Right-wing thugs

Right wing thugs love to use violence against their opposition. Because, y'know, violence is manly and all that, and anybody who isn't a right wing thug is just a wuss and, like, fair game, y'know, just another animal, right?

So when I hear that left-wing Texas representative Wendy Davis's office was firebombed, I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised at all. This is the kind of thing that right-wing fascists are always doing, from Mussolini's Blackshirts onwards.

In November, what kind of people do you want to vote for? The people strutting around measuring their penis by how violent they can be against "the opposition" and who relish the thought of imposing their rule upon others at gunpoint, or people who wish to live in a civil society where there is rule of law, not rule of thug? Sadly, there's a big enough minority who want to be thugs that I fear for the safety of all Democratic politicians... I hope Obama's Secret Service detail is better than any Secret Service detail has ever been in the nation's history, because they'll have to be. Because right now Obama looks like the winner in November... and there's a lot of blackshirts frothing at the mouth about that.

-- Badtux the Civil Penguin

Question

How many newspapers in Texas do you think are running the current Doonesbury cartoon making Texas look like fucking morons by mandating that abortion doctors sexually assault rape victims prior to aborting the fetus implanted there by the rapist? Not many, I suspect...

-- Badtux the "The GOP is the Taliban" Penguin

"Expose the violence inherent in the system"

That's one of the purported motives of the Black Bloc. The problem is, most people already are aware of the violence inherent in the system. As long as that violence is expressed towards people they don't like, such as criminals and minorities, they have not a single problem with it.

This is one reason why I insist that the purported motives of the Black Bloc are total bullshit, and that the actual motive is to discredit left-wing causes. And who benefits if that happens? Hint: the Koch Brothers dance a jig every time the Black Bloc shows up at a left-wing protest. Just sayin'.

-- Badtux the "Just the Facts" Penguin

White shirts

Tony Baloney rides again:

White shirts on a NYPD officer means that he's a supervisor-level political appointee. The blue shirts are the street cops, who get their jobs via civil service exam. Apparently somebody yelled something at this white shirt that he didn't like, so he jumped the police line and started whaling at people with his nightstick, followed by a couple of his other white shirts (this remind you of the stereotype of four Streets Department supervisors watching one man Streets Department worker digging a ditch? Is NYPD padded by a huge layer of political appointees above the street cop level? Is water wet?). Apparently his hope was that they'd hit back and he'd get to issue the order to clear the street. They didn't, they just YouTubed him, and eventually the blue shirts basically jumped the police line to rescue him from his own stupidity.

The white shirts are all owned by Mayor Bloomberg, so it's not coincidence that they, not the blue-shirted civil service street cops, are the ones who are being caught on camera doing this shit. Bloomers wants a riot so he can paint the protesters as violent evil people, and is trying to provoke the crowds into giving him one. Thus far the white shirts are not succeeding, they're just pissing off the folks who see these videos and causing the crowds on Wall Street to grow bigger. People see that the Wall Street bankers who crashed our economy via fraud and outright theft are up there on the balconies drinking champagne and laughing while the people the Wall Street bankers made homeless are down on the street getting whaled on and arrested, and the justice -- or lack thereof -- of the situation is so blindingly obvious that anybody who's not a Fox News viewer can "get it".

On the plus side, Bloomers is doing *wonders* for the NYC tourism industry :).

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Another right-wing terrorist attack

It didn't really make the news because there wasn't a body count like with the right-wing Norwegian terrorist, but the right-wing jihad against Planned Parenthood continues. Fire-bombing clinics barely even makes the news nowadays, it's so routine. Yet these are terrorist attacks. Not terribly effective ones because right-wingers tend to be morons, but terrorist attacks none the less.

-- Badtux the Terror Penguin

Teh Crazy, it burns, it burns...

Glenn Beck compares the dead in Norway to Hitler Youth.

I don't get it. What's his point? That it was okay for a tall blond Norwegian to kill all those kids because they were liberals? That's the only thing I can figure from what he said.

We see where eliminationist rhetoric gets you -- it gets you Timothy McVeigh and Anders Behring Breivik and a lot of dead children. But Beck apparently has no problem with that, from what I can tell.

-- Badtux the Unsurprised (if appalled) Penguin

Waitin' fer Republicans to refudiate her

At CPAC, Our Lady of the Skanky Little Black Cocktail Dress (sometimes referred to as "Man Coulter") says that the U.S. should start throwing journalists in jail. Just like in those havens of freedom North Korea, China, and Saudi Arabia, I suppose.

Note that CPAC didn't boo OLOTSLBCD, they *cheered* her. If the Republicans want to stop being compared to Nazis, they need to quit proposing Nazi policies, yo. Just sayin'.

- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Why am I not surprised...

...that the State of Mississippi is about to issue a commemorative license plate honoring... the founder of the KKK?

Note that Nathaniel Bedford Forrest wasn't just a short-term member of the KKK. He *founded* the damned thing, which is another level altogether over Robert Byrd and Hugo Black, both of whom were junior-level KKK members for only a short amount of time.

-- Badtux the Unsurprised Penguin

Republicans want to torture puppies

No, I'm not joking. Balloon Juice has the details, but basically puppy mills in Missouri complained that they weren't allowed to torture their puppies under the new regulations that voters had voted in, so the Teabagger legislature happily over-ruled the voters in order to protect the right of puppy mills to torture puppies.

What next, a bill targeting widows and orphans for random beatings? Yeesh.

-- Badtux the "Wow, that's some sick" Penguin

Thought for the day

If you don't want to be compared to Nazis, quit proposing Nazi solutions to problems facing your nation.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

The Party of Rape

The Republicans have introduced a bill that will change the definition of rape as used to determine whether an abortion can be funded. Under the new definition of rape as proposed by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), rape isn't rape unless you have the bruises to show it. But I'll let someone else tell you about it -- "Under the proposed law, for example, women who become pregnant after being drugged and raped would get no assistance. And children molested by sexual predators would get no assistance unless they were sufficiently beaten."

Yes, I just linked to Charles Johnson's disgusting right-wing blog Little Green Footballs. When a bill is so disgusting that even Chuckles is disgusted by it, you know it's disgusting.

The Republican Party's message: Sorry foster kids, you got raped, you gotta bear your rapist's baby to term unless ya got the bruises to prove it. That's just plain wrong. Just sayin'.

-- Badtux the Disgusted Penguin

Die quickly

Ezra Klein asks, "What is going to be done about the plight of those permanently unemployed because they're too young to retire but nobody will hire them because they're too old?".

Well, the Republicans have a plan for that too. Too young to retire but too old to work? It's the same basic plan as their retirement plan for the poor once Social Security is dismantled, as their health care plan for the bottom 98% of the population once health care reform and Medicaid are dismantled, and so forth. Don't get unemployed, and if you do, die quickly. Duh.

Not that Preznit Hopey Changey has any other plan, other than, well, hopey for changey. Or as Vice Preznit Pie-hole put it, "hang in there". Uhm, yeah. Hope is not a plan. Just sayin'.

So we have one party that's incompetently evil, and another party that's evilly incompetent. Sigh. WASF.

- Badtux the Snarkily Disgusted Penguin

Now who could have done that?!

Radio-controlled bomb found along MLK Parade route in Spokane, Washington.

Could this have been done by the same sorts of people as the small group who did this one? Or maybe it was done by the same sort of person who did this one? Or these? Or this one?

So you think all those bombings and assassinations are by right-wing extremist lunatics out to turn back the clock on civil rights for women and minorities? No no no no! Clearly, dear soul, you listen to the wrong media. Why, any moment now I expect Caribou Barbie, Rush Limpdick, and Weepy Beck to come out and tell us the real culprits here, who are clearly LIBERALS, yo!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

And in today's wingnuttery...

The Coplay Whitehall Sewer Authority's sewer plant is getting overwhelmed with rainwater every time it rains, causing raw sewage to overflow into the stream it outputs its water into. The EPA doesn't like that both because this stream is upstream from drinking water plants and because it's just plain nasty to have brown turds floating in your waterways, and has threatened them with fines if they don't fix their overflow problem. So the sewer authority has checked the sewer lines in the streets to make sure none of them are connected to storm drains or anything like that, and they look good. Then someone brought it to their attention that it had become customary in their area for people to attach their downspouts and sump pumps to the sewer line instead of dumping the water out into the lawn to soak into the ground. And a bing! went on in their heads, and they sent out a notice that sump pumps and downspouts were *not* to be attached to their sewer lines -- and that they'd be inspecting every home attached to their system to make sure that none of these unauthorized sources of rainwater were attached to their system, and giving notices of noncompliance with health regulations to the people who were overwhelming their system with rainwater, and, if the noncompliance wasn't fixed, they'd start passing on the EPA fines to those people too by using their statutory authority under their state's public health ordinances.

Now, there's a reason for sewage treatment plants, and it's simple public health. A sewage treatment plant that isn't, err, treating, is a bad thing (like, duh?). In third-world nations, water-borne illnesses are a major cause of death. Cholera is of course the biggy that gets all the PR, but there are literally dozens of diseases that get similar results, such as guardia, cryptosporidia, hepatitis, and typhoid. Here in America they became almost unknown after sewer and drinking water treatment plants were instituted, to the point where a single case of typhoid causes a major freakout of the general public.

But none of that matters to the wingnuts at World Nut Daily. It's a violation of your right to kill your neighbor with your fecal matter to have the sewer district inspect your home! Even if the only thing they're dong is looking at your downspouts and tramping down into your basement to inspect your sump pump's discharge, why, it's government overreach! Thus a huge headline, "Feds come knocking for home inspections", even though the Feds are involved only in that they're going to fine the sewer district if the sewer district doesn't stop discharging human fecal matter -- shit -- into the upstream of several other water district's drinking water treatment plants.

Yeppers, World Nut Daily says you have a right to make your neighbors drink shit and die of water-borne illnesses! Wow, why am I not surprised? What's next from World Nut Daily: a screaming headline proclaiming laws outlawing murder are a violation of your fundamental human right to kill people anyway you want? Talk about a bunch of murderous sociopaths... but hey, we're talking about the right-wing in America, after all, and as I've pointed out the body count from the right wing in America is pretty darn high, whether it's the body count they've done directly or the body counts that result from their disastrous policies such as the "War on Drugs". So why should we be surprised that World Nut Daily would stand up proudly to defend your right to kill people with your turds?!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Body counts

It is interesting that when you bring up the fact that right-wing terrorists are killing people here in America, the first thing that right-wingers do is shout, "Bill Ayers!" There's one major issue with their comparison, however:

Mr. Ayers, like every other left-wing terrorist in the past 60 years in the United States, targeted *PROPERTY*, not *PEOPLE*.

The “Weather Underground” targeted property, not people.
The “Earth Liberation Front” targets property, not people.
The “Black Bloc anarchists” non-organization targets property, not people.

Are you starting to see a pattern here?

There is only one set of terrorist groups here in America that target people rather than property, and they are ultra-right-wing groups.

• Osama bin Laden’s group? Ultra-right-wing (wants to impose Sharia law).
• The Dominionist groups that bombed abortion clinics and kill doctors? Ultra-right-wing (wants to impose Mosaic law).
• The militia groups that want to kill immigrants and liberals? Ultra-right-wing.
• The racist hate groups that want to kill racial minorities? Ultra-right-wing.

There is not a single left-wing group in the whole bunch of folks who want to kill, kill, kill. And there is a reason for that. Left wingers have a fundamental respect for human life. They want human life to be better. Right wingers, on the other hand, believe property is more important than human life. They want property to be protected from all those awful people who might actually, like, *need* it in order to even survive. Thus right-winger Jan Brewer’s death panel in Arizona, which cut off the transplant funding for Medicaid there and has thus far killed two people… the amount of money required would have been literally 10 cents for every Arizona taxpayer, but 10 cents in the pockets of Arizona taxpayers is apparently more important to right-wingers than human lives, which right wingers consider worthless, apparently.

Right-wingers disagree with this, whine that their ideology isn't what causes all these dead bodies on the ground. Yeah right. Bullshit talks, but I look at the reality on the ground, not bullshit. Those dead bodies simply *are*. Whether it is children pulled from the rubble of the Oklahoma City federal building or bodies pulled from the rubble of the World Trade Center or the people killed by Jan Brewer's death panel, these are bodies resulting from right-wing ideology. Left wing ideology results in live people. Dead people vs. live people. Results *matter*. And if I must embrace an ideology, it will *not* be one that results in a trail of dead bodies.

- Badtux the Body Count Penguin

Free speech and threats

There have been a number of laws proposed in the aftermath of the Arizona shooting that would punish speech that advocated acts of violence. The upside, say advocates of such a law, is that random crazies would have only their own voice inside their head to tell them to kill, and thus be less likely to kill. It would also dial down the heat of the rhetoric in the political environment and make it much more likely that we could figure out some way to get along rather than kill each other.

The other side, on the other hand, says it'd be a violation of the 1st Amendment to outlaw general threats. Note that specific threats of a specific act of violence against a specific person are already illegal, and nobody has ever honestly proposed that we legalize these. So what is the difference between saying, "Kill George Soros", and "Kill the Jews"? Either one is a threat. Just ask any Jew who has ever been the target of the latter what goes through his or her body when someone advocates "kill the Jews". It's a sick feeling at the pit of your stomach, a fluttering of the heart, a panic'ed feeling in your head... it's the exact same as a specific threat against a specific Jew, in other words. And, in my opinion, should be treated the same way -- just as it is in every other Western nation, and just as it was here in the United States before Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969.

So here's my question to those who say that outlawing advocacy of violence is tyranny: Was the United States a tyranny before June 9, 1969? Is Canada a tyranny? Is Great Britain a tyranny? Is Australia -- a nation which doesn't even have a Bill of Rights in their Constitution because a Constitution is just a piece of paper and they rely on democracy, not a piece of paper, to defend their liberties -- a tyranny?

If outlawing advocacy of violence, as EVERY SINGLE WESTERN DEMOCRACY did after the events of 1939-1945 where some German dictator used violent speech to incite his people to exterminate most of the ethnic minorities of Europe, is "tyranny" -- does that mean that only the United States is free, and only since June 9, 1969? Or are you saying that, unlike every other citizen of a democracy on this planet, Americans simply can't handle such a ban on violent speech? If the latter, why do you hate America?

As for the argument, "but who decides what's violent speech?", we have a mechanism for that in a democracy. It's called a COURT OF LAW. The whole point of a jury is to listen to the facts of a case, then decide whether something is a violation of the law or not. Juries also have a bad habit of refusing to enforce laws that they feel step over the line, such as the recent case that I referenced here where a Montana court couldn't seat a jury because they couldn't find a juror who'd convict someone arrested for less than an ounce of marijuana. In short, we already have the mechanism in place to decide things like this in a way that respects our democratic processes and the rights of our people.

In short, I believe Brandenburg v. Ohio was wrong. Advocating violence has no place in political speech -- what the 1st Amendment was written to protect -- and we have examples all over the world that outlawing advocating violence does not result in tyranny and does *not* impact the ability of people to engage in the vigorous political discourse of a democracy. Go read the British press such as the Independent or the Guardian or the even rougher tabloids. They criticize their government in ways that would have the editors of the Washington Post and New York Times collapsing on their fainting couches with a case of the vapors. If that kind of vigorous political discourse is "tyranny", then I say we need more of it here in America, yo!

-- Badtux the International Penguin

Quit picking on her!

Quit picking on Britney Palin!

Well, no. It's just so much fun to pick on that vacuous bimbo (of whom one female banker says, "she's set back feminism by fifty years"). Palin's rhetoric is stupid and, intentionally or not, things like her now-famous "crosshairs" targeting liberals for defeat in the November elections hints at the violent rhetoric coming from the real eliminationist right, people like Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck who have suggested exterminating liberals (then claimed "it was a joke!" when called on it), but as far as I know she hasn't herself issued one of these:

So while I think Palin deserves the condemnation she is getting for the "blood libel" nonsense, I think she does have a point that she's being unfairly targeted in general as a source of the violent rhetoric that flourishes in the right wing. She's not the one who fantasized about a terrorist attack on San Francisco. That was Rush Limbaugh. She's not the one who said a suicide truck bomb targetting the New York Times would be a good idea. That was Ann Coulter. She's not the one who said the murder of Nancy Pelosi and Michael Moore would be a good thing. That was Glenn Beck. Palin is an idiot, and intentionally or not, her rhetoric certainly hints that she holds eliminationist views. But heaping special anger at Palin ignores the role of the real sources of these views -- which, as the embattled Sheriff Dupnik of Tucson AZ points out, emits especially from conservative "commentators" like Ann Coulter and the hosts of hate radio and Faux News. *NOT* from Sarah Palin, who may wink at such rhetoric, but not to the extent of issuing a liberal hunting permit like Ann Coulter regularly does.

-- Badtux the Eliminationists-r-GOP Penguin

Blood libel

False accusations that Jews engage in the ritual murder of Christian children and use the blood of said child in their ritual matzoh date all the way back to 1144. These false accusations -- the "blood libel" -- has been used ever since then to justify campaigns of exterminations against Jews. The most recent genocidal workout the "blood libel" got was when Adolph Hitler used it to justify his campaign of extermination against Jews.

The most important thing about this "blood libel" is that there is no blood. That is, there are no dead Christian children. No secret rituals. No blood baked into matzoh. No nothing. The Jewish faith forbids the consumption of blood under any circumstances, ritual or not. Thus millions of Jews have lost their lives over the years due to an accusation that they took the lives of children, when no such thing ever happened.

So when Sarah Palin comes out and says that people who accuse her of cheering on violent extremism are committing "blood libel", I gotta wonder what the fuck she's talking about. I mean, look:

See the girl in the picture above? Her name is -- was -- Christina-Taylor Green. She was nine years old. She was born on September 11, 2001. She was the granddaughter of a baseball legend and was the only girl on her Little League team, playing second base. She was a good Catholic girl in Tucson, Arizona, who recently had her First Communion at St. Odilia Catholic Church. And she is DEAD. D-E-A-D. Her blood ran out of her little body onto the sidewalk of a shopping center in Tucson, forever stopping her little heart. Her weeping mother is going to spend the rest of her life staring at that picture wondering, "what would Christina-Taylor have become if she hadn't been murdered?"

It cannot be a "blood libel" if there really *IS* a dead child, if there really *IS* blood. Just sayin'. Not to mention that the main target of this vicious act of terrorism, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, is, err... Jewish. As are most of the victims of the "blood libel."

So color me confused. Unless Sarah Palin has suddenly converted to Judaism and been falsely accused of baking the blood of Christian children into her matzohs, all she managed to do was demean the murder of a young child by calling it a "libel". What, she doesn't believe that Christina-Taylor Green is dead? She thinks the media merely made up the blood on the pavement in Tucson? What, if anything, is going through the empty vacuum that is Caribou Barbie's "mind" anyhow?! That blood was *real*. Not a libel. And the only victims of this senseless act of terrorism are lying in hospital beds in Tucson, or in coffins -- not in Wasilla Alaska, meth capital of the world.

-- Badtux the Sickened Penguin

Angry vs. violent

So the tighty righties as usual are trying to say that the shooter of a liberal judge and a liberal Congresswoman was, err, a liberal, and they probably are going to convince their echo chamber of gullible people who shout "keep your government hands off my Medicare!" of this "fact". So what, nobody outside their echo chamber of morons, cretins, and venal evil sons of bitches gives a shit anyhow.

But our so-called media is really missing the boat when they focus their sights upon "angry" rhetoric. Look. There's plenty of shit that makes me angry. It makes me angry that in the richest land on the planet, the amount of money that Sheriff Joe Arpaio wastes losing lawsuits over violating the civil rights of his prisoners every year would have saved the lives of at least two people murdered by Republican governor Jan Brewer's death panel. I am angry that my tax dollars are used to kill women and children in Afghanistan. I am angry that every effective method of ending the current recession by creating jobs via government action is stymied by a Republican Party that is more focused on scoring political points in some sick game of one-upmanship than upon the good of our nation.

What I am not, however, is violent. I do not state or imply that entire classes of people are vermin who should be exterminated, the way that mainstream Republican pundits on hate radio and Faux News regularly expound. I do not advocate taking up arms against our democratically elected government. I do not advice killing people, which is what the right wing is saying when they talk about "watering the tree of liberty" -- they're talking about murdering people who don't agree with their ideology. I don't "joke" about killing the staff of the New York Times the way that Ann Coulter "joked", I don't advocate violence in any way or form other than as delivered by the justice system after a fair trial before a jury of one's peers in a duly constituted court of law.

And that is the fundamental difference here between right-wing rhetoric and left-wing rhetoric. Left-wing rhetoric is often angry. But for all of Keith Olbermann's angry rhetoric, can you point me to one instance -- even ONE instance -- where he advocated violence? NO. Because lefties simply do not advocate violence. Even the more radical lefties I know, the ones who wanted George W. Bush hanged for treason, were quick to clarify "after a fair trial in a court of law that finds him guilty" when I cornered them on that statement. Can you point me to *one* mainstream left-wing voice that has ever advocated violence? Hello? Hello? Is anybody out there?

-- Badtux the Nonviolent Penguin

Thereby proving the point

The Sheriff of Pima County got a lot of heat from teabaggers about his comments about an environment of eliminationist rhetoric bringing the crazies out of the woodwork to attack and kill people. Other bloggers have noted the same thing -- that the right wing rhetoric has been full of talk about "2nd amendment solutions", "watering the tree of liberty", and other such incitements to commit acts of violence against liberals and others that they dislike (such as judges who rule that swarthy Messicans have rights too). And... gosh darn it, they get threats against them from teabaggers. Thereby proving the point. Not that the teabaggers understand that. Huh, go figure.

-- Badtux the Exasperated Penguin