The Equilvalent of Hoods

I've always found it rather unsettling that the anonymity of the internet causes what would otherwise be normal discourse and debate into heated, hate-filled rhetoric that one would most likely never dare to say face to face for fear of physical assault.

With the ascent of our country's first African-American president after our sordid history of racism however, never has it struck me more that the progeny of the cowards who once wore hoods and robes are now trading them in for the 21st century version of their shameful furtiveness.

We've seen it bubbling up more and more. What may have started as a moron with a Curious George doll at a Palin campaign rally or the accusations of President Obama being a secret Muslim has escalated to deadly violence and frightening vitriol on conservative websites without the slightest hint of disgrace or remorse.

Case in point. Free Republic.

"A typical street whore." "A bunch of ghetto thugs." "Ghetto street trash." "Wonder when she will get her first abortion."

These are a small selection of some of the racially-charged comments posted to the conservative 'Free Republic' blog Thursday, aimed at U.S. President Barack Obama's 11-year-old daughter Malia after she was photographed wearing a t-shirt with a peace sign on the front.

The thread was accompanied by a photo of Michelle Obama speaking to Malia that featured the caption, "To entertain her daughter, Michelle Obama loves to make monkey sounds."

The cowardice to write such things while hiding behind a keyboard used as a hood and a username used as a robe is immeasurable. This isn't about disagreeing with the administration's policies. This isn't worrying about national security. This isn't about the threat of terrorism. This is hostility and disdain for an 11 year old girl purely based on the color of her skin. This is about the overt racism displayed at the President of the United States and his family.

And the bigotry doesn't stop at the faceless ones living under rocks. Now the ugly scars and boils filling in a Dorian Gray's portrait of the GOP are visible for all to see. Chip Saltsman, a candidate for chairman of the Republican National Committee, sent out CDs containing the song,"Barack the Magic Negro." South Carolina GOP activist Rusty DePass joked that an escaped gorilla from a local zoo was an "ancestor" of Michelle Obama.

Speaking of primates, let's not forget about the editorial cartoon depicting police officers shooting a monkey and lamenting that "they'll have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill." And most recently there's Audra Shay, a candidate to chair the Young Republicans National Federation, who "LOL"ed when a Facebook friend ranted that they had to "take this country back from all of these mad coons." Further review of her Facebook account and her poor attempts to scrub her page found more than a few racist and homophobic comments.

In October 2008, in the wake of news that an effigy of Sarah Palin was being hung outside an affluent Hollywood home as an offensive Halloween decoration, Shay replied, returning to the “LOL” style that she employed after the “coons” comment: “What no ‘Obama in a noose? Come on now, its just freedome [sic] of speech, no one in Atlanta would take that wrong! Lol.”

She picked up the thread again the next morning with a clarification and a new insight. “Apparently I could not spell last night. I am wondering if the guys with the Palin noose would care if we had a bunch of homosexuals in a noose.”

By the way, she won her election.

Apparently, this is the future of the Republican party, continuing to elect not only racists, but overt ones at that. While the anonymous "hooded" cowards of the Internet feel free to spew their intense hate of "the other" without fear of repercussion, their elected Grand Dragons and Imperial Wizards further marginalize the 21st Century Whigs.

GOP R.I.P.

posted by Armadillo Joe

I've figured out what really pisses me off about the whole Steve King slaves-aren't-significant-to-American-history episode.

He's from Iowa. Iowa fought for Union. Iowa was never a slave state. So why is he making common cause with a bunch of Dixie-fied Civil War re-enactors? I know why. It goes to my larger thesis about the Dixie-fication of America.

When Nixon used the Southern Strategy (actually hatched during the Goldwater campaign) to bring former Dixiecrats into the GOP fold, he welded the definition of "conservative" to that of the word "southern" and, forever after in American life, conservatism as it is popularly understood has a distinctly southern flavor. I offer the coast-to-coast appeal of Jeff Foxworthy's "redneck" jokes as just one piece of evidence.

And though what I'm sure they all thought was a sure bet for electoral success ad infinitum could have worked if calibrated properly and tended to with loving care, the Republican Party is now imploding into a minor regional party because the overlords, in order to garner allies in their generational class war, thought they could harness the inchoate fears in the lower classes of nigras, uppity wimmin-folk, queers and other assorted dirty fucking hippies. The monsters refused to be yoked to the narrow ambitions of the Ruling Class and have now overrun HQ. The result? An ever more tightly wound black-hole of hate, self-serving mythology and historical revisionism that pulls in anything in its gravitational field, including Steve King of Iowa, a state that fought for Union.

This is what "conservatism" and the GOP look like at the tail-end of the Southern Strategy. I have a whole new view of the overall arc of "The Movement" since WW2 because of Rick Pearlstein's "Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus." The fact that McCain went down in flames to a man unimaginable as president within the living memory of most Americans makes a neat historical bookend to the fact that Goldwater -- and, more specifically, the Goldwater campaign -- launched the modern Republican Party by inviting in the racist yokels, toothless goobers and paranoid rednecks to their party who had once been beyond the pale of polite society and then ruthlessly organized them into an orc army with the help of modern technology and mountains of private and corporate cash. Prior to Goldwater, conservatives were split regionally and culturally between the two political parties. Between Goldwater and Reagan, they united under the Republican "brand."

However, I don't believe the GOP will be able to pull out of its current death-spiral. GOP resurgences since Goldwater's implosion in '64 have happened because "The Movement" was still gathering steam: Nixon resigned and Ford was weak, but Reagan overran a clueless Jimmy Carter; a vacillating Bush41 lost in a three-way split, but the post-Reagan GOP caucus in Congress (and a Supreme Court with no less than four Reagan-appointed justices -- including O'Connor from Arizona and Chief Justice Rehnquist also from Arizona who had been on Goldwater's legal team) had redrawn the political map enough to get Bush43 in office.

But Reagan, Gingrich's Congress and the impeachment of a popular president for a blowjob were the apex of their power. I think they've been coasting on inertia ever since because they don't know what to do. Since Goldwater, the right (and eventually the whole of the GOP) had always defined itself in opposition to things. Once they were put fully in charge, they proved utterly clueless. Were it not for the adrenaline-boost of 9/11, they may have even imploded before Bush's second term. He may not have even had one.

The GOP and conservatism have fallen a long, long, long way -- farther even than they had stood in the late 1950's when some on the American right-wing were accusing Republican President Eisenhower of being a communist sympathizer, before Goldwater twisted the party into an ugly enough horde to actually place a diseased cur like Dick Nixon on their ticket. The last time the American right was laid this low was in the early days of FDR and the Great Depression. It took 30 years and the Senator from Arizona to galvanize them back into an effective movement, even if the whole edifice was built under false pretenses and group delusion.

This time, though, I don't see how they can get back up again. I really don't.

And that is a good thing.

Must Reads

Daniel Klaidman, Newsweek: Independent’s Day - Attorney General Eric Holder may probe Bush-era torture

Matt Taibbi: On The ‘Everyone Was Doing It’ Excuse

Rob Tornoe: Cartoonist Reveals Unedited Michael Jackson Strip

Bill Moyers & Michael Winship: Some Choice Words For "The Select Few"

Sam Stein: Emanuel's Public Plan With Triggers Trial Balloon "Blew Up": Dem Lawmaker

Bob Herbert: The Human Equation

David Michael Green: A Saw The News On Television Today, Oh Boy

Robert Reich: When Will The Recovery Begin? Never.

Armadillo Joe recommends...

Joe Conason: The losers who gave us Sarah Palin

President Obama's Weekly Address - July 11, 2009

Recovery and the Jobs of the Future

Nooners feels the shock of recognition

posted by Armadillo Joe

...and fires a parting shot as she just walks on by.

Sarah Palin's resignation gives Republicans a new opportunity to see her plain — to review the bidding, see her strengths, acknowledge her limits, and let go of her drama. It is an opportunity they should take.

[...]

In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. "I'm not wired that way," "I'm not a quitter," "I'm standing up for our values." I'm, I'm, I'm.

[...]

...she is... a seemingly very nice middle-class girl with ambition, appetite and no sense of personal limits.

Hitler's Reaction to Palin's Resignation

Another awesome video from Funny or Die!

Hitler Finds Out Sarah Palin Resigns - watch more funny videos

The Kucinich Bitchslap

Don't fuck with Dennis Kucinich.



And who is this little prick, Dr. David Gratzer? Hope he can get to a proctologist after that reaming.

(H/T GottaLaff)

House Rejects Obama Signing Statement

I'm glad that the House did this. I just wish they had some backbone and did the same with some of the more egregious Bush signing statements, namely ignoring a provision banning the torture of terror detainees.

The House rebuked President Obama for trying to ignore restrictions to international aid payments, voting overwhelmingly for an amendment forcing the administration to abide by its constraints.

House members approved an amendment by a 429-2 vote to have the Obama administration pressure the World Bank to strengthen labor and environmental standards and require a Treasury Department report on World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) activities. The amendment to a 2010 funding bill for the State Department and foreign operations was proposed by Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), but it received broad bipartisan support.

Minnesota GOP Sends Franken $96K

Is this a magic number or what? First Ensign's parent's send $96,000 in hush money to his mistress, and now this:

In the last chapter of a stinging loss to now-Sen. Al Franken, Minnesota's Republican Party has sent the Democrat almost $96,000 to cover lawsuit costs.

...Minnesota law required Republican Norm Coleman to reimburse Franken for some costs because the election lawsuit didn't change the outcome. The judgment excluded Franken's attorney fees.

Whew! I thought maybe Franken was secretly the Minnesota GOP's mistress... mister? Whatever.

Signing that check sure had to hurt. Heh.

Stupidity Knows No Bounds

On Wednesday, I awarded Rep. Steve King (R- Doucheland) my Douchebag of the Week honors, something I normally reserve for a Sunday afternoon. Soon thereafter, Brian Kilmeade made his wonderfully racist comment on Fox and Friends which Fraulein brought to our attention.

For a minute, I thought I may have been too hasty in not waiting until the end of the week to rip King. But never let it be said that King disappoints. It only took 24 hours to top himself.

"[O]f the 645,000 Africans that were brought here to be forcibly put into slavery in the United States, there were over 600,000 people that gave their lives in the Civil War to put an end to slavery. And I don't see the monument to that in the Congressional Visitor Center, and I think it's important that we have a balanced depiction of history."

Not only is King a racist douche, but he's a moronic one as well. "... there were over 600,000 people that gave their lives in the Civil War to put an end to slavery." Uh, Rep. King? Wasn't that the TOTAL amount of casualties for BOTH sides? If so, then, uh... who fought against those who wanted "to put an end to slavery"?

(H/T Bob Cesca)

Ensign's Mommy & Daddy "Gifted" Mistress $96K

Senator Ensign, it just gets more and more embarrassing for you, doesn't it?

Politico: Sen. John Ensign's parents shelled out big bucks to pay off their son's mistress, the latest twist in an unfolding scandal that has upended the political career of the one-time rising GOP star.

...On Thursday, Ensign's attorney said that the senator's parents gave Doug Hampton, Cynthia Hampton and their two children gifts worth $96,000 in the form of a check. The attorney, Paul Coggins, said that each gift was limited to $12,000 and "complied with tax rules governing gifts."

Seriously, John? Your mommy and daddy tried to pay off your mistress and her family? Sort of makes Governor Mark "Juan Peron" Sanford look like a stand up guy.

Runner-Up Douchebag of the Week: Brian Kilmeade

Posted by Fraulein

I doubt this guy is competent to make himself a bowl of cereal in the morning. And yet here he sits, "screeching," as Gawker notes, on "Fox and Friends." He's concerned that Americans have a tendency to "marry other species." What the fuck is Brian Kilmeade talking about, you ask? Has there been some epidemic of matrimonial unions between people and earthworms? Oh no. He's talking about interracial marriage.

Somebody put this douchebag out of our collective misery, please.

GOP Bizarro Wingnut World

Liveblogging the Palin resignation:

4:46 pm: Stop the ACLU has rounded up reaction from the right blogosphere. He culled the wrong opinion. They don't get it.

4:30 pm: My take? If Palin is anything like I think she is (know she is), Obama's treasonous presidency is responsible for this. She, like all patriotic Americans, is shocked by what is happening. Obama is destroying this country. She knows it. We all know it. We need a leader. She is answering our call.

She did not quit. She is going to get into the fight to save America. Watch what happens.

4:23 PM: FOX news cut her news conference. 7 days of Michael Jackson and they did not allow us to hear her remarks in full. First Iran, now this.

From what I saw - this is not a woman who is retiring. She is assuming the mantle. This was a campaign speech. She was amazing.

-Pamela Geller

Ballsy Greenpeace Protest

Greenpeace activists scaled Mt. Rushmore today to issue a challenge to President Obama. "Our brave climbers rappelled down the face of Mt. Rushmore today to issue a challenge to President Obama: If he wants to get his face on this monument, he needs to be a true leader on global warming, not a politician," said one Greenpeace member.

Texas Tech (still) sux

posted by Armadillo Joe

And Matt Yglesias agrees with me.

Oscar Mayer Dead at 95

Oscar G. Mayer, who transformed his family business into one of the the world's largest meat processors, died Monday. He was 95.

Remember this kid?

And here's the story behind the original Oscar Mayer wiener jingle.

Douchebag of the Week: Rep. Steve King

There are many things that expose Iowa Congressman Steve King's douchebaggery pretty much every time he opens his mouth. There's the time he called the Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucuses "separatist groups." Or when he went on a "Socialist" scare rant calling the Progressives in the House "socialists." Or when he claimed that Al-Qaeda would be "dancing in the streets" if Obama won the presidential election.

But this time, King really takes the cake.

That the United States Capitol, and specifically the Statue of Freedom that rests above it, was built by slave labor has long been a source of shame. The House sought to redress that grievance on Tuesday evening, however slightly, with a resolution acknowledging the role slaves played in the construction.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) isn't having it.

The resolution passed 399-1, with King voting against.

The purpose of the resolution, according to its text, is to direct "the Architect of the Capitol to place a marker in Emancipation Hall in the Capitol Visitor Center which acknowledges the role that slave labor played in the construction of the United States Capitol."

The lone Congressman who decided that even this slight acknowledgement wasn't good enough to garner his vote was our good Christian, Rep. Steve King, who not too long ago thought a resolution to recognize "the Christian faith as one of the great religions of the world" was worthy of Congressional votes. But a nod of recognition to the slaves who built our Capitol building? Not so much.

Iowa Rep. Steve King (R as in "Ridiculous"): Douchebag of the Week.

Cartoon of the Day

Froomkin Hired by HuffPo

According to Glenn Greenwald:

...[Dan] Froomkin to be [Huffington Post's] Washington Bureau Chief and regular columnist/blogger. Froomkin will oversee a staff of five reporters and an Assistant Editor, guide The Huffington Post's Washington reporting, and write at least two posts per week to be featured on its main page and Politics page. I learned last night of the hiring and spoke to both Arianna Huffington and Froomkin this morning.

...Froomkin was fired by The Washington Post a little more than two weeks ago after writing an online column for almost six years that was one of that newspaper's most popular.

The old media establishment keeps having heart palpitations every time another newspaper goes down failing to realize that boneheaded moves like these are causing their demise.

Rahm Got The Message

It's been extremely frustrating to hear non-definitive talk from White House officials when it comes to a strong public option for healthcare reform. Especially if it comes from the supposed arm-twister, Rahm Emanuel. Yesterday, Emanuel seemed to be a little mealy mouthed when discussing the possibility of a final healthcare plan without a public option. Now this was according to the Wall Street Journal, which is now owned by Rupert Murdoch. Enough said. But the doubts still lingered - enough for President Obama to make a statement from Russia (with love):

"I am pleased by the progress we're making on health care reform and still believe, as I've said before, that one of the best ways to bring down costs, provide more choices, and assure quality is a public option that will force the insurance companies to compete and keep them honest. I look forward to a final product that achieves these very important goals."

So what was with Rahm and the mixed signals? Why is the possibility of accepting a compromise like a trigger or a co-op even being thought about? I know that in the world of Obama being The Great Mediator, they can't just say flat out that the President will veto any bill that doesn't contain a strong public option. They at least have to act as if all options are on the table rather than piss people off and slow things down to a crawl. But still, be firm and consistent with your message.

Well it looks like Rahm got the message.

After initially indicating his support for a public plan “trigger,” White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel reassured House Democrats tonight that he strongly backs a public plan. Progressive Caucus Co-Chairwoman Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) said she told Emanuel that support for a “trigger” would cause health reform to lose Democratic votes:

“We have compromised enough, and we are not going to compromise on any kind of trigger game,” Woolsey said she told Emanuel. “People clapped all over the place. We mean it, and not just progressives.”

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) said Emanuel reassured him that he “doesn’t stand by that trigger.”

It's gotten to the point that the bill would lose more Democratic votes than gain Repubican ones if a public option is not part of the plan. This combined with Harry Reid's instructions to Max Baucus to drop the proposal of taxing health benefits and stop trying to garner GOP votes looks promising for the public option.