RWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.
Even though God stopped President Obama from nuking Charleston, according to one Colorado lawmaker, God permitted a brutal attack on a Colorado woman as punishment for abortion rights. Even worse, other conservative activists believe that God is preparing to destroy America if the Supreme Court approves of gay marriage.
5) God Behind Brutal Attack On Pregnant Woman
Gordon Klingenschmitt, the Religious Right activist who is now a freshmen Republican member of the Colorado State House, reflected on the recent attack on a pregnant Colorado woman, in which her stomach was cut open and her baby killed, by arguing that the assault was God’s punishment on the country for abortion rights.
“This is the curse of God upon America for our sin of not protecting innocent children in the womb and part of that curse for our rebellion against God as a nation is that our pregnant women are ripped open,” he said during his “Pray In Jesus Name” broadcast.
Facing an outpouring of criticism for his remarks, Klingenschmitt is now claiming that he is the real victim of the story, alleging that people are only outraged because he quoted the Bible during the program. Anyone who criticizes him, Klingenschmitt suggests, are really trying to take away his freedom of speech and “freedom of worship.”
He has found at least one ally in fellow Colorado pastor Kevin Swanson, who said on his radio show that God “may have somehow directed” the attack on the pregnant woman “to teach Colorado a lesson” about its laws preserving abortion rights.
4) God Will Destroy America Over Gay Marriage
Surprising nobody, anti-gay activists are releasing a flurry of statements warning that the legalization of same-sex marriage will unleash God’s wrath on America.
The Coalition of African American pastors, a group closely tied to the National Organization for Marriage, warned members in a statement, “America’s Wake-Up Call?,” that judges want “immorality” and “moral decay” to “spread like a cancer.” Urging members to “fight against this ‘cancer’ that is ravishing the nation which, will ultimately bring about its destruction,” the group said that America is “following in the tradition” of countries throughout history that were destroyed by “the divine judgment of God.”
Rick Scarborough, a leading Religious Right pastor, had a similar message in a WorldNetDaily column where he warned that the Supreme Court “is threatening to unleash the spirit of hell on the nation” by striking down bans on same-sex marriage, while Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association said the court is preparing to throw its “fist in the face of God Almighty.”
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins even called on conservative Christians to consider “rising up” if the court rules in favor of marriage equality: “I don’t think the nation is going to accept it, I absolutely don’t, and the conflict that is going to come as a result of it.”
3) Obama Greatest Threat To Jews Since Nazism
During his radio show yesterday, conservative commentator Mark Levin insisted that President Obama is “the greatest threat to Jews ... since the 1930s.”
“He’s the greatest threat they face since the 1930s” because he is arming “Israel’s enemies” while degrading Israel’s defenses, Levin said. “He is the greatest threat that that nation faces, and by the way, he’s a great threat to our nation too, as far as I’m concerned.”
Because Obama is supposedly “arming up the Islamo-Nazis in Tehran,” Iran will soon be able to “attack Israel” and “attack our west coast.”
Via Media Matters:
2) Climate Scientists Persecuting Ted Cruz, Says Ted Cruz
While talking to the Texas Tribune, Sen. Ted Cruz mocked the science behind climate change as part of a plot to give government control over “every aspect of our lives” and make “a whole lot of money.”
Cruz said that “global warming alarmists don’t like to look at the actual facts and the data,” and like the Catholic Church centuries ago which persecuted Galileo, seeks to “brand you a heretic” if you don’t agree with them.
“Today the global warming alarmists are the equivalent of the flat-earthers, it used to be ‘it is accepted scientific wisdom the earth is flat and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier,’” Cruz said.
As Chris Mooney points out, not only is Cruz wrong about climate science, but “Galileo actually got in trouble with the Church over Copernicanism, or the idea that the Earth goes around the sun, itself located at the center of the solar system — not the shape of the Earth.”
1) ‘Patriot’ Plants Bomb To Prove A Point
We regularly see not-at-all-credible reports in the right-wing media about the proliferation of Muslim no-go zones and terrorists skipping across the border and setting up training camps inside of the U.S., usually expressing angst that Obama is doing nothing to stop these mythical crises (or, more typically, is helping the terrorists).
One self-described “patriot” in Georgia decided to take matters in his own hands, “building two improvised explosive devices” and putting them in a backpack along with “a Koran and a list of potential terrorist targets, including hospitals, schools and Jewish facilities in the Greater Atlanta area.” He even “wrote the name ‘Mina Khodari’ inside the backpack because he said ‘it looked foreign,’” TPM reports, noting that he put the book “The Rape of Kuwaitt” along with the Koran in the backpack, which he left in a Georgia park last November.
All of this was done, the man says, because not enough people are “paying attention to what was going on (sic) the world.”
This patriot now “faces federal charges of attempting to damage federal property by use of an explosive device.”
