TIME’s lazy, unimaginative choice

TIME magazine’s having made Barack Obama its “Person of the Year” yet again (it first gave Obama that designation for 2008) reminds me of the ludicrously premature awarding of the Nobel Peace Price to President Hopey-Changey-Droney for 2009.

Not that TIME routinely is exactly creative or visionary in its naming of its annual “Person of the Year.” Winning a U.S. presidential election often if not usually is enough of an accomplishment/“accomplishment” for an individual to win the designation. Jimmy Carter won the designation in 1976 and Ronald Reagan did in 1980. Bill Clinton won it in 1992 and even George W. Bush won it in 2000 and in 2004 — and then, as I noted, Obama won it in 2008 and then again this year.

The Nobel Peace Prize selectors are a lot more creative — the only two U.S. presidents to win the prize during my lifetime (I was born in 1968) were Jimmy Carter in 2002 and, as I noted, Obama in 2009. (Well, Al Gore, who actually won the presidency in 2000, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, but he wasn’t coronated as president by the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court.)

I fail to see why, other than TIME’s lack of vision or creativity or imagination, Obama was named the magazine’s “Person of the Year” again this year.

I mean, TIME’s selection comes right as Obama apparently just handed over U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice’s scalp* to the KKK, headed by Grand Dragon John “Sore Loserman” McCain, so that the much more acceptable old white guy (John Kerry) can be made U.S. secretary of state instead, and as Obama apparently is poised to sell us out to the Repugnican Tea Party fascists on Social Security, and Goddess knows what other historic Democratic achievements the center-right DINO Obama will dismantle during his second term. (Surely Obama will be a progressive president in his second term, the Obamabots theorized. The gloves will be off! Yeah, right. I’m so glad that I voted for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein on November 6.)

TIME’s 2008 designation of Obama as its “Person of the Year” I can accept. He not only beat Billary Clinton in the protracted Democratic presidential primary season, which was a political feat, but his election as the nation’s first non-white president was at least a milestone if not technically a great accomplishment.

But TIME’s 2012 designation of Obama is just fucking lazy.

True, Obama, given his dismal first term, is damned fucking lucky to have been re-elected. He promised “hope” and “change” but delivered more of the same. Instead of pushing through a progressive agenda when both houses of Congress were in his party’s control in 2009 and 2010, he squandered his once-in-a-lifetime political capital by trying to sing “Kumbaya” with the Repugnican Tea Party traitors — and thus his party lost the House to the “tea party” traitors in 2010.

Obama won re-election last month only because the Repugnican Tea Party dipshits incredibly stupidly nominated one of the most unlikeable people on the planet as their presidential candidate for 2012.

Multi-millionaire Mormon Mittens Romney is so freakishly unrelatable that even many if not most Repugnican Tea Party traitors had to hold their noses while they cast their votes for him (better the despicable white guy than the black guy again), so of course Mittens lost the so-called “swing vote.”

Obama didn’t win re-election because he’s so great, but because his opponent was so unbelievably bad, replete with telling his Richie-Rich donors on hidden camera in May that he already had written off 47 percent of the American people as being lost causes.

Fuck, make David Corn of Mother Jones magazine, who broke the “47 percent” story in September, the “Person of the Year.” He did more to win Obama re-election than Obama did.

Even TIME magazine’s editor seems to credit changing U.S. demographics to Obama’s re-election more than to Obama himself. Reports Reuters:

[TIME magazine] has tapped U.S. President Barack Obama for its Person of the Year for the second time, citing his historic re-election last month as symbolic of the nation’s shifting demographics and the rise of younger, more diverse Americans.

In announcing its annual selection [today], the magazine called Obama the “Architect of the New America.”

“He’s basically the beneficiary and the author of a kind new America — a new demographic, a new cultural America that he is now the symbol of,” TIME editor Rick Stengel said of Obama, who was also selected for the honor in 2008 when he became the nation’s first black president. …

Obama is the beneficiary of demographic changes and the resultant national cultural changes, to be sure — as well as he was the beneficiary of what Howard Dean built in his failed 2004 Democratic presidential bid (indeed, in 2008 Obama rode Dean’s wave right on into the White House) – but how, exactly, is Obama the “author” or the “architect” of these changes?

Um, aren’t national demographic changes a lot bigger than just one individual?

Barack Obama could fart or sneeze and it widely would be called a great fucking accomplishment.

Only in a dying empire, it seems to me, could this be the case.

–

*If you thought that Obama actually was going to defend a person of color from the lynch mob to the death, don’t feel too badly. I also actually thought that maybe this time Obama wouldn’t throw a person of color who is under attack by the white supremacists under the bus, but, of course, just as he did with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Van Jones and Shirley Sherrod, he apparently tossed Susan Rice right under those big wheels.

Because he’s a man of character and courage, you see.

Let’s make him the “Person of the Year” every year!

Desperate wingnuts dust off Obama video to engage in race baiting

It’s always entertaining when the Repugnican Tea Party traitors — whose all-white-or-almost-all-white gatherings, including, of course, the Repugnican Tea Party National Conventions, resemble KKK rallies — accuse blacks of being racist.

In apparent response to Mittens Romney’s hidden-camera remark in May that he has written off 47 percent of Americans, the wingnuts have dragged out a 2007 video that “proves” that President Barack Obama is “racist.”

But there is no fucking comparison between the two videos.

Where to begin?

Then-U.S. Sen. Obama knew that he was being video-recorded in June 2007. Mittens had no fucking idea that he was being video-recorded just a few months ago. So this wasn’t Obama speaking to a cabal of his supporters in, to his knowledge, secret. That was the case, however, with Mittens. Context is everyfuckingthing.

Also, Mittens’ statements in May are a lot more recent, of course, and thus a lot more pertinent to the presidential campaign of today.

And really, we’re dredging up the Rev. Jeremiah Wright again?

Really?

This is all that the wingnuts have? A repeat of their pathetic 2008 presidential campaign? Then they’ve lost already. (Well, they have lost already, but just sayin’…)

I agree with most of what I’ve read about what the Rev. Jeremiah Wright reportedly has said publicly — most of his “controversial” statements strike me as “no-fucking-duh!” statements — and, far from having a problem with Wright, I have lambasted Obama for having thrown Wright under the bus, for having distanced himself from Wright because of the white supremacists and their anti-black race-baiting.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, to the white supremacists who comprise the Repugnican Tea Party, represents the bogeyman that is the Angry! Black! Man!, you see, and the KKK’ers gather ’round enthusiastically to lynch (politically speaking [these days]) this bogeyman.

It’s difficult to label Barack Obama an Angry! Black! Man!, since the cool, calm and collected Obama either just never has been an Angry! Black! Man! or has been very, very disciplined throughout his public/political career to keep any inner Angry! Black! Man! tightly under wraps, apparently having considered it politically fatal to do otherwise.

I mean, fuck — there is a reason that Barack Obama and neither Jesse Jackson nor Al Sharpton became president, isn’t there?

You’re not allowed to be angry in the deeply dysfunctional United States of America, no matter how deeply you have been wronged. Anger is a normal human reaction to significant to severe injustice, but in the U.S., especially among the wingnuts, displaying anger is considered akin to being mentally ill, or at least emotionally unstable, especially if the angry person is a member of an historically oppressed minority group. (Right-wing white men get away with displaying anger a lot more than do the rest of us, don’t they?)

I’d love to watch Barack Obama just fucking go off in public just once, but we very most likely will never see that.

The white-supremacist wingnuts’ game, though, is pretty fucking transparent: Since Obama doesn’t play the role of the Angry! Black! Man!, let’s try to make him “guilty” by association! That Rev. Jeremiah Wright is an Angry! Black! Man! — and Obama once sang his praises! Therefore, Obama is a closet Angry! Black! Man!

Also, Obama pointed out – correctly – in the “damning” 2007 video that the wingnuts have dredged up as some sort of proof of something, that the victims of Hurricane Katrina have been neglected, before and after the hurricane hit Lousiana in August 2005, primarily because most of Katrina’s victims are/were black.

Um, that’s just a fucking fact. The fact is that the victims of Hurricane Katrina were considered expendable. The vast majority of Katrina’s victims were poor black people, not even poor white people. (Was even one rich white person killed by Katrina? I doubt it. Hundreds of poor black people, however, were.)

To point out these fucking facts does not make Obama or any other black person “racist.”

It’s incredibly shameful that Katrina’s victims overwhelmingly have been black Americans (I write “have been” because the suffering hasn’t ended), but that’s a national stain that the nation needs to fucking deal with, not try to keep covered under the red-white-and-blue carpet.

This ugly stain under the carpet is the problem, not the person who simply points out its continued existence when the rest of us would rather just ignore it and act as though if we just don’t talk about it, it doesn’t fucking exist and we therefore are guilt-free.

But in the sick and twisted, evil “logic” of the Repugnican Tea Party traitors (and other assorted white-supremacist wingnuts) among us, it is “racist” for a member of an historically oppressed race to even talk about unpleasant history.

This is their “argument” in their latest desperate attack upon Barack Obama, a race-baiting attack employing the bogeyman of the Angry! Black! Man! that only demonstrates their racism, not Barack Obama’s or anyone else’s.

I haven’t planned to vote again for Barack Obama, given how much he has caved in to the traitors on the right and has not enacted the progressive agenda that he at least implicitly promised us on the left that he would, but I can tell you this: A sustained, race-based and racist/white-supremacist attack on Obama by the right-wing traitors from now until Election Day probably would be more than enough to induce me to give him my vote again.

You lost the Civil War, you treasonous bitches.

You don’t want a rematch.

Democratic pussies cave to Repugs even during their convention

Updated below

I hope that I live to see the nation’s first openly atheist president. I suspect that Barack Obama actually is an agnostic, maybe even an atheist, but he’d never publicly admit it because, like most politicians do, he panders to the fucktards who still believe in mythology.

Leave it to the spineless fucking Democrats to capitulate to the Repugnican Tea Party “Christo”fascists yet once again – even during the Dems’ quadrennial convention.

Earlier today I read with glee that the word “God” didn’t make it into this year’s Democratic Party platform, which is great news, since “God” doesn’t belong in the party’s platform any more than does Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy or the Great Pumpkin.

Of course, we’re talking about the Democrats, so it couldn’t last. Reports The Associated Press today:

Charlotte, N.C. — Embarrassed by Republicans, Democrats amended their convention platform [today] to add a mention of God and declare that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

Many in the audience booed after the convention chairman, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, ruled that the amendments had been approved despite the fact that a large group of delegates had objected. He called for a vote three times before ruling.

The party reinstated language from the 2008 platform that said “we need a government that stands up for the hopes, values and interests of working people and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential.”

It also reinstated its 2008 language that Jerusalem “is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.”

Democrats had approved a platform [yesterday] that made no mention of God or Jerusalem. Instead, it expressed “unshakable commitment to Israel’s security.”

Republicans pounced quickly on both omissions.

GOP officials argued that not taking a position on Jerusalem’s status in the party platform showed the president was weak in his support of Israel. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said omitting God “suggests a party that is increasingly out of touch with the mainstream of the American people.”

“I think this party is veering further and further away into an extreme wing that Americans don’t recognize,” Romney said.

The Democratic Party’s decision to restore the mention of Jerusalem reflected what advisers said was the president’s personal view, if not the policy of his administration. The administration has long said determining Jerusalem’s status was an issue that should be decided by Israelis and Palestinians in peace talks, but has been careful not to state that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital.

Romney’s campaign quickly sought to capitalize on the slight, but important difference.

“Mitt Romney has consistently stated his belief that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel,” said Andrea Saul, Romney’s spokeswoman. …

The White House wouldn’t say whether the change in the Democratic platform language reflected a change in administration policy.

Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the reinstated party language reflected “the policy of both Republican and Democratic administrations for decades.” … [Yes, because "That's the way we've always done it!" is such a convincing "argument"! And surely, anything that the Repugnican Tea Party has always done must be
right!]

But the decision to amend the platform did not rest well with some delegates.

Noor Ul-Hasan, a Muslim delegate from Salt Lake City, Utah, said she felt it went against the principle of the separation of church and state.

“There are people who don’t believe in God and you have to respect that as well,” Ul-Hasan said. She also questioned whether the convention had enough of a quorum to even amend the platform. “There was no discussion. We didn’t even see it coming. We were blindsided by it.”

Angela Urrea, a delegate from Roy, Utah, said she felt it was sprung on the convention without any discussion.

“The majority spoke last night,” Urrae said, noting [that] the platform was approved [yesterday]. “We shouldn’t be declaring Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”

Republicans declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel in the platform the party approved last week at its convention in Tampa, Fla. …

When was the last fucking time that the Repugnican Tea Party traitors changed their party platform in the middle of their fucking convention because of criticism from the Democrats?

Jesus fuck, you would think that the one God-damned time the Dems could show some fucking backbone would be during their fucking convention.

And what, exactly, does this last-minute capitulation to the “Christo”fascists get the Dems, politically speaking?

Committed “Christo”fascists already support the Repugnican Tea Party, which consists of millionaires and billionaires, but there aren’t enough plutocrats among us to win elections, so the millionaires and billionaires also pretend to love the white supremacists and the Jesus freaks and other assorted white trash, and that is the bulk of the Repugnican Tea Party: the plutocrats, the remnants of the KKK and the “Christo”fascists (with a lot of overlap among those categories).

Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel, but that’s one of at least a few things that the Coke Party and the Pepsi Party have in common: They both want Jewish dollars, so they can’t pander to the Israel-firsters enough. It’s treasonous to put the interests of a foreign nation above the interests of one’s own nation, but with the shameless money whores who comprise the “leadership” of both of the major parties, expect both parties to continue to lick Israel’s ass like no other nation’s ass.

And if God exists, then maybe God should be a suprise guest at the Democratic National Convention!

Yes, indeed: Barack Obama should scrap his acceptance speech and instead bring an empty chair on stage with him and have a conversation with God, a la Clint Eastwood. God could even endorse Barack Obama on live television!

What, that’s bullshit? It’s no more bullshit than is the utterly unprovable assertion that there even is a fucking God, who is like a reward- and punishment-doling Santa Claus on crack. (He sees you when you’re sleeping; he knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness’ sake!)

If the Repugnican Tea Party traitors want to continue to pander to the dipshits who still believe in a God, fine, but it would be fucking nice if the Democratic Party “leadership” would respect the long-standing concept of separation of church and state.

The job of a political party is to govern, and our government is to remain neutral in affairs of religion. That is the only fair way to govern. Otherwise, you have a theocracy, and I, for one, just say hell fucking no to an American Taliban.

I don’t give a rat’s ass what the religion is, whether it’s Judaism, whether it’s what we actually call here in the United States “Christianity,” whether it’s Islam, whatever — I don’t want retards who believe in non-existent deities to shove their delusions down my fucking throat through the vehicle of government that my tax dollars make possible.

Atheism, agnosticism and other belief systems (such as the Eastern belief systems) are growing in the United States of America.

The Repugnican Tea Party and the “Christo”fascism that the Repugnican Tea Party espouses are going the way of the dinosaurs.

It would be fucking fantastic if the cowardly fucktards who “lead” the Democratic Party wouldn’t follow the Repugnican Tea Party traitors into the fucking tar pits.

P.S. Now comes the news that the Big Man Himself — no, not God, but Barack Obama — had the party’s platform changed. Reports The Associated Press:

Charlotte, N.C. — President Barack Obama personally intervened to order Democrats to change language in their party platform to add a mention of God and declare that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, campaign officials said [today].

Scrambling to end the furor, Democrats abruptly changed the platform early [this] evening to reinstate language from the 2008 platform that said “we need a government that stands up for the hopes, values and interests of working people and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential.” …

Democrats also restored 2008 language on Jerusalem, declaring the city “is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.”

Campaign officials said Obama’s reaction on the omission of God from the platform was to wonder why it was removed in the first place.

The officials requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about private discussions.

The platform changes did not sit well with some Democratic delegates gathered in Charlotte, N.C., for the party’s three-day convention. Many in the audience booed after the convention chairman, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, ruled that the amendments had been approved despite the fact that a large group of delegates had objected. He called for a vote three times before ruling.

The revisions came as Obama struggles to win support from white working-class voters, many of whom have strong religious beliefs, and as Republicans try to woo Jewish voters and contributors away from the Democratic Party. Republicans claimed the platform omissions suggested Obama was weak in his defense of Israel and out of touch with mainstream Americans.

Democrats had approved a platform [yesterday] that made no mention of God or Jerusalem. Instead, it expressed “unshakable commitment to Israel’s security.” Republicans quickly pounced. …

Who fucking cares what the Repugnican Tea Party traitors think?

The Democratic Party’s platform had been approved democratically. It should have stood, regardless of what Barack Obama believes. Why should the members of the party vote on anyfuckingthing at all if they then can be overriden by one individual?

And no one caves in better to the thugs on the right than does Barack Obama, who makes them look like they are right by caving in to them almost every single fucking time.

Barack Obama has turned caving in to the radical right wing into a fucking Olympic sport.

Update: I just watched the video of the actual vote on the changes to the Dem Party platform. What a fucking weasel Antonio Villaraigosa, chair of the convention, is.

The change to the party’s platform required a two-thirds vote by the delegates, which Villaraigosa did on a voice vote. Villaraigosa had the delegates voice-vote three fucking times, apparently believing that the third time would be a charm, that the delegates would fall in line like good little lemmings.

Yet by even the third voice vote, it doesn’t sound at all like Villaraigosa reached the two-thirds threshold.

Nonetheless, the weasel-bastard, undaunted by the fact that sometimes democracy doesn’t go your way, declared that the changes to the platform had passed by two-thirds of the delegates.

This blatantly dishonest, anti-democratic, hierarchy-ass-licking bullshit is what you would expect from the Repugnican Tea Party Nazis, not from the Democratic Party — and this is yet another reason why I call the two parties of the partisan duopoly the Coke Party and the Pepsi Party: because there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two.

I place most of the blame on the Democratic Party’s worthless “leaders,” like Barack Obama and Antonio Villaraigosa, who apparently has gotten ahead in the Dem Party only by going along with the fucktards who outrank him, by putting blind personal political ambition — and thus blind obedience — far above decency and integrity.

Kudos to the delegates who at least tried to stop the anti-democratic coup that their party’s selfish, shameless “leaders” perpetrated upon them today.

Is Mother Earth trying to rid Herself of Repugnicans?

Tropical Storm Isaac hasn’t even become a hurricane yet and has yet to reach Florida, but already Isaac’s ominous approach has induced the Repugnican Tea Party traitors to effectively cancel the first day of their scheduled four-day KKK-like convention in Tampa (Monday).

At this point, I don’t see how Isaac could not ruin the quadrennial KKK convention.

Even if Isaac doesn’t make a direct hit on Tampa, Isaac is expected first to visit the southern tip of Florida as a category-one hurricane late tomorrow night or early Monday morning, and then is expected to make landfall in the Gulf Coast as a category-two hurricane late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, according to AccuWeather.com:

AccuWeather.com image, August 25, 2012

Future Hurricane Isaac is expected to rake the coast of the western portion of Florida and perhaps also the coastal areas of neighboring Southern states Alabama, Mississippi and maybe even Louisiana, which needs another hurricane like Mittens Romney needs another million dollars.

Even if Isaac spares Tampa, I don’t see how the Repugnican Tea Party traitors can continue their convention while a category-two hurricane has just hit the Gulf Coast without looking like the major-league assholes that they are. For that matter, I don’t see how they can even begin their convention belatedly on Tuesday while a category-two hurricane is expected to make landfall in the Gulf Coast in less than 24 hours without looking like the major-league assholes that they are.

I hate it when the wingnuts ascribe catastrophic events (hurricanes, earthquakes, 9/11, etc.) to us homos or to supporters of women’s reproductive-choice rights or the like, but fuck if it doesn’t look like Mother Nature is trying to wipe the planet-killing Repugnican Tea Party traitors off of the face of the planet like a dog trying to rid itself of fleas. It’s like she knew that they were going to be concentrated in Tampa and so she sent Isaac their way.

Maybe Mother Nature finally was sent over the edge when the Mittens Romney/Pretty Boy Paul Ryan team essentially announced in Ohio today that while women may not control their own uteri, they may open their own businesses, because, you see, that’s the only actually important endeavor that there is in this man’s world: making money and perpetuating the evil that is capitalism. (“Women need our help,” Mittens proclaimed in the critically important swing state of Ohio today, but he wasn’t talking about help with women’s reproductive rights or with their equal rights or help caring for their families. He was talking solely about helping them in the business world.)

In all seriousness, the toxic masculine worldview that Team Mittens/Ryan represents has been destroying the planet for some time now, and if it takes some acts of the Goddess to clean the toxic mess up, I’m all for it.

P.S. I noticed this striking paragraph, this interesting tidbit, buried in this Associated Press story on Isaac:

Cuba has a highly organized civil defense system that goes door-to-door to enforce evacuations of at-risk areas, largely averting casualties from storms even when they cause major flooding and significant damage to crops.

Wow. I guess that this is one of the reasons that the wingnuts vociferously slam Fidel Castro’s administration of Cuba: Unlike the “leaders” here in the United States, land of the “free,” Castro actually saves the poor people of his nation from drowning and otherwise dying in hurricanes.

That evil, evil man!

Anarchists attack white supremacists. Hell, yeah!

Updated below (on February 29, 2012)

Sacramento Bee/sacbee.com photo

Members of the apparent white supremacist group “South Africa Project” arrive at the California State Capitol today. The group very apparently is using real and/or fabricated killings of whites by blacks in South Africa as a cover to push a white supremacist agenda. The sign with the apparently PhotoShopped image of the injured little white girl reads, “Genocide cannot be justified” — something that is awfully interesting to hear a group of white people proclaim. But today, it’s white people who are the victims, you see.

I work near the California State Capitol building here in Sacramento, and I noticed during my lunch break today that there was a decent-sized group of people demonstrating on the Capitol grounds. This is common at the Capitol; protests, demonstrations and gatherings there are so common there that they’re easy to ignore. California is, after all, the nation’s most populous state and there are a million causes and issues, and throngs of people often travel to the Capitol for their causes.

A co-worker of mine told me as I was returning from my lunch break that members of the Occupy movement were protesting some white supremacists at the Capitol. I should go check it out, he said. My lunch break was over, so I couldn’t, but all the same, where there are white supremacists gathered it’s probably volatile and therefore your safety might be put in jeopardy, so even if I’d had the time to check it out, there is a good chance that I wouldn’t have.

But I read the headlines afterward.

Reportedly, some members of the Occupy movement threw bottles and other objects at the white supremacists as the white supremacists were leaving the Capitol grounds. (Unfortunately, I missed all of this.) Reports The Associated Press today (text in bold is my own emphasis):

Sacramento, Calif. — At least two law enforcement officers were injured [today] during a clash with members of the Occupy movement who were at the state Capitol to counter a rally by a group protesting violence by blacks against whites in South Africa.

The clash erupted in the afternoon as California Highway Patrol and Sacramento police officers were escorting about 35 members of the South Africa Project to a parking garage after their protest outside the Capitol building.

About 50 members of Occupy Oakland began throwing cans and bottles at the South Africa group and at the officers. The Occupy members then clashed with the officers as people with the pro-whites group hurried into the parking garage.

“It was the activists across the street engaging the officers,” said CHP officer Sean Kennedy.

Two officers suffered minor injuries and were taken to a hospital. CHP Capt. Andy Menard said one officer who was struck in the face by an object was released from the hospital. The second officer was getting X-rays after apprehending a person suspected of throwing objects, Menard said.

Kennedy said the officer who was struck by an object was showing signs of possibly being affected by some type of chemical or pepper spray.

The CHP arrested three members of the Occupy group on suspicion of disobeying an officer.

The violence abated after a large contingent of law enforcement arrived at the scene, about a block from the Capitol.

The clash followed a tense afternoon during which peace officers kept the two groups separated outside the Capitol.

Members of the South Africa Project were trying to draw attention to what they said is black-on-white violence in that country. Organizers said similar demonstrations were planned in other states and elsewhere in California.

The group was mostly male and white, some with shaved heads and prominent tattoos.

Many of the Occupy protesters, some wearing hoods or masks, said they came from the San Francisco Bay area to counter what they called a racist group affiliated with former Louisiana Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

Occupy protesters had been cursing at the South Africa Project rally and at officers keeping the two sides apart.

Ryan Stark, 26, who said he is part of Occupy Sacramento, said he joined the protesters challenging the South Africa Project protesters because there needed to be a showdown.

“I didn’t throw anything … but these sorts of demonstrations need to happen,” he said, referring to the counter protest. “They do have the right to say what they want, but we’re not going to let it fly.” …

“South Africa Project” apparently is new. There is no entry for it in Wikipedia, and Wikipedia has an entry for fucking everything. However, the group’s shitty website gives me the impression that the group indeed is a white supremacist group that is using the real and/or fabricated killings of white South Africans by black South Africans (because white South Africans never have killed or otherwise oppressed any black South Africans) not only as a cover for pushing white supremacism, but as a tactic to stir up hatred — and probably violence — against blacks by whites here in the United States.

And The Associated Press’ description of the “South Africa Project’s” demonstrators – “mostly male and white, some with shaved heads and prominent tattoos.” Hmmm. Does that sound like anyone we already know and love?

(Hey, if you think I’m being inaccurate or unfair, look at the group’s own pictures of its little dog and pony show at the California State Capitol today on its own bad website and then draw your own conclusions.)

That is not free speech, the incitement of race-based violence, even if such incitement is communicated in code (as the white supremacists, including Repugnican Tea Party presidential contenders, like to communicate these days).

Therefore, in my book, white supremacists who are trying to spread their disease of race-based hatred in public don’t deserve personal protection in public.

The cops who got mildly hurt today got hurt because they were protecting, shielding — dare I say, thus even aiding and abetting — the white supremacist scumbags. (And if the cops now are being pepper-sprayed back, as the AP news story seems to suggest, well, maybe that’s what you call karma…)

Also, let’s be clear: The description of the Occupy/“Occupy” protesters who threw the objects — “some wearing hoods or masks” — sounds to me like a description of anarchists, who are a group that is distinct from the Occupy movement, and a group that pre-dates the Occupy movement by years.

Hey, if you don’t trust me, here is photographic evidence of the Occupy/“Occupy” protesters who counter-protested the white supremacists at the Capitol State Capitol today:

Sacramento Bee/sacbee.com photo

“WHITE POWER IS HORSE SHIT.” I love that sign. Anyway, with the exception of a few, including Captain America, which is a hoot (really — I think that someone wore that costume to counter-protest white supremacists is pretty fucking funny), those “Occupy” protesters are wearing black and they have their faces covered, which is the garb of the typical anarchist — and not the garb of the typical Occupy protester.

Anarchists often infiltrate left-leaning gatherings and raise hell. That’s their thing; peaceful protests that don’t change anyfuckingthing because they don’t threaten the status quo are not the anarchists’ cup of tea.

I can’t say that I blame them for not demonstrating “nicely,” in a way that does not offend the powers that be – and thus in a way that is utterly ineffectual. We claim that we have free speech in the United States, but such “free” speech in reality often if not usually means only speech that cannot jolt the status quo. And the status quo sure the fuck needs jolting.

I have nothing against the anarchists. Anyone who goes after white supremacists who dare to spew forth their filth in the public square is fine with me, and the imagery of a bunch of supposedly bad-ass white supremacists fleeing from a mob of Occupy/“Occupy” protesters (most if not all of them actually anarchists) – the way that blacks have had to flee from mobs of white supremacists — is gratifyingly amusing.

And who knows? When/if the shit really hits the fan, I might join the anarchists’ ranks. (Black is slimming anyway…)

But, for the time being, it’s unfair and inaccurate that the corporately owned and controlled mainstream media continue to refer to fairly obvious anarchists as members of the Occupy movement when, in fact, these anarchists might not claim the Occupy movement and/or the Occupy movement might not claim them.

Your typical member of the Occupy movement does not pelt plutocrats or white supremacists or their witting or unwitting protectors, cops (many of whom are white supremacist themselves, or who at least protect and serve the white power structure), with objects.

Not yet, anyway.

P.S. Does any of this remind anyone of the American Civil War? Is this what we are headed toward — a rematch of the Civil War? Might we be presented with the opportunity to crush the white supremacists once and for all?

Update (February 29, 2012): “South Africa Project’s” home page has been updated since I first wrote about it. Now, there is a video that prominently features notorious white supremacist David Duke on the hate group’s home page. (I guess that they’re not bothering to pretend anymore.) The hate group’s home page also now features an image of a little white girl praying, accompanied by this text: “Dear Lord, please protect my big brother and my daddy and my uncles and my oupa [grandfather?] from those savages that are raping and murdering us.”

Wingnuts, not known for their subtlety, are fine with exploiting children to try to advance their ignorance and hatred — this little girl never asked to be exploited like this, and could not agree to such use of her image, since she is too young to consent, is too young to understand racism and white supremacism, but is at the total mercy of adults — and it strikes me that a child in the Middle East certainly might pray to God that the killings and maimings and other violent abuses and the wrongful incarcerations of their family members by white occupiers comes to an end. (Ditto for Palestinian children…)

At any rate, after Apartheid* in South Africa, I just can’t feel sorry for the white people there. Anything that might be happening there now that disfavors whites probably would be what you call karma, and karma is always just.

–

*Wikipedia notes of Apartheid:

Apartheid was a system of racial segregation enforced by the National Party governments of South Africa between 1948 and 1994, under which the rights of the majority non-white inhabitants of South Africa were curtailed and white supremacy and Afrikaner minority rule was maintained. Apartheid was developed after World War II by the Afrikaner-dominated National Party and Broederbond organizations and was practiced also in South West Africa, which was administered by South Africa under a League of Nations mandate (revoked in 1966), until it gained independence as Namibia in 1990.

Racial segregation in South Africa began in colonial times. However, apartheid as an official policy was introduced following the general election of 1948. New legislation classified inhabitants into four racial groups (“native”, “white”, “coloured“, and “Asian”), and residential areas were segregated, sometimes by means of forced removals. Non-white political representation was completely abolished in 1970, and starting in that year black people were deprived of their citizenship, legally becoming citizens of one of ten tribally based self-governing homelands called bantustans, four of which became nominally independent states. The government segregated education, medical care, beaches, and other public services, and provided black people with services inferior to those of white people.

Apartheid sparked significant internal resistance and violence as well as a long trade embargo against South Africa. Since the 1950s, a series of popular uprisings and protests were met with the banning of opposition and imprisoning of anti-apartheid leaders. As unrest spread and became more violent, state organisations responded with increasing repression and state-sponsored violence.

Reforms to apartheid in the 1980s failed to quell the mounting opposition, and in 1990 President Frederik Willem de Klerk began negotiations to end apartheid, culminating in multi-racial democratic elections in 1994, which were won by the African National Congress under Nelson Mandela. The vestiges of apartheid still shape South African politics and society.

So: According to the hate group “South Africa Project,” we are to feel sorry for whites in South Africa today, despite their long history of depriving black South Africans of their equal human and civil rights, based upon their race. We’re to cry in our beer for these white supremacists. We are to focus on their more recent woes and totally ignore the crimes against humanity that they perpetrated upon others over a very long period of time.

Again, one word comes to mind:

Karma.

‘Christo’fascist agenda? Over THEIR dead bodies!

The Associated Press reports that “Christo”fascist presidential hopeful Prick Santorum “has said that he wouldn’t try to take away the birth control pill or condoms but that states should be free to ban them. He told a Christian blog last year that as president he would warn the nation about ‘the dangers of contraception’ and the permissive culture it encourages. He’s also questioned whether women should be in combat and said that ‘radical feminists’ have undermined the traditional family by ‘convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness.’” Oh, and he believes that Roe vs. Wade should be overturned (which 72 percent of Newser’s users have deemed “scary”) and he recently declared that as president he would try to “overturn” any U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage — even though the U.S. president of course may not “overturn” the nation’s highest court, something that a high-school freshman should know.

Wow. What does it say about the Repugnican Tea Party — and its presidential chances in November — that Prick Santorum has been leading Mitt Romney in national polls of Repugnican Tea Party presidential preference this month?

True, in these recent polls Santorum has been leading Romney by only two to four percentage points, but still: Santorum’s last gig in U.S. politics was losing his re-election bid to the U.S. Senate in 2006 by 17.3 percentage points. Wikipedia notes that Santorum’s 2006 Democratic opponent, Bob Casey Jr., enjoyed a “margin of victory [that] was the largest ever for a Democratic [U.S.] Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, and the largest margin of victory for a [U.S.] Senate challenger in the 2006 elections.” And Pennsylvania often if not usually is a presidential swing state, which indicates that its voters are pretty much in line with the nation’s voters as a whole.

Yes, wingtards, please make Prick Santorum your 2012 presidential nominee. Please!

The Associated Press reports today that Santorum proclaimed to “tea party activists and evangelical voters in [swing state] Ohio … that [President Barack] Obama’s agenda is ‘not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your jobs. It’s about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology.’”

Wow. So, according to Prick Santorum, a U.S. president should govern based upon “a theology based on the Bible.”

I don’t want a U.S. president governing based upon “a theology based upon the Bible” any more than I want a U.S. president governing based upon the Koran or the Torah or the Book of Mormon or any other backasswards, patriarchal, misogynist, xenophobic, homophobic, militaristic book written by ignorant men who lived and died (with the exception of the newbie Mormons, of course) centuries and centuries ago.

Prick Santorum told his crowd of KKK’ers in Ohio today that Barack Obama’s agenda isn’t about them, but Prick Santorum’s agenda isn’t about the majority of the rest of us Americans, who reject his “Christo”fascist, far-right-wing agenda, who believe in the individual’s right to use contraception, which Prick Santorum, a puppet of Pope Palpatine, is on the record as opposing; who believe in a woman’s right to govern her own uterus; and who believe in the right of any two adults who wish to marry each other to do so. (Yes, nationwide polls show that a solid majority of Americans favor giving same-sex couples some legal status, if not full marriage equality, and even then, many (if not most) nationwide polls show that those who favor full marriage equality rights for same-sex couples have broken the 50.0 percent mark.)

History has demonstrated that theocracy results in violence and bloodshed between different religious factions, and that secular government is the best kind of government to prevent this.

Is this what the “Christo”fascist Prick Santorum and his “Christo”fascist supporters want, I wonder — a bloody jihad against those of us who refuse to submit to their Bible-based bullshit? Just like we see with the Taliban?

You say Rick Santorum, I say American Taliban.

The “Christo”fascists in the United States of America have the freedom to live their lives as they wish. If they believe that contraception and/or abortion are evil, then they do not ever have to use contraception or ever get an abortion. Neither contraception nor abortion is forced upon them by the government. If they believe that same-sex marriage is evil, then they don’t have to marry a member of their own sex. The government doesn’t force them to marry members of their own sex, either.

The “Christo”fascists are free to believe whatever insanity they wish to believe, a right that they exercise to the fullest. The government does not force them to believe in evolution or global warming, and if they want to shield their offspring from facts and science and sanity, then they may school their little spawn at home. (That’s child abuse, in my book, but they have that right.)

What really rankles the “Christo”fascists is not that they cannot live their own lives as they see fit, despite their ludicrous claims of victimhood, their ridiculous propaganda about a supposed “war on religion” when, in fact, Americans are free to pray at home and in their places of worship of their non-existent, Zeus-like deity, and are free to express and to disseminate their ideas about this non-existent deity, and U.S. churches remain untaxed, may with impunity blatantly discriminate against individuals based upon their sex and race and sexual orientation and gender conformity (and, of course, based upon their religious beliefs), and, despite their untaxed status, still the churches blatantly insert themselves in the political process (like the Mormon cult’s and the Catholick church’s involvement in Proposition H8).

U.S. churches long have had special rights and privileges and immunties that we non-“Christo”fascists do not possess (try not paying your taxes, or blatantly discriminating against women or non-whites or those whose religious views differ from your own in your workplace, for example), yet they cry “victimhood.”

No, what really rankles the “Christo”fascist minority is that there are tens and tens of millions of us Americans who reject their Bible-based bullshit, and, because the “Christo”fascists’ backasswards worldview doesn’t survive the scrutiny of reality and logic and reason, they need as many converts as they can get in order to be comfortable in their bullshit, backasswards beliefs.

And I have little doubt that if they couldn’t convert us, they would kill us, if they could. Just like the Taliban.

So — preventing a “Christo”fascist like Prick Santorum from ever getting into the Oval Office is, literally, a matter of life or death, and the majority of us Americans who reject the “Christo”fascist agenda need to stand up to the “Christo”fascist minority and proclaim: Over your dead bodies will we go back to the Dark Ages to which you believe you can drag us.

Burn your race cards, Obamabots!

Gee, I guess that I’m a big fucking racist for expecting more of Melissa Harris-Perry than her race-baiting article in The Nation.

All kinds of excuses have been put out there to cover for Barack Obama’s lackluster presidency:

He inherited a huge fucking stinking, steaming mess from the unelected Bush regime. The Repugnican Tea Party traitors in Congress have been fighting him tooth and nail, have been doing everything in their power to ensure that he is a one-term president, regardless of the damage that this is causing the nation.

These excuses are legitimate enough. Obama did inherit a huge fucking stinking, steaming mess. The Repugnican Tea Party traitors have done all that they can to cripple him.

But Obama won’t win re-election on excuses. I know of no president who ever won re-election based not upon his actual accomplishments while in office, but upon his making even a strong case that others were responsible for his lack of accomplishments.

And although he’s not responsible for what he inherited, the fact of the matter is that when the iron was red hot, Obama didn’t strike. While he should have come in with guns a-blazin’, Obama instead has used a drinking straw and spitballs. Timidly.

The result is that although he had both houses of Congress in his party’s control for all of 2009 and 2010, and when he had the nation’s good will for most of that time, Obama did diddly squat. Oh, he achieved health care “reform” — “reform” that the health care weasels gave their blessing to and “reform” that isn’t scheduled to kick in until 2014, for fuck’s sake.

Obama is guilty of having squandered spectacularly what probably will turn out to have been his one and only shot at making a big difference. He had his big opportunity and he blew it. Forever.

But no. The problem actually is that white liberals are actually racist.

That is the poisonous talking point that Nation writer and MSNBC talent Melissa Harris-Perry has injected into the national conversation. The title of her Nation piece pretty much says it all: “Black President, Double Standard: Why White Liberals Are Abandoning Obama.”

My God. (And I don’t even believe in God.)

Um, for starters, we white liberals didn’t abandon Obama. Obama abandoned us. Or, perhaps more accurately, he punk’d us from the very beginning, telling us what he’d figured we wanted to hear in order to get our money and our votes.

The main idea of Harris-Perry’s piece is that white liberals have been harder on Obama than they ever were on Bill Clinton because Obama is black and whites generally are harder on blacks than they are on other whites, that whites expect more of blacks than they do their fellow whites.

Certainly that phenomenon can manifest itself in some situations. Certainly racism continues in the United States of America, not only against blacks but also “illegals” and other racial minority groups. Certainly there is no “level playing field” in the United States. Blacks, kept down for generations, never had the wealth or other privilege to hand down from generation to generation, like many whites did, so the “level playing field” argument is bullshit.

Of course the majority of the “tea party” fascists are white supremacists and racists whose gatherings look and feel like KKK rallies. I agree 200 percent with Morgan Freeman on this. I’ve written about it many times.

But to pull out the race card on your allies?

Really?

So basically, to the race-card-carrying Obamabots, Barack Obama is beyond reproach. Anyone who has any problem with him must be racist. There can be no other possible explanation.

This is convenient for Obama and his Obamabots, of course. The race card in this case would serve as a perpetual get-out-of-jail-free card for Obama. He would out-Teflon right-wing icon Ronald Reagan, whose praises Obama can’t sing loudly or frequently enough. (You never heard George W. Bush worshipping a Democratic president, did you?)

Or maybe instead of calling it the race card, we should call it the race mace — you know, you hit someone over the head with a mace.

Anyone who even thinks of being critical of Obama will keep his or her mouth shut, lest he or she be clobbered publicly with the race mace.

You know, this is, in spirit, thuggery. This is, in spirit, terrorism (which I define, broadly, as the use of intimidation on others in order to get one’s own way). Oh, and it’s slanderous or libelous, too. It’s not much different, in spirit, from the right wing’s calling someone a Communist in the 1950s in order to silence him or her. Defamation is fun!

But the race mace doesn’t work on this white liberal.

As someone who has had black boyfriends, charges by people who don’t know me that I’m a racist fall off of me like water falls off of a duck’s ass. And as someone who gave Barack Obama hundreds of dollars and my vote in 2008 — not because I’m a guilty white liberal but because I truly believed that he was the best viable candidate – I really don’t need some race-mace-carrying terrorist calling me a “racist.”

Why did I give Obama hundreds of dollars and my vote? Well, most if not all of the money that I gave him for the 2008 cycle I gave to him during the drawn-out 2008 Democratic primary contest. Why? Because I wanted him, not Billary Clinton, to be the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee.

Why?

Because I’d figured that a Billary Clinton presidency would be just like the first Clinton presidency. I didn’t want another sell-out, triangulating Democrat in name only in the White House. I wanted a progressive in the White House.

And although Obama and the Obamabots deny it now, Obama did offer himself up as the anti-Billary, as the true progressive in the race. “Hope” and “change” are about progressivism — not about maintaining the status quo or speaking softly and carrying a tiny twig.

Now, however, in Obama’s third year, many have speculated that he has governed even further to the right than Billary would have governed had she become president. Many have speculated that a President Billary would have smacked down the Repugnican Tea Party traitors in Congress, unlike the balls-less Obama, who stupidly only spoke about singing kumbaya with the Repugnican Tea Party traitors while their supporters portrayed him as a witch doctor with a bone through his nose, as a chimpanzee or a monkey, as a cultivator of watermelons on the White House lawn, etc. These aren’t people you try to play nice with. These are people you take down.

Comparing Bill Clinton’s presidency to Obama’s presidency is comparing apples to asparagus. I don’t need to go into the details of that — writers David Sirota and Joan Walsh (both “racist” white liberals, don’t you know) did a pretty good idea of deconstructing Harris-Perry’s bullshit thesis, and so I don’t need to do that here, but mostly, the economic times of the two presidencies are so different that it renders the comparison of the two fairly pointless.

Obama is not being judged by white liberals based upon the color of his skin, but based upon the content of his character. His character defects include his unwillingness to fight for those who put him where he is with our money, our time and energy, and our votes; his breaking one campaign promise after another; and his habit of throwing his former supporters under the bus when he finds it politically expedient to do so.

He threw the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Van Jones and Shirley Sherrod, all of them, under the bus. As soon as the white supremacist fascists on the right started to attack these individuals, Obama just dropped them like flaming dog shit. That alone speaks volumes about his character. (To be fair and balanced, when Bill Clinton very similarly threw former surgeon general Jocelyn Elders under the bus, that was a travesty of justice, too. And again, I’d supported Obama over Billary to prevent that kind of thing from happening again. And speaking of the Rev. Wright, you really should read his recent interview with Chris Hedges. Wowser.)

The fact of the matter is that whether they like it or not, blacks need the support of us white liberals. Blacks can’t afford to alienate us en masse. They just can’t. Politics is a blood sport — not a kumbaya marathon – and you need as many players on your side as you can get.

(We gay people, too, can’t do it on our own. We need the support of heterosexuals. It would be incredibly fucking stupid of us to alienate those liberals who support us by claiming that in actuality they are
homophobes.)

What I’m saying is: Burn your race cards, Obamabots.

The president of the United States of America, whoever that is at the time, must be open to criticism from the left and from the right. No president or other leader should be exempt from criticism because of his or her gender, race or sexual orientation.

A leader should be judged for such things as his or her accomplishments — or lack thereof — and for his or her character. On these measures, white liberals (and black liberals and other liberals) have not judged Barack Obama unfairly.

To give Obama a break because he is black is as racist as is expecting him to outperform his white cohorts, although since there can be only one U.S. president at a time, and as every presidency is different because times change, Obama doesn’t have any true cohorts, and certainly not Bill Clinton, whom he at least tacitly promised us he wouldn’t be.

To support Obama primarily because he is black is as racist as opposing him primarily because he is black.

Ironically, those who so casually try to pin the slanderous or libelous label of “racist” on white liberals who dare to criticize the nation’s first black president are racist themselves.

I still love Melissa Harris-Perry, though. I’ve seen her on MSNBC and I like her.

Her Nation article and the shit that she has stirred up, though — not so much.

Cunter: ‘tea-partiers’ ‘cheerful,’ liberals ‘violent’

I wasn’t going to blog anymore tonight. Then I read Ann Cunter’s latest lie fest.

Cunter tries to make the case that liberals are violent racists.

It’s funny. In a sick and twisted way. Does she believe her own shit or does she have full awareness that she’s lying through her venom-dripping fangs?

Cunter begins with:

While engaging in astonishing viciousness, vulgarity and violence toward Republicans, liberals accuse cheerful, law-abiding Tea Party activists of being violent racists.

Oh, fuck, I wish that we liberals were violent! (And that the “tea party” fascists truly were “cheerful” instead of hating upon everyone who isn’t a conservative straight white person who identifies as a Christian — you know, the way our tea-bagging founding fathers wanted it to be.)

We liberals should have killed someone when George W. Bush blatantly treasonously stole the White House in late 200o after having lost the popular vote and the state of Florida, of which his brother just coinky-dinkily was governor (and of which the chief elections official just coinky-dinkily also had sat on his election campaign committee). When the unelected Bush regime launched its bogus Vietraq War for Big Oil and for Uncle Dick’s Halliburton, we liberals should have gone on a murderous fucking rampage.

But we didn’t.

Actually, the “tea party” dipshits aren’t widely accused of violence, even though Cunter goes on to beat the “tea-party” spittle story to death. They are, however, accurately widely accused of being racist.

Look at how many non-whites attend “tea party” gatherings. Why, if the “tea party” is a such a big tent, is that tent filled almost exclusively with white people?

And the New York Times reports that less than 1.5 percent of the audience of Faux “News” (which we might as well call the Tea Party Channel) is comprised of black viewers, while around 20 percent of CNN’s and MSNBC’s viewership is black. Why, do you suppose, that is? (Oh, yeah: because blacks are racist. Andrew Breitbart says so.)

Cunter also proclaims:

We also have evidence of liberals’ proclivity for violence in the form of mountains of arrest records. Liberal protesters at the 2008 Republican National Convention were arrested for smashing police cars, slashing tires, breaking store windows, and for possessing Molotov cocktails, napalm bombs and assorted firearms. (If only they could muster up that kind of fighting spirit on foreign battlefields.)

There were no arrests of conservatives at the Democratic National Convention.

Hmmm. My understanding is that the vast majority of those who actually smash police cars, slash tires, break store windows, etc., are anarchists, not liberals, and while I don’t know much about the anarchists, my understanding is that by definition they don’t like liberals, considering liberals to be part of the broken political system that they despise. Actually, I think that they hate any and all political systems, broken or otherwise. (Any anarchists there, feel free to correct me in the comments section if I’m wrong.)

But that aside, again, I only WISH that liberals actually would wreak havoc like Cunter claims they (we) do. Instead, they tend to be notoriously pussy, usually not even fighting back when they are physically attacked. Fucking peaceniks. (And, as Cunter points out, liberals don’t even like to slaughter Muslim babies for the profits of Big Oil in the names of freedom and democracy and God and Jesus and puppies and kittens and fluffy little bunnies and butterflies and marshmallows and cotton candy. Fucking treasonous liberals!)

And if there were no arrests of conservatives at the Democratic National Convention, well, since conservatives tend to be overly comfortable, overprivileged rich fucks, since they tend to sit at the top of the hierarchy, shitting and pissing upon others, what, exactly, do they have to protest? (Oh, yeah: taxes, which the rich fucks’ corporations — which are people just like you and me, don’t you know – don’t even pay anyway. [Oh -- and the black guy won the 2008 presidential election over the old white guy by 7 percentage points, when U.S. history clearly has demonstrated that only white men should ever be president.])

But wait. Cunter’s not done.

“It was a good day when George Bush was merely burned in effigy, compared to Hitler or, most innocuously, compared to a monkey,” she whines.

OK, so go to Google images — images.google.com — and look up “Obama monkey” and “Obama Hitler.” You’ll see lovely images like these:

(You can Google “Obama burned in effigy” on your own. And you know, you’re no one until you’re burned in effigy. Just sayin’.)

It seems to me that blacks are much more often compared to monkeys or other non-human primates than are whites, and that whites comparing blacks to monkeys is quite different from mostly whites comparing a white guy to a monkey*, and really, I don’t think that the right or the left has a monopoly on the trite Hitler comparison, although if Barack Hussein Hitler truly wants to round up and exterminate six million “tea-partying” wingnuts, hey, I’m down with that. (But that will never happen, the FEMA concentration-camp conspiracy stories notwithstanding, because, as I said, liberals are pussies.)

Cunter even manages to scrape together some names of Democratic politicians who have made racist or racist-sounding statements in the past, and, of course, she has to mention that the late Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd in his youth used to be a member of the KKK, which he spent the rest of his life regretting and denouncing. (Well, she doesn’t remind us that he was young and that he regretted it the rest of his life. An oversight, I’m sure.)

Cunter neglects to mention Repugnican racist politicians like Strom “Baby Daddy” Thurmond, Trent Lott (whose political career imploded when he stated that segregationist Thurmond should have been elected president in 1948), George “Macaca” Allen, Jeff(erson) Sessions, John Ashcroft, George Bush I (remember the Willie Horton ad?) and George Bush II (remember the robo-calls that John McCain had fathered a black child, which had Karl Rove’s greasy fingerprints all over them? And how helpful Bush II was to the black victims of Hurricane Katrina?), Katherine Harris (and her purging of black voters from Florida’s voter rolls so that Bush II could “win” Florida), and, of course, David Duke. (Cunter actually writes that we liberals “have zero examples of conservative racism.” Uh, smoking dope isn’t legal yet, Ann.)

And these “incidents”/incidents of liberal-on-conservative violence/“violence” that Cunter recounts are, as violence goes, pretty tame. And quite anecdotal — hardly a fucking national pandemic, unfortunately. The worst of them she recounts is that a guy at a MoveOn.org event bit off a portion of a wingnut’s finger.

Again, cool shit like that doesn’t happen nearly enough.

I wonder what one of Cunter’s fingers tastes like. Careful, though, my fellow violent liberals. I’m guessing that she has acid for blood.

–

*I used to love the comparisons of George W. Bush to a chimpanzee, although the comparisons were an insult to the intelligence of our closest living cousins.

The comparisons of Bush to chimps was a statement on his lack of intelligence, however. The prime aim of comparisons of blacks to non-human primates, however, is to suggest that they are subhuman – and thus, that it’s justified to treat them as such. 

Big difference. But just another innocent oversight on Cunter’s part, I’m certain.

Where’s Macaca?

The NAACP says that the “tea party” is racist.

The “leadership” of the “tea party” — including its grand dragoness, Sarah-Palin Quayle – denies this.

Yet we have ample evidence — photographic evidence — that the “tea party” is guilty as charged.

Seriously: If I had the rights to news photos of “tea-party” crowds I would put together a coffee-table book, modeled after the Where’s Waldo? books, perhaps titled Where’s Macaca?*

Because finding a non-white person among a crowd of “tea-party” dipshits is as challenging as it is to find Waldo.

For instance, this news photo of a “tea-party” crowd I’d put on the cover of my book titled Where’s Macaca?:

Associated Press photo

(Actually, there is one person in the photo who appears not to be Anglo. Can you find Macaca?)

If you think I’m being inaccurate or unfair (or both), you can go to Google Images and type in “tea party crowd” and see for yourself how many non-whites you can see in photos of large “tea-party” crowds.

(Heck, I’ll even save you the time; you can click here to see those results for yourself.)

The pictures do not lie.

–

 *“Macaca,” you might recall, is a racial epithet for a brown-skinned person, from the French word for “monkey.” Repugnican U.S. Sen. George Allen of Virginia lost re-election in 2006 after he referred to a young Indian-American man as “macaca” – while the young man was capturing him on video.

Palin-Quayle on God, guns ’n’ grizzlies

Associated Press and Reuters photos

The 46-year-old Sarah Palin-Quayle pontificates in front of the National Rifle Association’s annual convention yesterday just before its cross-burning ceremony. Palin-Quayle’s juvenile, Valley-girl-like word choice, intonation and body language should come as no surprise, given that her main means of political communication is Twitter.

I would say that the 2008 presidential election never ended for Repugnican Sarah Palin-Quayle, who refuses to go the fuck away, but it’s more accurate, I think, to say that her 1984 beauty pageant never ended for her. Indeed, the former Miss Alaska pageant contestant (she lost that contest, too) reminds me of a former Miss California Carrie Prejean –

– who has gone on to become a right-wing politician two decades from now, replete with the cross pendants –

Associated Press photo

– that both Palin-Quayle and Prejean prominently publicly display as proof of their favor with God and Jesus.

Palin-Quayle is in the news yet again, telling the KKK-like National Rifle Association yesterday that surely President Barack Obama would ban guns if he could, and that it’s up to God’s warriors like she and the members of the NRA to prevent that God-awful scenario from happening.

Um, Jesus Christ probably would ban guns, but that’s another blog post…

Actually, Obama The Great Centrist never would ban guns* — he’s way too pussy to do anything radical — but the message that “President Sambo is a-gonna take away yer guns!” resonates well with the white-supremacist crowd that Grand Dragoness Palin-Quayle was addressing yesterday.

Probably even more ludicrous, though, than Palin-Quayle’s lie that the black president is after whitey’s arsenals is her assertion that she also made yesterday at another appearance that “mama grizzlies” — pissed-off Repugnican and other right-wing women, especially mothers, I’m guessing she means by “mama grizzlies” — are going to “rise up” and “take this country back.”

Aside from the fact that there aren’t enough far-right-wing women to hold a fucking Tupperware party, much less (much more?) take over the nation, I like the “mama grizzly” rhetoric, because this is what Palin-Quayle actually thinks should be done with grizzlies:

Yes, that is a photo of the wildlife-lovin’ Palin-Quayle in the governor’s office when she was governor of the Podunk State of the Great White North.

As Palin-Quayle is against women’s right to choose what to do with their own uteri, and supports the right wing’s subjugation of women in general, it is appropriate that she’s now blathering about her support of “mama grizzlies” when we have photographic evidence of the fact that she likes to pal around with grizzlies that have been slaughtered.

Indeed, like Cruella de Vil loved her Dalmation puppies, planning to make them into fur coats, Palin-Quayle thinks that mama grizzlies make great sofa covers.

You betcha.

P.S. Here’s a photo of Chatty Cathy Palin-Quayle at yet another event on Wednesday. I love the subtlety, don’t you?

Associated Press photo

*Indeed, The Associated Press notes:

Gun enthusiasts [that's a nice, "professional" way of saying "gun nuts"] have trumpeted fears that their rights would erode under a Democrat-led White House and Congress, but President Barack Obama has largely been silent on issues such as reviving an assault weapons ban or strengthening background checks at gun shows. Obama also signed a law allowing people to carry loaded guns in national parks.