RNC front-runner (and Tea Party favorite) Saul Anuzis seems to have a thing about fascists
November 20, 2010 No Comment
Click here to view this media According to the Wall Street Journal, Michigan Republican leader Saul Anuzis is the front-runner to replace Michael Steele as chairman of the Republican National Committee. We’re sorry to see Steele go, because he’s provided so much amusement over the years. But where Steele never failed to provide us truckloads of Republican dumbassery, Anuzis may more than make up for it in far-right wingnuttery. You may recall that Anuzis argued vehemently last year that Republicans needed to attack President Obama’s agenda as “economic fascism” — and from the things he was saying then, it’s clear he had become an ardent follower of the cult of Jonah Goldberg and his fraudulent “liberal fascism” thesis. But Anuzis’ thing about fascists goes much deeper than that , as Heidi Beirich at the SPLC noted earlier this week. Because Anuzis has not only long maintained an association with one of Michigan’s leading young white supremacists — a former campus activist named Kyle Bristow — he has adamantly defended him: Bristow led the Michigan State University campus branch of Young Americans For Freedom (MSU-YAF) and was so virulent in his politics that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) began listing it as a hate group in 2006. Bristow also served as a Republican precinct delegate. enlarge Credit: Courtesy SPLC Kyle Bristow, left, and Saul Anuzis Bristow’s MSU-YAF engaged in extensive racist activities. One of its first stunts was presenting a 13-point agenda that would have established a “Caucasian caucus” at MSU and, in turn, eliminated all student government representation for practically every other non-white, non-heterosexual, non-male or non-Christian student group at the university. Bristow was on record saying, “Homosexuality kills people almost to a degree worse than cigarettes. … these [pro-gay rights] groups are complicit with murder.” MSU-YAF sponsored a “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day” contest, held a “Koran Desecration” competition, jokingly threatened to distribute smallpox-infested blankets to Native American students, and posted “Gays Spread AIDS” fliers across campus. Bristow’s YAF also brought several extremists to speak at the MSU campus, including Holocaust denier Nick Griffin, leader of the whites-only British National Party (for more on YAF, read here ). None of this seemed to bother Anuzis. “This [Bristow] is exactly the type of young kid we want out there,” Anuzis, then already the GOP state chair, said on a radio program in May 2007, the year after MSU-YAF’s more outrageous activities were made public. “I’ve known Kyle for years and I can tell you I have never heard him say a racist or bigoted or sexist thing, ever.” Just this past October, Anuzis’ Michigan GOP issued a press release attacking a Democratic candidate for secretary of state because she once interned at the SPLC, which the release said used “fear and intimidation” in its hate group listings. Since receiving this outpouring of support from Anuzis, Bristow has graduated to the top ranks of the American radical right. Now a law student at the University of Toledo, Bristow recently self-published a novel, White Apocalypse , whose plot revolves around a series of violent revenge fantasies against Jewish professors, Latino and Native American activists. A major subplot ends in the bloody assassination of a character apparently based on an SPLC staffer. Several notable white supremacists and anti-Semites have endorsed the novel. Anuzis compounded the creepout factor Monday, when he went on Neil Cavuto’s Fox show and said: Anuzis: And I think we’ve got to get back to the fundamentals — find somebody’s who’s basically going to make sure the trains run on time, raise the money, and then implement the best get-out-the-vote program Republicans possibly have in 2012. Considering Anuzis’ thing about fascism, maybe that wasn’t an accidental reference. Seem fitting , though, that Anuzis is being heavily backed by the Tea Party as well — which is why he was so adamant in his support for the Tea Party’s influence in the GOP. George Zornick has more at ThinkProgress.
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Click here to view this media I’m not sure which is worse. Senator Jim Bunning or Senator-elect Rand Paul. One thing is sure, however. They’re both swaggering jerks. One ties up women; the other threatens patriots. The Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on the Affordable Care Act yesterday for the benefit of repealers and anti-repealers alike. Along with the usual posturing, there was this remarkable exchange between Dr. Berwick and Senator Bunning. Clearly piqued by Berwick’s recess appointment, Bunning berates him for accepting it without the proper hearings. Never mind Bunning’s silence when George W. Bush appointed all of these folks as recess appointments, including the evil, odious neocon John Bolton to the UN Security Council. No, no, that doesn’t matter to Bunning at all. Dr. Berwick was really quite engaging despite the browbeating attempt. When scolded for daring to accept President Obama’s appointment, he quite humbly answers that his President asked, and he accepted because he, too, wants to serve his country. The entire hearing is here . It’s quite interesting, particularly when Berwick is actually allowed to respond to questions. He’s a terrific person to have as head of the CMS, particularly right now.
Continue reading …Rachel Maddow Tells Glenn Beck to Leave the IAVA and the Veterans Alone
November 20, 2010 No Comment
Click here to view this media Rachel Maddow asks fear monger Glenn Beck to leave the IAVA the hell alone. Glenn Beck painted the non-partisan veterans group as an evil union supporting, George Soros, radical, communist organization that is “duping” people into supporting our veterans returning home from war. It’s just shameless what Beck did and Rachel who normally doesn’t want to weigh into the fray of Beck’s madness finally had enough of it and spoke out on her show this week. MADDOW: Thank you so much for standing guard against these communists masquerading as a veterans organization, that are using you for their communist purposes. Thank you for standing guard against these communists who are duping you; these communists over at Iraq and Afghanistan’s of America. There are people all over America today who listen to Glenn Beck who know believe that IAVA is a communist front group because Glenn Beck said so. IAVA is not a communist front group. They do not feed veterans who march in parades with them as part of a communist plot to dupe veterans into becoming communists. They do not take money from Move On or any other Fox News boogy men more boogiesh than me. But even if they did it would still be the patriotic equivalent of a mortal sin to do what Glenn Beck did this week when he randomly and at length and in totally made up tale, launched this 100% false attack on Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a nonpartisan group that does nothing wrong and does nothing like what all of Glenn Beck’s listeners now think they do. I generally try to be of good cheer when it comes to people being dumb in the media but this is more than dumb. This is disgusting. Leave… the… veterans… alone. What’s really pitiful is that the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the right wing hate talkers are allowed to continue to pollute our airways instead with no push back so their listeners are aware that they’re lying to them. I really believe we need some new form of The Fairness Doctrine out there that does not stifle free speech but instead points out the lies if that’s possible in the age of media consolidation. Better yet if our politicians actually cared about having something that resembled a free press in America, these media companies that control everything would be split up, and yesterday would not be too soon.
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Click here to view this media Via The White House blog : In the fourth edition of White House White Board, Austan Goolsbee, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, discusses the President’s tough decisions on the American auto industry in light of the General Motors IPO. Goolsbee is so good at these things that you wonder why the White House didn’t do them sooner.
Continue reading …Gingrich Pretends Republicans Can’t Be Racist Since They Elected Michael Steele as RNC Chair
November 20, 2010 1 Comment
Click here to view this media Newt Gingrich wants us to believe that the party that still hasn’t given up on Lee Atwater’s Southern Strategy and embraces the bigotry of the likes of Rush Limbaugh, who’s race-baiting on the air on a daily basis — why, that party couldn’t possibly be racist because they elected Michael Steele as RNC chairman. Gingrich also fails to note that Steele’s fund-raising efforts were severely undermined by the likes of Ed Gillespie and Karl Rove and similar outside groups. VAN SUSTEREN: All right, you used the word “replace,” so let me go to Michael Steele, who — it seems that there are many within the Republican Party who are not — not anxious to have him run again. What’s he done well? And where has he failed, if he’s failed? GINGRICH: Well, Michael Steele has done very well in dramatically expanding Republican outreach to minority communities. Thirty-seven percent of the members of Congress who are Latino are Republican, the highest number in history. We have two African-American members of Congress and have made real breakthroughs in other areas. We elected an all-Latino state ticket in New Mexico. We elected an Indian-American with Nikki Haley in South Carolina as governor. It was really quite a remarkable year. And you wouldn’t have said two years ago, when the first African-American president as a Democrat was elected, that he would set the stage for the biggest increase in Republican minority representation in history. But in, for example, in the state of Texas, four Latino candidates and two African-American candidates won state legislative seats as Republican. So all across the country, Michael did a good job there. He did a good job representing the Republican Party in public. VAN SUSTEREN: So why are people unhappy with him? GINGRICH: There were no attacks… VAN SUSTEREN: So why are some unhappy with him? GINGRICH: I think — I think there’s — look, I think, to be candid – - and he’s a very good friend of mine. To be candid, I think there’s a feeling that in the area of raising money and in the area of running the internal machinery, that he didn’t do as good a job, that he should have had a much stronger executive director taking care of that part of the party, and that’s why there’s significant dissatisfaction. He’s got to make a decision. If he wants to run, he’s going to have to convince the committee members that he’s going to have a very, very strong executive director and that the committee will be much more professionally run over the next two years. But I wouldn’t count him out because he did, in fact, do a lot for the Republican Party. Remember, despite all their efforts, the Democrats in the White House never attacked the Republicans this year on racism because it was so patently stupid when had you Michael Steele as the chairman. That is a significant advantage in public relations campaigns. And I think that Steele does deserve some of the credit for us having done much better than anybody thought possible in January of 2009. VAN SUSTEREN: Mr. Speaker, enjoy Iowa. Thank you, sir. GINGRICH: Take care.
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Click here to view this media Biden tries to give a diplomatic response but just can’t. And his hosts can’t contain their laughter either. From this morning on Morning Joe .
Continue reading …David Duke’s new role as white moralist kind of conflicts with his horndog past
November 19, 2010 No Comment
Click here to view this media My latest post is up at SPLC’s Hatewatch. It’s all about everyone’s favorite white supremacist and how he’s becoming concerned about our morality these days — hahahahaha …. Now that he’s gaining in years, longtime white-supremacy advocate David Duke, who in his youth gained a notorious reputation as a womanizing playboy, is apparently now shifting to a more traditional role of moralizing geezer. Witness his most recent video “lecture,” wherein he lectures his audience (such as it is) on the historical roots of the “sexual revolution” – which, in Duke’s view, is the product of Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychoanalysis, and therefore is yet another civilization-destroying product of product of conniving Jews: Duke: Wherever the globalist media reaches on this planet, there is an ongoing sexual revolution. It should be called sexual dehumanization. In traditional Western culture, sex is idealized and embedded with the idea of family and children and the deep and sacred respect for the love between a man and a woman, and marriage as a beautiful, even holy, institution. A perfect example of the veneration of womanhood, fidelity and purity, as expressed in countless artworks, is the Virgin Mary. The Madonna is also venerated in the Muslim Koran, which defends Mary from the Jewish Talmudic slanders that claim Mary was a whore and Jesus a bastard. I hate to quote those words. Today the name Madonna fits the Talmudic slander. It’s the image of a degenerate superstar whore, engaging in gang sex and mocking the crucifixion. The latest media-promoted female phenom is Lady Gaga, and this teen idol is also depicted engaging in gang sex, sadism, masochism, and other forms of degeneracy, along with her trendy music. Now this is the hottest new star promoted by the Jewish controlled globalist media, including MTV – Sumner Redstone. Real name: Rothstein. The media of the Western world, and thus of the whole globe, has become a weapon of mass destruction of the highest in human values. The human cost has been enormous. Hundreds of millions of families have been destroyed. Children now commonly grow up without fathers. Sexually rooted epidemics, including STDs, hepatitis and HPV are now soaring. AIDS, a disease primarily of promiscuity, will cost hundreds of millions of lives. Millions of people have suffered sterility, and will never know the joy of children. Child rape, molestation, and abuse has grown exponentially. Nevermind the hypocrisy of the nation’s foremost practitioner of racial and ethnic dehumanization lecturing us about “sexual dehumanization.” What’s agonizingly hilarious about this diatribe is how starkly Duke’s new moral ethos contrasts with his own personal behavior over the years. Read the rest here.
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Click here to view this media This exchange among three right-wing Fauxheads — Ann Coulter, who is adamantly opposed to the TSA’s new airport bodyscans (hmmmmmm …. OK, not gonna go there), Peter Johnson, a longtime BushCo apologist who thinks they’re just fine, and Sean Hannity, who just wants to be pals with all things RightWing — really isn’t particularly enlightening. But it sure is entertaining. Especially because Johnson won’t let Coulter get away with her vague platitudes — Coulter, of course, thinks we can just do away with the scans and instead rely on good ol’ American racial profiling, — and so he insists on pointing out that Coulter has no solutions for dealing with the kinds of threats the bodyscans are intended to prevent. (I’m not so sure Johnson is right about the need for the scans, but that doesn’t make Coulter anything other than the dead wrong she usually is.) So Coulter shrieks at him to shut up, when in fact he’s just engaging in the standard Fox-style talk-show behavior, where interruption is the norm. Indeed, Coulter is a past master of this form. Coulter has a history of not handling criticism well — she always wants her critics silenced. I’m surprised she didn’t ask Hannity to beat Johnson up.
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Click here to view this media It’s ironic, isn’t it, that all the talking heads on Fox — Sean Hannity in particular — were calling Lisa Murkowski a “sore loser” for refusing to accept her defeat in the Alaska primary at the hands of Tea Party militiaman Joe Miller and proceeding with a write-in challenge. Now that the tables have turned and it’s clear that Murkowski has won , it’s self-evident that it’s Miller who is the REAL sore loser, refusing still to concede even though everyone on the planet can see he’s lost. Yesterday he went on Neil Cavuto’s Fox show and refused to give in : CAVUTO: Are you saying — I`m sorry, Joe, but do you want a recount? Is that what you are saying? MILLER: Well, we may. We may actually ask for a hand count of our ballots of well. And that was the benefit that she got. We will probably ask for that as well. But we will wait and see when these numbers finally sort out here at the end of the week. Gotta wonder if he’s still counting on that house and furniture in D.C. he went shopping for : enlarge Credit: WriteInLisa Hee hee. I love the smell of burning hubris in the morning.
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Click here to view this media It’s not just friends that are noticing your status updates on Facebook. Debt collectors are now combing through social networks to learn about the lives of those who owe and even embarrass them. One woman in Tampa, Florida felt violated when she found out she was being stalked by collectors online. Melanie Beacham told WTSP’s Beau Zimmer that she had been receiving as many as 20 calls per day from MarkOne Financial after getting sick and falling behind on her car payments. “Then one day she got a call from her sister saying the company contacted her in Georgia,” Zimmer wrote. “I was telling her, ‘No way, because you’re not even a reference,’” Beacham said. After finding out that the company had contacted her sister and other relatives through Facebook, Beacham contacted consumer attorney Billy Howard of Morgan & Morgan. “Now Facebook does a debt collectors work for them,” Howard told Zimmer. “Now it’s not only family members, it’s all of your associates. It’s a very powerful tool for debt collectors to use.” Howard believes stalking through Facebook could become a standard technique for debt collectors if action isn’t taken. “It’s getting the desired result, and that is to start a domino effect of panic and embarrassment among family and friends, and people will do anything to stop that,” he said. Howard wants MarkOne Financial to stop using Facebook and other social media to harass Beacham’s family and friends. He’s filed a lawsuit to make his point. Tana Ganeva at Alternet notes that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) website is clear that debt collectors may only contact other people to find out your contact information. Since MarkOne Financial already had been calling Beacham as many as 20 times per day, it’s doubtful that they were contacting family members to get her contact information. The FTC says: If an attorney is representing you about the debt, the debt collector must contact the attorney, rather than you. If you don’t have an attorney, a collector may contact other people – but only to find out your address, your home phone number, and where you work. Collectors usually are prohibited from contacting third parties more than once. Other than to obtain this location information about you, a debt collector generally is not permitted to discuss your debt with anyone other than you, your spouse, or your attorney. “Nobody should have to go through what I went through,” Beacham said. “I was hurt because I just felt I didn’t need my family going through that.”
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