outrageous

It's Not Just the "Occasional Nut" Getting Violent

jacob

Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) really doesn’t like to answer questions, and is more than happy to let his thugs beat citizens asking about tax policy:

On Friday, two Feder staffers approached Congressman Wolf in a public location to ask him some questions. Two different individuals who were accompanying Congressman Wolf (staffers? relatives? friends?) assaulted the Feder staffers, as you can see quite clearly in the video. The first Feder staffer was hit with a cane and then punched. The second staffer (as you will see on the video) was pinned to a wall and forcibly held there. All of this took place in the presence of Congressman Wolf, who stood by and did nothing to intervene.

Note: this is a “moderate” Republicon. He’s supposedly not in thrall to the batshit sane elements of the party. Yet he seems to enjoy the violence just as much.

This should be a career-ender. I hope Judy Feder takes that cocksucker down. You do not, in a civilized society, tacitly encourage your hangers-on to beat citizens in your presence. These fucking thugs need to understand that there are consequences for such behavior.

Virginia. Do the right thing.

(Tip o’ the shot glass to Mark A R Kleiman at Daily Kos)

It's Not Just the "Occasional Nut" Getting Violent
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Crazy Christian Ladies Can Run, but They Can't Hide

jacob3 Comments

Heh.

Never underestimate the power of the Woozle to expose to daylight what you’d rather hide. So much for trying to delete a shameful post. This will remain long after the cached page is gone.

Janine from Farmington, who used to be Raani from Ft. Worth, tried to password-protect her blog to hide it from the prying eyes of us sodomite-loving godless sorts, but funny thing about Google cache – it allows you to view the page in all its wretched glory. The latest offering is a rather spectacularly hateful guest post by Pastor Anderson, in which he manages to misinterpret Genesis to a remarkable degree:

2. How Do the Sodomites Recruit Others to their Lifestyle?

Every Sodomite in the Bible is a rapist or molester. The Bible tells three sickening stories about Sodomites and every one of the three stories involves someone being violated against their will.


Example #1

And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. – Genesis 9:20-24


The first Sodomite mentioned in the Bible is Ham. Ham took advantage of his own father Noah while he was drunk. He didn’t just see his father’s nakedness; the Bible says that Noah knew what his younger son had done unto him. The first example of homosexuality in the Bible involves a person being violated against his will.

A normal person (i.e., not a frothing fundie with a sick as fuck mind) reads the following sequence of events: Ham sees Noah drunk and naked, ran out and blabbed to his brothers, said brothers squeamishly backed into the tent and covered Daddy up without looking, and Noah got pissed because he found out Ham had ratted him out for being a naked drunken slob.

Pastor Anderson, however, somehow pictures a rape scene. I’d hate to see his Rorschach test results.

After much more picking apart the Bible for filthy bits in order to prove his fucktarded theories, the Pastor solemnly calls for intolerance:

It is time that preachers and Baptist people take a stand against the Sodomite freaks and turn off the television that tries to shove their perversion down our throat. God help a generation of Christians that does not think that homosexuality is “that bad.” We need a revival of old-fashioned righteous indignation and hatred for sin and perverts.

The next time someone tries to ban pornography while extolling the Bible and its virtues, at least I have a list of salacious verses to point them to.

This is the face of fundamentalist Christian love. These are the sorts of people extorting companies that support No on Prop 8. These are the types who cheer on abortion clinic bombers. This is Sarah Palin’s fan club.

And they want to run this country.

Expose them. Ridicule them. Drive them back to the fringe where they belong.

Crazy Christian Ladies Can Run, but They Can't Hide

Lies, Bigotry – and Extortion

jacob4 Comments

The religious right has gotten so drunk on their own supposed power that they feel comfortable resorting to blatant blackmail to get their way:

Apparently all’s fair when you’re trying to deny folks their rights.

The letter from Yes on 8 came by certified mail, demanding at least $10,000. Jim Abbot knows exactly why he’s being targeted – his business gave $10,000 to a group called Equality California, which supports No on Prop 9..

..The letter says if Jim doesn’t give an equal donation to Yes on 8, the name of his company will be published. It reads in part, “It is only fair for Proposition 8 supporters to know which companies and organizations oppose traditional marriage.

It’s fucking official.

The anti-gay frothers trying to force an anti-gay marriage amendment onto California’s constitution proudly own this thing. The .pdf of the extortion letter they sent is here. It’s on their letterhead, with their signatures. Some key paragraphs from the letter sent to Abbot & Associates:

We respectfully request that Abbot & Associates withdraw its support of Equity California. Make a donation of a like amount to ProtectMarriage.com which will help us correct this error and restore Traditional Marriage. A donation form is enclosed. We will be most grateful and will advertise on our website Abbot & Associates’ generous contribution.

Were you to elect not to donate comparably, it would be a clear indication that you are in opposition to traditional marriage. You would leave us no other reasonable assumption. The names of any companies and organizations that choose not to donate in like manner to ProtectMarriage.com but have given to Equality California will be published. It is only fair for Proposition 8 supporters to know which companies and organizations support traditional marriage.

We will contact you shortly to discuss your contribution sincerely hoping to receive your positive response.

That’s not only extortion. It’s language the Mafia would be proud of.

Who are the wanna-be Mafiosi?

Ron Prentice
Yes on Prop 8,
Campaign Chairman

Edward Dolejsi
Executive Director, California Catholic Conference

Mark A. Jansson
Executive Committee Member

Andrew Pugno
General Counsel

Only their leading lights. They’re not even using proxies.

Usually, when right-wing groups are caught in something so egregiously evil it could harm their cause, they try to back away. Not these fuckers. They’re proud of themselves:

But when asked about the letter to Equality California donors, Prentice confirmed they were authentic and said the ProtectMarriage.com campaign was asking businesses backing the other side “to reconsider taking a position on a moral issue in California.”

[snip]

“I think the IDing of, or outing of, any company is very secondary to the question of why especially a public corporation would choose to take a side knowing it would splinter it’s own clientele,” he said.

This says something utterly incredible about these ratfuckers. Not only do they think extortion is acceptable, they believe that so many people agree with their rabid fear of gay marriage that threatening to “out” a company that doesn’t agree with them will produce compliance with their agenda. As if companies haven’t gone round trumpeting their fair and equal treatment of gays. As if companies don’t take enormous pride in their diversity. These fucking morons are so locked in their rigid anti-gay worldview that they don’t realize they’re trying to rob these companies with a toy gun.

Let’s send them a message that blackmail won’t be tolerated. Let’s stand for equal rights for same-sex couples. If you’ve got a few spare bucks, try to get yourself on Prentice’s list of people to out. Donate here.

Lies, Bigotry – and Extortion

A Touch of Crass

jacob

These fuckheads have no shame:

Republican strategist Brad Blakeman, responding to a question about how John McCain could square his opposition to wasteful spending with the RNC shelling out over $150,000 on clothes and accessories for Sarah Palin, said that the real outrage is Barack Obama “taking a 767 campaign plane to go visit Grandma.” This is the same grandmother who raised Obama and who is very seriously ill.

This from the party of “family values.”

Using your campaign plane to rush to your dying grandmother’s side is in no way morally equivalent to breaking campaign finance law to tart up Caribou Barbie “because she needs clothes.” The fact that these fuckers thinks it’s worse tells you all you’ll ever need to know about the morality and values of the right wing.

If you feel moved to make a statement, Ratmach at Daily Kos has created an Act Blue page where you can make donations to Obama in his grandmother’s name. [4:19 am Pacific – Act Blue’s server has the blues. Ah, well, there’s always the campaign’s website.]

A Touch of Crass

How Republicons Pick a VP Candidate

jacob1 Comment

From the NY Times Magazine, via Digby, comes an inside look at the “thinking” involved when Republicons choose a vice president:

A friend had said to [McCain campaign manager Rick] Davis: “The way you pick a vice president is, you get a frame of Time magazine, and you put the pictures of the people in that frame. You look at who fits that frame best — that’s your V. P.”

This, my darlings, is the lavish care and attention Republicons pay to good government and doing right by America. This is how they put “country first.”

Go. Vote. Destroy.

How Republicons Pick a VP Candidate

Some More Occasional Nuts

jacob

The key to a successful “occasional nut” defense is to a) ensure that the nuts don’t show up with alarming frequency and b) aren’t Congressmen taking the podium at your rallies:

On Saturday, Republican North Carolina Reps. Patrick McHenry and Robin Hayes warmed up the crowd at a rally for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) by throwing red meat to the right-wing audience. McHenry called the event the “biggest crowd John McCain has gotten in North Carolina” and said that voters had a critical choice between McCain and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) this election. Someone in the audience yelled out, “It’s like black and white” to loud laughter. McHenry let the remark pass.

When it was his turn to speak, Hayes accused liberals of hating “real Americans”:

He [McHenry] yielded the microphone to Representative Robin Hayes, who prefaced his comments by saying it was important to “make sure we don’t say something stupid, make sure we don’t say something we don’t mean.” Republicans, he reminded the crowd, were kind people. Plus, he added, the liberal media had shown itself eager to distort such remarks. With the crowd duly chastened and put on best behavior, he accused Obama of “inciting class warfare” and said that “liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God.”

The jury has returned a verdict, Your Honor. “Occasional Nut” defense: Epic Fucking Fail.

Hayes’s attempt to “make sure we don’t say something stupid:” We’re going to need a phrase for “Epic Fucking Fail to the 10th power.”

At what point to we say that the vast majority of the Republicon party has gone beyond screwing pooches and jumping sharks and disqualify them from holding public office ever again?

Some More Occasional Nuts

Push Poll Sez "Obama's a Muslim!!1!11!!!"

jacob1 Comment

I’ve been watching the right’s campaign of dirty, disgusting tricks play out with some fascination. We’ve seen the voter suppression, the Swift Boat-esque ads, the filthy lying robocalls, the endless ad hominem attacks, the fearmongering, playing to prejudice, and just about everything else. But what was missing from this campaign cycle was a really vicious push poll.

Our wait is over.

Today on Daily Kos, ycompanys reports receiving a push poll with such subtle questions as these:

  • Did you know about Barack Obama’s affiliations to Fannie Mae and Fannie Mac and that most of his contributors are Washington lobbyists representing the corrupt firms that caused the financial crisis?
  • Did you know about Barack Obama’s affiliation to terrorist Bill Ayers and to the fraudulent voter registration organizationAcorn?
  • Did you know that Obama is a muslim?

All of which are followed up by, “Does this make you less likely to vote for Barack Obama?” The poll almost seems desperate by the third time ycompanys answers “No.”

Well, my darlings, I grew interested. How far had this spread? Who was doing the dirty deed? Who paid for the dirty deed? I consulted my dear friend Google, and have discovered a few rather intriguing answers.

Whocalled.us has a litany of complaints about a push poll from the number 703-263-2155 that so rudely interrupted ycompanys’s day. A clear pattern emerges:

“Appears to be a push poll for McCain. Very slanted questions.”

“Identified themselves as Americans in Contact PAC. At least I think. It was pretty hard to hear. Definitely a push poll for McCain.“

“703-263-2155 is a robo push-poll designed to trash Obama. I live in NH.”

“Misleading (Push) Poll from Americans in Contact PAC in Herndon, Virginia. Occurred today (10/18/08) at 1:20 PM at my home in Johns Island, SC”

And so on and on. So this much is clear: This rat bastard of a push poll is being conducted by an outfit called Americans in Contact PAC, and it’s covering several states. Googling “Americans in Contact PAC” didn’t net me their website, but it did direct me to another lucky recipient, who had found and linked them. I trotted on over to their site for a look-see.

My, wasn’t I not surprised to discover they’re the wingnuttiest of wingnutty far right PACs:

The vision of Americans in Contact PAC (AICPAC) is to activate, educate, mobilize, as well as turnout to vote, those it has identified to support an “One Nation Under God,” that will “hold certain truths to be self-evident and support the fact that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” (Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776)

Yup. Conflating a phrase added in the 1950s because of McCarthy-era paranoia over the Red menace with the Declaration, and throwing a typo in there to boot. Textbook.

Their website consists of one (1) page containing one (1) announcement:

Americans in Contact PAC Launches Nationwide Voter Identification Survey

Washington, DC­ –Today the Americans in Contact Political Action Committee (AIC-PAC) launched nationwide voter identification survey calls which will seek to identify conservative voters and persuade them to vote. The mission of Americans in Contact PAC (AICPAC) is to identify social and fiscal conservatives throughout America and engage them at the grassroots level in the political process of elections and legislation at all levels of Government (local, county, state and federal).

Using artificial intelligence systems and voice-recognition software, AIC-PAC’s survey calls will ask voters to indicate for whom they intend to cast their vote for President or other races and about their positions on issues that motivate them to vote. Liberals throughout American are fighting to defeat John McCain and conservative candidates. Americans in Contact PAC seeks to respond by identifying and turning out to vote thousands of supporters of John McCain and Sarah Palin and of conservative candidates for other offices.

Between now and the November election Americans in Contact PAC will be identifying conservative voters, reminding them to vote and asking them to volunteer to help conservative candidates. Thereafter, it will continue to seek to mobilize conservatives broadly for candidates and issues of concern.

Note how they very carefully don’t mention, “And if the person we call turns out to be a horrible misguided Obama supporter, we’ll attempt to force a change in opinion by spreading thoroughly debunked right-wing smears.”

You might be wondering what their other issues of concern might be. My darlings, I have the answer to that as well (scroll to the comments):

Hi, I got a telephone survey from the right to life people. Came up as PUBSRV 2008 (which makes it sound like a public service thing) telephone #703-263-2155.

I strongly encourage all pro-choice voters to answer it and take part in the survey because their line of questioning in conjunction of what they immediately represent themselves with is completely unethical. Their questions are designed to convince you to vote prolife and believe that abortion is nothing more than “birth control” they state that they spent months working with legal and medical professionals designing the measure. They also attack a person’s religious convictions. It is a very unethical and skewed survey.

I’m sensing a pattern here….

A person left a recorded message to “protect California families”. It was caller encouraging a “yes” vote on proposition 8. (I don’t quite understand how allowing Gay couples to have a committed relationship hurts California families.

Yes
, indee
dy. Bet you a dollar that if I email them asking if they think creationism should be taught in schools, I’ll get a resounding yes.

The actual polling work itself is being done by an outfit called CC Advertising, which seems to have run polls for Huckabee and Clinton this last cycle, judging from the comments I’ve run across. I did a wee bit o’ sniffing around, but found no steak there, just sizzle.

Americans in Contact PAC seems like a rather new entity, but I’m not the most adept sleuth on the intertoobz. If any of you lot want to go play Sherlock Holmes and take up the story from here, send me your links and we’ll keep ourselves mightily entertained. Who knows? If we’re really lucky, they might fuck up and do something amusingly illegal.

Push Poll Sez "Obama's a Muslim!!1!11!!!"

Hey, Republicon Party: Grow the Fuck Up

jacob1 Comment

“The occasional nut,” eh?

Yesterday, the Sacramento County Republican party removed from their website images that likened Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) to Osama bin Laden. One of the images “encouraged people to ‘Waterboard Barack Obama’”:

waterboard2.jpg

The chairman of the Sacramento County Republican party, Craig MacGlashan, told the Sacramento Bee on Tuesday, “Some people find it offensive, others do not. I cannot comment on how people interpret things.”

There’s a rather large number of “occasional nuts” right there in the Republicon party leadership. This is a fucking chairman who can’t figure out that everyone aside from a xenophobic, mouth-breathing son of a bitch would find those images and sentiments highly offensive.

What the fuck is wrong with these people? How can a party be filled to the brim with this kind of disgusting, crude, bigoted hate and retain even a tiny shred of credibility in a civilized society? They’re dragging America down to the lowest common denominator of paranoid fuckwit. They think this sort of immature bullshit belongs on their official websites. And I for one am extremely pissed off that these fucking douchebags claim to be moral authorities.

The few good Republicans left standing out there need to clean these shitstains out of their party ASAP, before there’s nothing left worth saving.

Hey, Republicon Party: Grow the Fuck Up

Bush Lied, Abused Surveillance Powers. In Other News, the Sun Rose this Morning

jacob1 Comment

Anyone surprised by this has bounced their reality check:

In the most unsurprising revelation imaginable, two former Army Reserve Arab linguists for the National Security Agency have said that they routinely eavesdropped on — “and recorded and transcribed” — the private telephone calls of American citizens who had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism. The two former NSA employees, who came forward as part of journalist James Bamford’s forthcoming book on the NSA, intercepted calls as part of the so-called “Terrorist Surveillance Program,” whereby George Bush ordered the NSA in 2001 to eavesdrop on Americans’ calls in secret, without first obtaining judicial approval as required by the law (FISA). That illegal eavesdropping continued for at least six years — through 2007.

The two NSA whistleblowers, Adrienne Kinne and David Murfee Faulk, were interviewed by ABC News’ Brian Ross. Kinne said that “US military officers, American journalists and American aid workers were routinely intercepted and ‘collected on’ as they called their offices or homes in the United States.” He also said his co-workers “were ordered to transcribe these calls.” Faulk told Ross: ”when one of my co-workers went to a supervisor and said: ’but sir, there are personal calls,’ the supervisor said: ‘my orders were to transcribe everything’.” He said that the intercepted calls included highly personal and intimate conversations and even phone sex.

Because eavesdropping on pillow talk is ever so important to our vaunted national security.

This is what comes of those “trust us” arguments put forth by the government, especially Bush’s regime. Grant government power without meaningful constraints, and you get the NSA transcribing every sigh and naughty word of an officer’s call to his Stateside wife. And what do they do with this critical intelligence? What would you do if you were an NSA employee, ostensibly on the hunt for terrorists but forced to listen to nothing but bread-and-butter American conversations all day?

[Former Navy Arab linguist David Murfee] Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of “cuts” that were available on each operator’s computer.

“Hey, check this out,” Faulk says he would be told, “there’s good phone sex or there’s some pillow talk, pull up this call, it’s really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, ‘Wow, this was crazy’,” Faulk told ABC News. […]

That’s right. This is why we had to grant Bush sweeping powers to eavesdrop on Americans: so bored bureaucrats could waste their time passing around sweet nothings they had no business listening to in the first place.

But remember: if you’re not guilty of anything, you have no reason to fear Big Brother might be listening. Wasn’t that one of the assurances we got when they were cramming this program down America’s throat? Isn’t that always the lie?

But maybe, you think, it’s worth risking a few abuses in the interests of America’s safety. After all, a program thorough enough to catch journalists, humanitarian workers, and military brass in flagrante delicto has to be catching all the bad guys.

If that’s your thinking, you’d best think again:

These abuses aren’t merely grotesque invasions of privacy and civil liberties, though they obviously are that. Independently, surveillance abuses undermine genuine counter-terrorism efforts and national security interests in the extreme. If NSA agents are listening in on the calls of innocent Americans, including journalists and aid workers — including their intimate calls and even their “phone sex,” as Faulk said — then that means they’re not listening in on actual terrorist suspects. That’s why, as Rep. Rush Holt among many others have long argued, allowing oversight-less eavesdropping not only guarantees civil liberties abuses but also destroys genuine counter-terrorism efforts.

That’s right. While NSA agents are busy passing around titilating bits, they’re missing the actual terrorists plotting actual attacks. Do you feel safer now?

This is nothing but political, my darlings. There’s no other reason for targeting – yes, targeting – journalists, aid workers and military officers. How much would you like to bet that if a thorough investigation is done, we’ll discover that these transcripts were used to squelch stories that might have proved embarrassing to the government? I’ll bet you my damned life savings there are blackmail files lurking around in the bowels of the NSA, just waiting for that moment when pressure would have to be applied. What’s amusing to transcriptionists is gold to rulers in need of leverage. Johnny Journalist is about to break a story that would put the government in a bad light? Pull out his file. Ask him if he wants his wife to know what he’s been saying to his mistress.

You know they’d use it. No government is innocent, and this one won’t even hesitate an instant before they do the immoral thing. Decency seldom wins out over political expediency. This government has no clue what decency is.

Do you want to see what America has become?


Black, on this map, denotes countries that are “endemic surveillance societies.” We now share that distinction with places like Russia and China. You know, the very places we like to howl self-righteously at for their atrocious human rights and freedoms records.

We are all going to have to work hard to force our representatives to roll back the abuses of this regime. We let this go too far. It’s time to realize just how much freedom we’ve given uselessly away because we let a bunch of power-mad assclowns frighten us into submission. It’s time to get a grip on our fear and put the checks and balances back in place.

Otherwise, China may start to look like a bastion of freedom compared to the United States.

(Tip o’ the shot glass to Steve Benen, whose closing paragraph says it all: “Imagine that. Hand over excessive and largely unchecked surveillance powers to the Bush administration, and gross abuses become commonplace. Who could have guessed?” Who indeed.)

Bush Lied, Abused Surveillance Powers. In Other News, the Sun Rose this Morning

A Ready Supply of Brownshirts

jacob

Decent people are baffled by atrocities. They want to believe that regular folks don’t engage in horrible acts of mass violence. That attitude was pronounced in the years following the Holocaust: we in the West have a superiority complex, and we just couldn’t imagine that ordinary Europeans took enthusiastic part in Hitler’s Final Solution. His Brownshirts and the SS had to be filled with ranks of crazed, godless, evil fuckers, not average European citizens. Civilized people wouldn’t do such things.

It’s terrifying to realize that civilization is a thin veneer, that decency and humanity can so easily be stripped away by politicians playing on ordinary people’s fears and insecurities. All it takes is a set of leaders giving people permission to unleash their inner demons on easy scapegoats. They blame an indentifiable minority for the country’s ills: Jews, blacks, liberals. They whip up the hate. They work the crowd into a frenzy. And then, suddenly, ordinary people become a howling mob. Ordinary, civilized folks find themselves willing to do the unthinkable, because they’ve been given permission. It’s normal. It’s okay. It’s patriotic:

It’s no wonder that the slightest incitement from Sarah Palin or John McCain will turn one of their rallies into a lynch mob. Just talk to the folks who attend.

My camera was rolling for literally seconds before people happily said to me, on camera, that Barack Obama is a terrorist. If I hadn’t spent most of my time at the event inside, waiting for the candidates to show up, I could have gotten dozens of these people on tape.

[snip]

I’ve been doing blog video for a while, and presidential rallies a lot longer. And this is the most strange, ignorant, uninformed, angry, up-to-no-good, and gullible group of people I’ve ever seen at a political rally.

Ever.


These people have been told for years that their lives are threatened by scary brown Islamofascists. They’ve been told that their problems are caused by the minorities taking over America. Then, when a man with a Kenyan father and a white mother runs for office, they’re told he’s a closet Muslim with a militant black pastor who befriends terrorists – and the easy conclusion is jumped to. They’re terrified and primed to strike out. All they need is permission.

It seems McCain and Palin are more than willing to give them that permission for the sake of winning an election.

Of all the evil McCain’s responsible for, this is the worst.

A Ready Supply of Brownshirts