Even the Right Hates the Right

Not sure why some clown in Tennessee would be coming after a Congressman from Virginia – but this seems a bit like the nuts attacking the fruit in a fruitcake…

Man arrested for threatening Cantor’s family

The FBI says a Tennessee man has been charged with threatening the family of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia.

Agents arrested 62-year-old Glendon Swift of Lenoir City on Wednesday.

He is accused of leaving two voicemail messages at Cantor’s office in suburban Richmond on the evening of Oct. 27. In the profanity-laced messages, the caller calls Cantor “Jew boy.” He also says he is going to destroy Cantor, rape his daughter and kill his wife.

Swift made a preliminary appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge C. Clifford Shirley Jr. in Knoxville on Thursday.

Cantor spokeswoman Laena Fallon said the Republican congressman had no comment on the threats.

The Black Women of Occupy Wall Street

Yes there are black folks in the Occupy Movement – including Occupy Wall Street, despite the disparagement by conservatives that the movement is made up of privileged white kids. This video alone has more black folks than the entire Glenn Beck Tea Bagger rally on the mall last year on MLK’s Birthday.

The Black Women of Occupy Wall Street, posted with vodpod

Another Tea Party Stalwart Convicted of Domestic Terrorism

These whack jobs are dangerous. This one went from Georgia to Tennessee to a Court House looking for an armed confrontation with police…

From this video in 2010, apparently there has been some concern by authorities about Huff for a while. That would put him even at the fringe of even a far right group like the Oathkeepers.  What Huff doesn’t say in the video is Huff told authorities he was going to take over the town, with the assistance of some militia groups.

The FBI interviewed a bank manager who said Huff told him on April 15 that Fitzpatrick had been falsely arrested, that Huff was in the Georgia militia, and that 8 or 9 other militia groups were headed to Madisonville on April 20 to “take over the city.” The bank manager said Huff told him he’d see Huff’s actions on the noon news.

FBI agents interviewed Huff at his home on April 19, and Huff said he would be traveling to Tennessee to help Fitzpatrick get the charges against him dropped. Huff told agents there would be no violence unless they were provoked into violence.

Still, he told agents he planned to travel with his Colt .45 handgun and AK-47 rifle. The FBI monitored Huff and observed him leaving his house around 6:15 am on April 20. The Tennessee Highway Patrol pulled him over for various traffic and registration violations.

The troopers said Huff volunteered that he planned to travel to Madisonville to take over the courthouse, to arrest the people on Fitzpatrick’s warrants–who he termed “domestic enemies of the United States engaged in treason”–and to turn those arrested over to state police to place in jail.

Darren Wesley Huff, Georgia Birther, Convicted Of Plot To Take Over Courthouse To Topple Obama

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Prosecutors described a frightening standoff at a Tennessee courthouse between law enforcement and an armed man who vowed to take it over in his quest to oust President Barack Obama. The man’s attorney said he was just a “loudmouth” expressing his political opinions.

The defense didn’t work for Darren Wesley Huff, who was convicted Tuesday on a federal firearms charge that could send him to prison for up to five years.

Huff, 41, was armed with a Colt .45 and an assault rifle on April 20, 2010, when he and about 15 others, some also armed, arrived in Madisonville, a small town about halfway between Knoxville and Chattanooga.

Civil War…Part Deux?

Glad someone else sees this…

Salvador Dali - "Premonition of Civil War"

Apocalyptic GOP Is Dragging Us Into a Civil War

Had a friend send me this article by former Republican staffer Mike Lofgren under the subject line, “Informative reading for tonight’s Republican showcase.” I’m probably late in seeing it, but Lofgren’s piece raises fascinating and terrifying questions about the future of our political system and the increasing possibility that we are headed toward something like a civil war, or a constitutional crisis.

Lofgren, in describing the reasons for his defection from the Republican party, describes a Republican camp that increasingly acts not like a traditional peacetime political organization, but more like an apocalyptic cult or one of the authoritarian movements from early 20th century European history.

In particular, the insane decision to turn the once-routine procedure of raising the debt ceiling (Lofgren notes it was done 87 times since WWII) into a political crisis revealed that the GOP party mainstream had sunk to the level of terrorism – holding our economic system hostage in exchange for political concessions. 

Duke Nukem of the Tea Bagger Set – New Video Game

This one should cause no end of conservative whining. An outfit called Stavingeyes Advergaming has come up with a “battle the zombies” game where the Zombies (gasp!) are Faux News commentators and Tea Baggers.

The Game, “Tea Party Zombies Must Die” is free, and I am sure will be on the “guilty pleasures” list of many progressives and moderates who have had it up to their eyes with the ever squalling right wing. I am sure this will get 24 x 7 coverage on Faux as conservatives complain that the game is encouraging violence against their ilk. The hole in that argument is that the last dozen or so times in the last 25 years any nutcase has actually tried to harm an elected official, news commentator, or public figure (remember the Anthrax Terrorist Attacks and Gabby Giffords) the targets have been real live  ”Liberals”, and the attackers have been folks steeped in the violent right wing mythology promoted by Faux and their right wingdizzie bretheren.

Seems Progressives, unlike their right wing counterparts – know the difference between political fantasy, and real life.

New ‘Tea Party Zombie’ game allows players to kill off conservative leaders, Fox News anchors

If tea party opponents are really aiming for political civility, the latest online video game from Brooklyn-based StarvingEyes Advergaming won’t do much to further their cause.

Although it isn’t exactly James Hoffa saying “Let’s take these son of a bitches out,” a new video game called “Tea Party Zombies Must Die” has surfaced on the Internet.

The objective of the game is to destroy zombies made in the likenesses of conservative figures including Bill O’Reilly, Brit Hume, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, the Koch brothers and Glenn Beck.

The game also offers players an opportunity to shoot up the headquarters of Fox News, and of the right-wing “Americans for Prosperity” organization.

Americans for Prosperity spokeswoman Jennifer Ridgely declined to comment on the game and StarvingEyes Advergaming did not immediately respond to The Daily Caller’s request for comment.

 

Black Tea Day on the Stock Market

In 1987 the stock market took it’s worst hit in over 50 years. That day has become to be known as “Black Monday”.

Well – with the 635 point hit the Stock Market took today, following a 500 pint hit last Thursday, I think we call this was Black Tea Monday – in honor of the folks responsible for it – the Tea Baggers in Congress.

If you don’t have a recall election scheduled in your district, and are represented by one of the Tea Baggers…

I suggest you start a petition, or a more immediate group effort with something like tar, feathers… and a rail.

Battered Dow Ends Down 635

The Dow Jones plummeted under 11,000 today, dropping 635 points as the United States’ downgraded credit rating punished the markets. The drubbing took the Dow down 5.55% to 10,810, reports MarketWatch. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 bled more, shedding 6.90% and 6.66% respectively.

“The initial reaction with most things problematic in the market is to sell and ask questions later,” one investment banker told the Wall Street Journal this morning. The turmoil sent investors scrambling to an ironic place for safety: US Treasuries, which saw big gains despite the downgrade. T-note yields hit their lowest level since January 2009. Gold also soared, closing at more than $1,713 an ounce.

 

Congressman Lewis and Voter ID Laws

This is why I have little respect for the Congressional Black Caucus. With 42 members in the US House, the CBC can pretty much do to Republicans what Republicans did to Democrats between 2008 and 2010…

Stop damn near everything in the House, unless they got Bill Riders or legislation voted on they care about.

Sooooo… WTF aren’t they being proactive about derailing Jim Crow Voter ID? Why don’t you pass a Bill that every state that enacts a Voter ID requirement must meet Federal Civil Rights review by the Justice Department before receiving any federal funds?

Close down Military Bases, and federal facilities in any state with Voter ID laws. Now those are pretty extreme – but I think you get my drift.

Fillibuster and shut down the next “Symbolic Vote” by the tea Baggers in Congress.

If I were head of the CBC, you wouldn’t be able to pass water in Congress without a bill doing something about black unemployment.

Seems to me these guys could be doing a lot more than just speechifying and playing the victim card.

VOTER ID SPARKS BLACK IRE

Washington – Black Congressman John Lewis of Atlanta is joining several other Democrats arguing that the rise of voter–identification laws across many states is a coordinated attempt by Republicans to suppress minority and elderly votes.

Lewis, a civil-rights activist in the 1960s said, “We must fight back. We must speak up and speak out. We must never, ever go back. We will not stand idly by while millions of Americans are denied their right to participate in the democratic process.”

Lewis spoke along with other Democrats and warned that the state laws must be rejected.

“These new policies are a clear attempt to prevent certain pre-determined segments of the population from exercising their right to vote,” said Rep. Marcia Fudge. “To be frank, Mr. Speaker, these efforts have an all-too familiar stench of the Jim Crow era.”

Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) said the voter-ID laws are a Republican response to President Obama’s election.

“Is this a serious voter problem? No,” he said. “Unfortunately, it is a cynical and malicious Republican attempt to suppress minority and elderly voters who turned out in historical numbers for the ’08 elections.”

Others said the laws are akin to a poll tax, something used more than 100 years ago in an effort to discourage minority voters. The lawmakers said the requirement of an official government identification is a cost that many cannot afford, and which interferes with their right to vote.

Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) argued the laws are an “organized effort to turn back the clocks back to the period prior to the 1965 voting rights act.”

Think it is time for another “Yellowback Donkey Award”!

Fostering Extremism and Hate

While the SPLC doesn’t regard the Tea Party Movement as a hate group – I think that is an exercise in semantics. Some pretty fine hair splitting, indeed.

In Arizona, “Hate Central” for the “movement”, Republican legislators have drafted an even more draconian gang-rape of the Constitution…

Number of U.S. hate groups on the rise, report says

The number of radical right groups in America — including hate groups, “Patriot” groups and nativist groups — increased in 2010 for the second year in a row, according to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The organization’s quarterly publication, Intelligence Report, said the growth was “driven by resentment over the changing racial demographics of the country, frustration over the government’s handling of the economy, and the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and other demonizing propaganda aimed at various minorities.”

The SPLC documented 1,002 hate groups operating in the United States in 2010, a 7.5% increase from the year before. It was the first time that more than 1,000 hate groups were recorded since the organization started tracking them in the 1980s.

But the biggest growth was in so-called “Patriot” groups, which the organization described as conspiracy-minded groups that see the federal government as their primary enemy. There were 300 new groups like this, an increase of more than 60% from the year before, the report said. A lot of the growth in the Patriot groups came from an increase in the number of militias recorded.

There was also a smaller increase in the number of anti-immigrant vigilante groups, SPLC reported.

“We were expecting to see the winds out of their sails because of the mainstreaming (of some of the radical right’s ideas), but that hasn’t been the case,” said Mark Potok, director of SPLC’s Intelligence Project.

He cited developments in the past year such as the passing in Arizona of a restrictive immigration law as an example of extremist ideas being folded into the mainstream.

Politicians affiliated with the Tea Party movement have also co-opted some of the extremist groups’ agenda, ranging from attacking birthright citizenship to requiring special permission for federal agents to carry out operations without the local sheriff’s consent.

But, Potok pointed out, there is a difference between the Tea Party movement and the Patriot movement described in the report.

The Tea Party is not considered an extremist or hate group, “but there are some strains of extremism” in it, he said.

We Know What to Do With Labor Unions and Illegals! (some current Arizona Border Vigilantes)

On the organization’s website, there is a new map that includes a list of all the hate groups and extremist organizations operating in each state. The rise of the Patriot groups is especially notable because this is the subset of radical right groups most associated with violence.

“The real large criminal plots have come more from Patriot groups than the hate groups,” Potok said.

As an example, he noted a man with a long history of anti-government activities who was arrested in January in a car filled with explosives outisde a mosque in Dearborn, Michigan.

There was also a case of a neo-Nazi who was arrested in January as he headed for the Arizona border with a dozen homemade grenades, and another case where police discovered a plot to bomb a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Spokane, Washington, he said.

The Tea Begins to Crumble in the US…

It has taken a while, but there has been a dramatic change of public opinion about the Tea Party, and it’s sugar daddies – not the least driven by folks experiencing exactly what having these folks in power means.

After successfully buying a movement, and election, and even judges, the Koch brothers juggernaut hit a brick wall. That brick wall is when average Americans actually had to face, and pay for the bigotry and insane policies of the Republican Party.

CPAC...Dancing With Morons and Bigots

The counter-revolution is underway.

Faux News and Tea Bagger favorite pundits are falling in terms of public opinion faster than rocks…

The G.O.P.’s Post-Tucson Traumatic Stress Disorder

…Glenn Beck’s ratings at Fox News continued their steady decline, falling to an all-time low last month. He has lost 39 percent of his viewers in a year and 48 percent of the prime 25-to-54 age demographic. His strenuous recent efforts to portray the Egyptian revolution as an apocalyptic leftist-jihadist conspiracy have inspired more laughs than adherents.

Sarah Palin’s tailspin is also pronounced. It can be seen in polls, certainly: the ABC News-Washington Post survey found that 30 percent of Americans approved of her response to the Tucson massacre and 46 percent did not. (Obama’s numbers in the same poll were 78 percent favorable, 12 percent negative.) But equally telling was the fate of a Palin speech scheduled for May at a so-called Patriots & Warriors Gala in Glendale, Colo.

Tickets to see Palin, announced at $185 on Jan. 16, eight days after Tucson, were slashed to half-price in early February. Then the speech was canceled altogether, with the organizers blaming “safety concerns resulting from an onslaught of negative feedback.” But when The Denver Post sought out the Glendale police chief, he reported there had been no threats or other causes for alarm. The real “negative feedback” may have been anemic ticket sales, particularly if they were to cover Palin’s standard $100,000 fee.

What may at long last be dawning on some Republican grandees is that a provocateur who puts her political adversaries in the cross hairs and then instructs her acolytes to “RELOAD” frightens most voters.

They Bought 5 Supreme Court Justices… Governor Scott Walker was a Bargain!

Corruption in the United States has reached epidemic proportions. Whether it is Republican Judges in Pennsylvania taking kickbacks to lock up kids in private prisons on minor offenses, or corrupt Supreme Court Judges like Scalia and Thomas taking money, and getting their marching orders from the Koch brothers…

Wisconsin Protesters in State Capital

 

Seems the Koch brothers buying spree didn’t end with judges and the usual Congressman and Senators…

They bought a Governor.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: Funded by the Koch Bros.

Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker, whose bill to kill collective bargaining rightsfor public-sector unions has caused an uproar among state employees, might not be where he is today without the Koch brothers. Charles and David Koch are conservative titans of industry who have infamously used their vast wealth toundermine President Obama and fight legislation they detest, such as the cap-and-trade climate bill, the health care reform act, and the economic stimulus package. For years, the billionaires have made extensive political donations to Republican candidates across the country and have provided millions of dollars to astroturf right-wing organizations. Koch Industries’ political action committee has doled out more than $2.6 million to candidates. And one prominent beneficiary of the Koch brothers’ largess is Scott Walker.

Tunisia, Cairo, Tehran, Benghazi, Beijing…Wisconsin

One brutal dictator or repressive government after another, in perhaps the largest series of mass demonstrations th world has ever seen – people are taking to the streets for political freedom, and economic rights…

In Tunisia and Cairo, the world was riveted as everyday citizens braved sometimes brutal violence by their repressive governments to suppress their will… And overthrew dictators.

The battles in other countries like Libya promise to be even more bloody, as hundreds are murdered by the Ghadaffi’s Secret Police and Army thugs. And China, prepares for perhaps another Tienanmen Square style repression suppressing the upstart “Jasmine Revolution”.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin – Americans start the fight to take their country back from the neo-fascists…

The revolution may not be televised… But it will be on YouTube.

Democrat Jim Moran – Racism Part of 2010 Election

Congressman Jim Moran (D) NoVa

Rep Jim Moran used to be my Congressman. He’s a good guy – but he is fooling himself here. While racism certainly played a key, if not pivotal part in the development and anger of the Tea Party, and is a key component of conservatism…

It wasn’t why Democrats lost the last election.

A fear of leadership is why the Democrats lost. With control of the legislative and Executive branches the Democrats wussed out, allowing Rethugs to control the agenda. Whether such was a failure of actual leadership (arguable) or a failure of perception – the result was the same…

Bogged down in Rethugly stalling, and an impossible goal of bipartisanship with the Devil…

Democrats failed to lead.

Democrat says racism played role in election losses

Democratic congressman Jim Moran said racism was one factor in his party’s losses in the 2010 midterm elections, invoking President Obama’s race, slavery and the Civil War in a TV interview.

Moran, a Virginia lawmaker, told Arab network Alhurra after Obama’s State of the Union Address earlier this week that “a lot of people in this country … don’t want to be governed by an African-American.”

He went on to say that Democrats essentially lost the majority in the U.S. House for “the same reason the Civil War happened in the United States…the Southern states, particularly the slaveholding states, didn’t want to see a president who was opposed to slavery.”‘

His comments were part of a larger interview, in which he discussed foreign policy, the economy and other issues. Moran has said that he believes concerns about jobs and the economy were the primary reasons Democrats took a drubbing at the polls.

In the biggest midterm election change since 1938, the GOP won 63 House seats — easily eclipsing the Republican Revolution of 1994 that put Newt Gingrich in the speaker’s chair.

Moran’s remarks were first reported by The Weekly Standardand picked up by other news outlets.

Anne Hughes, a spokeswoman for Moran, said the congressman “was expressing his frustration” about the nation’s struggle with racial equality. “Rather than ignore this issue or pretend it isn’t there, the congressman believes we are better off discussing it in order to overcome it,” she said in a statement.

Moran, first elected in 1990, has a history of making controversial remarks and is known for his combative personality. For example, he angered Jewish groups in 2007 by suggesting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee pushed the United States to go to war with Iraq. In the mid-1990s, Moran got into a shoving match with a Republican congressman.

 

On the History of Right Wing Hate Media

Interesting video on how the same folks who funded and promoted JFK’s assassination are funding today’s Tea Party…

This is today -

This is the face of Domestic terrorism. While your average Tea Party member isn’t guilty of anything…

The folks who pay for their movement, fund hate radio and hate TV, and fund this sort of over the top demonization in hopes of raising another Lee Harvey Oswald…

Are guilty of Terrorism.

Tea Baggers In North Carolina Re-segregate Schools

If you ever wondered what the Tea Party really is all about…

Republican school board in N.C. backed by tea party abolishes integration policy

RALEIGH, N.C. – The sprawling Wake County School District has long been a rarity. Some of its best, most diverse schools are in the poorest sections of this capital city. And its suburban schools, rather than being exclusive enclaves, include children whose parents cannot afford a house in the neighborhood.

But over the past year, a new majority-Republican school board backed by national tea party conservatives has set the district on a strikingly different course. Pledging to “say no to the social engineers!” it has abolished the policy behind one of the nation’s most celebrated integration efforts.

And as the board moves toward a system in which students attend neighborhood schools, some members are embracing the provocative idea that concentrating poor children, who are usually minorities, in a few schools could have merits – logic that critics are blasting as a 21st-century case for segregation.

The situation unfolding here in some ways represents a first foray of tea party conservatives into the business of shaping a public school system, and it has made Wake County the center of a fierce debate over the principle first enshrined in the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education: that diversity and quality education go hand in hand.

The new school board has won applause from parents who blame the old policy – which sought to avoid high-poverty, racially isolated schools – for an array of problems in the district and who say that promoting diversity is no longer a proper or necessary goal for public schools.

More on That Conservative Domestic Terrorism