Who are the Teabaggers? Well it turns out they are EXACTLY who we thought they were.

 Courtesy of the New York Times:

Our analysis casts doubt on the Tea Party’s “origin story.” Early on, Tea Partiers were often described as nonpartisan political neophytes. Actually, the Tea Party’s supporters today were highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born, and were more likely than others to have contacted government officials. In fact, past Republican affiliation is the single strongest predictor of Tea Party support today. 

 What’s more, contrary to some accounts, the Tea Party is not a creature of the Great Recession. Many Americans have suffered in the last four years, but they are no more likely than anyone else to support the Tea Party. And while the public image of the Tea Party focuses on a desire to shrink government, concern over big government is hardly the only or even the most important predictor of Tea Party support among voters. 

 So what do Tea Partiers have in common? They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.

More important, they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 — opposing abortion, for example — and still are today. Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek “deeply religious” elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates. The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government. 

This inclination among the Tea Party faithful to mix religion and politics explains their support for Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. Their appeal to Tea Partiers lies less in what they say about the budget or taxes, and more in their overt use of religious language and imagery, including Mrs. Bachmann’s lengthy prayers at campaign stops and Mr. Perry’s prayer rally in Houston. 

Yet it is precisely this infusion of religion into politics that most Americans increasingly oppose. While over the last five years Americans have become slightly more conservative economically, they have swung even further in opposition to mingling religion and politics. It thus makes sense that the Tea Party ranks alongside the Christian Right in unpopularity.

Republican racists who want to turn this country into a theocracy.

Color me unsurprised.

Want a second opinion?  Here you go.

When I started going to Tea Party meetings two years ago, I was sympathetic. Just after attending one in North Dakota in August of 2009, I wrote: "Most tea partiers are not bad people. They're just mad. In many meaningful ways, today's Tea Party attendees' lives have gotten consistently worse for the last 20 years, regardless of which party was in power." I concluded that trying to figure out what they wanted was a dead end because what they wanted was simply to complain—that the Tea Party "is not a group of listen and respond; this is a group of respond and respond." 

Two years of Tea Party functions later, and I finally know what the Tea Party wants: A Christian nation.

It appears that these small minded, ignorant racist fundamentalists have completely taken over the Republican party.  And through them they want to take over this country.

What say we keep that from happening.  You with me?

Sarah Palin's twisted Tweet translated..

Okay so I happened to read this tweet from that wacko from Wasilla:

Obama:"Lincoln-they talked about him almost as bad as they talk about me" Mr. Pres- tour Lincoln Museum anti-Abe display;try repeating claim 
9 hours ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®

Now in the interest of full disclosure I have to admit I had NO fucking idea what Palin was trying to say here.

I was so confused that I actually went over to the Sea O'Pee to see if perhaps they had a special Palin twitter salad decoder ring or something.

It turns out they did have some idea of what she was trying to say.

Apparently during Palin's very, very, very brief bus tour/political prick tease, she had stopped by the Lincoln museum. In one portion of the museum is a room called "The Whispering Gallery."

The Whispering Gallery is a twisted, nightmarish hallway where you will hear brutally unkind things said about Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln during their early months in Washington. On the walls are cruel caricatures and barbed political cartoons that attack the Lincolns.

Apparently Palin got her panties in a twist because President Obama had DARED to compare the hateful, insulting, violent things that are currently being said about him to the hateful, insulting, violent things that were said about President Lincoln.

And since Palin had JUST visited the museum this information about the "Whispering Gallery" had not disappeared completely from her brain.....well not yet anyhow.

So is she right?  DID Lincoln suffer far more hateful comments and biting satire than our current President has faced?

Let's find out.

Anti-Lincoln cartoon

(A bitterly anti-Lincoln cartoon, based on slanderous newspaper reports of the President's callous disregard of the misery of Union troops at the front.)

Anti-Obama cartoon

Anti-Lincoln cartoon

(While Lincoln's prosecution of the war dominated the political debate, slavery was the ultimate wedge issue in the campaign against the president -- and the newspaper, the New York World, had a field day with the delecate subject of race relations. Taking Lincoln's abolitionist sentiments to the extreme, the World claimed that what the president really wished was, "perfect social equality of black and white," even advocating intermarrying so as to become, "the finest race on earth". Courtesy of William Rabbe.)

Anti-Obama cartoon

Oh yeah, I see her point.  Don't you?

The Right Wing is apoplectic at being accused of inspiring terrorism. I guess all of these people came up with the idea on their own.

Photo courtesy of the Red Phoenix

All of these incidents were compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

January 21, 2009
On the day after Barack Obama is inaugurated as the nation’s first black president, Keith Luke of Brockton, Mass., is arrested after allegedly shooting three black immigrants from Cape Verde, killing two of them, as part of a racially motivated killing spree. The two murders are apparently only part of Luke’s plan to kill black, Latino and Jewish people. After being captured by police, he reportedly says he planned to go to an Orthodox synagogue near his home that night and “kill as many Jews as possible.” Police say Luke, a white man who apparently had no contact with white supremacists but spent the previous six months reading racist websites, told them he was “fighting for a dying race.” Luke also says he formed his racist views in large part after watching videos on Podblanc, a racist video-sharing website run by longtime white supremacist Craig Cobb. When he later appears in court for a hearing, Luke, charged with murder, kidnapping and aggravated rape, has etched a swastika into his own forehead, apparently using a jail razor.

May 31, 2009
Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion extremist who was involved with the antigovernment “freemen” movement in the 1990s, allegedly shoots to death Kansas late-term abortion provider George Tiller as the doctor is serving as an usher in his Wichita church. Adherents of “freemen” ideology claim they are “sovereign citizens” not subject to federal and other laws, and often form their own “common law” courts and issue their own license plates. It was one of those homemade plates that led Topeka police to stop Roeder in April 1996, when a search of his trunk revealed a pound of gunpowder, a 9-volt battery wired to a switch, blasting caps and ammunition. A prosecutor in that case called Roeder a “substantial threat to public safety,” citing Roeder’s refusal to acknowledge the court’s authority. But his conviction in the 1996 case is ultimately overturned. In the more recent case, Roeder is charged with murder and faces life in prison.

Feb. 18, 2010
Joseph Andrew Stack, who had earlier attended meetings of radical anti-tax groups in California, sets fire to his own house and then flies his single-engine plane into an Austin, Texas, building housing IRS offices. Stack and an IRS manager are killed, and 13 others are injured. Stack leaves a long online rant about the IRS and the tax code, politicians and corporations.

March 27-28, 2010
Nine members of the Hutaree Militia are arrested in raids in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana and charged with seditious conspiracy and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction. The group, whose website said it was preparing for the imminent arrival of the anti-Christ, allegedly planned to murder a Michigan police officer, then use bombs and homemade missiles to kill other officers attending the funeral, all in a bid to set off a war with the government.

April 30, 2010
Darren Huff, an Oath Keeper from Georgia, is arrested and charged with planning the armed takeover of a Madisonville, Tenn., courthouse and “arrest” of 24 local, state and federal officials. Authorities say Duff was angry about the April 1 arrest there of Walter Francis Fitzpatrick III, a leader of the far-right American Grand Jury movement that seeks to have grand juries indict President Obama for treason. Several others in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement accuse Duff of white supremacist and anti-Semitic attitudes in Internet postings.

May 10, 2010
Sandlin Matthew Smith detonates a pipe bomb at a rear entrance to a mosque in Jacksonville, Fla., while worshippers are inside. Armed only with a fuzzy videotape, authorities only identify Smith, based on talking to witnesses to whom he admits the attack, a year later. They track Smith, a bus driver from Julington Creek, Fla., to a campsite near Fairview, Okla., where he resists arrest with a gun and is killed. A search of Smith’s two homes turns up explosive materials.

June 8, 2010
A bomb packed into a soda can is planted outside Osage Baptist Church in Carroll City, Ark., where a polling station for a Democratic Senate primary runoff between Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Lt. Gov. Bill Halter is located. The device does not explode, although authorities say it was capable of causing death or serious bodily injury. Officials later receive a tip from contractors who hired to clean out the foreclosed home of self-described “Patriot” Mark Krause, where they find bomb-making materials, manuals, and materials related to antigovernment militias. Krause, who earlier posted antigovernment messages to MySpace, eventually is arrested in Seattle.

July 18, 2010
An unemployed parolee with two bank robbery convictions, apparently enraged at liberals and what he sees as the “left-wing agenda” of Congress, allegedly opens fire on California Highway Patrol troopers who pull him over in Oakland. No one is killed, but two troopers are slightly injured and Byron Williams is shot in the arms and legs. Williams allegedly later tells authorities that he was on his way to attack offices of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Tides Foundation, a liberal organization that, although little known to most Americans, has been repeatedly pilloried on air by Fox News host Glenn Beck.

Sept. 2, 2010
A pipe bomb is thrown through the window of a closed Planned Parenthood clinic in Madera, Calif., along with a note that reads, “Murder our children? We have a ‘choice’ too.” The note is signed ANB, apparently short for the American Nationalist Brotherhood. Six months later, law enforcement officials arrest school bus driver Donny Eugene Mower, who allegedly also threatened a local Islamic Center and has the word “Peckerwood,” a reference to a white supremacist gang, tattooed on his chest. Mower reportedly confesses to the attack.

Sept. 7, 2010
The FBI arrests 26-year-old Justin Carl Moose, a self-described “freedom fighter” and “Christian counterpart to Osama bin Laden,” for allegedly planning to blow up a North Carolina abortion clinic. After earlier receiving tips that Moose was posting threats of violence against abortion providers and information about explosives on his Facebook page, the FBI set up a sting operation to capture him. Moose later pleads guilty to distributing information on manufacturing and use of an explosive and is sentenced to 30 months in prison.

Jan. 14, 2011
Federal agents in Arizona arrest Jeffery Harbin, a member of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement, for allegedly building homemade grenades and pipe bombs that he apparently intended to supply to anti-immigration groups patrolling the Mexican border. A prosecutor says that Harbin constructed the devices, using model rocket engines and aluminum power, “in such a way as to maximize human carnage.” Harbin is indicted on two counts of possessing a destructive device and a third of transporting destructive devices. Jeffery Harbin is the son of Jerry Harbin, a Phoenix-area activist with past ties to the neo-Nazi National Alliance and the racist Council of Conservative Citizens.

Jan. 17, 2011
Bomb technicians defuse a sophisticated improvised explosive device (IED) found in a backpack along the Spokane, Wash., route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade with 1,500 marchers. Using forensic clues found in the dismantled bomb, officials about two months later identify and arrest Kevin William Harpham, a long-time neo-Nazi. Harpham had posted more than 1,000 messages to the neo-Nazi Vanguard News Network since 2004, when he was a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance. Harpham also had contributed to the white supremacist Aryan Alternative newspaper. He is indicted on one count of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and one count of possessing an IED. Later, federal hate crime charges are added.

We could have course quibble at a few of the incidents listed above as to whether the individuals were inspired by the "Right Wing" as most of us understand it, or more fringe elements, but we do have to admit it is a chilling list to see all put together like this.

I would also like to add our own Alaska grown terrorist Schaeffer Cox to the list as well. just to round it out.

These are just the incidents that have taken place since Barack Obama became President. You can see a much more comprehensive list over at Addicting Info.

Lawrence O'Donnell disusses the heart wrenching number of LGBT teen suicides in Michele Bachmann's district.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

There is no excuse for children to feel isolated because of their sexuality any more than it is okay to do so in response to their skin color or their gender.

Adults should understand that, and take great pains to be accessible to the students who are reaching out for help.

For those who have been asking if there is a connection between the Oslo terrorist and Sarah Palin, your wish is my command.

In a revelation that should come as no surprise to most of us, Norway terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, is a fan of the American Tea Party, in particular crazed anti-Muslim firebrand Pamela Gellar.

Breivik was a fan of Tea Party darling Pamela Geller's rabid, anti-Islam website Atlas Shrugs, and made frequent comments there. Indeed Breivik's irrational fear and hatred of Islam and marxism, coupled with his Christian fundamentalism, makes him an ideological twin to many of the most dangerous members of the American Tea Party.

For those who were unaware, Gellar has a vicious, anti-Muslim website called Atlas Shrugs, and she is also on the national Advisory Committee of Jews for Sarah:

JewsForSarah is proud to have the dynamic Madame Geller as a member of our national Advisory Board.

Here is Gellar defending her idol on Canadia TV earlier this year.



Yesterday Gellar quickly put up a post condemning Breivak's murderous rampage and quickly going on the defensive:

According to this report, he started planning this attack nine years ago. I wasn't blogging back then.

Gellar misses the point.  It does not matter if the initial spark for his Muslim hatred did not come from the American Tea Party, Sarah Palin, or Gellar herself, there is increasing evidence that their rhetoric added fuel to inflame his hate until he could not longer take it and felt the time was right to act.

And as movie critic Roger Ebert pointed out in his review of "The Undefeated":

"The Undefeated" takes opposition to the Democratic party for granted, and focuses on Republicans and establishment conservatives, who should apparently share the blame. It praises only the Tea Party, and assigns credit to Palin for Tea Party victories in the 2010 elections. As Palin continues to prolong her entry into this year's GOP Presidential primaries, one wonders if Stephen K. Bannon has his money on a third-party bid by Palin as a Tea Party candidate. I suspect that's where his heart lies.

I myself have seen no evidence that Adolph Hitler ever personally murdered a Jew, but whose name is forever linked to the extinction of six million Jewish people?

So to date Sarah Palin placing a bullseye over Gabrielle Gifford's district had NOTHING to do with her being shot, her hate filled rhetoric during the McCain campaign had NOTHING to do with the insane number of death threats against our President, and her participation in the anti-Muslim hate speech coming from the Tea Party had NOTHING to do with what happened in Oslo, Norway.  Is that what we are supposed to believe?

That is quite a number of coincidences, and what is it that Palin believes about coincidences again?

“There are no coincidences” is a favorite maxim.

 I could not have said it better myself.

(I would like to give a hat tip to the anonymous commenter who sent me some of the links I used in this post.  Thank you very much for your help.)

Though there was no connection, Fox News used the Oslo terrorist attacks to fan the flames of anti-Muslim hatred.

In early reporting all anybody knew was that there HAD been a bombing in Norway and a shooting at the youth camp.  Yet that was all Laura Ingraham needed to state unequivocally that, “Two deadly terror attacks in Norway, in what appears to be the work, once again, of Muslim extremists,” and then to immediately jump to a pre-recorded Bill O'Reilly interview with the lawyer representing the Islamic Community Center in New York, which prominently featured O'Reilly bullying the man and insinuating that the Muslim people were to blame for 9-11.



We can wait until we are blue in the face for Ingraham, or Fox News, to apologize for their blatant hate mongering but it will never come. This was a purposeful decision to gin up more hatred toward Muslims, and as a byproduct keep Americans supporting the wars overseas which financially benefits Fox News, and which feeds Roger Ailes personal xenophobia concerning the Islamic people.

This morning I wrote:

And hidden in the shadows there can be no doubt that America has its version of an Anders Behring Breivik, just waiting in the wings for that last straw to snap his emotional camel's back, or perhaps for direction from a Right Wing radio host or Fox News talking head, to provide a clue as to which enemy he needs to place in his crosshairs.

Can there be any doubt who Fox News is actively attempting to place in those crosshairs?


And is that not exactly the kind of rhetoric which inspired Anders Behring Breivik to launch his devastating terrorist attack against his own people in the first place?

Breivik had talked admiringly online about conversations he had had with unnamed English Defence League members and the organisation Stop the Islamification of Europe (SIOE) over the success of provocative street actions leading to violence.

"I have on some occasions had discussions with SIOE and EDL and recommended them to use certain strategies," he wrote two years ago. "The tactics of the EDL are now to 'lure' an overreaction from the Jihad Youth/Extreme-Marxists, something they have succeeded in doing several times already."

In other words it appears that the promoters of terrorism that Laura Ingraham, and her bosses, are having such difficulty identifying, may in fact be found staring back at them from the mirror. 


(H/T to Moral Low Ground.)

What was the motivation behind the Oslo killings? And are they destined to happen in America next?

This is pretty chilling stuff folks so you may want to have at the very least a cup of coffee before reading this.

Courtesy of the Foreign Policy blog:

I have just finished reading through what appears to be the 1,518-page manifesto and handbook of the alleged perpetrator of the worst terrorist attack in Norwegian history.

The manifesto, bylined by someone calling himself Andrew Berwick, is entitled "2083: A European Declaration of Independence" and was posted on Stormfront.org, a white supremacist website, and discovered by American blogger Kevin I. Slaughter. [UPDATE: Norwegian TV has confirmed that the author is indeed the Oslo shooter, according to the New York Times.]

In it, "Berwick" declares himself a "Justiciar Knight Commander," a leading member of a "re-founded" Knights Templar group formed at an April 2002 meeting in London. He claims the founding group has 9 members, whom he does not name, and that three other sympathizers were not able to attend the original meeting.

"Our purpose," the document reads, is to "seize political and military control of Western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda."

In grim, apocalyptic language, it advocates attacks on "traitors" across Europe who are supposedly enabling a Muslim takeover of the continent.

"[W]e should… not exceed (per 2010) aprox. 45 000 dead and 1 million wounded cultural Marxists/multiculturalists in Western Europe," the author writes. "The time for dialogue is over. We gave peace a chance. The time for armed resistance has come."

The manifesto also provides detailed instructions for everything from making a bomb to raising funds to preparing physically and mentally for what the author describes as a coming three-stage "civil war" between patriotic nationalists and "multiculturalists" who are, wittingly or not, destroying European civilization.

Filled with hateful rantings against Muslims -- whom the author claims are on a trajectory to take over Europe and erase its culture patrimony -- the writing bears a great resemblence to online comments attributed to Anders Breivik, 32, the confessed perpetrator of a massacre that has so far claimed nearly 100 lives.

The author also claims to be Norwegian, and says that English is not his native language. And at the bottom of the document are several pictures of Breivick in different outfits, including the frogman costume pictured above.

There is much more which you can read for yourself by clicking the link above.

This is very frightening information indeed, and I am sure I am not the only one amongst us who immediately thought of Jared Lee Loughner, or Timothy McVeigh, after reading of this tragedy and then wondered if, in this time of vicious political bickering, the very same kind of horrific incident wasn't in America's immediate future as well.

I can tell you with certainty that Frank Schaeffer has very little doubt:

There is a growing movement in America that equates godliness with hatred of our government in fact hatred of our country as fallen and evil because we allow women choice, gays to marry, have a social safety net, and allow immigration from other cultures and non-white races.

According to the Guardian newspaper, the killer wrote:

"Today's Protestant church is a joke," he wrote in an online post in 2009. "Priests in jeans who march for Palestine and churches that look like minimalist shopping centres. I am a supporter of an indirect collective conversion of the Protestant church back to the Catholic."

It seems Anders Behring Breivik longed for a "pure" and ultra conservative religion. He was a man of religious conviction, no liberals with their jeans need apply! Liberals beware.

Norway is just a first taste of what will happen here on a larger scale.

I certainly hope that this time Mr. Schaeffer is incorrect, but I cannot pretend not to see the same gathering storm clouds of which he is speaking.

And for those who have recently questioned why I still bother to call out Sarah Palin on her lies, and reveal to the world just how insane she, and her political points of view, are, this is why. Because the people behind this kind of hatred, and plans for Christofascist domination, are looking for an attractive package behind which they can broadcast their message of hate and divisiveness until the country is so splintered that they can then step in to grab hold of the reins of power.

I have long been convinced that Sarah Palin WAS the vessel that they chose to further their agenda.  But we, with no small amount of help from Palin herself, have managed to damage her credibility to the point that I don't believe they find her useful any longer. By no means am I suggesting that she is not still somebody whose activities should be monitored carefully, because she is.

However there are others like Bachmann and Perry with which we still to contend.  And hidden in the shadows there can be no doubt that America has its version of an Anders Behring Breivik, just waiting in the wings for that last straw to snap his emotional camel's back, or perhaps for direction from a Right Wing radio host or Fox News talking head, to provide a clue as to which enemy he needs to place in his crosshairs.

In other words my friends when it comes to unveiling the dangerous agendas of the lunatic fringe, or shining the light of truth on dark plots of nefarious political operatives, we have really only just begun.

In the immortal words of Robert Frost:

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

A message from the Muslims who share our country, My Fellow Americans.

The vilification of the Muslim community in America is one of the saddest, and most profane things to happen to any group of people in my lifetime. The attacks of 9-11 provided, for some, the excuse to wage a holy war right in the heart of our country, and to bury their fellow citizens under shovelfuls of hateful rhetoric, shameful accusations, and religious intolerance.

As many of you know, I am not much of fan of ANY religious belief, but I DO love people.  And these are simply people.  What's more they are OUR people.  And they deserve our acceptance, our respect, and our protection.

To learn more please visit this website.

Thank you.

Breaking News: Traced Slur May Have Originated from Senate Staffer

¡Hola! Everybody...
I was hanging out on the comments page of one the blogs I follow, Joe.My.God, a blog dedicated to LGBT issues.

The author says that someone left the following comment on his post: “All faggots must die.”

of course, we old school flame warriors know this par for the course in the blogoshpere, except that Joe added:

“The above comment was left today by “Jimmy” on my post about the DADT cloture vote. The IP address *appears* to resolve to the neighborhood of GOP U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss’ Atlanta office. The ISP is “United States Senate.” I’m confident that the JMG internet sleuths can get to the source.

Here’s the IP: 156.33.20.72. Get busy, geeks!”

Check out the blog for updates. At least one reporter from the Atlanta Journal Constitution has picked up on the story (click here) and people are busy tracking down the origin of the comments. If this is from a senate office, hopefully someone will get reamed.

Eddie

Bigotry Dressed as Research

¡Hola! Everybody…
This is the goober redneck muthafuckas (yeah that reads correctly) attempting to disguise their xenophobia as concern for “the rule of law,” or passing out propaganda dressed as “research.”

* * *

-=[ Bigotry Dressed as Research ]=

The anti-immigrant faction hide their bigotry mostly as “concern” for the largely fabricated crises attributed to immigration. In effect, they’re demanding that my rights (or the rights of any person of color) be abridged in the name of “national security.” In this way, they hypocritically hide behind the racism of the “show me you papers” Arizona immigration law (AZ SB1070) and other such measures.

Never mind that a large body of research on undocumented immigrants from a broad range of institutions show the allegations of the anti-immigrant crowd are groundless. Disregard that the most vocal anti-immigrant organizations are hate groups -- documented nativists and white supremacists. No! Don’t look at that! The anti-immigrant bigots assure us that all they want is to make us all safe from the feces-smearing, disease-ridden, promiscuous, lazy, shiftless messakins, and their third world ways, who come here to live off welfare and (paradoxically) take away all the good jobs.

Two organizations, FAIR and CIS (actually, they are one organization, both founded, funded, and run by documented eugenicists, nativists, and white supremacists) are often cited by the goobers as viable, credible supportive evidence for their claims. (I will have more to say about the historical connection between immigration and white supremacists, xenophobes, and racists at a later date.)

Anti-immigrant hate groups' studies make the wildest claims and if you're debating a goober anti-immigrant bigot, you can be sure they will try to slip by a FAIR or CIS-backed study. The problem is the studies are hugely flawed.

Notice that a broad range of credible research organizations, using well-known and accredited social scientists, largely dispute the findings of CIS, FAIR (and also NumbersUSA). Notice also these organizations have documented ties with white supremacists, or actually have these cretins in positions of power. This should make anyone looking to honestly inform themselves about immigration think twice. But conservatives have never been known for their moral reasoning or honesty (though they love to pontificate on morality).

Take, for example the following FAIR “study,” which makes the claim regarding the economic impact of immigration:

“The fiscal costs of illegal immigration do not end with these three major cost areas. The total costs of illegal immigration to the state’s taxpayers would be considerably higher if other cost areas such as special English instruction, welfare programs used by the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens, or welfare benefits for American workers displaced by illegal alien workers were also calculated.”

Yet, when a credible researcher looked at the FAIR study on the economic impact of the children of undocumented immigrants, he found it made many unsupported claims and that its numbers crunching just don’t add up:

“... the report’s own statistics do not support this claim. Even if the report is correct in its assertion that the cost to states was $7.4 billion in 1999-2000, this represents only 1.9 percent of the $381.8 billion spent nationwide on public elementary and secondary education and a minuscule fraction of the roughly $1 trillion in total spending by state governments. Moreover, the report neglects to mention the estimated 1.1 million undocumented K-12 students in 2000 comprised a mere 2 percent of the total student population and that many state governments -- including California’s -- were running budget surpluses at that time. [emphasis added] It is no more plausible to claim that undocumented students are somehow largely to blame for current budget deficits than it is to claim they deserve most of the credit for the budget surpluses of three years ago.”

“... the FAIR report argue[s] that ‘communities’ limited tax dollars are being diverted to accommodate mass illegal immigration.’ This conveniently ignores the fact that immigrants are part of the taxpaying community. The report attempts to get around the issue by saying that while it ‘is reasonable to ask whether the costs of educating illegal alien students is offset by the taxes paid by their parents…study after study shows that immigrants cost taxpayers more in public services use than they pay in to the system via taxes.’”

Notice that last sentence. The FAIR study makes the factual claim (without documentation) that undocumented immigration has a negative impact on the US economy. Not only is this a false claim, the exact opposite is true:

“However, this simply is not true. In the most authoritative study to date on the economic costs and benefits of immigration, 1997’s The New Americans, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that ‘the average immigrant pays nearly $1,800 more in taxes than he or she costs in benefits’ and that immigrants make a net contribution of “as much as $10 billion a year” to the U.S. economy.”

But here’s the kick in the ass:

“It also is worth noting that The New Americans emphasizes a key fact overlooked in any analysis, such as FAIR’s, which tries to estimate the net “costs” of immigration by taking a single-year snapshot of the economy: ‘Children who consume services and pay no taxes today become contributing taxpayers tomorrow.’” (click here for the brief take-down of FAIR's shoddy research practices)

In short, FAIR and CIS are not so much “research” organizations, but a part of a loud and hysterical anti-immigrant movement given free reign on mainstream media though they are thinly veiled racist organizations spewing hate propaganda.

And I have found the same methodologically flawed tendency in most of the studies done by anti-immigrant organizations. For example, there was the one study claiming that Mexicans were responsible for a spike in rates of leprosy. That study’s “findings,” repeated for weeks on the now defunct Lou Dobbs program on CNN, and done by someone with no real social science, or epidemiological training, was later found to be totally false. When Dobbs was confronted by this on a 60 Minutes segment, he refused to acknowledge the mistake and continued airing segments connecting undocumented immigrants with fabricated “disease plagues.” The same was found to be true of studies blaming immigrants from everything to crime to the theory that undocumented immigrants are part of a conspiracy to retake the southwest (click here for a full expose of the hate groups featured on mainstream media as credible organizations)

Whatever your position on immigration, the one criteria for a sane public discourse should be a discussion based on the facts, not the hysteria of bigoted goobers masquerading as legitimate organizations.

Fuckin’ redneck muthafuckas dressed in labcoats. SMH

-- Eddie

Right Wing Hysteria & Moral Cowardice

¡Hola! Everybody...
Life is a celebration -- each day is another opportunity to deepen that celebration... or not. LOL

* * *

-=[ Moral Cowardice ]=-

Man, you are a died in the wool dumb ass. Please tell me that you do not consider the killer of DR Teller a move by a right wing extremist.....it was a crime by a CRIMINAL, plain and simple, and ALL efforts to make it into something it was not, the lone action by a lone gunman, not associated with any conservative movement, have failed.

-- An example of “reasoning”

This was the opening salvo from a twat who, when confronted with facts tying recent killings to the White Nationalist Movement, ran crying to his site, wrote a blog about me, and then cried and whimpered that I was mean (and a racist to boot! LOL I just love it that neocons are now experts on racism). I believe this individual and individuals like him are moral cowards...

But before I continue, I must admit to a huge mistake. After some thought, I have come to the conclusion that classifying the perpetrators of recent hate crimes by white supremacists as “mentally unstable,” does a disservice to all those Americans who suffer from mental illness. The vast majority of citizens suffering from mental illness never go out on killing sprees. Most, in the face of debilitating illness, go out and function just as the rest of us, never harming a soul.

These so-called “lone gunmen” are not crazy, psychotic, or mentally imbalanced. They knew exactly what they were doing. They are definitely angry -- but they are angry about very specific things, and in very specific ways. For example, each one picked targets that suited their political goals -- political goals shared by massive movements. They stashed weapons and they carried out their premeditated acts of violence.

There’s a consistency to the ideology of these angry, armed, white males and the common thread that ties them together is white supremacy and right-wing hysteria.

If we heard the exact same story of a black or Latino/a and it was discovered that the individual had ties to a Black or Latino/a Nationalist movement numbering in the tens of thousands, I’m willing to bet this fool and people who think as he does would be shooting black and brown people on sight, no questions asked.

They are not crazy, solitary gunmen and women; they are part of a fascist movement composed of moral cowards. No... These fascists -- America’s homegrown terrorists -- are not unhinged; they are perfectly sane individuals taking neoconservative ideology to its conclusion. In this way, they are an extension of fascist ideology in the same way that groups of Klansmen are extension of that ideology. It is an ideology undergirding a well-organized and sizable political movement in America.

In the coming days, I will show that the neocon movement is predicated on racist notions of white superiority. The core thrust of modern conservatism comes from modern-day pseudo-scientific “research” no different in empirical validity from 19^th century eugenics and head measuring. Furthermore, these attempts to scientifically validate racist ideology have been given almost free reign on the editorial pages of some of the most influential newspapers and journals.

Georges Santayana famously said that those who refuse to learn from the past, are condemned to repeat it, and we ignore the actions from the well-organized far-right at our own expense. One need only take the lessons Santayana was referring to -- the lessons of fascisms and the hell they wreaked during WW II. Hanna Arendt wrote extensively of the symbiotic relationship between propaganda and fascists movements. One cannot breed without the other. Even shit needs flies...

Speaking of which, here’s an interesting response to my link on the White Nationalist Movement (quoted verbatim):

By and large it is liberals who have as much in common nowadays with this guy than do most conservatives. After all it is popular to be anti Israel, and pro hama's. -- An Idiot

I chose this particular nugget of “reasoning” because it is a prominent meme running rampant on the neocon blogosphere these days. It is really quite simple (or simplistic):

Right-wing propagandists are pro-Israel.

The American Left is anti-Israel.

Therefore, a white supremacist is a left-wing extremist!

Or as one responder put it:

All cats die.

Socrates died.

Socrates was a cat.

The dire lack of logical reasoning by the talking heads and their sheeple on the right is par for the course. Limbaugh has made millions using logical fallacies, as has O’Reilly and the rest of their hate talk comrades. Recently Glenn Beck of Fox News stated that, “What they’re missing is: The pot in America is boiling. And this is just yet another warning to all Americans of things to come.”

Actually, Beck has it right: the pot is boiling, but it is boiling because of people like Glenn Beck, ranting hysterically every night about impending apocalypses of various forms -- looming “liberal fascism,” the “economic meltdown.” Obama, every white supremacist’s nightmare, is coming for your guns and a class of inferior people has stolen the America that you once knew. In this way, fascist ideology, interchangeable with neocon principles, gets credence and emboldens those on the far right. Guns sales since Obama’s election going through the roof -- and it ain’t happening in East LA or Brownsville, Cabrini Green, or Harlem.

Propaganda and fascism -- one cannot thrive without the other. In creating the black and brown face of evil, we help dehumanize those faces, making it easier to justify their extermination.

This is taking neoconservative ideology to its logical conclusion. In this way, frequent MSM commentator Pat Buchannan, a Holocaust denier himself, can advocate setting up snipers on our southern borders with nary a whimper from journalists.

Combine hate radio, hate websites, hate podcasts, and a crisis economy where people feel they are losing all they have, and we see the beginning of a perfect storm of hate crimes and murders committed by a significant percentage of millions of stable, hate-filled who have been primed to move from sullen bigotry and anger to violent criminal action

A social security check arrives late. A bounced check starts bank charges that end up costing hundreds of dollars and the movement gains momentum, blaming immigrants, blacks, Jews, gays, war protester-- and the next thing you know we are seeing dead people on national TV. And those millions of other Americans afflicted with fascist hate are seeing one more case of a person letting go, unleashing the hate that the extremist media has built up...

Anti abortion people attempted to put on a “shocked” face, publicly denouncing the murder of Dr. Tiller.

The Washington Post reported that John de Nugent, white supremacist friend of the Holocaust Museum murderer James W. Von Brunn, “called von Brunn a genius but described the shooting as the act of ‘a loner and a hothead.’” “The responsible white separatist community condemns this,” he said. “It makes us look bad.”

Yeah, right... Sounds like my man up there in the epigraph, doesn’t it?

What it does is it exposes such thinking as the moral cowardice that it is.

Eddie

Niggerology

¡Hola! Everybody...
I find it interesting that some believe Blacks shouldn’t be offended by the use of the word nigger because they (blacks) use the word. What does this say about an individual’s morality? Furthermore, I find it offensive, as well as the height of arrogance, that an individual would presume that people “should get over it” when exposed to hate speech.

* * *

-=[ Reflections on Niggerology ]=-

“I advance it there fore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to whites in endowments of both body and mind.”

-- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1785

There is no other word in the English language more closely related to the notion of White Supremacy and racial hatred than the word nigger as uttered by a bigot. Indeed, the word is so central to American history that it has its place right up there with loftier phrases such as freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

While Jefferson expressed doubts about the shameful institution of slavery, he apparently had no qualms about expressing his views regarding the inferiority of Blacks. And he dressed it in “scientific” prose, paving the way for a long and shameful history of scientific racism. This is where we can begin to see the roots of the word nigger -- in the dialectic of white superiority versus black inferiority. This dialectic continues today, kept alive in the pseudoscience of Murray’s Bell Curve and the modern conservative movement’s racially coded language of “individuality,” “the underclass,” and “self-determination.”

In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson fashioned the excuse he and his peers needed: a “rational” explanation for blurring the inherent conflict of a free nation built on the institution of slavery. According to Jefferson’s “observations,” blacks were little more than childlike, animalistic creatures doomed to lives of permanent subservience. Sadly, this is not much different from the assertions of conservative social scientists, both black and white, who blame enduring racial inequality on people of color and their white liberal “enablers.”

His ridiculous and inflammatory observations framed in scientific and “learned discourse,” lay down the foundation for what Josiah Nott, a 19th-century scientist who sought to prove blacks' inferiority, described as “niggerology.” Journalist Jabari Asim links widespread acceptance of this pseudoscience to anti-black campaigns evident in courtrooms, congressional committees, churches, and the popular media.

Nigger, and all the historical baggage of that it comes with, is irrevocably tied to this ideology. Some whites would argue that nigger is merely an invective, but they do so at the expense of ignoring centuries of history. Just as some pooh-pooh the hanging of a noose as a mere prank, conveniently ignoring the implications of a lynching. The dominant view from this ahistorical perspective is that black people should just “get over it.” To me this is the same as saying, “Get over it... nigger,” because it’s saying that the issue isn’t hate speech itself. Rather, such logic situates the problem on the individual or group targeted with hate speech. Of course, others will accuse me of attempting to give blacks and people of color special consideration.

Now, having somewhat set the table for all this horrible word, let me address a more volatile issue: when, or is it ever right, to use the word nigger, or any other racial epithet. Asim does not believe the word can or should be expunged from our language. I tend to agree with him. He applauds black artists, such as comedian and actor Richard Pryor and poet Sonia Sanchez, who have used the word for aesthetic, historical, and ethical purposes. However, he calls black people’s casual use of “nigger” even in an attempt to reclaim it, unimaginative: “As long as we embrace the derogatory language that has long accompanied and abetted our systematic dehumanization, we shackle ourselves to those corrupting white delusions -- and their attendant false story of our struggle in the United States.”

Determining when use of the “nigger” is permissible -- even constructive -- and when it is harmful is a delicate matter. I believe Asim contradicts himself. If the word can be used by artists for redemptive and ethical purposes, then why can’t a people similarly reclaim and redefine the word? After all, is it not true that who gets to wield power over language and how we define words (and ourselves) is at the core of self-empowerment.

In my personal life, among my friends, I use the word. Publicly, it would be more than stupid for me, to call a group of athletes “nappy-headed ho’s,” especially if I were an old white guy like Imus, with a history of documented racialized and bigoted views.

Imus tried to retaliate by suggesting that rappers use such language and it’s accepted, and it’ a double standard to suggest that his using it is wrong. This is the same white knee-jerk response from bigots who use or refuse to condemn the word. Niggers use the word, why can't we?

It’s not a Black thing, a White thing, a woman thing, a man thing, a Latino/a thing, or even an American thing.

It’s called “boundaries,” something individuals saddled with a sense of entitlement often find hard to grasp. I know when some words are okay and not okay. And to misconstrue it and the context is playing with fire. As much as I identify with black culture, I would be a fool to go up to a black person I don’t know and claim him as, “my nigga.”

Just as it would be foolish for a black man I don’t know to walk up to me and call me a spic. It’s about membership, first. In the case of Imus, his true feelings got in the way. He actually believes that he was somehow entitled to use a racial slur (on the radio in front of tens of thousands of listeners, no less). And then he cried foul (irony!) because he felt he was being judged unfairly. Or, as a white person here noted, “I think if blacks continue to use the word nigger then perhaps they should not be shocked/offended/outraged when others do.”

Huh? Why not? It’s idiotic to justify one transgression by pointing out another perceived transgression. It is a shallow, child-like sense of morality -- They do it, Mommie! Why can't I!

Believe me, as a public speaker even I know the use of “ nigger” or “nappy-headed ho’” in a public situation would get me fired -- and rightfully so.

Women can say certain words to women. Gays can say particular words to gays. Blacks can say some choice words to one another. In fact, individuals who are friends of different ethnic groups may consider it just fine to use racial slurs among themselves -- if they all agree to it -- but if a Black person is speaking to an Asian and isn’t a part of their concentric circle, then he might have some trouble on his hands. And vice versa.

But it goes deeper than that. Take my sister, for example. While growing up, my sister and I did not get along at all. We were constantly caught in a power struggle. One day, I was complaining to my best friend about her and he happened to express agreement with me, which caused me to turn on my friend: I can talk about my sister, but you can’t. It’s the same with team sports. Someone on your team can ride you, but watch out if it’s the member of an opposing team doing the riding.

However, even familiarity doesn't give you a free pass to use certain words. As a journalist friend of mine -- an African American woman -- pointed out, “I feel in no way comfortable ever using the N-word. Not just because it is not a regular part of my vocabulary, but because I can’t just walk up to any stranger using it either... Black people don’t just walk up to each other indiscriminately using that word with one another; that's suspect and you can get a proper ass-kicking if you do it, even if you’re the same race.”

It’s all about context. What’s appropriate in one context is inappropriate in another. Furthermore, if an individual expresses displeasure over my language, then it’s up to me to give some respectful consideration.

This is not to say that using nigger is perfectly fine. I might use it when in the company of some my friends, but that’s with friends with whom I have a certain unspoken agreement with. They know I’m not calling them nigger in the context of Jeffersonian niggerology as a way to assert my racial superiority. They know me and we have a shared history and know that my usage of the word nigger comes more from the sentiment expressed by Felipe Luciano’s poem Jibaro! My Pretty Little Nigger Man, or the Last Poet's Niggers Are Scared of Revolution, than from Charles Murray’s attempt to justify indefensible social policy decisions based on the erroneous assertion that blacks are intellectually inferior and thus doomed to life as a permanent underclass.

To you, it may not be right and you may not think it’s fair. That’s just the way it is. If a black person expresses displeasure at you calling him or her a nigger, then you need to get with the program.

Paz,

Eddie