I am fascinated to know what y’all thought about Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. C-SPAN’s video library has the entire rally and is available if you haven’t seen it. Let me put a few questions out there to get the ball rolling.
(1) Was Beck successful in co-opting the message and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr? (2) Were you moved by the vacuous patriotism and empty religiosity? (3) Did Beck erase the stain of his incessant race baiting against Obama by sharing the stage with colored folks? (4) Could you discern anything coherent from his pompous rambling? (5) What did you think of Palin’s remarks? (6) Did Alveda King make a fool of herself, her family, and the entire African Diaspora by lending her name to this rally?
Questionable Role: Pat Robertson’s un-be-weave-ably happy darkie co-host on the right wing 700 club.
KRISTI NEEDS YOUR HELP
Age: Old enough to know damn better.
Sex: Female
Date she left reality: The day her stupid arse went to work for Robertson’s talabangelical network in 1999.
Race: Black (Kristi’s membership in the race is under review.)
Latest Incident: Sitting there like a lobotomized coon while Pat Robertson attempted to discourage charitable giving to Haiti by spinning a fictitious tale of Haitians making a pact with the devil to gain independence from the French.
Height: 5’6″
City Last Seen: Virginia Beach
Weight: 140 lbs
State : Virginia
Hair: Weave
Country: United States
Eye Color: Brown
What You can do: Apparently Kristi doesn’t know that slavery is over and that she is free to leave Pat Robertson’s racist plantation network at any time to find legitimate work that doesn’t prey on her people’s religiosity and steal their hard earned money. Your generous contribution will help assist a team of professionals that will plan and execute an intervention on Kristi. They will show her that she doesn’t have to be Pat’s fuc*ing slave girl and that Christianity is not synonymous with the GOP. Should they fail to persuade Kristi, they’ll just beat her damn arse like she stole somethin.’
(Obama sets the record straight on Race, Religion, and his Pastor)
Having absorbed all of the calumny, reprobation, and histrionics I can stand regarding Barack Obama, Trinity United Church of Christ and its former Senior Pastor, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, I can be silent no more.
Having failed to make the manufactured Farrakhan smear stick, Obama’s tormentors have succeeded in distorting Jeremiah Wright into his horrifyingly racist doppelganger.
First, let me say that Barack Obama’s “denunciation” of some of Dr. Wright’s justifiable indignation about America’s hypocrisy regarding race, war, and Hillary Clinton, left a bad taste in my mouth, a very bad taste indeed.
Obama, the Junior Senator from Illinois, has labored mightily to run a campaign which focuses on that which unites rather than that which divides because it is a reflection of the way he has lived his life and made his career as an organizer, lawyer, state legislator, senator, and presidential candidate. He hasn’t always met that goal.His unequivocal support of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of innocent Lebanese civilians in 2006 and his failure to adequately address the Clinton campaign’s deliberate and repeated attempts to racially polarize Democrats reflect his craven accommodations to America’s racial hypocrisy.
A sistah named Cassandra from Michigan emailed me saying, “For the first time I don’t care whether or not he wins if he must shed his spirituality and dilute his soul to neutralize the stench and sting of truth that so many White Americans refuse to acknowledge…The hypocrisy and denial of how racism is destroying the integrity of working class and poor American blacks, whites, Latinos, Arabs and Asians is the seam that is dividing and will eventually shred the Democratic Party.”
Americans talk a good game, but in the end, as Jesse Jackson before him, he is being held to a racist double standard that previous white Presidents and Presidential Candidates were not held too.
Barack Obama’s religious affiliation with Trinity United Church of Christ is an affirmation of his own bi-racial heritage as the son of a Kenyan and white Kansan.To say that his membership in the United Church of Christ, a predominantly white denomination created in 1957 from the Congregational Christian Church and the Evangelical Reform Church is somehow suspect or racist is both ludicrous and false.
Trinity United Church of Christ is both integrated and welcoming of all people-including gays and lesbians.When Hillary Clinton’s denomination, the United Methodist Church, sent conflicting signals over the issue of homosexuality and restricting the role of gay clergy and the ability of gay congregants to have their unions blessed in the Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ went in the opposite direction in affirming its covenant with gay clergy and parishioners. Years before then, Wright established an AIDS ministry and a singles ministry for gay and lesbian congregants.
Lisa Miller, writing in Newsweek said, “As a leader, Wright defied convention at every turn. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune last year, he recalled a time during the 1970s when the UCC decided to ordain gay and lesbian clergy. At its annual meeting, sensitive to the historic discomfort some blacks have with homosexuality, gay leaders reached out to black pastors.”
“At that session, Wright heard the testimony of a gay Christian and, he said, he had a conversion experience on gay rights. He started one of the first AIDS ministries on the South Side and a singles group for Trinity gays and lesbians—a subject that still rankles some of the more conservative Trinity members, says Dwight Hopkins, a theology professor at the University of Chicago and a church member.”
Given the hatred and venom spewed forth in too many black pulpits toward black gays and lesbians, Dr. Wright stands out as enlightened, inclusive, and welcoming.But he would have to be in order to grow the church from 80 to 8000 members in three decades. Dr. Wright is the opposite from the bitter, angry, and bigoted portrait the corporate media has fashioned.
Come on, people.Do you really believe that a “black racist” would choose a 90% white denomination in which to plant his flag or are you just some kind of a damn moron engaged in a typical form of racist projection.I defy anyone to name one integrated, gay-friendly, mainline, protestant, predominately African American congregation you’ve ever stepped foot in where you’ve experienced hatred. I know damn well that nobody can because there is no such thing. Are you seriously scared of a moderate, bi-racial politician who bends over backwards to be inclusive, mainstream and non-threatening?Please.
Don’t fall for the right-wing attack campaign launched by Fox News and its corporate mimics.
Obama’s rise to prominence has been swift but it is not unlike that of another little known state politician who rose to prominence over thirty years ago, Jimmy Carter.Carter, you’ll recall was a born-again Baptist layman who also made common cause with all people regardless of race, religion, or background in order to heal the nation after Watergate.During the first months of his presidency in 1977, his home congregation, the Plains Baptist Church, of Plains, GA, forced out Pastor Bruce Edwards, because he sought, with the support of the President, to integrate the church.
During the waning days of the Presidential campaign, a black minister and “publicity seeker,” Rev. Clennon King, challenged the official policy of the church forbidding “Negroes and other civil rights agitators,” from membership. I find no record of the firestorm of criticism we see regarding Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright. Nobody called on him to resign his membership or denounce the racially prejudiced people with whom he had lived his entire life.
Plotting a middle ground, the church, following Carter’s lead, denied Rev. King membership.The final straw, however, came after Pastor Edwards and his wife adopted a half-Hawaiian child.According to the President’s brother Billy, it was bad enough that the pastor was a liberal integrationist, but adopting the “tan-skinned” child was “99 per cent of the preacher’s problem,” wrote Margaret Montagno in Newsweek.
The Plains Baptist Church subsequently changed its policy in word, but not in deed.Nicholas King, writing in the New Republic said, “The ‘opening’ of the Plains Baptist Church was achieved last fall under the leadership of the Carter family…But there was opposition to the opening from the church’s old guard, and the only black face in the congregation the Sunday Jimmy Carter first returned to Plains as President belonged to a Secret Service man.” After he left the presidency, Jimmy Carter left the church and joined with former Plains Baptist Church members at Maranatha Baptist Church.The small congregation of 135 opens its doors to 12,000 visitors a year to hear the President teach Sunday School. A few years ago, Carter also left the hopelessly right-wing Southern Baptist Convention.
According to the Los Angeles Times, during the 1980 presidential campaign, in the midst of a conservative tide taking over the Southern Baptist Convention, the President of the Southern Baptist Convention, Bailey Smith, proclaimed, “God almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew.”Again, nothing was heard from the media calling on President Carter to renounce the convention of which he was a member or for then Governor Ronald Reagan, who had addressed the same gathering of evangelicals in Dallas that same day to renounce the divisive and anti-Semitic statement of a right-wing supporter. The Washington Post covered the story on page F10 on September 26, 1980.The New York Times covered the story on three occasions and A 18 was the closet it came.
Lastly, can anybody recount for me the media firestorm over Pat Robertson’s endorsement of Rudy Giuliani.Refresh my memory about how many times the clip of the Religious Broadcaster andBaptist Minister advocating the assassination of the president of Venezuela, a supplier of oil to the United States, was run on Fox News and the rest of the corporate media in denunciation of Giuliani.How many times did they run the clip of Robertson agreeing with Jerry Falwell about the proper blame for 9/11 on abortions and gays and lesbians in a manner meant to accuse Giuliani of intolerance?
Today, nothing is materially different for the Hawaiian bred Barack Obama than it was for the half-Hawaiian son of Jimmy Carter’s Pastor. America, like Plains Baptist Church, has the same problem and like Jeremiah Wright has pointed out eloquently for thirty-six years as Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, race is 99 per cent of it.
This is the week set aside in honor of one our own, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.Normally a time for celebration, I have come to dread our annual commemoration because of photo-op’s like the one above with Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. Dr. King’s niece, Alveda King, has fallen off the mountaintop, bumped her damn head, and become a member of the vast right-wing conspiracy.
Employed full-time by the religious right, she is an aggressive pro-life activist, minister, and professional public speaker. As she has moved steadily to the right, Alveda has provided political cover and given full license to those who would distort, defame, and destroy the dream of her late Uncle in the name of a fictitious colorblindness that is really white supremacy.
A long time opponent of Affirmative Action, she is entangled in a network of right-wing preachers hell bent on destroying the progressive social change that Dr. King fought for.While Dr. King spoke of the power of love and the creation of the beloved community, the glue that holds their little movement together is hatred, homophobia and a fixation with stopping same sex couples who love each other from having the right to marry.
In the month of Mrs. King’s death, Alveda participated in “Justice Sunday,” a wingnut gala consisting of the full constellation of reactionary politicians and their talabangelical brethren dedicated to fighting for the confirmation of Bush’s judicial nominees like Samuel Alito.Alito, an archconservative with a history of hostility to civil rights, provided the fifth vote to strike down voluntary Affirmative Action plans in the public schools last year. Weakening the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education without the guts to admit it, Alito and his allies on the court dealt the principle of ending separate but equal education a mortal wound.
During most of Dubya’s first term, he found some way to paw Coretta Scott King in a manner that made my blood boil. Born on the same day as my grandmother two years apart, Mrs. King was always an icon in my household.I would NEVER allow George W. Bush to put his damn hands on my grandmother and I could never understand why Mrs. King visited the White House of a man who stole the Presidency. Her graciousness was always taken advantage of by this White House and she invariably became a colored prop in Dubya’s annual racist stage play of deceit every third Monday in January.
My personal favorite was the 2003 King Holiday.Within days of the holiday, the Administration announced a bold frontal assault on Affirmative Action by filing a brief against the Affirmative Action Admissions programs for both the University of Michigan and its School of Law.Writing a powerful Five-to-Four opinion upholding the principle of Affirmative Action, Sandra Day O’Connor ended her twenty years of steady opposition to Affirmative Action programs.Within two years, she resigned from the court only to be replaced by Alveda’s choice, Samuel Alito.It is only a matter of time now before Affirmative Action is destroyed by the Roberts Court.
This week, Martin Luther King III, “deeply” concerned about politicians misappropriating the legacy of his father, wrote John Edwards a beautiful letter telling him to keep fighting and stay in the race.If he was truly concerned about folks distorting the dream, he would have stopped his Mama from being used by George W. Bush, stopped his sister Bernice from demonizing gays and lesbians, put his foot down to permit the man who paid for his Daddy’s funeral, Harry Belafonte, to eulogize his mother instead of the ignorant patrician in the White House, and done something to put his cousin Alveda in check.
As adherents of the drum major for justice who preached non-violence, it would be unseemly for the members of the King family to take Alveda aside and beat her ass until she remembers what the hell the dream is really about.Nevertheless, let me be the first one to say to the King family that all of black America would happily forgive y’all if you laid down the principles of non-violence temporarily to “lay hands” on Alveda with “the love of the Lord.”
I won’t tell nobody and I am quite sure that Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, a King family friend, would help.After all, she has kept her girls outta jail, despite the mess they’ve been involved in, and I’m very sure a discrete word from the mayor to the Po-po would squash it. If Shirley can’t help, somebody can always call Bishop Thomas Weeks, Juanita Bynum’s soon-to-be ex-husband.The way I see it he’ll pop either the question, Alveda, or both.
Although I can’t help but lampoon Alveda and make light of this situation for the sake of my fragile sanity, bastardizing Dr. King’s dream is no laughing matter.
Craig will announce at a news conference in Boise Saturday morning that he will resign effective Sept. 30, four state GOP officials told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Word of the resignation came four days after the disclosure that Craig had pleaded guilty to a reduced misdemeanor charge arising out of his June 11 arrest during a lewd-conduct investigation at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
The three-term Republican senator had maintained that he did nothing wrong except for making the guilty plea without consulting a lawyer. But he found almost no support among Republicans in his home state or Washington.
Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter appeared Friday to have already settled on a successor: Lt. Gov. Jim Risch, according to several Republicans familiar with internal deliberations.
Craig’s spokesman, Dan Whiting, had said earlier that the senator would announce his career plans Saturday. The spokesman would not say whether Craig intended to resign.
Craig has been out of public view since Tuesday, when he declared defiantly at a Boise news conference: “I am not gay. I never have been gay.” But Republican sources in Idaho said he spent Friday making calls to top party officials, including the governor, gauging their support.
There has been virtually none publicly.
Asked Friday at the White House if the senator should resign, President Bush said nothing and walked off stage.
Republican officeholders and party leaders maintained a steady drumbeat of actions and words aimed at persuading Craig to vacate his Senate seat.
GOP lawmakers, hoping to get the embarrassment to the party behind them quickly, stripped Craig of leadership posts on Wednesday, one day after they called for an investigation of Craig’s actions by the Senate Ethics Committee. Craig complied with the request.
With his wife, Suzanne, at his side, Craig said he had kept the incident from aides, friends and family and later pleaded guilty “in hopes of making it go away.”
Craig, 62, has represented Idaho in Congress for more than a quarter-century and was up for re-election next year.
Republican officeholders and party leaders wanted Craig to give up his seat in the Senate as soon as possible. Their preference, according to several officials, was for a successor to be selected and ready to take the oath of office when the Senate returns from its summer vacation next week.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called Craig’s conduct “unforgivable” and acknowledged that many in the rank and file thought Craig should resign.
Republicans, worried about the scandal’s effect on next year’s election, suffered a further setback Friday when veteran Virginia Sen. John Warner announced he will retire rather than seek a sixth term. Democrats captured Virginia’s other Senate seat from the GOP in the 2006 election and have sought to line up former Gov. Mark Warner to run if the seat became open.
The contest for control of the next Senate was already tilted against Republicans, who must defend 22 of 34 seats on the ballot next year, before the Craig scandal and Warner’s announcement.
With a GOP candidate other than Craig, Republicans would stand a much better chance of keeping his Idaho seat in 2008. Idaho is one of the nation’s most reliably Republican states. The GOP controls the statehouse and all four seats in Congress, and Bush carried the state in 2004 with 68 percent of the vote.
Risch, the lieutenant governor, served for seven months as governor last year after former Gov. Dirk Kempthorne was named interior secretary. Risch had said earlier he was interested in Craig’s Senate seat if Craig did not seek re-election in 2008.
Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, also had been mentioned as a possible replacement for Craig, but the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because Craig has not resigned, said Otter would choose Risch.
Mark Warbis, a spokesman for Otter, said the governor would not comment until he hears from Craig.
Craig served in the House before winning his first Senate term in 1990 and compiled a strongly conservative voting record.
On Thursday, the Minneapolis airport authorities released a tape recording of Craig’s interrogation minutes after he encountered a plainclothes officer in an adjacent stall in an airport restroom.
Craig and airport police Sgt. Dave Karsnia disagreed about virtually everything that had occurred — including whether there was a piece of paper on the floor of the stall and the meaning of the senator’s hand gestures.
Craig denied that he had used foot and hand gestures to signal interest in a sexual encounter.
“I’m not gay. I don’t do these kinds of things,” Craig told the officer. “You shouldn’t be out to entrap people.”
Karsnia accused Craig of lying and grew exasperated with his denials.
“Embarrassing, embarrassing. No wonder why we’re going down the tubes,” Karsnia said
Sen. Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican, made the following statement at 4:30 p.m. ET Tuesday.
BOISE, Idaho — “First, please let me apologize to my family, friends, staff and fellow Idahoans for the obvious and unnecessary lie I’m about to tell. I did nothing at the Minneapolis airport I’m willing to cop to. I regret my stupid decision to plead guilty and the shame and derision that has brought to my wife, family, friends, staff, and fellow Idahoans. For that, I offer this, the lamest apology in the history of all mankind.
“In June, I overreacted, told the truth, and it was a politically poor decision. While I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct at the Minneapolis airport or anywhere else, somehow, for the second year in a row, I keep being exposed as someone with the proclivity to solicit sex in a public toilet. I chose to plead guilty to a lesser charge in the hope of making it go away. I did not seek any counsel, either from an attorney, staff, friends, or family. That was a stupid mistake, and I deeply regret it. I could have lawyered up and muddied the waters sufficiently to get this charge thrown out, but I didn’t for rather transparent reasons. I have now retained counsel and I am asking my counsel to review this matter to see if he can get me out of this s#*tstorm.
“For a moment, I want to put my state of mind into context on June 11. For eight months leading up to June, I had been relentlessly and viciously exposed for what I am by the Idaho Statesman. If you’ve seen today’s paper, you know why. Let me be clear: I am not willing to admit to being gay and never have been.
“Still, without leaving me a shred of dignity, the Statesman has exposed my extra curricular fornication. In pleading guilty, I overreacted in Minneapolis, because of the stress of the Idaho Statesman’s persecution and the deliciously sarcastic gossip it has fueled around Idaho. Again, that overreaction was a mistake, because if my Republican colleagues were willing to let the obvious lies of Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, and Alberto Gonzales pass unchallenged for years, I don’t understand why they can’t back me up one more time. Furthermore, I should not have kept this arrest to myself, and should have immediately hired an attorney and public relations mouthpiece to spin the lie of the century on my behalf. I wasn’t eager to face the music, but I should have done so anyway.
“I love my wife, family, friends, staff and Idaho. But I love serving Idaho in Congress more. Over the years, I have accomplished nothing for Idaho, and I desperately hope Idahoans will allow me to continue to do that. There are still fascist goals I would like to accomplish and hypocrisy I’d like to revel in. I still cling to the delusion that I can be an effective leader for the religious right. Next month, I will announce the fact that I will not seek re-election.I am just putting this face-saving B.S. out there as a Hail Mary pass to see whether or not there are enough gullible troglodytes left in Idaho to vote me back into the Senate.
“As an elected official, I fully realize that my life is open for public ridicule and scrutiny, and I take full responsibility for the “brilliant idea” of blaming the Media for exposing my hypocrisy and the mistake in judgment I made in attempting to handle this matter myself.”
“It is clear, though, that through my actions I am obviously lying to Idahohans and the American people. For that, I ask the people of Idaho on bended knee to please look the other way and let this pass down the memory hole like Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Iraq, Impeachment, and all the rest of the crap in Washington. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzze let me be a Senator again!!!!!!!!”
I want to, again, offer my deeply insincere apologies to all those I have let down and disappointed with these actions from my past. I am completely responsible. And I am so very, very sorry I got caught. No matter how long ago it was, I know this has hurt the relationship of trust I’ve enjoyed, and never deserved, with so many of you, and that I have a lot of work to do to rebuild that. I will work every day to pander to the lowest common denominator to rebuild it.
Since then, I’ve gotten up every morning, checking my crotch and the bed only to be relieved that neither is saturated in a pool of blood. Everything I really believe in kinda centers in my crotch region and if continuing to believe in and acknowledge those values causes some to attack me because of my past failings, well, so be it.
Unfortunately, my admission has encouraged some long-time political enemies and those hoping to profit from the situation to spread falsehoods too, like those New Orleans stories in recent reporting. Those stories are not true-at least that’s what I’ve said in the past and I need to stick to that to cloud the issue.
Now, having said all of this, I’m not going to answer endless questions about it all over again and again and again and again-because then I would inevitably be caught in a tangle of lies. That might sell newspapers, but it wouldn’t serve my family or my political aspirations well at all because I have a lot of important work to do for Louisiana that I didn’t do while indulging my S&M fantasies with hookers on the side and missing Senate votes.
For my part, I’ll be helping finalize a crucial water resources bill to provide much better hurricane and flood protection-what I shoulda been doing instead of calling escort services. I’ll be following up on our demagogic and racist defeat of an immigration bill by working for draconian and unworkable border and workplace security. I’ll be fighting for my political life, undermining liberals and much more.
From here, I’ll go directly to the airport and to Washington for votes, because I’m desperate for this face saving press conference to end. Thank you.
Wendy Vitter: To those of you who know me, are you surprised that I didn’t castrate the bastard? You know, in most any other marriage, this would have been a private issue between a husband and a wife — very private—until he bled to death. Obviously, it is not here.
Like all marriages, ours is not perfect. None of us are. But I have him where I want him now and my lawyer is on speed dial. When I dealt with this privately years ago, and damn near castrated David, I made the decision to turn the tables and assume the power in the marriage. To spare a prick was not the easy choice, but it was and is the right choice for me. David and I are now the best of friends and he better pray it stays that way.
Last week, some people very sympathetically said to me, “I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes right now.” I told the bitches off.This is the part where I’m supposed to say some politically soothing crap about being proud to be Wendy Vitter and then attempt to invoke sympathy for the ordeal my children have gone through.I’m just gonna skip it though in the interest of time.
And now I’m going to attempt to invoke your sympathy for me as a wife and I hope you will understand. It’s been terribly hard to have the media parked on our front lawn and following us every day. And yesterday, the media was camped at our church — at our home, and at our church every day. So even if I wanted to castrate and kill him for this latest outrage, I would have been caught.
As David returns to his right-wing pursuits and self-promotion in Washington, we’re going to return to our life here. I would ask you very respectfully to let us continue our summer and give us a pass on our obvious hypocrisy, just as we and our media advisors had planned.
I believe in solving problems through intimidation-not weakness-from hubris, not vacillation.
I’ve seen the everyday racism and homophobia of Americans across our country.I’ve seen people create political careers from nothing-using nothing more than the inherent fear white folks have of colored folks.I’ve witnessed how well it always works and have good reason to peddle the white fantasy that anybody can grow up to be President.In America, we love to congratulate ourselves for our openness to diversity while simultaneously asserting white privilege.
I am running for President because when I look to the future, I see a fascist police state where Americans are confident that their President is in rigid control of the country.
When I was first elected Mayor, we looked at the places where the City, or bureaucracy, or racial liberalism, were taking away people’s white pride.We cracked down and focused our sights—we took the bull by the horns.
Wages, hard work and ingenuity were overtaxed and overregulated.Too many white people felt like they couldn’t get ahead if they allowed black folks a level playing field and played by the rules.So we took decisive steps to dramatically slash social services and cut the N****** off welfare.
When I was elected Mayor, half the blacks were on welfare clogging up the system and sucking decent taxpayers dry.Therefore, we took on the state-sponsored liberal welfare state bullshit and turned “Welfare Offices” into “Job Centers” that became an Orwellian nightmare only a fascist could love.
We were successful because we refused to define deviancy down-instead we raised expectations and told the lazy ass blacks to get a damn job.We frustrated legitimate job seekers and people eligible for assistance and took on the black groups in the spirit of my mayoral campaign slogan, “one city, one fascist dictatorship.”
I’m writing you because you are some loon on a right-wing mailing list the campaign bought. You fancy yourself influential in your community and give to various and sundry right-wing causes and candidates.You know what they say, “A fool and his money are soon parted.” It would be great if you could be parted with a gift of $ 1,000, $500, $250, $100, $50, or even $25 bucks.If you could send it today, our grassroots hand holding and pacification of the troglodyte right can begin immediately.
We stand at one of he most crucial points in the history of the campaign-I got Fred Thompson breathing down my neck and I NEED YOUR SUPPORT.
Like you, I believe that Ronald Reagan was the greatest thing since sliced bread and that we must look toward the future to reassert our core values of hate, fear, racial polarization, respect for law and order, and a commitment to scaring the bejesus out of stupid people about Arab ragheads out to get us at home and around the world.
And while we know damn well that the bullshit in Baghdad and Afghanistan ain’t going well, I need to fill your stupid head up with ridiculous rhetoric about victory so that I can win your vote and the nomination.
This campaign is about strong, fascist leadership.When I took office in New York, people were afraid of criminal blacks and felt like they were losing control of their own lives.Drawing upon the “Broke Negroes” theory of policing, we cracked down on the quality-of-life-crimes such as walking, driving, and just plain being-while black.We cleaned the riff-raff out of Times Square so that wholesome white families from Nebraska could feel safe visiting the Big Apple.
To usher in an era of dictatorship based on our shared right-wing fascist Republican values, we must win this race for the White House so that I can uphold our priorities and demand accountability.
We will impose discipline on the budget by kicking the blacks and Hispanics off welfare.By doing so, we will reclaim our Reagan tradition as the party that understands the importance of hostility to minorities wins elections.
At the core of our approach to reform is the basic concept of white supremacy.
I believe that every parent should have the ability to send their child to the all-white school of their choice, be it public, private, or parochial.
We cannot be discouraged or cynical in the wake of our Party’s disastrous midterm F-up’s. For the Republican Party to win the presidency in 2008 and take back the majority in Congress, we must wholeheartedly embrace our core principles-or simply steal it again.
From the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, our party’s greatest contribution is to expanding the wealth of the top 1% and keeping the blacks and Hispanics down in this land and around the world.
When I say we should reduce taxes on the rich to stimulate the economy, I say it to slavishly appeal to the anti-tax nutcases and government phobic wingnuts that get off on that bullshit and will vote for me.It worked in New York because I did it and saw it work like a charm.
As Mayor, I stood up to the politics-as-usual agenda, held fast to my unprincipled demagoguery, and proved that:
Tax relief creates more wealth for the rich and leaves the rest behind.
Picking fights with a cartoonish clown like Al Sharpton was good for my approval ratings.
Shooting an unarmed black man 41 times because the NYPD have a vague sense that he might have committed a crime is a public relations bonanza and an opportunity to pander to the basest elements of the white electorate.
Our party is at its best when it connects to the primal racial fears of the white populace.
At a time of war and danger, the Republican Party must nominate a proven demagogue.At a time when Americans want to feel confirmed in their desire for white privilege, the Republican Party must boldly lead in this direction.Being a stubborn prick with strong beliefs and the arrogance to stick with them through unpopular times is an essential characteristic of our next president.
I’ve been tested, after all, I was the gigantic asshole that brazenly flaunted my whore in public and then announced the dissolution of my marriage in a televised press conference before I asked my wife for a divorce to her face.If y’all can let me get away that bullshit and still take me seriously, I deserve the Republican nomination for President.
I’m feeling catty today so please forgive me. I can’t help it. But y’all know I have a low tolerance for B.S. This steamy photo on the front page of the New York Post borrows from a March Harper’s Bazaar piece on the First Whore in waiting, Judith Nathan Giuliani. Miss Judi, you’ll recall, was Giuliani’s so-called “very good friend” whose “friendship” brought a public dissolution of Hizzhonor’s second marriage. He was whoring around with this tramp and bringing her for clandestine stays at Gracie Mansion, the Mayor of New York’s official residence.
Understandably, Miss Donna had a problem with Giuliani flaunting his tramp in front of her damn face and those of her children. She had a press conference of her own and alluded to another of his affairs “with one staff member” that she had been unconscionably subjected to. Classy and smart, Miss Donna rose to the occasion and played her part of the wronged wife to the hilt. Her performance added to the impression of Giuliani as a petulant bastard,which, of course, he is and will always be.
After impeachment, I thought I’d seen it all. This run for the White House brings the hypocrisy full circle. After threatening to destroy our republic in a demagogic and hypocritical power grab by fools in glass houses, now this. Republicans are far from tepid about his candidacy. Most of them welcome his candidacy like another grandbaby-with enthusiasm. The right-wing, however, seems ready and loaded for bear. They don’t appear poised to let him slide into power on an uncritical tidal wave of post-September 11th publicity. He ain’t on their far-right home team of knuckle dragging sycophants.
I shudder to think what a Giuliani Presidency would be like. He actually has a good shot at the nod, and in the end, the Oval Office. God forbid that we’re treated to another disgusting spectacle of him changing whores in midstream.
Congressman Keith Ellison, once again showing the progressive savvy that got him elected to Congress over a gaggle of others, was sworn in yesterday on Thomas Jefferson’s Quran, affirming his faith and underscoring the religious tolerance of one of our nation’s most distinguished and intellectual founding father’s. With this act of quiet dignity, Keith Ellison has proven himself to be a class act and an above average politician that understands the game of one-upsmanship.
Attacked for his Muslim faith again and again by a triumvirate of wingnuts: Glenn Beck, Dennis Praeger, and finally Virginia Congressman Virgil Goode, Ellison’s statesmanlike defiance reveals them as the bigots they are. Ellison then went for the kill on the house floor as he and Dennis Kucinich sidled up to Goode and shook hands with a man I regard as nothing more than a Klansman with a title.
Below, Congressman Goode takes the oath of office. But seriously…
Goode wrote a constituent and said “I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way. The Muslim representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran.” The only thing missing was a line that said “Segregation now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever” and a passing reference to the evils of race mixing. With examples like Virgil Goode and the media acceptance of his racism, it is amazing that more people don’t get on the “Goode foot.”
I’m dreaming of a white Senate
Just like the ones I used to know
Where the racism glistens,
and the country listens,
Brainwashed by Fox News and Tony Snow
I’m dreaming of a white Senate
With every wingnut bill I write
I’m for God, against Gays, and not really that bright
And may all your ballots be cast for a white
I’m dreaming of a white Senate
With every wingnut bill I write
I’m for God, against Gays, and not really that bright
And may all your ballots be cast for a white
Lost in the white fantasy world of right-wing extremism, Ken Blackwell and Vernon Robinson are the this year’s dynamic duo of wingnuttery. These black stormtroopers for the religious right defy all logic and reason and teeter dangerously on the edge of insanity.Obsessed with homosexuality and same-sex marriage, they have left no stone unturned in their ruthless and bigoted culture war against gay people, the most pressing issue on their narrow little their minds.
There is a so-called war on terror, high unemployment, crumbling schools, deteriorating housing and health care opportunities to be worried about for black families and all these two can be worried about is gay folk, as if they can escaped somehow.
There is a genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan that has claimed the lives of nearly 450,000 Sudanese, most of whom are Christians since 2003. The Bush Administration and its number one black foreign minstrel, Condoleezza Rice hasn’t done anything concrete to stop the killing. Isn’t that slightly more important than the “menace” of same-sex marriage?
Two million Africans died from HIV last year. They were killed by the indifference of the Industrialized World that has promised much and done little to stem the tide of disease and death. HIV is on pace to wipe out entire generations of people in sub Saharan Africa if it is not stopped. How many black lives and black families need to be destroyed in Africa and America before we realize that we need to be concerned with something other than the hateful scapegoating of gay people. Socially ostracizing gay people and preaching hate against gays and lesbians will not ever solve the problems in the black community.
The virus of theocratic fascism has infiltrated the black church and is driving a wedge between black people of faith and the black political leadership empowered by the black church during the civil rights era. Before there was a Jesse Jackson there was Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. He was Black America’s most famous preacher-politician. Elected as one of only two black members of congress in the forties, Adam Clayton Powell became Black America’s charismatic prince melding the philosophical influences of the black church into his politics for the social, political, and economic uplift of black people. He attacked Jim Crow segregation inside and outside the halls of congress with legislation and boycotts. Into this tradition of leadership came Martin Luther King, Andrew Young, John Lewis, Jesse Jackson, Bill Gray and others. They risked their lives marching to create the reality of today. This is the tradition Ken Blackwell, Vernon Robinson and their jack-booted fellow travelers ignore and desecrate at the peril of the black community.
Ken Blackwell and Vernon Robinson are enabled by a tight and growing network of black religious conservatives caught up in the ideological cul de sac of homophobia and republican politics. Some of the leading lights of black reaction are: Bishop Harry Jackson, of the High Impact Coalition, Dr. Martin Luther King’s niece, Alveda King, Dr. King’s daughter, Rev. Bernice King and her pastor, Bishop Eddie Long. Jackson, Long and Alveda King have all endorsed or participated in GOP campaigns or causes.
Ken Blackwell, Ohio’s Secretary of State is attempting to make the jump into the Governor’s mansion on the back of a thundering wave of right wing hysteria and reaction. He has sought and won the support of the most vociferous proponents of scorched earth conservatism and white supremacy. His previous service enabling Bush to steal the last Presidential election in Ohio is supposed to recommend him to the far-right but those loyal right-wing rubes are leaving him in droves this year.
The huge GOP scandals in Ohio this year have virtually destroyed Republican chances statewide if a fair vote without the interference of fixed Diebold machines is allowed to be held. As many have pointed out, Bush and his GOP don’t like black people and tickets led by them usually lose as they become entangled in suffocating webs of of wingnuttery. This year is no different, but the prominence of these black conservatives serves as a direct challenge to the democratic party to put forward more black and brown candidates for statewide offices that people of color usually shy away from.
Vernon Robinson, a former Winston-Salem, NC alderman, is just an unfathomable lunatic that is in dire need of psychiatric help. Born into the middle class, the son of a Tuskegee Airman, he has absolutely no excuse for his far right extremism and white supremacist worship. Yes, that is a picture of Vernon with Jesse-I-hate-blacks-and-gays-Helms.
A fascist firebrand, he specializes in shock politics and infammatory rhetoric that fixates on sex. His political ads make Kerry Healey’s look subtle in comparison. A frequent candidate for state and national office, he often loses but has raised millions from conservative knuckle draggers.
My favorite ad of the season is this one from the Robinson campaign which says it all
Skeptical Brotha 