Dumbass Quote of the Day

“I do agree that there are other groups that pose a terroristic threat to this country... I would say that the threat from radicalized Muslims is a unique and greater threat. It is the greatest threat... [Islam] comes from a hate-filled holy book, the Quran, which is taken very literally by its people.”

~Bill Maher on Real Time while speaking to Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, a Muslim

I was shocked and disappointed, waiting for the punchline, when Bill said this especially after starting the interview bringing the question posed by Glenn Beck when he interviewed Ellison, "Sir, tell me why I should think you're not with the enemy." He goes on to quote an author who disparages the Quran, but doesn't bother to go to the source itself? Or to at least follow up with a Quran scholar? I don't understand how he can criticize Rep. Peter King and Glenn Beck for their views in one breath and in the next, agree with the generalized nonsensical right wing meme that Islam is a radical religion that wants to destroy the United States.

If Maher truly believes that the Quran is taken literally by it's followers, then he must think Beck was on to something.

Fuck You, Brian Kilmeade

Kilmeade's non-apology apology for calling all Muslims terrorists:

"I misspoke. I don't believe all terrorists are Muslims. I'm sorry about that, if I offended or hurt anybody's feelings. But that's it."

But if I didn't offend anyone, then nevermind.

I'll never understand how these brainiacs get national shows.

New Poll: Majority of Americans Are Idiots - UPDATED

18 percent of Americans say that President Obama is a Muslim, an increase of seven points since Pew Research last asked the same question in March 2009. 40% aren't sure. Only 34% know he is Christian. So 58% of Americans are basically morons.  ... Sounds about right.

Immediately I'm hearing pundits blaming the White House for its lack of message on the issue. Seriously? Are we expecting the White House to put out a statement saying that presently, President Obama is still a Christian and we'll be updated weekly as to his religious status? It's too bad they didn't have a Bush Denomination of the Week update.  But hey, he was a white guy so he couldn't have been a Muslim, right?

UPDATE (8:20pm): I truly don't know what to say. I think I'm living in BizarroWorld.

Jen Psaki, White House deputy communications director:  

President Obama is a committed Christian, and his faith is an important part of his daily life. He prays every day, he seeks a small circle of Christian pastors to give him spiritual advice and counseling, he even receives a daily devotional that he uses each morning. The President's Christian faith is a part of who he is, but not a part of what the public or the media is focused on everyday.

The poll's findings are not surprising given the scope of the issues we are focused on-a recovering economy, bringing troops home from Iraq, putting healthcare and financial reform implementation in place. The President's strong Christian faith is what guides him through these challenges but he doesn't wear it on his sleeve.

I guess we really will see a weekly faith status update. And I can only shake my head in embarrassment.

(H/T Bob Cesca)

The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad, Fear Mongering, Profiling, Flight 297 Viral E-Mail

I received a forwarded e-mail (the worst kind) today from a friend's mother who usually sends me these kinds of e-mails in order to debunk them. Being as she's a reasonably liberal older person in a conservative town, she's more often than not a target for such fear mongering, smear e-mails. This one was a great read, complete with heroic feats and amazing courage. It's almost a shame it wasn't true.

It seems that a man named Theodore Petruna took it upon himself to tell the real tale of the reason Air Tran Flight 297 from Atlanta to Houston was delayed on November 17th, 2009; the full story that the media wouldn't tell (that "media" being Fox News).  And the proof is in the brown-skin hating pudding because Mr. Petruna says he was on the flight.

The real reason the flight was delayed? Muslim terrorists on a dry run!

►Continue reading The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad, Fear Mongering, Profiling, Flight 297 Viral E-Mail◄

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?

Douchebag of the Week: Frank Gaffney

I often wonder if MSNBC is supposed to be the Barack Obama network as wingnut conservatives claim, why they continue to give credence to douchebags like Frank Gaffney. Why is he a semi-regular on Hardball? What does he do other than malign, misinform and mislead in the guise of honest debate?

Here's part of Gaffney's latest column (and by "column," I mean the toilet paper he used that morning and handed in to his editors, as is most of his body of work, and by "work" I mean morning dumps, post coffee):

"...After his five months in office, and most especially after his just-concluded visit to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, however, a stunning conclusion seems increasingly plausible: The man now happy to have his Islamic-rooted middle name featured prominently has engaged in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich.

What little we know about Mr. Obama's youth certainly suggests that he not only had a Kenyan father who was Muslim, but spent his early, formative years as one in Indonesia. As the president likes to say, "much has been made" -- in this case by him and his campaign handlers -- of the fact that he became a Christian as an adult in Chicago, under the now-notorious Pastor Jeremiah A. Wright.

With Mr. Obama's unbelievably ballyhooed address in Cairo Thursday to what he calls "the Muslim world" (hereafter known as "the Speech"), there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself."

The trifecta! An Hitler comparison, a Rev. Wright reference and the tried and true accusation that he is a Muslim. He continues the Manchurian Candidate inference. The Proof? Obama quoted the Koran four times! He "established first hand knowledge of Islam." He named Jesus in conjuction with Moses and Muhammed and said "peace be upon them" which is only used as a Muslim blessing upon dead prophets.

"According to Islam, that is what all three were - dead prophets. Of course, for Christians, Jesus is the living and immortal Son of God."

There's the proof, I tell you! It doesn't occur to Gaffney that maybe President Obama prepares for his speeches unlike his predecessor. Gaffney can't fathom that President Obama is smart enough to understand that when speaking to a group of 2,500 Muslims and millions more on television while you're in the Middle East, perhaps a little respect for their religion and culture goes a long way. But I don't think respect for religion and culture other than his own is Gaffney's forte.

Gaffney also took offense at President Obama's fight against religious intolerance.

"Even more troubling were the commitments the president made in Cairo to promote Islam in America. For instance, he declared: 'I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.' "

That's troubling? What's really troubling is that Frank Gaffney is just one of the growing number of television face time sloths inciting fear and hatred based on lies that is causing eruptions like the ones in Pittsburgh, Wichita, Laughlin, NV and Washington DC. And he doesn't even know it. Or maybe he does know, but he doesn't care.

Frank Gaffney: Douchebag of the Week.

Values Voters

Guest posted by Armadillo Joe

Once, during my senior year in high school, a girl accused me -- in front of everybody -- of being a "satanic atheist." When I attempted to explain to her the stupidity of that statement, she started crying and yelling that I had been tempted by Satan to reject the god who loves me and his son who died on the cross for my sins and that made me a "satanic atheist."

That experience was not the only reason I left Texas and The South, but the fact that she was not only not that unusual in the braindead bigotry of her beliefs nor even their spittle-flecked passion, but is in fact pretty much considered mainstream illustrates the type of people many Texans and Southerners are in their core and why I had to leave for more wide-open minds.

Which brings me to this story (h/t Booman Tribune). In South East Texas, 16 miles outside of Jasper -- the internationally famous, racist shithole where James Byrd, Jr. was dragged to his death behind a pickup truck about ten years ago -- it seems a 35-year veteran of the Brookeland, Texas Independent School District had the temerity to express his un-reactionary views a little too much in class. He had the unmitigated gall to tell his students that he was a supporter of Barack Obama and that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh were lying about Mr. Obama being a Muslim. Soon enough, he was suspended following an argument in a school building hallway with an upset parent (yes, a parent came to the school to confront him about speaking ill of Fox News and the porcine drug-addicted sex-tourist -- during school hours). After a few weeks of on-again, off-again questioning that culminated in the ISD's superintendant asking him if he was a Christian, and to which he replied that it was none of the school district's business, he was ultimately dismissed him for a trumped-up charge of "inappropriate contact" with students. The best part is that he was replaced by the Baptist minister who leads the church where the majority of the Brookeland ISD's supervisors get their churchin'.

Which was purely a coincidence, I'm sure.

You can read the finer details of the whole sordid tale here, but only do so if you don't want to bash your forehead into your desktop.

Stories like this explain how George W. Bush was able to get the second election close enough to steal and the continued political careers of neanderthal nitwits like Pete Sessions and John Cornyn. However many good, awesome True Blue hippies and other assorted space cowboys one might find in Austin and the Texas Hill Country or even in certain isolated pockets of Dallas or Houston, by and large the State of Texas, especially the South East corner of it near the Louisiana border -- like the rest of Old Dixie it is so close to -- is still the racist, unevolved sewer it has been since the days of slavery.

And Barack Hussein Obama is their president.

So suck on that, haters.

Why Obama Lost In West Virginia

Maybe it has something to do with, oh, I don't know... WEST VIRGINIANS! Take a look at some of the MENSA members that have the privilege of voting.

People like Janice:




People like Mike Norman who sells "Obama in '08" T-shirts out of his bar with a picture of Curious George eating a banana:

"We're not living in the (19)40's," he said. "Look at him . . . the hairline, the ears -- he looks just like Curious George."


I guess we're all overreacting huh, Mike? Why would having a picture of a monkey on a t-shirt with the black candidate's name underneath be considered racist? I couldn't imagine.

Rick Blake, a spokesman for publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which owns Curious George, said Wednesday that the company didn't authorize the use of the character's image, but hasn't been in touch with anybody selling or manufacturing the shirts.

"We find it offensive and obviously utterly out of keeping with the value Curious George represents," Blake said. "We're monitoring the situation and weighing our options with respect to legal action."

Well Mike, I hope your motherfuckin' racist ass gets sued for everything you own, including the two teeth left in your head, you asshole.

West Viginia

It's a foregone conclusion that Hillary Clinton is going to win today's primary in West Virginia, especially with comments like this coming from its edumucated citizens:

“I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife’s an atheist.”

Yes, that comes from a lifelong "Democrat." 67-year-old retired coalminer Leonard Simpson would rather vote for McCain given the choice of the Straight Talker or the Muslim with the atheist wife (that would be Obama in his mind).

So I'm not expecting too much out of West Virginians, but I think the main issue is how the punditocracy is going to spin it. Are they going to say what we all know, that Hillary's win is nothing that we didn't expect but with superdelegates streaming toward Obama and the not so fuzzy math and the massive debt her campaign is carrying, she's still trying to climb a nearly impossible mountain for the nomination?

Or are we going to get yet another false horserace, with Hillary being the comeback kid and "why can't Obama close the deal?" inane banter to fill out the slated hours of "coverage" of a primary whose projected results will be known about two minutes after the polls close?

I'll take a quick look tonight but won't hold my breath for anything newsworthy.

Dealing With Stupidity In The General Election

I just came across an article in our local rag, The New York Daily News, entitled Ugly Truth Why HIllary Clinton Won't Quit:

...Many in the white, working-class crowd were simply not ready to back Barack Obama - for reasons that are disturbing.

"I'm kind of still up in the air between McCain and Hillary," said Jason Jenkins, 32, who cited information from a hoax e-mail as a reason to spurn Obama.

"I'll be honest with you. Barack scares the hell out of me,"he said. "He swore on the Koran."

Obama did manage to pull in many white voters, but still encountered similar sentiments from a man who refused to shake his hand at a diner in Greenwood, Ind.

"I can't stand him," the man said. "He's a Muslim. He's not even pro-American as far as I'm concerned."

And sadly, this is why shitheads like former New York City Mayor Ed Koch are calling Obama a loser in the general election and why Clinton still thinks she has a shot. It's the unspoken race issue. They hope that idiots will vote for Clinton not because they actually support her, but because they still think Obama is a Muslim, or they put too much emphasis on Rev. Wright, or they just won't vote for a nigger. Especially an uppity one who is smarter and richer than they are.

The Obama E-Mail Smear Campaign

I received this e-mail from a friend who knew it to be false but thought I'd like to take a look at it. He asked the person who sent it to him not to send stuff like this again. Good for him.

This e-mail has been around for at least a year. I remember getting it long ago, maybe before I started this blog and never really wrote about it, until now.

Here is the unedited e-mail I received, misspellings, capitalizations and all.

THIS DEFINITELY WARRANTS LOOKING INTO. THIS COUNTRY WASFOUNDED 'ONE NATION UNDER GOD'. ALMIGHTY GOD, NOT THE GOD OF THE KORAN.

We checked this out on 'snopes.com'. It is factual. Check for yourself.
********************************************************************************
Who is Barack Obama?Probable U. S. presidential candidate, Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a black MUSLIM from Nyangoma-Kogel, Kenya and Ann Dunham, a white ATHEIST from Wichita ,Kansas .

Obama's parents met at the University of Hawaii. When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced. His father returned to Kenya. Hismother then married Lolo Soetoro, a RADICAL Muslim from Indonesia . When Obama was 6 years old, the family relocated to Indonesia. Obama attended a MUSLIM school in Jakarta. He also spent two years in a Catholic school.

Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim. He is quick to point out that, 'He was once a Muslim, but that he also attended Catholic school.'And that he now is a member of Trinity United Church of Christ, "a black is proud based church " that through it's minister is associated with Louis Farakam's Nation Of Islam.

Obama's political handlers are attempting to make it appear that Obama's introduction to Islam came via his father, and that this influence was temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya soon after the divorce, and never again had any direct influence over his son's education.

Lolo Soetoro, the second husband of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham,introduced his stepson to Islam. Obama was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta.

Wahabism is the RADICAL teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world. Since it is politically expedient to be a CHRISTIAN when seeking major public office in the United States, Barack Hussein Obama has joined the Trinity United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background. ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into office he DID NOT use the Holy Bible, but instead the Koran (their equivalency to our Bible, but very different beliefs).

Let us all remain alert concerning Obama's expected presidential candidacy.The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the U.S. from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level - through the President of the United States, one of their own!!!!

Please forward to everyone you know. Would you want this man leading our country?...... NOT ME!!!

It's very interesting to me that whoever started this e-mail even linked Snopes.com at the top. So the first thing I did was click on the link and type "obama muslim" in the Snopes search window. Here's what I found: (click on the screen capture for full size)

How very sad that the idiots trying to perpetuate these smears won't even take the time to click on a link provided to them to disprove the lies in the very e-mail that tries to maintain the smears. But that's what these evil bastards count on: ignorance, laziness, fearmongering, racism and stupidity.

From the Snopes article: (click on the screen capture for full size)





So please, forward THIS post to everyone you know who is too lazy to look it up for themselves the next time you get trash in your inbox.

As Far As I Know

There's been a lot of criticism over Clinton's 60 Minutes interview and her answer on the "Obama-is-a-Muslim" rumor. She gave a perfectly good answer... except for the ending.

STEVE KROFT: You don't believe that Senator Obama's a Muslim?

HILLARY CLINTON: Of course not. I mean that's, you know, that, there is no basis for that. You know, I take him on the basis of what he says, and, you know, there isn't any reason to doubt that.

KROFT: You said you take Sen. Obama at his word that he's not a Muslim...

CLINTON: Right, right..

KROFT: …you don't believe that he's a Muslim.

CLINTON: No! No! Why would I? There's nothing to base that on. As far as I know.

When I first heard what she had said (I didn't watch the interview) I thought, "Oh, great! Is she looking for a job on the McCain campaign after Obama wins the nomination?" But after watching the interview, the comment reads much worse than the interview.

But it's a painstaking process to find a video other than on the CBS website to see the full Clinton comment. As Jake Tapper notes:

To be fair, Clinton went on to say that having "been the target of so many ridiculous rumors... I have a great deal of sympathy for anybody who gets, you know, smeared with the kind of rumors that go on all the time."

But Tapper also makes a valid point. What if the shoe was on the other foot?

Let's try just one of any number of ridiculous anti-Clinton smears.

HYPOTHETICAL STEVE KROFT: You don't believe that Senator Clinton killed Vince Foster?

HYPOTHETICAL BARACK OBAMA: Of course not. I mean that's, you know, that, there is no basis for that. You know, I take her on the basis of what she says, and, you know, there isn't any reason to doubt that.

HYPOTHETICAL KROFT: You said you take Sen. Clinton at her word that she didn't kill Vince Foster...

HYPOTHETICAL OBAMA: Right, right..

HYPOTHETICAL KROFT: …you don't believe that she killed Vince Foster.

HYPOTHETICAL OBAMA: No! No! Why would I? There's nothing to base that on. As far as I know.

Food for thought, isn't it? Yes, Clinton probably should have kept the "As far as I know" comment to herself. But these politicians are so scutinized by what they they say, it was probably an automatic thing for her, not wanting to get caught in a game of "gotcha" in so many other instances of reporters pressing a question.

Yes I'm making an excuse for her, I'm not a Hillary fan and I am an Obama supporter. The comment is much ado about nothing, although hypersensitive people won't take it as such. The one thing she should have said, as Obama touched on in his portion of the interview should have gone something like this:

"This is a prejudice attack that we shouldn't stand for as a nation. Barack Obama is not a Muslim. But would it make a difference if he was? Would you be asking me the same question if he were Jewish? Or Greek Orthodox? Or Hindu? This rumor is not only an insult to Barack, but an insult to all Muslims everywhere who are being stereotyped and perpetrated as terrorists just because their religion is the same as that of opportunistic extremists. Would we be targeting all Roman Catholics because of Timothy McVeigh?"

But she didn't say that.

As far as those intrepid "journalists" out there, why don't you ask John McCain if he'll reject and denounce religious extremist John Hagee's endorsement and if not, does that mean that McCain believes the Catholic Church is a "great whore" or if he believes "that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that" instead of having a barbeque with a man you're supposed to be reporting about objectively?

Naomi Klein: Islamophobia - Updated

Klein has a great article in the Nation Magazine regarding the Obama Muslim smear tactics and questions not the right of him to challenge the false allegations, but the silence by Obama and others in condemning anti-Muslim racism. If the attacks were smearing Obama for being, oh, let's say Jewish, would there be outrage? You bet your AIPAC ass there would be!

Hillary Clinton denied leaking the photo of Barack Obama wearing a turban, but her campaign manager says that even if she had, it would be no big deal. "Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely."

Sure she did... The obvious difference is this: when white politicians go ethnic, they just look funny. When a black presidential contender does it, he looks foreign. And when the ethnic apparel in question is vaguely reminiscent of the clothing worn by Iraqi and Afghan fighters (at least to many Fox viewers, who think any headdress other than a baseball cap is a declaration of war on America), the image is downright frightening.

The turban "scandal" is all part of what is being referred to as "the Muslim smear."...

...Occasionally, though not nearly enough, Obama says that Muslims are "deserving of respect and dignity." What he has never done is... denounce the attacks themselves as racist propaganda, in this case against Muslims.

...Obama has the power to be more than [a] victim. He can use the attacks to begin the very process of global repair that is the most seductive promise of his campaign. The next time he's asked about his alleged Muslimness, Obama can respond not just by clarifying the facts but by turning the tables. He can state clearly that while a liaison with a pharmaceutical lobbyist may be worthy of scandalized exposure, being a Muslim is not.

UPDATE: Good follow up by a Nation reader-

02/28/2008 @ 4:28pm

While Naomi Klein's point is well taken--being called Muslim should not be considered a slander--I think she is not giving enough credit to Obama, nor is she putting these false rumors in the proper context.

In terms of Obama's response, he has not just said that Muslims deserve respect, he has also--on a number of occasions--spoken out against the scapegoating of Muslims, along with the scapegoating of immigrants and gay people. While not an explicit repudiation of the notion that being called Muslim is a slander, it is pretty darn close.

And in terms of the context: the subtext of these rumors about Obama's religion is that he is a "Manchurian candidate" who supports Islamic extremism and terrorism. This is also the subtext of the stories about the Nation of Islam, Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground and Obama's supposedly "racist" church. The claim that he is Muslim is rarely made in isolation from these other claims, and therefore should not be considered in isolation from this broader--truly slanderous--context.

Amanda Armstrong
Chicago, IL