Douche Quote of the Day

Talk about your right wing lunacy!

Gawker:

Andrew Breitbart: [Holocaust Museum shooter] James von Brunn was a "multiculturalist just like the black studies and the lesbian studies majors on college campuses."

Breitbart is angry that anyone would call a neo-Nazi a "right-wing extremist."

Here's a sample:

"It's such a fucking slander on people like me. This guy's political philosophy is more akin to the drivel that you hear on a college campuses that delineates us by group and not by individuality....
It's deeply offensive that you would use this for political gain."

What a fucking jokester this douchebag is. But please go to Gawker and listen to the whole seething, angry voicemail. How dare someone call Von Brunn a right wing extremist! Apparently it's an insult to real right wing extremisits like Breitbart.

What Did Joe Scarborough Say About The Holocaust Museum Shooting?

From what I hear, not very much. I didn't watch the show today, but I understand that it was mentioned as a passing news item once. Maybe Scarborough didn't say much because of this (1:03 mark):



Laugh, clown. Laugh.

Adding... If I'm wrong about the Morning Joe coverage of the shooting, please let me know. Regardless, Scarborough is still a douchebag.

Racial Profiling

In yesterday's post, I mentioned Texas Congressman Lamar Smith's outrage over April's Department of Homeland Security report warning of right wing extremism and how he said it amounted to "political profiling," and that DHS is "using people's political views to assess an individual's susceptibility to terror recruitment."

Steve Benen turns the tables and asks, "What if they weren't white guys?" What if the shooting of Dr. Tiller and the Holocaust Museum shooting and the murder of three police officers in Pittsburgh and the Unitarian church shooting in Knoxville where two victims died were committed by... Muslims?

Imagine if James Von Brunn, Scott Roeder, Poplawski, and Adkisson were all Muslims.

What would the rhetoric be like? What kind of legislation might congressional Republicans offer? How many special reports about the "epidemic" of domestic Muslim violence would Sean Hannity host?

How willing would the public be to give up civil liberties to respond to the attacks? How loud would the laughter be from conservative leaders when liberals warned against racial profiling?

DHS Right Wing Extremist Report Coming To Fruition

When the Department of Homeland Security issued a report warning of possible violence from right wing extremists and extremist groups a few weeks ago, there was much outrage. Or fauxtrage as the case may be. For some strange reason, the Republican party took offense at the report.

Wingnuts like Michelle Malkin called the report "one of the most embarrassingly shoddy pieces of propaganda I’d ever read out of DHS", "piece of crap report" that serves as "a sweeping indictment of conservatives." Really, Michelle? A word search of the words, "conservative", "Conservatives" and "Republican" turns up no hits on the PDF of the report. An indictment of conservatives? Why would they equate themselves with extremist hate groups?

No matter to the Republicans/Conservatives who felt the vapors. This was a hit job on the GOP by the duplicitous Obama administration. The "Support the Troops - Buy a Car Magnet" groups were upset about the mention that returning Iraqi vets might be targeted for recruitment by these extremist groups in order to utilize their military talents. The immediate suggestion of course was that this insinuation vilified our soldiers. The bluster was so loud, that DHS Director Janet Napolitano felt the need to apologize to those who were "offended."

The kicker was that it was the Bush administration that ordered the assessments of both right wing and left wing extremist groups, but the reports weren't completed until after Obama took office. And I don't remember hearing any outrage of the left wing report which was released in January.

So here we stand a few weeks later, after the murder of Dr. George Tiller while in church by a pro-life "extremist" and today's shooting attack at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, by an 88-year old anti-Semitic, white supremacist with a previous record and you have to wonder, "What did DHS Director Napolitano apologize for?"

What will Michelle Malkin say now about that "shoddy piece of propaganda"? What will Texas Rep. Lamar Smith say now after categorizing the DHS report as "political* profiling" the pro-gun advocates, pro-life advocates and veterans? What will Joe Scarborough say now after accusing the DHS and Obama administration of targeting veterans instead of Al-Qaeda?

They'll say what they always say: a lone wolf. A nut who was acting alone. They won't see the big picture. They'll refuse to look back and see the rise in vitriol and violence since the election. And as is frequently becoming the case, they will be wrong.


UPDATE (6:45pm): It seems I had some kind of Spidey sense today.

Fox News Reporter: Scandalized DHS Report Needs Second Look

* Correction: My earlier post misquoted Smith as stating "racial" profiling and not "political" profiling.

DHS Report Nothing New

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean no one's out to get you. But in this case being a paranoid conservative means you should think everyone is out to get you. Even when no one is.

And thus the noise from conservatives is painfully loud at the Department of Homeland Security report entitled, "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment" because for conservatives, it's all about them.

This has become instant fodder for Republicans and conservatives as an attack on them. Michelle Malkin calls it an "Obama DHS hit job" even though it was the Bush administration that ordered the report before leaving office. Nevermind that there isn't one mention of "conservatives" or "Republicans" in the report. Nevermind that there was a DHS report on "Leftwing Extremists" released in January. This is just another excuse to cry foul.

There are mentions of "rightwing extremists, including militias and white supremacists" but for the life of me, I don't have the first clue as to why conservatives and Republicans would define themselves as "rightwingers" and take offense. Do they not believe that there are neo-Nazi hate groups or white supremacy groups like the KKK in existence? Why would they be so quick to assume that rightwing extremists = conservative?

Amazingly, Shepard Smith of Fox News blew their conspiracy theories out of the water.

...at the end of last year, prior to the inauguration, the Department of Homeland Security under the Bush administration was sounding the alarm about the potential for right-wing groups to act, specifically because of the economy, and also because America was going to have its first African-American president.

...we were able to obtain [a leftwing extremist] bulletin as well. It came out in January, and... didn't get the same attention. It looked specifically at groups like the Earth Liberation Front, or ELF, groups that in the opinion of Homeland Security, in the future will try and attack economic targets and specifically use cyber-attacks, because they see that is sympatico, or in concert with some of their other beliefs.

So there are two assessments. The one on the left, the one on the right is the one that's getting the attention because of the leak.

... I would point out that both of these assessments, Shep, were commissioned under the Bush administration. It takes some time to do them. They only came out after he left office.