe Biden should call on ex-president trump to “call Vladimir Putin and end this war. We must stop this war and Donald Trump can do it.”
In yet another piece of the absurd, a GOP candidate for North Carolina governor said transgenderism and homosexuality are “filth,” that former President Barack Obama is a “worthless, anti-American atheist,” that American Muslims are “invaders who refuse to assimilate to our ways while demanding respect they have not earned” and that Michelle Obama is a man.
And rounding out the week, the Republican state of Tennessee rejected millions of dollars from the federal government for HIV/AIDS prevention because the prevention efforts help to protect transgender people.
Just another day in the theater of the ridiculous that is the Republican Party. Kafka would have a field day.
The new House Speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., had to bargain away his manhood to squeak through to victory on the 15th vote that dragged on mercilessly for four days. In order to win the support he needed to get the post of his dreams, McCarthy had to pander to the far right in the party.
That would include, among others, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, both members of the far right Republican Freedom Party caucus. Both were named by McCarthy to the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic which will pursue politically-charged issues including the origins of the disease, the development of vaccines, how roughly $5 trillion in federal aid was used and the societal impact of coronavirus-related school closures.
McCarthy named a podiatrist, Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, to head the subcommittee.
Wenstrup, who said he’s been researching coronavirus since 2020, said he is particularly concerned that the coronavirus resulted from U.S. funded “gain of function” research at a lab in Wuhan, China. Gain of function research genetically alters an organism in a way that may enhance the biological functions of gene products. The research is intended to reveal targets to better predict emerging infectious diseases and to develop vaccines and therapeutics.
The origin of the COVID-19 virus remains uncertain, with the prevailing theory that it came from wild animals sold for food at Chinese markets.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has claimed that Dr. Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Advisor to the President, collaborated with the Wuhan Virology Institute on creating super viruses through gain of function research. At a hearing in 2021, Fauci responded to Paul, “with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect…the NIH (National Institute of Health) has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research [conducted at] the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Serving in his fifth term in Congress, Wenstrup was one of 126 Republican members of the House to sign an amicus brief in 2020 in support of Texas v. Pennsylvania, a lawsuit filed at the U.S. Supreme Court contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case .
Greene, who represents a small Georgia district that is redder than a tomato, is actually being seriously considered as a vice presidential running mate for trump, who remains popular among many Americans despite his treasonous actions on Jan. 6, 2021, among numerous other crimes.
In one of her first statements upon being named to the COVID-19 committee, Greene said that she wants the Pfizer company to be investigated for engineering “mutations” of COVID-19 for future profits. She said her concerns were based on a video produced Project Veritas, a far right activist group that has propagated disinformation and conspiracy theories in its videos and operations. The group is supported by various conservative individuals and groups, including the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
The nearly 10-minute video was published on Tuesday on social media channels like Twitter, where it has been viewed over 21 million times. It includes a conversation between an unidentified Project Veritas reporter and a Pfizer employee identified as “Jordon Trishton Walker, Director of Research and Development–Strategic Operations and mRNA Scientific Planning.”
“We’re exploring, like, you know how the virus keeps mutating?” Walker tells the Project Veritas reporter. “Well, one of the things we’re exploring is like, why don’t we just mutate it ourselves, so we could focus on, create, preemptively develop new vaccines, right?”
Greene tweeted that the comments show that “The Pfizer Director…is caught on video discussing mutating the virus to change the vaccines & how Covid is a cash cow! Pfizer took BILLIONS of federal [dollars]. Our Covid Select Subcommittee MUST investigate!”
Greene has been kicked off various social networking platforms for passing lies about COVID-19 including that the COVID vaccines were “failing” and that there were “extremely high amounts of Covid vaccine deaths.” Greene also compared being required to wear a mask on the House floor to the Holocaust.
She has attended a white supremacist conference, endorsed violence against Democrats, and said that if she and former trump advisor, Steven Bannon, were in charge of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, they would have made sure that trump supporters were armed and would have won.
Jackson, a former White House physician in the Obama and Trump administrations and a past critic of Fauci, jumped on Greene’s comments.
“CLEAR YOUR CALENDAR @pfizer!” tweeted Jackson who once raved about trump’s “excellent” health. “I’m sure the committee to investigate Covid will have questions on this!!”
Jackson has said the omicron variant of COVID-19 is the latest deep state plot to distract America and that “Democrats spent years refusing to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for its role in causing a global pandemic.”
“We can no longer ignore the mounting evidence suggesting the virus was leaked by the Chinese Communist Party,” said Jackson who did not reiterate the “mounting evidence.”
In 2021, Jackson introduced the Forbidding Repressive Executive Efforts and Denouncing Overreaching Mandates (FREEDOM) Act in the House, an effort to push back against vaccine mandates. The act, which never made it to the Senate for a vote, would have required all federal agencies and departments to report on the number of employees who have quit or will quit because of the vaccine mandate, and to estimate the cost and time associated with filling the positions.
As part of a Republican political tsunami to prove that the pandemic was caused by China, Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas introduced a bill, the “China Lied, People Died Act” on Thursday that would require China to pay back the trillions of dollars appropriated by Congress in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nehls, a former sheriff, Army tank commander and strong trump backer, said that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is “singlehandedly responsible” for the millions of people killed by COVID-19 and the House GOP majority will work to make China pay back the $4.6 trillion in federal coronavirus relief and more. A co-sponsor of the bill is far right wingnut, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., who is fortunately not on the COVID-19 subcommittee.
Nehls also was the Texas lawmaker who said Biden should call trump to call Putin and “end this war.” That would be unlikely given the fact that days before Russia invaded, Trump praised Putin as a “genius” for declaring part of Ukraine independent, adding that Russian forces would be peacekeepers.
Nehls said he thought Putin would respond to Trump because “he never went into Ukraine” when trump was president.
Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina, is campaigning on a platform of climate change denial, abolishing the state board of education and removing science and history curriculum from the elementary schools. He has used anti-Semitic slurs and promoted the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory of a cabal of Jewish international bankers.
On his Facebook page and to his, more than 100,000 followers, Robinson impugns transgender people as “filth” who “glorify Satan”; Muslim “INVADERS” who “refuse to assimilate to our ways while demanding respect they have not earned; former President Barack Obama, “a worthless anti-American atheist”; and Michelle Obama who Robinson calls a man.
Finally, on to Tennessee and the red state’s ongoing war against transgender people and the LGBTQ community in general.
The fiercely Republican state has rejected millions of dollars from the federal government for HIV/AIDS prevention. The state will continue to support HIV testing and prevention for first responders, victims of human trafficking, and mothers and children. It will not prioritize men who have sex with men and transgender people, particularly in communities of color, who are at greatest risk of HIV, according to federal surveillance data.