Friday Reads: meh.
Posted: January 2, 2015 Filed under: morning reads, Political Affective Disorder | Tags: Maria Cuomo, religious extremists, Right Wing Hate Groups, Steve Scalise 15 CommentsGood Morning!
There’s a lot of panem et circenses around this time of year. There are all those bowl games which really do serve as a form of superficial appeasement for having to spend your days slaving for one of America’s many unpleasant employers doing things that are unfulfilling at best and reprehensible in all likelihood. Afterall, there’s been all this credit card debt ran up over the last few months so the indentured will have to continue at it regardless. Then, we all need to be appeased for having to put up with the ongoing insults piled on us by the Republican Congress and most urban police departments. There sure is a lot of news that should make folks want to lie around in a stupor.
For example, Steve Scalise thinks he’s smarter than the rest of us and that his dalliance with hate groups will eventually be forgotten. More information has come out from that shows the Duke henchmen who set up his speech before a group of White Nationalists has been telling tales.
Two days ago, Slate ran a piece quoting Kenny Knight, a close associate of David Duke, who booked the room for the white supremacist group, known as EURO. Knight claimed that he invited Scalise to speak to the “Jefferson Heights Civic Association, which was largely comprised of elderly people who lived in his and Scalise’s neighborhood.” The meeting of the civic association, Knight said, just happened to be held in the same room as the EURO conference held later that day. Knight told The Times-Picayune that he “was not a member of EURO and did not arrange for any speakers at the 2002 conference.”
The right-wing ran was the story, billing the entire controversy as little more than a hoax.But, as it turns out, Knight was lying. Not only was Knight a member of the EURO group but “documents filed with the Louisiana secretary of state’s office list him as treasurer…” He is also listed as a member of the group in a 2002 news release for the conference in question, where he was scheduled as a speaker.
Asked about the discrepancy and the state document listing him as treasurer of the group, Knight hung up twice on a reporter for The Times-Picayune. Eventually, Knight said “Is that 15 years ago? I don’t even remember that. I’m not communicating any more with the news media. I’m finished with y’all.”
If you have any further questions, ask David Duke. In an interview with the Washington Post, Duke said he “recalled Knight reaching out to Scalise in the weeks before the conference to come and update attendees on state affairs, and that Scalise accepted without reservation.”
Duke’s group isn’t the only certified hate group that Scalise has been known to pander around. Of course, this guy thinks that the League of Women Voter’s is a “liberal” group and akin to EURO as BB pointed out yesterday. His barometer of
political extremists seems way off. But, Congressman Sleaze also loves him some Tony Perkins who is another certifiable hater. Perkins’ record of extremism and hate politics is legendary. Scalise has no problem with him and his group either.
But that is not Scalise’s only affiliation with a noted hate group. He is also aregular on Tony Perkins’ radio show, Washington Watch With Tony Perkins.Perkins heads the Family Research Council, which the Southern Poverty Law Center condemns as virulently anti-LGBT. According to the SPLC, the Council “often makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science. The intention is to denigrate LGBT people in its battles against same-sex marriage, hate crime laws, anti-bullying programs and the repeal of the military’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy.”
Perkins, also from Louisiana, has connections to Duke as well. In the mid-’90s, while acting as a campaign manager for Woody Jenkins, then a candidate for the U.S. Senate, he paid $82,500 for Duke’s mailing list. Like Scalise, he improbably claimed he didn’t know the list was attached to Duke, but happened to file a false campaign disclosure form to hide the payment, and was subsequently fined $3,000. Three years later, while serving as a state representative, he gave a speech to the Council of Conservative Citizens, another white supremacist group.
While plenty of Republicans are against same-sex marriage, most don’t go so far as to ally themselves with Perkins. For the House majority whip to have that kind of allegiance may turn some heads.
Unfortunately, House Dems don’t seem to want to make anything of any of this.
Democrats are taking a strikingly cautious approach to the controversy surrounding House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and his speech to a white supremacist group in 2002.
The vast majority of Democrats are not calling for Scalise to resign, or for leadership to drop him. But they are tying Scalise to other Republicans and arguing the issue is emblematic of a party Democrats argue is at odds with minority groups on a range of policies.
Strategists say the approach reflects a few factors.
Democrats don’t want to get too far in front of the story, particularly since it is unclear whether Scalise’s 2002 address to the European-American Unity and Rights Organization is an isolated incident.It’s also possible that Democrats are quite happy to see Scalise continue to be a part of the GOP leadership, since it will allow them to return to the story about his address to a group founded by David Duke repeatedly between now and Election Day 2016, when Democrats hope a broader electorate will help them win the White House and take back House and Senate seats. Only Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (N.Y.) has called for his resignation as majority whip.
There’s more news about Cops Go Wild in the news. A NYPD cop has turned himself in for attacking a female MTA employee.
An NYPD cop has surrendered in an attack on an MTA worker, officials said Thursday.
Police Officer Mirjan Lolja, 37, was suspended after the assault in which the Metropolitan Transportation Authority worker — who was on-duty and in her uniform — was allegedly put into a bear hug, thrown to the floor and choked, cops said.
“I’m totally outraged,” Joe Costales, chairman of Transport Workers Union Local 100, said of the allegations. “We’re not safe with members of the public, and now we’re not safe from the police.”
The 28-year-old conductor was on the southbound D train platform at the Tremont Ave. station when Lolja confronted her about 2:30 a.m. on Dec. 23, officials said. She was hospitalized with minor back and neck injuries.
A police chief in Georgia has shot his wife.
The wife of Peachtree City Police Chief William E. McCollom is in critical condition after being shot by her husband Thursday morning.
Police responded to the couple’s home in the 100 block of Autumn Leaf shortly after 4:15 a.m., where they found the victim, 58-year-old Margaret McCollom. She was taken by helicopter to Atlanta Medical Center.
The GBI will handle the shooting investigation. GBI spokeswoman Sherry Lang originally said Chief McCollom called 911 to say he accidentally shot his wife twice with his service weapon. After further investigation, Lang said it was determined that only one bullet had been discharged.
Investigators won’t say where McCollom was injured, or what led up to the shooting, only that it occured in the couple’s bedroom.
Peachtree City Manager Jim Pennington says as standard procedure, the chief was put on administrative leave and the GBI asked to spear head the investigation.
So, the biggest news of the holiday was the death of former NY Governor Mario Cuomo.
Ever-eloquent Mario Cuomo, a son of Queens who rode his rhetorical gifts to three terms as New York governor and tantalized Democrats by flirting with a run for President, died Thursday. He was 82.
Cuomo passed away five hours after his oldest son, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, wasformally sworn-in to a second term in Manhattan. The elder Cuomo was too ill to attend. He died of “natural causes due to heart failure” at his Manhattan apartment surrounded by his family, Andrew Cuomo’s office said.
“He couldn’t be here physically today … but my father is in this room,” Andrew Cuomo said in his inaugural address.
“He’s in the heart and mind of every person who is here. His inspiration and his legacy and his spirit is what has brought this day to this point.”
As governor, Mario Cuomo wrestled with two recessions and presided over a massive expansion of the state prison system. A liberal, he bucked the political winds by wielding his veto pen year after year to block the restoration of the state death penalty.
So also coming up on the bread and circuses radar is the Super Bowl and the State of the Union Address. Which one will titillate the American Public more? Yes, the one with endless commercials that last longer than the actual play itself. Well, I could be talking about the opening of Congress, but you know it’s the football game. La Sigh. La Sigh. La Meh.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Ignore the Man Screaming in Front of the Curtain
Posted: June 10, 2012 Filed under: The Media SUCKS, the villagers, War on Women, WE TOLD THEM SO | Tags: bloviators, liberal angst, Right Wing Hate Groups 13 Comments
Here’s an interesting thesis from Steven Almond writing at the NYT.
Liberals are to blame for the success of right wing canards and screamers because they don’t elevate the conversation. They fixate on the bloviator.
Of course, not all right-wing pundits spew hate. But the ones who do are the ones we liberals dependably aggrandize. Consider the recent debate over whether employers must cover contraception in their health plans. The underlying question — should American women receive help in protecting themselves from unwanted pregnancies? — is part of a serious and necessary national conversation.
Any hope of that conversation happening was dashed the moment Rush Limbaugh began his attacks on Sandra Fluke, the young contraceptive advocate. The left took enormous pleasure in seeing Limbaugh pilloried. To what end, though? Industry experts noted that his ratings actually went up during the flap. In effect, the firestorm helped Limbaugh do his job, at least in the short term.
But the real problem isn’t Limbaugh. He’s just a businessman who is paid to reduce complex cultural issues to ad hominem assaults. The real problem is that liberals, both on an institutional and a personal level, have chosen to treat for-profit propaganda as news. In so doing, we have helped redefine liberalism as an essentially reactionary movement. Rather than initiating discussion, or advocating for more humane policy, we react to the most vile and nihilistic voices on the right.
Media outlets like MSNBC and The Huffington Post often justify their coverage of these voices by claiming to serve as watchdogs. It would be more accurate to think of them as de facto loudspeakers for conservative agitprop. The demagogues of the world, after all, derive power solely from their ability to provoke reaction. Those liberals (like me) who take the bait, are to blame for their outsize influence.
Blink.
Okee dokee then.
From Digby: Little wingnut monsters: even if you don’t feed them, they grow up anyway.
This may be the single dumbest op-ed in the NY Times this year, which would be an accomplishment, given that Friedman, Brooks, Douthat, and Bruni all write there. Apparently Steve Almond thinks that if liberals would just ignore nasty old Republicans, then we’d have an amazingly civil public discourse and Fox news would shrivel up and die. The logic goes something like this:
1.) Ignore Mean Republicans
2.) …3.) UNICORNS!
This is something like clap-for-Tinkerbelle in reverse. If we stop enabling righties by paying attention to them, they’ll go away.
I would like to say that I don’t feel personally victimized by escalating right-wing fanaticism. Most of the time I feel more like a helpless bystander watching barbarians sack my country.
From me:
WTF is wrong with you? We now have walking, talking, reproducing humanoids that think taking from the poor and giving to the rich solves all of our economic problems, that poor people deserve to starve and die from lack of insurance because there’s something morally wrong with them, a basically ineffective right of center president is a socialist, Kenyan Muslim who has spent us into no man’s land, Fox News is actually news and not just made up shit that rich Republicans want you to believe, and fertilized egg has more right to “life” than a woman or a man that’s been wrongly convicted of a crime or GLBT people. We’re supposed to ignore the propagandists and just spout platitudes about “big ideals”? Gimme a friggin; break and buy a clue, dude! We tried Air America. It bored every one. Eliot Spitzer got sent to out media land for having heady conversations. What planet is this?
That is all.
Norwegian Terrorist: Extremist Christian and Right Winger
Posted: July 23, 2011 Filed under: Republican presidential politics, right wing hate grouups | Tags: Anders Behring Breivik, domestic terrorism, Norweigian Domestic Terrorism, Pam Geller, Right Wing Hate Groups, Right Wing Hate Trash 45 CommentsYou’re probably reading right now that around 90+ teenagers were gunned down in Norway simply for attending a labor party
summer camp. If you made the rounds on some blogs yesterday as well as some main stream media sites, you’d have read some of the most blatantly hateful comments on Muslims that you could ever imagine. The immediate assumption was this was an attack by Islamic extremists. Frankly, many places read like it was an attack by a random Muslim.
Turns out that the Norwegian Terrorist is a fundamentalist Christian who admires infamous hate mongers and enemies of our liberties as spelled out in the US constitution Pam Geller of Atlas Shrugs and Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch. I’ve read some of Breivik’s prolific internet writings now. He praises Lou Dobbs and criticizes CNN for telling him to tone down his rants dealing with Muslims. He also likes to call every one Marxists at the drop of the hat; especially the press and academics. Additionally, he thinks Christians need to go back to the basics and stop helping poor Palestinians. Sound like any one you may know?
What I’d like to know is if we’re going to put those folks into indefinite detention now and subject them to enhanced interrogation by the CIA to determine the extent to which they were complicit (or not) in this terrorist attack? Perhaps Rick Perry and his friends should be sent to Guantanamo so we all can feel safe. I’m just waiting for New York Congressman Peter King to hold hearings on the radicalization of Nordic Americans. Perhaps some people should start protesting the building of anything related to Freemasons especially near shops that sell herring. Is that something Herman Cain is willing to take up? Oh, wait, he’s probably one of them. Off to Guantanamo for him and Michelle Bachmann. These are just the application of the same prescriptions these people were applying to the wrong “goatfuckers” yesterday when the assumption was that it was an attack by an Islamic extremist rather than a Christian one.
Many bloggers and reporters without preconceived hatreds have been busy trying to find out the political leanings of mass murderer and domestic terrorist Anders Behring Breivik before the Freemasons and other interested parties–like Pam Geller–can scrub their sites. Here is a taste via the LGF link above to Doug Saunders whose Norwegian friend spent some time collecting and translating Breivik’s internet spew and has placed documents here. They read like a manifesto against “multiculturalism”, Marxist professors and media, and Muslims found all around this country in Talk Radio, Republican Presidential Speeches, and right wing blog sites. Try this Breivik confession on for size.
I myself am a Protestant and baptized / confirmed to me by my own free will when I was 15. But today’s Protestant church is a joke. Priests in jeans who march for Palestine and churches that look like the minimalist shopping centers. I am a supporter of an indirect collective conversion of the Protestant church back to the Catholic. In the meantime, I vote for the most conservative candidates in church elections.The only thing that can save the Protestant church is to go back to basics.
This is one rant that I found particularly recognizable from the American Right Wing and the extreme Christian right.
The problem is that it often does not help about 80% of Muslims are “moderates”, ie they ignore the Quran. “It takes very few people to overthrow a plane.
“What percentage is the Taliban of Pakistan’s population? 1%, 3%, 5%? And how much chaosis there today?In every society where Islam exists there will be a certain percentage of the Muslims who actually follow the traditional interpretations of the Koran.And then we have the relationship between conservative Muslims and so-called “moderateMuslims”.
There is moderate Nazis, too, that does not support fumigation of rooms and Jews. But they’restill Nazis and will only sit and watch as the conservatives Nazis strike (if it ever happens). If we accept the moderate Nazis as long as they distance themselves from the fumigation of rooms and Jews?
Now it unfortunately already cut himself with Marxists who have already infiltrated-culture,media and educational organizations. These individuals will be tolerated and will even work as professors and lecturers at colleges/universities and are thus able to spread their propaganda.For me it is very hypocritical to treat Muslims, Nazis and Marxists differ.They are alls upporters of hate-ideologies.
Not all Muslims, Nazis and Marxists are conservative, most are moderate. But does it matter? A moderate Nazi might, after having experienced fraud, choose to be conservative. A moderate Muslim can, after being refused to enter a club, be conservative,etc.It is obvious that the moderate supporters of hate-ideologies, at a later date may choose conservatism.
Islam (ism) has historically led to 300 million deaths
Communism has historically led to 100 million deaths
Nazism has historically led to 6-20 million deaths. ALL hate ideologies should be treated equally
Here’s an insightful comment gleaned by Sergey Romanov at the LGF link above showing that readers in the US that hang out at places like Pam Geller’s sight or Jihad Watch really agree with the Norwegian Terrorist. This shows we undoubtedly have that problem brewing here.
One of them writes (sorry, won’t link; h/t: oslogin):
There is very little that he said that I would disagree with. It is clear that he is a Counterjihadist and visits the same sites that most of us do, Gates of Vienna, Jihadwatch, Atlas Shrugs, etc. He also follows political developments in Britain and reads the Telegraph and Daily Mail. The revelation of the Labour government’s conspiracy to flood the country with immigrants to “rub the right’s nose in diversity” was of great interest to him. I’m sure the bien-pensants in the British left will now want to reflect soberly on the folly of pushing people too far.What emerges very clearly from the comments is that he harbours resentment against the mainstream media for pushing a culturally Marxist agenda and covering up Muslim wrong-doing and the negative effects of mass immigration and multiculturalism in Europe generally. This applies especially in Norway, where he felt that the politically correct agenda was completely unchallenged by the mainstream press. This may explain the attack on the VG newspaper’s offices. In some of the comments, he discussed setting up a Norwegian media organisation with a culturally conservative focus.
The Guardian has gleaned through these documents and interviewed childhood friends of Anders Behring Breivik. Here is their latest profile.
A friend told the Norwegian newspaper VG that Breivik had been from the far right politically since at least his late twenties, when he began posting a series of controversial opinions on Facebook and the Norwegian site Document.no, which is critical of Islam.
What has emerged so far paints a disturbing picture: a Christian fundamentalist with a deep hatred of multiculturalism, of the left and of Muslims, who had written disparagingly of prominent Norwegian politicians.
Raised in Oslo, he is reported to have attended the same Smestad primary school as Norway’s crown prince, later attending schools in Oslo’s Gaustad and the Handelsgymnasium. Writing later about his teenage years, he would describe racial tension between Norwegians and young immigrants.
Another significant event was being baptised into the Protestant church of “his own free will” at the age of 15. More recently, however, he had expressed his disgust at his own church. “Today’s Protestant church is a joke,” he wrote in an online post in 2009. “Priests in jeans who march for Palestine and churches that look like minimalist shopping centres. I am a supporter of an indirect collective conversion of the Protestant church back to the Catholic.”
He was a fan of violent video games and former neighbours said he had sometimes been seen in “military-style” clothing. In the pictures that have so far emerged, Breivik appears well dressed, slender and clean shaven, a picture of the young entrepreneur he wanted to be. His businesses, however, were not much of a success, each one being dissolved after a short while after making a loss, until he established his farm business in 2009 and moved out of Oslo.
The purpose of his businesses, as Breivik admitted in one posting, was in any case to support his political activities.
But the man who listed Kafka and George Orwell’s 1984 as his favourite books on Facebook made little secret to friends and others who frequented Christian fundamentalist and far-right websites of his racist views. A member of an Oslo Masonic lodge, reportedly a body builder and a hunter with two registered weapons – a Glock pistol and an automatic rifle – it has been Breivik’s online profile that has, so far supplied the most public information.
He was a former “youth member” of his country’s conservative Progress party between 1999 and 2004, a party he criticised in one posting for embracing “multiculturalism” and “political correctness” rather than taking an “idealistic stand”.
My question to you is how many “mainstream” Republican politicians, right wing talk shows, and posters on sites that you may frequent say the same kind of stuff? I went yesterday to post a simple cat story on a friendly site and found similar hate mongering that could have come straight from this terrorist’s postings. How many neighbors do you know that hold similar views and have no problems venting them? Hopefully, this should scare some people into realizing the extent to which all hatred, anger, and extremism turns many people into the worst examples of humankind. My prayer is that we don’t see copy cats here. I doubt it will change Pam Geller at all–here’s a nasty link to prove that–but I’m looking forward to watching her dance her way to a rationalization with the rest of her ilk. Then there’s Herman Cain. I also imagine he’s gotta have a doozy of an explanation up his blue serge sleeve for this Christian Cultural Conservative.
Oh, and just in case you have any doubt that he’s part of the Christian Cultural Conservative Movement, read this! We’re considered cultural Marxists or “Kulturmarxistene” so let’s join hands and sing the Internationale.
Kulturmarxistene managed to bargain crucial popular platforms that secured them victory:Sexual Liberation (weakening of the church / morals / patriarchy / nuclear family / birth rates)Feminism – positive and negative effects (weakening of the church / patriarchy / nuclearfamily / birth rates)Rights of workers – positive aspects- Drug / alcohol / party of liberation (weakening of the nuclear family / moral / birth rates)Multi-Cultural – sold in as the introduction of exciting offers / food / experiences (negativeaspects: mass immigration, Islam, ghettofication-> enklavisering, crime-murder / rape /robbery / violence, weakening of the identity / culture / unit / nation etc.. )Too much of these elements (with a few exceptions) will help to draw us towards a Marxist utopia (chaos). The only pragmatic we can do is work on cultural conservative consolidation in the next10/20/30/40 year so that we can avail ourselves of the window that will surely open up (FjordMan scenario.)…98% of all Norwegian journalists are now cultural Marxists / multiculturalists / politically correct (or sympathize).The problem is that the fundamental institutions in Norway as for example, Volda University College (School of Journalism) and University of Oslo has been infiltrated already several decades ago (and most other schools for that matter). These are today indoktrineringsleire forfuture generations of the cultural Marxists / multiculturalists / politically correct.
This was obviously not last year. The cultural Marxists have had the opportunity (when the APnever punished / imprisoned them) to infiltrate our institutions since 1945. In 1968, the first”litter” indoctrinated with Marxists are ready to implement their doctrines. The results we seetoday.I have no idea how we are to reverse this. It seems as if Islam can actually solve this problem for us in the course of 30-70 years, when the cultural Marxists will soon lose control over these forces.I’ve always wondered, there was no cultural conservative intellectual and / or grass roots options in 1968? One can see forever the cultural Marxists demonstrating in the streets of the images in1968-1972, but where was the cultural-conservative forces?
Again, sound like any Republican Presidential Candidates, Radio Talk Show hosts, and bloggers you know?







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