[guest post by Dana]

I know, I know, why can’t I stop talking about the certifiable Marjorie Taylor Greene, you ask. I’ll tell you why: it’s not just because she’s a low-hanging fruit nutcase who can’t stop saying crazy things, but she is also representative of “today’s” Republican Party. You know, the Party that has transformed itself from a once-solid, once-principled entity to one that rewards liars who promote the Big Lie and punishes truth-tellers. That Republican Party. Greene is a well-known Republican firebrand, who is only too happy to push the Big Lie and protect Donald Trump at all costs when she’s not making absurd comparisons to Nazis…

First, there was this from Greene last weekend:

In an appearance last week on the podcast “The Water Cooler with David Brody,” Greene lamented to a nodding Brody about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to maintain a mask mandate on the House floor because of concerns many GOP members may not be vaccinated.

“This woman is mentally ill,” Greene said of Pelosi, D-Calif. “You know, we can look back in a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens — so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany, and this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.”

Ugh.

This morning she came up with a real lulu in response to an earlier report about a Knoxville grocery store’s new in-house Covid safety measures for shoppers and employees:

Food City announced it will soon allow customers who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to shop without masks.

Beginning Thursday, May 20, vaccinated store associates and customers will not be required to wear a face mask inside the grocery store.

Employees who have been fully vaccinated will have a vaccination logo displayed on their name badge.

Food City advised customers who have not been fully vaccinated or those who prefer to do so as a safety precaution to continue wearing face coverings. The store will continue to encourage social distancing and provide hand sanitizer, cart wipes and enhanced cleaning procedures in all of its locations.

Per Greene:

Vaccinated employees get a vaccination logo just like the Nazi’s forced Jewish people to wear a gold star.

Vaccine passports & mask mandates create discrimination against unvaxxed people who trust their immune systems to a virus that is 99% survivable.https://t.co/6X6VNolcA7

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) May 25, 2021

It is pretty troubling that an elected official is so incredibly ignorant that she would accuse a private business that has actually lifted a mask mandate and is set to rely upon an honor system with regard to employees informing them as to whether they have been vaccinated with what the Nazis forced the Jews to do by making them wear the yellow Stars of David. I won’t insult your intelligence by pointing out the obvious differences. Suffice it to say, no one at Food City is going to be deporting any employee to a work camp, or worse, for not having a vaccination logo on their name tag.

Anyway, the hits just keep coming. Greene was at it again when she responded to a report that the University of Virginia was implementing their own Covid safety measures as students return to campus this fall:

University of Virginia students who have not been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will be barred from participating in in-person classes in the fall semester and cannot step foot on university grounds, school leaders announced Monday.

Students will have to provide proof of vaccination by July 1 if they want to take in-person classes or be on university grounds. Students can request a medical or religious exemption to the requirement. If granted, they will be required to take weekly COVID-19 tests and other health measures.

“This approach will enable our students to return to a residential academic setting where they can live, study, and gather together safely,” UVA President Jim Ryan and other university leaders said in an email message.

…

In late April, Attorney General Mark Herring issued a formal opinion that universities have the authority to require COVID-19 vaccinations as a condition of in-person enrollment. The decision was written to provide guidance to universities establishing their protocol for the upcoming semester; however, an attorney general opinion is not legally binding, so a student could make a legal challenge to the university’s requirement.

Cue the Nazi comparison:

Well hate freedom media would you look at this story.

It appears Nazi practices have already begun on our youth.

Show your VAX papers or no in person class for you.

This is exactly what I was saying about the gold star.

This is disgusting!https://t.co/YIttsMRaW9

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) May 25, 2021

Not for the first time, Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy released a statement condemning Greene’s references to Nazis and Jews, saying that her “intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling.”:

Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling.

Let me be clear: the House Republican Conference condemns this language.

My full statement: https://t.co/KnliN3YbJ2

— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) May 25, 2021

“Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling. The Holocaust is the greatest atrocity committed in history. The fact that this needs to be stated today is deeply troubling.

“At a time when the Jewish people face increased violence and threats, anti-Semitism is on the rise in the Democrat Party and is completely ignored by Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“Americans must stand together to defeat anti-Semitism and any attempt to diminish the history of the Holocaust.

“Let me be clear: the House Republican Conference condemns this language.”

Other leaders in the Party also condemned Greene’s comments. This from Mitch McConnell:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., also blasted Greene, calling her comments “outrageous” and “reprehensible.”

McConnell’s spokesman pointed out on Twitter that the Senate leader had previously slammed Greene’s “loony lies and conspiracy theories” as a “cancer for the Republican Party and our country.”

Presumably responding to McCarthy’s and McConnell’s condemnation of her, Greene pushed back in a long Twitter thread as if the leaders of her own conference hadn’t clearly stated that she was wrong and condemned her remarks:

The media and Democrats and everyone feeding into it is allowing them to hide the truth, which is the digusting anti-semitism within the Democrat Party.

2. At a time when the Socialist Democrats and the Jihad Squad are supporting terrorists Hamas, and their supporters are attacking Jewish people on the streets of America,

3. it’s never been more important than now to stand up against forced vaccinations and mask mandates that the left is using to discriminate against Americans who refuse to comply.

4. Their attempts to shame, ostracize, and brand Americans who choose not to get vaccinated or wear a mask are reminiscent of the great tyrants of history who did the same to those who would not comply.

5. And everyone feeding into it is allowing them to hide the truth, which is the disgusting anti-semitism within the Democrat Party.

6. The Democrats are the party of division, hate, critical race theory (pure racism), discrimination, totalitarianism, socialism, globalism, gender destruction, BDS, defunding our police, and ANTIFA / BLM terrorists.

7. I’m sorry some of my words make people uncomfortable, but this is what the American left is all about.

And they are America last in every single way.

–Dana

Glenn Kessler has a piece titled Timeline: How the Wuhan lab-leak theory suddenly became credible:

How and why did this happen? For one, efforts to discover a natural source of the virus have failed. Second, early efforts to spotlight a lab leak often got mixed up with speculation that the virus was deliberately created as a bioweapon. That made it easier for many scientists to dismiss the lab scenario as tin-hat nonsense. But a lack of transparency by China and renewed attention to the activities of the Wuhan lab have led some scientists to say they were too quick to discount a possible link at first.

It did not “suddenly become credible.” It has always been credible. Jim Geraghty had the evidence back in April 2020. The problem is that the “fact checkers” of the world missed it because they were hellbent on mocking the bioweapon theory, and refused to see the difference between that and the more plausible leak theory. Caleb Howe had a joyous post last month about how Big Media mocked the idea. It’s still worth a read.