Sarah Palin sacrificing herself for interracial harmony!

Could I have been wrong all these years, that Caribou Barbie (aka Sarah Palin) is actual not a racist and loves (really loves!) other people and races?

News reports based on the yet unreleased book by Joe McGinniss titled "The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin" claims that Palin has a fetish for black men, has used illicit drugs, and has had marital affairs.  It has been suggested by Caribou Barbie that Mr. McGinniss, -who was invited to live in Sarah Palin's neighbor's house and observe the Palin family- is a pervert and maybe even a pedophile!  As everyone knows, Sarah doesn't pull punches when this hockey mom with lipstick gets angry.

Sludge like this is better left in the pages of tabloid newspapers, preferably owned by arch-douche bag Rupert Murdoch.  There are probably far more damaging and news worthy stories about Palin, which has been richly covered elsewhere.  However, my contempt of Palin and the entire faux-populists and deranged crypto-fascists of the Tea Party movement demand me to at least bring to light these allegations.

McGinniss has some choice words about Palin that have raised my eyebrows:

• He describes in the book "that Palin had a sexual ‘fetish’ for black men and had a one-night stand with Miami Heat player Glen Rice while dating future husband Todd Palin. Rice is said to have confirmed the encounter to the McGinniss."
• States that Palin "married her husband only after being impregnated, saying that her first child, Track, was born eight months after the wedding."
• Palin engaging with Brad Hanson, her husband’s one time business partner, in a six-month affair that lead to the dissolution of the two men's snowmobile dealership.
• Palin furthermore has in the past used marijuana and cocaine

Some of these things are pretty lame, while others are just typical low class shenanigans.  The whole black men fetish I find amusing.  It's awfully cold up there in Alaska and a piping hot thick drink of black goodness is maybe what she really needs.

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Really though, I think more attention should be given to a documentary that is currently being shown at the Toronto International Film Festival, called "Sarah Palin - You Betcha."  The documentary, profiled in the Guardian newspaper, is by British film maker Nick Broomfield, who says that Palin "represents the forbidden in a weird and mischievous way" to the minds of evangelical Christian men in the Republican party.  People who are most knowledgeable of her, describe Palin as "dangerous", a "sociopath" and "disrespectful to intelligence".

The Guardian article summarizes Palin in a more coherent manner:

[Broomfield] has her down as a political opportunist who'll simply try to fill any power vacuum – a theory that fits neatly with the portraits offered of her as an overgrown prom queen, a beauty pageant back-stabber (there's some great footage of her puffing on a flute during Miss Alaska 1984, a dead spit for Rula Lenska) who thrives on gossip and vendettas and formulates policy with populist short-sight. Any allegiance to intellectual or fiscal ideologies is flaky at best. Her erratic decision-making meant she left Wasilla with a £22m deficit after her stint as mayor, then, as state governor, slapped an enormous tax on oil companies in Alaska. "She got that through with Democrat support," says Broomfield. "Most of the Republican party were against it."

The dangerous stupidity of this woman and her equally imbecilic followers should not be underestimated.

Personal Accountability, the American right wing edition.

So this is what's left of the American political landscape?

Six dead, including a federal judge, a Pastor, three senior citizens, and a nine year old child.  A member of congress in critical condition, recovering from an attack that sent a bullet through her head and across her brain.  And another fourteen wounded.

Unlike those members of the mainstream media (MSM), who profit from the endless vitriol of the Republican party and unbalanced right-wing demagoguery as illustrated above in Caribou Barbie (aka Sarah Palin), reasonable and educated people are aware of the diminution of decency in the theater of American politics and the impact of that endless stream of vituperative speech on the nation as a whole.  Consider what Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, had to say on this matter.

When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government... The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on this country is getting to be outrageous and unfortunately Arizona has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.

He did not say that this was the act of one deranged lunatic.  Rather, he cast a wide net on the media, the vast array of bigoted and self-serving members of the political establishment, and those who support these debased opportunists in the general public.

The vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business ... This has not become the nice United States that most of us grew up in.

As others have pointed out, this is the standard model for conservatives when they are not in power.  Kevin Drum of MotherJones magazine describes the counter-cyclical response of the conservative electoral base during these periods:

If you elect a liberal Democratic president, you get this kind of reaction from middle class conservatives. In FDR's day you got the Liberty League. JFK inspired the growth of the John Birch Society. Clinton got the conspiracy-minded talk radio crowd. And Obama has the tea parties...

In the 30s it was opposition to the New Deal. For the Birchers it was communism. For the Clinton-haters it was the culture wars... while today's is the deficits/socialism message.

While it is true that in each period there was a distinct reaction to the policies of liberals and the Democratic party, the current regularity and pervasiveness of these attacks, which do not emanate from fringe groups, but from mainstream corporate sponsors, Republican party members across the nation, and prominent media personalities, indicates that the nation has moved into a political atmosphere that so toxic with rancor and lies, that it cannot be dismissed or quelled.

Let's review a few of those hyper-patriots who are so fond of  invoking Jefferson's "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" quote.

• Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano (D), recently was the recipient of an incendiary package
• Governor Martin O'Malley (D) of Maryland, was also the intended recipient of two packages that detonated at a federal postal center injuring some workers.
• Nevada Senatorial candidate and Tea Party favorite, Sharron Angle, stated that the public had the option of dealing with an out-of-control Congress through "Second Amendment remedies."  The terminology is right-wing code for the assassination and murder of federal officials.
• Several other Republican candidates declared that the "violent overthrow" of the US government may be necessary in the event that they did not win the 2010 midterm elections.
• Byron Williams, a former felon, planned "to target individuals at liberal nonprofit the Tides Foundation and the ACLU."    He injured two police officers in a highway shoot-out, when police attempted to apprehend him for erratic driving.  In interviews after his arrest, Williams claims that he was directly inspired by Glenn Beck, Fox news celebrity, to seek retribution.
• Gregory Giusti pleaded guilty to repeatedly threatening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- including threatening to destroy her California home -- because he was "upset with her passing the health care law."  The perpetrator's mother indicates that he was motivated by friends and Fox News.
• President Obama has seen a 400% increase in death threats from the public compared to George W. Bush. According to reports, America's first black President "is the target of more than 30 potential death threats a day and is being protected by an increasingly over-stretched and under-resourced Secret Service"
• July 2009, Neo-Nazi James von Brunn, launched an attack on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum that killed security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns
• May 2009, Minuteman off-shoot group leader, Shawna Forde, murdered a 9-year old girl and her father in Arizona, in an attempt to finance their militia operations.
• May 2009, Abortion provider, Dr. George Tiller was murdered at his Church by an anti-abortion activist, who had belonged to an anti-government militia group that believed that virtually all existing modalities of government in the USA were illegitimate.  Dr. Tiller was shot point-blank in the head.  He had been a subject of violent militant and religious fanaticism since 1998.
• April 2009, a local Florida man killed and wounded several Chilean students involved in a foreign exchange program.  The killer was an active member of the Republican party who had espoused murdering immigrants to his neighbours.
• February 2009, in a suicide attack aimed directly against the IRS, a Texan man flew a single engine plane into the side of an Austin, Texas IRS building.  The incident led to the killing a of a single IRS employee and injury of several others.
• Tennessee white supremacists planned to murder then Presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008 and engage in the mass murder of black people.
• July 2008, a lone gunman attacked Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church in Tennessee, killing two patrons and injuring another seven.  The gunman, Jim David Adkisson, stated: "he had targeted the church because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of major media outlets."
• Eric Robert Rudolph, a right-wing Christian militant was responsible for the 1996 Atlantic Olympic bombings, the bombing of a Georgia abortion clinic, the bombing of lesbian nightclub in Atlanta, and a second abortion clinic bombing in Alabama, which killed a policeman working as a security guard and seriously injured nurse Emily Lyons.  Rudolph was assisted by like-minded sympathizers, who facilitated his evasion of police for more than five years.
• April 1995, the Oklahoma city bombing was conducted by right-wing militants Timoty McVeigh, Terry Nichols, and Michael Fortier, who were seeking retribution against the federal government for their involvement in the 1990's FBI sieges of Ruby Ridge and Waco, Texas. According to Wikipedia, the blast claimed 168 lives and injured more than 680 people. The blast destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a sixteen-block radius, destroyed or burned 86 cars, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings. The bomb was estimated to have caused at least $652 million worth of damage.

When it comes to the demented actions and words of right-wingers, they can never be held responsible, because in their mind they are the victims.  Like Palin and the propagandists at Fox news, they are never to blame for the climate of fear, hate, and ignorance that has arisen.  It's those dirty, hippie liberals, who are out to undermine the "real Americans," which are to blame.

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UPDATE: Conservatives have already criticized and asked for the resignation of Sheriff Clarence Dupnik for his castigation of conservative rhetoric and theatrics.  As usual, the right-wing is ramping up the propaganda by saying that it is the amoral liberal press that is painting them - the same people who have been marching around the country attending presidential speeches, congressional rallies, and health care debates with handguns and publicly attacking anyone who may disagree with them for the past two years- as the bad guys!

Fuelling the Clash of the Civilizations Meme!

Despite the fact that few persons on either side of the so-called Clash of the Civilizations divide actually want a "clash", there are those zealots who feel that wholesale planetary warfare is a positive course of action for the species. 

I've already discussed the rationals, why Bin Laden and his Islamist cohorts felt compelled to engage in their terrorist actions in previous posts (here and here).  The nature of the Islamist mind frame, generally speaking, is that of a victim seeking vengeance to mollify either actual or perceived attacks upon him and his metaphysical being.  To further the socio-political aims of its leaders, it requires a population, or at least a subset, to use the process of psychological transference, where their existing angst, anger, and inadequacies can be directly attributed to an externality that can be understood as the "other." In this case, the other is America or more generally Western civilization. For example, in an attempt to create a focus point in which they can blame the nation's inherent failings upon, the Mullahs inveigh against the "Great Satan". By transferring their own failures to America, they draw distinctions for their loyal followers of the high mindedness and virtue of their cause.  As the Green Revolution of 2009 has shown however, the majority of educated Iranians and youth, which form the majority of the population, find this decades old form of propaganda tiresome and repressive.

One has to remember, that across most of the Islamic world, their rulers are little more than quisling satraps whose existence is dictated by their utility to American hegemony. With the end of the cold war and advent of a more multipolar world, these nations offer America either oil reserves or strategic geopolitical use.  Equally, the governments of these nations are intimately aware of their own dependency on America's military, financial, and technical resources to exist. Weak failed states like Iraq -which has now been occupied by American forces for 19-years- and Afghanistan -occupied by NATO and Western forces for nine years- would most certainly degenerate into further civil war or complete disintegration without a firm military presence in the region; American or otherwise. Thus, while the specter of American hegemony may rankle the masses in many Islamic countries, those in control understand that if left to the demented illogic of absolute religious divinity over regional politics as espoused by factional leaders, these nations would combust into fratricidal violence and destabilize whole swaths of world.  For a thousand years, these people have been ruled and governed by others, and for good reason.

On the other hand, America's religious buffoons are hopped up on pushing humanity towards Armageddon and driving a war with the Kings of the East to validate Biblical prophecies.  For example, Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville, Florida has proposed that on the 9th anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist assault on America, that his flock will burn Qu'rans (aka. the Koran).  The moral equivalence argument has been made that Muslims are attacking American Christianity through the construction of the Cordoba Cultural Center in New York.  The response by this lot, to this perceived slight, is to engage in a classic book burning exercise.  America's Republican party through their coy electoral race-baiting strategies have unleashed the most bigoted and unstable element of its confederacy of dunces.  General Petraeus, the Pentagon, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and numerous religious and national leaders across the world, including even PM Stephen Harper of Canada, have denounced the racism and brutal stupidity of this action, which they insist will further marginalize those who support American objectives in the Middle East and across the world. 

While the military-industrial complex and the mandarins of war need and demand that this segment of idiots ferment a rational for the Pentagon's exorbitant budgets, the rest of the world needs to contain, quarantine, and sterilize these maladroits before we are further dragged into their dystopian and self-destructive fantasies.

Hallowed Ground and Charlatans...

There has been a lot of banter recently about WTC/ Ground Zero site as being hallowed ground.  For those who lost family members in the devastating terrorist attacks, the site no doubt invokes many passions and notions of what is sacred.  However, the argument that is being offered is not about Ground Zero per se, but about the appropriate manner of land usage surrounding the site and lower Manhattan specifically.

McClatchy Press has a good summary of the debate currently raging in the MSM about the proposed Cordoba cultural center to be constructed at Park51 place, two blocks from Ground Zero.  I'll highlight a few of the important points.

• Current plans for the cultural center include, "a 13-story, $100 million multi-use facility that's modeled after the city's popular 92nd Street Y. It would house a pool, gymnasium, a 500-seat auditorium for public events, and a Sept. 11 memorial, in addition to a prayer space."  Portraying the center, one that will ostensibly be used primarily as a gymnasium and memorial to the 9-11 victims, as solely and explicitly as a mosque, is simply dishonest.
• No one religion or ethnicity was targeted during the attack.  People from numerous countries and many religions, including Islam, died on that day.  All those people died because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
• The article provides some of the other commercial and non-profit activities within proximity of Ground Zero:  a strip club called the New York Dolls gentleman's club, an off-track betting parlor and smaller mosque that's been there for four decades. The New York Daily News recently tallied the businesses within a three-block area of the World Trade Center site — 17 pizza shops, 18 bank branches, 11 bars, 10 shoe stores and "17 salons where a girl can get her lady parts groomed."
• The people behind the center have been applauded by both the Bush and Obama Administrations, as voices of religious moderation and have assisted America's state department and intelligence units against violent extremism.

Although a number of prominent politicians, such as NY's Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have supported the proposed cultural center, many others have issued vitriolic and unsubstantiated statements.  For example, Newt Gingrich stated that because Saudi Arabia does not permit churches and synagogues in their country, then it is natural that Americans should equally be permitted to engage in such territorial and religious bigotry.  Apparently the former Speaker of the House of Representatives is unable to remember that the US constitution's first amendment explicitly and unequivocally guarantees the right to individual religious worship:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Equally, perennial buffoon Sarah Palin, has demanded that Muslims "refudiate" the project.  As an American, she is entitled to her own demented view of a flat earth-centric universe; however, she is not entitled to her own exclusive language.  Palin is a dangerous and deranged demagogue who is interested solely in extending the cult of Sarah to television viewers and right-wing radio listeners in America's racist and conservative conclaves.  Her bizarre contribution to the argument, while confusing to those of us in the reality-based universe, serve to divide Americans and further inflame international hostilities towards the nation as a whole.

Anytime government in collusion with popular sentiment serves to undermine the liberties and rights of law-abiding minorities, then it is not a matter of democracy, but a question of injustice.  America has a long and sordid history of intolerance, bigotry, and violence against minority groups.  Do we really need to be reminded that the only reason America exists today, is because it murdered its original inhabitants, stole their land, and broke nearly every treaty ever signed with them in the past 200+ years?  We and civil minded Americans should step back and think about what Abraham Lincoln said on his first Presidential inaugural address to the citizens of America:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Why African leaders can't be taken seriously: Part III

Last month, if one can imagine, race relations in South Africa hit a new low.

On April 3rd 2010, Eugene TerreBlanche, the country's leading white supremacist, was murdered by two of his farm workers.  Supporters of his said they would seek vengeance on greater South Africa for his murder and have warned nations not to send their athletes to the upcoming 2010 World Cup Football Games to be held there.

In the context of the murder, Mr. Julius Malema, the controversial leader of the ANC's youth league and potential future leader of the ANC party, attempted to seek short-term political gain by repeating in public an old ANC song; which if taken literally, calls for the killing of Afrikaners.  Since the end of apartheid in 1994, more than 3,000 white farmers are estimated to have been murdered.  South African courts have ruled that the song is an incitement to violence and illegal.

Malema then visited Harare, Zimbabwae, where he linked arms with Robert Mugabe, the country’s incompetent and bigoted dictator, and declared his own demands for nationalizing South Africa's mining industry and confiscating the land of white farmers, just as Mugabe had done.

 

South Africa's problems with this dunce do not end there.  In an interview with International journalists at ANC headquarters in Johannesburg, Malema publicly accusing BBC reporter, Jonah Fisher, of exhibiting "white tendency" then calling him a "bastard", "bloody agent" and "small boy".  The BBC reporter was then told by Malema to leave the press conference.

According to the Guardian UK newspaper, the dispute between Mr. Malema and the reporter began when:

Malema, who has just returned from Zimbabwe, praised Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and poured scorn on the "Mickey Mouse" opposition. He mocked exiles linked to the Movement for Democratic Change, led by Zimbabwe's prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, for using offices in Sandton, a wealthy suburb of Johannesburg.

Current South African President, Jacob Zuma, who I have ridiculed for his corruption and incompetence (here), was forced to publicly rebuke his unstable lieutenant; although in the meekest of terms.  Feckless ANC leaders condemned Zuma for merely saying that leaders must “think before they speak, as their utterances have wider implications for the country.”  Bloomberg news service is reporting,

Malema’s supporters will tell Zuma at an ANC national working committee meeting scheduled for April 19 that he was wrong to reprimand Malema in public... The ANC is divided on the issue and Zuma’s actions will be defended by the party’s military veterans association and the ANC Women’s League president, it said.

What future can South Africa have, when such flamboyantly idiotic and incompetent leaders are posed to seize control of the nation?

Carter on the Republican Noise Machine

The attempt of these right-wing zombies to portray their angst with this administration as having to do with reducing taxes, increasing liberty, or even reforming government based on firm conservative beliefs is farcical. If it were so, where were they when their Republican leaders were manufacturing consent for the Iraq war; doubling the federal debt; conducting a massive and illegal searches of Americans telephone conversations, emails, and sent mail; eliminating habeas corpus rights; and instituting torture as the first and last resort to any national security issue? No, their objective is nothing less than having this administration and equally America fail. Unable to articulate or even fiend a cogent argument based on facts and reason (not that they ever have) they reach deep into their primeval brains and vomit out voluminous buckets of venomous bile. To them Barrack Obama is considered a foreign agent who is hell-bent on destroying "their" America. To them he is simultaneously a socialist, a fascist, a Muslim, a Marxist, a communist, the Anti-Christ, and all things un-American.

Doublethink, the acceptance of two contradictory ideas or beliefs at the same time, has become the basis of the tea-baggers/Republican base's political ideology. As such, they are free to espouse the most ridiculous conceits without ever having to accept their inherent ignorance or bigotry.

When James Earl Carter, America's 39th president and Nobel prize winner, called a spade a spade, it was the mandarins of the mainstream media, too embarrassed by their own intellectual shallowness and outright pandering to those ignoble elements of American society, who first went to defend and then obfuscate the debate on the indecency of these tea-baggers and their right-wing accomplices. Despite the fact that the Republicans have been a party whose public philosophy, since Richard Nixon, has been that of ginning up white-alienation, race-baiting, persistent religious zealotry, and overt bigotry to win elections, we are told by the MSM and Republicans that their objections with Mr. Obama are honest. That and not the act of racism is the real news here.

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Follow Up: McClatchy Press has a good article on this subject in, "There's no denying Obama's race plays a role in protests." The article gives a broad outline of the increase of racial taunts emitted by the standard culprits and also to the growing extremism in right-wing circles that have resulted, in what author Ron Kessler describes in his forthoming book on the US Secret Service, "that racists and white supremacists probably account for more than a third of the estimated 30 death threats that Obama allegedly receives every day, about four times as many as were directed at former President George W. Bush."

Another Village Idiot Blows His Cover

Until yesterday, I'd never heard of Congressman Joe Wilson from South Carolina. Not to be confused with the former Ambassador (Joseph C. Wilson) who called George W. Bush and his administration of war-mongers dishonest in the infamous Niger yellow-cake uranium debacle that preceded the Iraq War. No, this Joe was a good ole' southern boy who fears God, loves apple pie, and hates niggers! Although the first two items I cannot verify, the third can be. You see, this Mr. Wilson is a member of a right wing group called 'Sons of Confederate Veterans,' a group according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) that is organized by radical neo-Confederates who favor secession and defend slavery as a benign institution. The group's leader, another self-appointed man of the cloth, one Rev. Eric Dean has attacked "racial interbreeding" as ungodly and described slavery as biblically sanctioned.

Having the full moral and intellectual vacuousness of his ill construed convictions behind him, Mr. Wilson, no doubt exhausted by the extravagances of the Obama administration, yelled out at the president, "Liar!" Facts, reason, civility, and general manners be damned, this village idiot needed to be heard. George Allen, former Governor and Senator from Virginia, had already used the racially tinged slur Macaca to insult another "colored" fellow with dubious American citizenship. What else could Mr. Wilson say under such blistering pressure?

I don't have a problem with politicians being called liars even by other politicians. However, if you are so disposed to calling out someone as deceitful, then at least you should know the definition of hypocrisy. The Republican party, that grand coalition of bigots, southern white dunces, flat-world believing anti-intellectuals, statists, and crony-corporatists, has been confirmed as issuing no less than 935 demonstrable falsehoods about the Iraq war. And yes Virginia in the reality based world we call these lies. According to the Centre for Public Integrity, they determined that the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanised public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretences.” The study identifies 935 false statements that were issued by the White House in the two years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Leading the pack, President Bush made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 false statements about Iraq’s connections with Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Colin Powell followed close behind with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction and 10 about Al Qaeda links.

So when the lies of George W. Bush yielded a two-trillion dollar war lacking an exit strategy and with thousands of Americans dead, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, millions of Iraqi displaced and pushed out of their own country, and not a single milligram of WMDs found, Mr. Wilson had nothing to publicly say; not a single word.