"Kill him!" again

In Pennsylvania today, the Hate Talk Express motors on:

"Chris Hackett addressed the increasingly feisty crowd as they await the arrival of Gov. Palin.Each time the Republican candidate for the seat in the 10th Congressional District mentioned Barack Obama the crowd booed loudly.

One man screamed "kill him!"

Supporters have been noted shouting “kill him,” “terrorist,” “off with his head” and other equally incendiary terms about Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. Others have directly suggested Mr. Obama is a Muslim, which he is not, or a traitor. Some comments even drew rebuke from Republican presidential nominee John McCain."

As far as McCain's "rebuke", too little too late, I'm afraid -- if he really wanted to return a modicum of civility to his campaign, he'd stop Palin from telling the lies that get these cretins all torqued up. But he isn't stopping her and she's too dishonest to even admit that her diatribes are the lowest kind of hate-mongering. From Huffpo, here's a video compilation of some of the hate going on at GOP rallies:




.
And it's spreading...

McCain campaign: turning down the vitriol volume

And why not? A picture says a thousand words.

The Hate Talk Express

The McCain campaign, and particularly Palin, wrenched open a putrid can of worms with their over-the-top, racially-tinged rhetoric last week. It was just a dog-whistle, but the low-functioning cretins who make up the GOP's base got the message loud and clear, and they're responding in kind:

"As the crowd cheered at a Sarah Palin rally this morning in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a man in the audience grinned as he held up a stuffed monkey doll with a Barack Obama bumper sticker wrapped across its forehead." [...]

"After Palin finished her remarks this morning, the man holding the stuffed monkey seemed to notice that a video camera was pointed at him, at which point he removed the Obama sticker from the doll’s head and crumpling it up in his hand."

You bought it, you own it -- "buy the ticket, take the ride" (as HST would say). Nice work, McCain/Palin.

"Call off the pitbull."

When more reasonable conservatives take issue with Sarah Palin's bogus attacks on Barack Obama, you know things have gone too far:

"The McCain campaign knows that Obama isn't a Muslim or a terrorist, but they're willing to help a certain kind of voter think he is. Just the way certain South Carolinians in 2000 were allowed to think that McCain's adopted daughter from Bangladesh was his illegitimate black child.

But words can have more serious consequences than lost votes and we've already had a glimpse of the Palin effect.

The Post's Dana Milbank reported that media representatives in Clearwater were greeted with taunts, thunder sticks and profanity. One Palin supporter shouted an epithet at an African-American soundman and said, "Sit down, boy."

McCain may want to call off his pit bull before this war escalates."

No kidding. Palin's recent speeches are dog-whistling every brain-damaged racist scumbag in the Republican constituency and whipping them into a shrieking frenzy. That kind of wretched, vicious hate-mongering should instantly disqualify her from being the Wasilla dog-catcher, let alone VP of the United States.

It's getting ugly

In these vile contests we call "elections", you can always tell when someone knows they're fucked by the ugliness of the accusations they hurl at their competition. It's a tactic borne out of total desperation -- just keep throwing shit and hope some of it sticks.

The McCain campaign shifted into full-bore "ugly" gear this week, with ludicrous accusations of a so-called "terrorist" connection to Obama. When Palin first started this shit on the weekend, some didn't see the racial undertone, but it was there -- Obama was the guy who "doesn't see America like we do", The Other. It's a dog whistle -- most of us don't hear it, but the racist scum does.

Today the open hostility spread to the media:

"Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy.""

Yeah, right... what was that about the incivility of the angry, angry left?

Those "Family (racist) Values"!

Big Things were happening this weekend in Minneapolis, as the Family Retchsearch Council threw one of their "Values Voters" wankfests. The FRC showed that there's a lot more to them than just homophobia and fetus fetishizing -- they also demonstrated their sensitivity to racism with the "Obama waffle mix" being sold by one of the vendors at the little shindig. Funnnnnneeee! CNN's Lou Dobbs liked it, and the "family values" rubes were just, uh, eating it up. But sadly, the popular item had to be pulled when the FRC suddenly "realized" that it was a racist piece of shit:

"Activists at a conservative political forum snapped up boxes of waffle mix depicting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as a racial stereotype on its front and wearing Arab-like headdress on its top flap.

Values Voter Summit organizers cut off sales of Obama Waffles boxes on Saturday, saying they had not realized the boxes displayed "offensive material." The summit and the exhibit hall where the boxes were sold had been open since Thursday afternoon."

The FRC followed up with a weak statement "condemning" the odious waffle mix and "the vendor" who was selling it. They claim that the exhibit wasn't vetted properly, and why not? If sloppy vetting is good enough for the McCain campaign, it's good enough for the Family Research Council. But the truth is probably simpler -- they didn't know the material was offensive because it wasn't offensive -- to them!

A whiter shade

GOP: the party of the pale:

"The reception honoring black participants at the Republican National Convention had it all – tasty food, an open bar and a little swag.

The only thing missing was the black delegates."

Gee, I wonder why?

And another one's gone

and another one's gone...

Racist homophobe (and former Republican Senator) Jesse Helms bites the dust at 86.

Out from under the rocks

Nothing like a story about an act of overt racism to bring the rest of the foaming fruitbags out from under their shit-encrusted rocks.

That CBC story about the pig's head incident in Ottawa (which I posted about on Monday) has generated over 100 comments, and ewwww it ain't pretty. Reading through the combox, I was reminded of a hot summer day when I lifted a bag of garbage out of its tidy little Rubbermaid™ can, only to find a nest of maggots teeming and boiling away underneath. It appears racism is not only alive and well but thriving in Canada.

First out of the gate on the racist side of the equation was this idiot:

Hahaha. Of course. The crush these people have on Steyn is well past the "schoolgirlish" stage and becoming an all-out obsession. No wonder he shut down his blog and made a run for it.

Predictably, a vicious little freak calling itself "InFidel" shows up to rant and foam and defend crumbling Canadian cultural values like Wonder Bread, Kraft Dinner and Timmy Ho's. His/her style is so spewingly familiar, it might just be someone we know from Right Blogistan. You know, the kind of person who routinely makes sweeping unsubstantiated claims that *everyone* hates multiculturalism. When called upon to define her/his definition of Canadian Culture and provide a citation to back up some alleged poll results, he/she responds:

Canada Freak Press, no less (and notably not even hyperlinked by this asinine "InFidel" character): would that be the Christalibangelist "news" site that publishes articles like "So What If I'm Racist?"? Arrgh. And you thought the level of debate on blogs was low.

A little good news

The Saudi Arabian woman recently sentenced to 200 lashes and 6 months in prison for "allowing herself" to be gang-raped (but of course!) has been pardoned:

"Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has pardoned the victim of a gang-rape whose sentencing to 200 lashes caused an international outcry, a Saudi newspaper said on Monday." [...]

"The 19-year-old Shi'ite woman was abducted and raped along with a male companion by seven men last year in a case that piled international pressure on the government to step in.

Ruling according to the strict Saudi reading of Islamic law, a court sentenced the woman to 90 lashes for being alone with an unrelated man and the rapists to jail terms of up to five years.

The Supreme Judicial Council last month increased the sentence to 200 lashes and six months in prison and ordered the rapists to serve between two years and nine years in prison."

Apart from the ridiculously oppressive law that led to a victimized woman being charged for what amounts to her own rape, the court seemed to miss the fact that she wasn't there by choice -- she was abducted. Well darn her for allowing herself to be abducted. Oh well: in places like Saudi Arabia, women take their tiny victories where they can.

Now if we could hear about a reversal of the non-sentences handed out to the rapists of a 10-year-old Aborigine girl in Australia last week, and the firing of the racist pigshit of a judge who claimed the child "probably agreed" to it, my week would truly be made. Maybe there's a chance, now that the case has drawn worldwide attention to a widespread culture of abuse.

(h/t: bastard.logic)

Witless in Washington (Part 3,782)

This is almost surreal:

"A top immigration official has apologized after awarding "most original costume" to a Homeland Security Department employee who dressed in prison stripes, dreadlocks and dark makeup for a Halloween gathering at the agency.

Julie Myers, assistant secretary overseeing Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, was part of a three-judge panel that lauded the costume, worn by a white employee, last Wednesday. She also posed for a photo with him."

So a guy shows up at a DHS Hallowe'en party in a racist costume, and not only is he not called out on it and immediately ejected from the party, his boss gives him a prize for "Most Original Costume", no less! And has no fucking clue that there might be something wrong, something just a little... off... with the whole scenario, until someone else at the party complains. Then it's "Oh... whoopsie!" Needless to say, the photo of Julie Meyers posing with the racist jerk in the "prize-winning" costume has gone down the memory hole and it's apologies all around.

Julie Myers, an immigration official (immigration?! official), is related to former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard B. Meyers, and she's also married to someone who used to work for DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff. So the upshot of it all is that while the idiot in the costume has been placed on "adminstrative leave", Myers won't be getting any reprimand.

Little things like this are glimpses into the hotbed of incest and insanity that is the current administration, and their complete and utter detachment from reality. And how they only care when they get caught.

(via Think Progress)

Wingnuts strike out against Coulter

for her anti-Semitic comments... Hahahahaha!!! Just kidding!!!

Let's have a look at the Pantload Media roundup on the subject:

Hot Air: “She’s not talking about forcible conversion; she’s saying Christians believe the Judeo-Christian tradition is The Way and those who don’t follow the path all the way to the end aren’t quite where they need to be.”

LGF: “From my reading, Coulter was simply stating standard Christian doctrine—with a little extra edginess to get Deustch wound up. Looks like it worked, and now she’ll sell some more books as a result.”

The Anchoress: “If you read that transcript to the end, you can see where Coulter tries to clarify her meaning, but she can’t, partly because a sound-bite forum is NO PLACE for that sort of deep and too-easily-misunderstood discussion, and partly because her host is, from his perspective as a Jew, unsurprisingly appalled by what he is hearing, by what he thinks Coulter is saying.”

You get the idea. Looks like they're taking the "She didn't really mean it that way" road out of this little shitstorm. Unfortunately, there's only one way she could mean it. And one other point of interest, if you please: just imagine their response had the same remarks been made by... oh, I don't know... Rosie O'Donnell? Huh??

Freedom of Online Speech

Watching the fallout from the "right girl" debacle over the weekend, an issue that keeps coming up is freedom of speech.

It goes without saying that I'm unequivocally opposed to hate speech directed against minorities. (And no, it doesn't matter if the person spewing the bile is of the minority they're attacking; it's still bigotry.) Obviously hate speech should be shut down wherever it's found in the mainstream: that includes delusional nitwits calling in to radio shows to rail against (pick a minority), hateful diatribes masquerading as "Letters to the Editor", fliers that denounce minorities, or phone lines that play racist messages. But when it comes to the internet, I'm somewhat more ambivalent.

My ambivalence doesn't stem from a belief that bigots have a right to attack minorities online, clearly they don't. I'd just be hesitant to advocate the curtailing of anyone's freedom of speech on the net, no matter how putrid their spewings, because this is the last place where expression is truly free -- we fuck with that at our peril. I worry that clamping down on hate speech online will put us on a slippery slope that ends someplace like China or Iran, where websites are routinely blocked and online criticism of the government can get a blogger tossed in jail. If less authoritarian regimes were in place in Canada and the USA my view might be less pessimistic, but at this point I think it's imperative to protect whatever freedoms we still have... even if the cost is that some abuse those freedoms.

In reality, the denizens of the net are largely not insane, and (I think) are capable of policing themselves. There are certainly more than a few nutjobs sprinkled around, but the most odious ones are far more easily identified when their freedom of speech is unchecked. Once found, they can be called out and sent a clear message that their hate-mongering is unacceptable; dropped from blogrolls, not linked to, whatever. But if their freedom of speech is curtailed, we won't even know who they are.

On the other hand, reading some of the excrement the offenders smear on their blogs must give pause to even the most hardcore libertarian. It's a real conundrum to me... I reflexively want to shut bigots down, but I also want to know who they are. Hmm.

Day of Re-Action

Today is the nationwide day of protest "Day of Action" being held to draw the attention of Canadians to problems plaguing First Nations people. Some, like economy, are long-term. But some are problems we should be ashamed even exist in Canada: lack of clean water, for one. Clean water?! That there are people in this country who can't access clean drinking water is more than a shame, it's an international embarassment.

But not as much of an embarassment as the reaction of some conservatives to the protests. Like the shit-spewing hatebot CC links to here. Even more shameful is the fact that such venomous racist scum would be in any way connected with our government (see "A Little TLC for troops fighting the Taliban"). Following Dave's lead, I sent this email to our Embassy in Washington DC today (you can, too):

"Connect2Canada" sounds like a nice little initiative: too bad one of its organizers, Wendy Sullivan, is a hate-spewing racist. This is what she writes on her blog "Girl On The Right" about today's First Nations Day of Action:

"As opposed to the other 364 days When the Natives do absolutely nothing except smoke, drink and fuck their daughters. This Friday will mark the Native Day of Action(tm) here in Canada. It's their chance to whine and complain that us white guys who pay 45% in income tax to support their smoking, drinking and daughter-fucking are ripping them off."

...and goes on to spew more toxic racist garbage, but I'm sure you get the idea. Check it out at girlontheright.com

As a Canadian, I would have thought our international face would be one of real Canadian values like tolerance and diversity. I'm disgusted and ashamed that our Embassy would have anything to do with a person who unequivocally rejects these values.

But it's your call to make.

Nobody is trying to take away RightGirl's freedom of speech; she has a right to throw all the feces she wants on her blog (if by "blog" you mean "the shit-stained screeds of a braindead screech-monkey"). The government of Canada, however, does not have the right to have even the most tenuous association with such racist scumbags. Not while I'm paying them.