Category: Bigotry

What Wonkette Said

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Let’s Dig Up The Rotting Bones Of Confederate Traitor (And KKK Founder) Nathan Bedford Forrest!

Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest, by most accounts except the white supremacist ones, was quite the murderous, racist shithead. He was a wealthy slave trader, and he presided over one of the bloodiest massacres of the Civil War at Fort Pillow, where hundreds of black and white Union soldiers, and also black civilians, were murdered in cold blood after they had surrendered. The historian Richard Fuchs wrote that “The affair at Fort Pillow was simply an orgy of death, a mass lynching to satisfy the basest of conduct — intentional murder — for the vilest of reasons — racism and personal enmity.” Oh, and he was also the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, so HE SEEMS NICE.

And in Memphis, the city which adopted Forrest so long ago as its own, there’s a big-ass statue of him in Health Sciences Park, in a racially diverse neighborhood that includes a world class medical center, dire poverty, gentrifying liberals, Victorian mansions, yummy restaurants, and the occasional murder problem. Buried underneath that statue are the rotting bigot bones of Forrest and his wife. And there’s a push to move the statue and dig up the bones, but, though that push is PART of the aftermath of the Charleston murders which left nine dead and millions of Confederate flags tossed aside in shame, this fight’s been going on a lot longer.

If there was a Confederate who deserved to end his days at the end of a rope with his remains fed to the dogs, it was Forrest.

Take down that f%$#ing statue, and put his remains in the town dump.

Finally!

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Following a very long debate, and an empassioned argument in favor of removing the Confederate flag by (among others) a descendent of Jefferson Davis, the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia is leaving the statehouse grounds in South Carolina:

South Carolina’s governor signed a bill Thursday that will send the Confederate flag to the state’s “relic room.” The decision was made more than 50 years after the rebel banner began flying at the statehouse in Columbia to protest the civil rights movement.

Governor Nikki Haley praised lawmakers for realizing that the long-celebrated symbol is too painful to keep promoting.

“The Confederate flag is coming off the grounds of the South Carolina Statehouse,” Haley said. “We will bring it down with dignity, and we will make sure it is stored in its rightful place.”

State lawmakers were prompted to remove the flag by the recent killing of nine African Americans at a church Bible study in Charleston.

South Carolina’s leaders first flew the battle flag over the statehouse dome in 1961 to mark the 100th anniversary of the Civil War. It remained there to represent official opposition to the civil rights movement.

………

Rep. Jenny Horne, a white Republican who said she is a descendent of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, scolded her party members for stalling.

“I cannot believe that we do not have the heart in this body to do something meaningful such as take a symbol of hate off these grounds on Friday,” she shouted. “For the widow of Senator Pinckney and his two young daughters, that would be adding insult to injury and I will not be a part of it!”

The pity of all this is that it took a racist maniac to kill 9 people at a prayer meeting to make this happen.

Yes, It Is Hypocrisy on a Historical Scale

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Thomas Piketty, economist and author of last year’s must read book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a treatise on the economic forces leading to inequality gave an interview in the newsweekly Die Zeit, in which he (correctly) observes that Germany has a greater history of shirking on its debt than any other nation on the face of the earth:

DIE ZEIT: Should we Germans be happy that even the French government is aligned with the German dogma of austerity?

Thomas Piketty: Absolutely not. This is neither a reason for France, nor Germany, and especially not for Europe, to be happy. I am much more afraid that the conservatives, especially in Germany, are about to destroy Europe and the European idea, all because of their shocking ignorance of history.

ZEIT: But we Germans have already reckoned with our own history.

Piketty: But not when it comes to repaying debts! Germany’s past, in this respect, should be of great significance to today’s Germans. Look at the history of national debt: Great Britain, Germany, and France were all once in the situation of today’s Greece, and in fact had been far more indebted. The first lesson that we can take from the history of government debt is that we are not facing a brand new problem. There have been many ways to repay debts, and not just one, which is what Berlin and Paris would have the Greeks believe.

ZEIT: But shouldn’t they repay their debts?

Piketty: My book recounts the history of income and wealth, including that of nations. What struck me while I was writing is that Germany is really the single best example of a country that, throughout its history, has never repaid its external debt. Neither after the First nor the Second World War. However, it has frequently made other nations pay up, such as after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when it demanded massive reparations from France and indeed received them. The French state suffered for decades under this debt. The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.

………

ZEIT: Are you trying to depict states that don’t pay back their debts as winners?

Piketty: Germany is just such a state. But wait: history shows us two ways for an indebted state to leave delinquency. One was demonstrated by the British Empire in the 19th century after its expensive wars with Napoleon. It is the slow method that is now being recommended to Greece. The Empire repaid its debts through strict budgetary discipline. This worked, but it took an extremely long time. For over 100 years, the British gave up two to three percent of their economy to repay its debts, which was more than they spent on schools and education. That didn’t have to happen, and it shouldn’t happen today. The second method is much faster. Germany proved it in the 20th century. Essentially, it consists of three components: inflation, a special tax on private wealth, and debt relief.

ZEIT: So you’re telling us that the German Wirtschaftswunder [“economic miracle”] was based on the same kind of debt relief that we deny Greece today?

Piketty: Exactly. After the war ended in 1945, Germany’s debt amounted to over 200% of its GDP. Ten years later, little of that remained: public debt was less than 20% of GDP. Around the same time, France managed a similarly artful turnaround. We never would have managed this unbelievably fast reduction in debt through the fiscal discipline that we today recommend to Greece. Instead, both of our states employed the second method with the three components that I mentioned, including debt relief. Think about the London Debt Agreement of 1953, where 60% of German foreign debt was cancelled and its internal debts were restructured.

As I’ve noted before, the Germans think themselves special, and as bad as American exceptionalism has been, the consequences of German chauvanism over the past 150 years has been uniquely horrific.

It does not help that pretty much everyone in German politics but the Die Linke (The Left) are n***er baiting the Greeks in a way that would impress Bull Connor.

I am inclined to believe that we are seeing the collapse of the Euro Zone, and possibly the EU.

H/t Gavin Schalliol, who did the original translation, and then was forced to pull it over IP concerns.

Hero of the Day

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And the accursed flag comes down

Brittany ‘Bree’ Newsome:

A woman scaled the flagpole in front of the South Carolina Statehouse Saturday morning and temporarily removed the Confederate flag that flew there. The woman was arrested by State Capitol police along with a man who had entered the grounds with her, the Associated Press reported. The flag was replaced and raised a short time later.

The woman, who was not identified by authorities, was named on social media as Brittany “Bree” Newsome, an activist from North Carolina. Her actions inspired the hashtag #KeepItDown, which was one of the top trending topics on Twitter in the U.S. Saturday. Later in the day, the hashtag #FreeBree was also trending in the U.S.

According to BreeNewsome.com, a site linked to a Twitter account belonging to a user with the name Bree Newsome and mentioned by numerous users in conjunction with the #KeepItDown hashtag, Newsome is an activist and graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

 Here is hoping that this happens regularly until it comes down forever.

Deep Thought

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Dylann Storm Roof is a 21 Year Old High School Dropout, he was born on April 3, 1994.

Zimbabwe replaced the apartheid Rhodesia in 1980.

In South Africa, the first elections with universal suffrage were held on April 27, 1994, ending the last vestiges of apartheid, and making the ANC the governing party in South Africa.

How does a 9th grade dropout know about this?

And yet there is the photo of Dylann Storm Roof, a 9th grade dropout who was less than a month old when Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa, wearing the flags of apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia on his jacket.

My guess is that he would not be able to find Rhodesia on a map. 

Hell, it’s likely that he couldn’t find Europe on a map.

But he knows about apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia well enough to have their flags on his jacket in a sort of perverted “lost cause” homage to their systems of racism and brutality.

People taught him this.  Like minded people.

Lone gunman, my ass.

In South Carolina, the Judges Have Sympathy for the Families of Terrorists ……… If They are White

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At a bail bond hearing for Dylann Roof (no bail for murder, but $1 million for weapons charges), the families of the victims gave statements, as is common in South Carolina, the judge, who (unsurprisingly) has a history of racially insensitive comments, took pains to remind everyone that the family that raised a racist terrorists are victims in all this too:

………

The judge began the hearing with a statement of sympathy for those slain — as well as for Roof’s family.

“We have victims, nine of them, but we also have victims on the other side,” Gosnell said. “There are victims on the other side, this young man’s family. No one would ever have thrown them into the whirlwind they have been thrown into.”

In a statement later, the Roof family extended its “deepest sympathies and condolences” to the families of the victims. “Words cannot express our shock, grief, and disbelief as to what happened that night. We are devastated and saddened by what occurred,” they said, asking for privacy.

As Michael Daly pithily observed:

………

Charleston County Magistrate James B. Gosnell began Friday’s bond hearing for mass-murderer Dylann Roof by declaring that the killer’s family members were victims as well.

At least he did not repeat an opinion that he offered in another proceeding a dozen years ago.

“There are four kinds of people in this world—black people, white people, red necks, and n—rs,” Gosnell advised a black defendant in a November 6, 2003 bond reduction hearing.

The comment led to a judicial disciplinary proceeding and a 2005 determination by the state Supreme Court. The court’s written finding reports Gosnell’s lame defense.

………

Ah ……… South Carolina.

Rather unsurprisingly, the accused is completely unrepentant over his acts:

………

More evidence also emerged that Roof, a high school dropout with a criminal record that began this year, may have been motivated by racial hatred. Law enforcement officials said he had confessed, and that during the confession, expressed strong anti-black views. Officials characterized him as unrepentant and unashamed.

Roof told officers that he wanted word of his actions to spread, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Ah ……… South Carolina.

And the cherry on this sh%$ sandwich is the fact that while that state and US flags were flown at half staff, the Confederate flag flying nearby has been kept at full staff, because the law drafted by South Carolina bigots forbids flying the flag at half staff:

After Dylann Storm Roof allegedly shot up an AME church in Charleston, S.C., killing nine people, two flags were lowered more than 100 miles away in Columbia, the state’s capital. Atop the South Carolina State House, the U.S. flag and South Carolina’s palmetto flag flew at half-staff as the manhunt for Roof ended with his capture in North Carolina and prayer vigils were planned. The show of respect would have been appropriate even if one of the state legislature’s own — state senator Clementa C. Pinckney — had not died in the attack.

But a third flag within view of the State House — a Confederate one — flew as high and as proud as ever, flapping in the breeze on a sunny day.

This looked bad.

But, it seemed, no one — particularly not South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) — could do anything about it. This was a matter of law.

“In South Carolina, the governor does not have legal authority to alter the flag,” a Haley spokesman told ABC on Thursday. “Only the General Assembly can do that.”

………

The law that moved the flag was quite detailed: The flag could not fly from the capitol dome, but had to appear at a memorial near the dome and could appear in legislators’ offices. Legislators even specified the type of flag, its placement, and the dimensions of its display.

It ain’t all bad though, a Republican legislator in South Carolina has mooted a bill to take down that symbol of treason and racism:

In the wake of the shooting in Charleston that took the lives of nine African Americans in a historically black church by a shooter with apparent white supremist sympathies, a State Representative from South Carolina announced plans Friday to introduce legislation that would remove the Confederate flag from the state capital.

In an interview with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, Norman “Doug” Brannon said the motive behind the planned bill wasn’t politics, but instead the loss of a friend. Specifically, Brannon spoke of Democratic State Senator Clementa Pinckney, a pastor at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and one of the victims of the fatal shooting.

“I had a friend die Wednesday night for no reason other than he was a black man,” Brannon, a Republican who is white, told Hayes.

 Small steps, I guess.

I expect Brannon to be turfed out in the next election, and it is likely that he thinks that this is the case as well.

Domestic Terrorism in Charleston, South Carolina

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Those patches are the Apartheid era Rhodesian and South African Flags, a staple among white supremacists

Last night, a white supremacist opened fire at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, killing people including the pastor:

The Facebook profile picture chosen by Dylann Storm Roof in May is thick with symbolism. It shows Mr. Roof, a scowling young white man, wearing a black jacket adorned with two flags — one from apartheid-era South Africa, the other from white-ruled Rhodesia — that have been adopted as emblems by modern-day white supremacists.

Mr. Roof, 21, was arrested Thursday in North Carolina after law enforcement officers identified him as the suspect in the mass shooting at a black church in Charleston, S.C., on Wednesday night. The shooting left nine dead, including the pastor, the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney.

Officials said the shooting was being investigated as a hate crime. Although it was not clear if Mr. Roof had actually joined any organized white supremacist groups, people who knew him said that in recent months, a young man they described as extremely shy had begun to harbor racist views and make increasingly violent statements about attacking black people.

Joseph Meek, 20, a childhood friend who reconnected with Mr. Roof this year, said Mr. Roof had changed, spewing racist ideas and talking about wanting “to hurt a whole bunch of people.”

………

Now Mr. Meek and his girlfriend, Lindsey Fry, both of whom are white, say they feel guilt about the shooting. “I feel we could have done something and prevented this whole thing,” Ms. Fry said.

Asked why Mr. Roof picked that particular church, Mr. Meek replied, “Because it was a black church.”

Another friend, Dalton Tyler, said that Mr. Roof had begun talking about wanting “to start a civil war.” But like Mr. Meek, he did not always take Mr. Roof seriously.

Mr. Tyler said on another occasion, the two were driving to a strip club by the zoo when Mr. Roof saw a black woman, used a racist word and said, “I’ll shoot your ass.”

“I was just like, ‘You’re stupid,’ ” Mr. Tyler said. “He was a racist; but I don’t judge people.”

Fox, of course, is claiming that it’s a war on Christianity, but the gunman’s own words put the lie to that:

………

They said that almost an hour after he arrived, the gunman suddenly stood and pulled a gun, and Ms. Washington’s cousin Tywanza Sanders, 26, known as the peacemaker of the family, tried to calmly talk the man out of violence.

“You don’t have to do this,” he told the gunman, Ms. Washington recounted.

The gunman replied, “Yes. You are raping our women and taking over the country.”

The gunman took aim at the oldest person present, Susie Jackson, 87, Mr. Sanders’s aunt, Ms. Washington said. Mr. Sanders told the man to point the gun at him instead, she said, but the man said, “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to shoot all of you.”

………

In a photo on his Facebook page, a glowering Mr. Roof wears symbols of two former white supremacist governments — the flags of apartheid-era South Africa, and of Rhodesia, the nation that became Zimbabwe. Other photos, posted by a Facebook friend of his and widely circulated online, show Mr. Roof leaning against a car with a license plate that reads, Confederate States of America.

BTW, not only the is characterization of this as accurate, the characterization of this as terrorism is literally in accordance with the oldest anti-terrorism laws in the United States:

………

Making the choice to call this a terrorist act is a way of recognizing the long history of anti-black terrorism in America. For most of American history, the word “terrorism” has referred to acts committed by white people against black people.

In fact, anti-black terrorism perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan was the reason for the first federal anti-terrorism law the US ever passed.

Making the choice to call this a terrorist act is a way of recognizing the long history of anti-black terrorism in America. For most of American history, the word “terrorism” has referred to acts committed by white people against black people.

In fact, anti-black terrorism perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan was the reason for the first federal anti-terrorism law the US ever passed. From a report in the Journal of Negro History based on testimony about the Klan:

The Reverend A. W. Cummings, a Northerner who had been president of the Spartanburg Female College, compiled a list of 227 persons whom he claimed were abused by masked men in that country between the October election of 1870 and the following July 15. He asserted that some two hundred of this number had been beaten, seven wounded by gun fire and four killed. Squire P. Quinn Camp, a white office-holder, claimed that between September 2 and July 15 in the township of Limestone no less than 118 had been abused by the Klan in some fashion, of which four were shot, sixty-seven whipped and six had their ears cropped…So extensive was the fear engendered that whole sections of the rural Negro population slept in the woods for several months during the winter.

The federal government, led by President Ulysses S. Grant, decided it needed to step in to protect order in the South — and keep the political system from being overwhelmed by terrorist intimidation. So it passed a series of laws, including the Ku Klux Klan Act, which made it a federal offense to conspire to threaten elected officials and voters to deprive them of equal protection.

The Grant administration enforced the Klan Act aggressively, using federal militias and charging Klan members in federal court. The law is generally given credit for destroying the Klan in its first iteration as a national terrorist group (it resurfaced during the 20th century).

In the 21st century, terrorism is typically associated with Muslim extremism; when white people commit mass shootings, their ideology isn’t as often brought to the fore. But because of the history of terrorism in the South, for many, labeling the Charleston church shooting terrorism is a way to recognize that black lives matter.

This is terrorism, and it should be prosecuted as such, and it should be called as such.

He intentionally went to a black church to kill black people. He assassinated a state senator. He intended to terrorize the black community.

Prosecute this as terrorism.

As an aside, in a bit or journalistic irony, 1day before the shootings, the New York Times reported on the growing threat of right wing terrorism:

This month, the headlines were about a Muslim man in Boston who was accused of threatening police officers with a knife. Last month, two Muslims attacked an anti-Islamic conference in Garland, Tex. The month before, a Muslim man was charged with plotting to drive a truck bomb onto a military installation in Kansas. If you keep up with the news, you know that a small but steady stream of American Muslims, radicalized by overseas extremists, are engaging in violence here in the United States.

But headlines can mislead. The main terrorist threat in the United States is not from violent Muslim extremists, but from right-wing extremists. Just ask the police.

In a survey we conducted with the Police Executive Research Forum last year of 382 law enforcement agencies, 74 percent reported anti-government extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats in their jurisdiction; 39 percent listed extremism connected with Al Qaeda or like-minded terrorist organizations. And only 3 percent identified the threat from Muslim extremists as severe, compared with 7 percent for anti-government and other forms of extremism.

The FBI recognized this over 6 years ago, but withdrew a report about the problem under pressure from right wing Republicans.

We need to treat right wing militias, the Klan, Operation Rescue, and their ilk as terrorist organizations, and to subject them to the full scrutiny of the law.

What Are the Limits of Political Activism by an Employee?

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A few days ago, I wrote of a Texas elementary school teacher, who, in response to the police officer abusing black teens in McKinney, suggested that the reinstitution of segregation might be a good thing.

I just learned that this teacher, Karen Fitzgibbons, has been fired.

Good news everyone!


I invented a device that makes you read this in your head using my voice!

My first reaction is that the Professor Farnsworth quote, “Good News, Everyone.”

Certainly, I don’t want any children taught by an open racist, which Ms. Fitzgibbons post clearly indicates.

On the other hand, it is profoundly worrying when a public employee is fired for expressing their political views as a private citizen, no matter how abhorrent.

In this case, I think that the firing is justified, I think that she no longer had the credibility required to deal with students and their parents, and any decision made regarding minorities in her class would naturally be suspect.

I do hope that the school district is reviewing any disciplinary actions involving minorities.

Skepticism of her entire career as an educator is justified.

Today’s Must Read on McKinney, and Bad Cops, and Good Cops

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Law Professor and former police officer Seth Stoughton makes the point that needs to be made about both the incident in McKinney, and in policing generally.

He observes that there are two cops on the film, and one gets people calmed down, and other one is Eric Casebolt:

An officer in McKinney, Texas, dashes down a sidewalk, losing his flashlight as he runs past a teenage videographer toward an emergency. Seconds later, the teen with the camera walks up to another officer, one who is standing with a group of kids. “I’m just saying,” the officer is saying in a calm, corrective tone that parents and school teachers everywhere will recognize. “Don’t take off running when the cops get here.”

He thanks the videographer for returning the flashlight, then listens for a few seconds as the kids around him try to explain who was and was not involved in a prior incident. “Okay, guys, I appreciate that,” the as-yet-unidentified officer says. He responds to their concerns—that the police had detained the wrong people—by saying, “Okay, that’s what I’m saying. They’re free to go.” While not casual, the officer is composed. His tone is friendly and professional as he engages with the kids.

Seconds later, another officer, Corporal Eric Casebolt, is shown interacting with some of the same kids. His angry tone and aggressive attitude stand in marked contrast to the first officer in the video. “Get on the ground,” he commands sharply while pulling on a young man’s wrist in a way that looks like he’s trying to force the man to the ground with a painful joint manipulation (technically a supinating wrist lock or, for martial arts enthusiasts, kote gaeshi).

When that proves ineffective, he grabs the back of the young man’s head and shoves him down. “I told you to stay,” he yells, pointing a large metal flashlight at someone off camera. “Get your asses down on the ground.” Like the first officer, he lectures some of the kids about running from the police, but he takes a very different approach. “Don’t make me fucking run around here with thirty pounds of god-damned gear on in the sun because you want to screw around out here.” He is anything but composed, calm or professional.

The two officers in this brief video represent two different policing styles, two different mindsets that officers use as they interact with civilians: the Guardian and the Warrior. As a former police officer and current policing scholar, I know that an officer’s mindset has tremendous impact on police/civilian encounters. I’ve described the Guardian and Warrior mindsets at some length here and here; for now, suffice to say that the right mindset can de-escalate tense situations, induce compliance, and increase community trust over the long-term. The kids interacting with the first officer were excited, but not upset; they remained cooperative. Had they gone home at that moment, they’d have a story for their friends and family, but it would be a story that happened to have the police in it rather than being a story about the police.

………

Officers should also look out for each other, protecting their colleagues not just from harm, but also from lashing out in anger or frustration. Policing can be intensely stressful, and officers should be trained and encouraged to help their peers deal with stressful situations. When an officer is losing his cool, another officer will often be able to intervene, giving the first a chance to collect himself. That type of peer support isn’t part of modern police culture—particularly not when the officer losing his temper is a supervisor and union official like Corporal Casebolt—but it should be.

A short video of officers in McKinney, Texas, shows us the avoidable results of an unnecessarily aggressive approach to policing. But in the same video, we can see a few seconds of policing the way the way it should be done.

Remember the old days, when people called members of the constabulary, “Peace Officer”?

A warrior cannot be a “Peace Officer”.  Their job is wage war against the enemy.

Peace Officers do not wage war against an enemy, the protect their fellow citizens.

In antiquity, when a “Warrior” took a town, he was supposed to take any male child that he found, and dash its brains out on the cobblestones.

This is not a proper model for policing.

Why I Did Not Want My Kids to Grow Up in Texas

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Baltimore might not be the best place in the world in terms of police professionalism (Freddie Gray), but I would not expect to see the sort of bullsh%$ that happened at the McKinney, Texas pool party:

No lives were lost. The incident played out at a suburban pool party, not an urban neighborhood struggling with crime and drugs.

 But perhaps it was that suburban setting that helped make the images so powerful and disturbing. Now a video of a police officer pointing a gun at teenagers in bathing suits and shoving a young black girl’s face into the ground has become the latest flash point in relations between the police and minorities.

 The cellphone video, taken at the community pool in Craig Ranch, a racially diverse subdivision north of Dallas, has set off another debate over race and police tactics, with activists calling for the officer to be fired and others arguing that the blame should fall at least in part on the teenagers.

 The video appears to show the officer, David Eric Casebolt, briefly waving his handgun at young partygoers who approached him as he tried to subdue the teenage girl on Friday. The officer ultimately immobilized the girl by putting her facedown on the ground and placing a knee on her back.

 Chief Greg Conley of the McKinney Police Department said that the video had prompted an internal affairs investigation and that Officer Casebolt, a patrol supervisor, had been placed on administrative leave.

 ………

 Earlier in day, activists outside Police Headquarters said the youths had been subjected to racial bias, and demanded that Officer Casebolt be fired. Dominique Alexander, the president of the Next Generation Action Network, a civil rights group, said it was an “illusion” that youths had been jumping the fence. “They had every right to be there,” he said.

 After the video spread quickly online, criticism poured in from around the country. The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas said that it while it did not have all the facts about the party, “what we do know is that the police response, as seen on the video, appears to be a textbook case of overuse of force.”

 In a video posted to YouTube on Sunday, a black teenager named Tatiana said her family was hosting a cookout for friends when a woman insulted them, prompting a 14-year-old family friend to respond. Tatiana said a white woman had then told her: “You need to go back to where you’re from” and to “go back to your Section 8 home.”

 Tatiana said that she had replied, “Excuse me,” and that then another white woman hit her in the face and “both women attacked” her.

 ………

 Brandon Brooks, 15, who shot the video, told a TV station that Officer Casebolt had not confronted him, one of the few white teenagers at the party.

 “I was one of the only white people in the area when that was happening,” he told the station. “You can see in part of the video where he tells us to sit down, and he kind of like skips over me and tells all my African-American friends to go sit down.”

(emphasis mine)

There are lots of good people in Texas, but the public culture, not only in terms of race, but also in terms of wealth, social justice, and the whole idea of public good, is incredibly toxic.

Even if you are raised to hate sh%$ like this, being raised in this toxic soup inures one to it, and I do not favor complacency to injustice as a tactic to raise children.

Michelle Bachmann May be Right About the Rapture

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I can think of no stronger indicator for the Apocalypse than the fact that, for the 2nd time in as many months, Donald Trump has seized the moral high ground.

Of course, this is an extremely low bar, as the competition is Pamela Geller:

Donald Trump was asked on “Fox & Friends” this morning for his opinion on the shooting outside Pam Geller’s “Draw the Prophet” contest, and he didn’t mince his words.

Brian Kilmeade asked whether he still believed “in freedom of speech, regardless of what they’re talking about — you’ve got to think they could do without being shot, don’t you think?”

Trump replied that it’s “very terrible,” but was heartened that the police acted “very strongly” by killing the two suspects. After blaming the “weak action” of the Baltimore police for the destruction of “over 200 businesses in a single night,” he praised the Garland, Texas police for their handling of these shooters.

However, he quickly switched subjects, saying that “I watched Pam [Geller on Fox News] earlier, and it really looks like she’s just taunting everybody. What is she doing drawing Muhammad? I mean it’s disgusting,” he said in reference to the attempted shootings. “Isn’t there something else they could be doing? Drawing Muhammad?” he went on.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck cut in to say that they’d asked Geller whether there wasn’t some other way they could have exercised their freedom of speech besides this contest, and Geller told her “No, there wasn’t another way, because you have to fight back against this war against the freedom of speech.”

Trump replied by again asking, “They can’t do something else? They have have to be in the middle of Texas doing something on Muhammad and insulting everybody?”

He reiterated his disgust at the attempted shooting, as well as his belief that Geller is taunting Islamic extremists. “What is she doing?” he asked. “Why is she doing it? It’s probably very risky for her — I don’t know, maybe she likes risk?”

“But what the hell is she doing?” he concluded.

So in April, he shamed most of the Republican Presidential candidates over Social Security and Medicare, and now, this.

I do not mean to imply that “The Donald” is meaningful ethics, but rather that the morality of the right wing has descended below his level.

Pamela Geller Wanted a Terrorist Attack, and She Got One

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Well, Pamela Geller has finally gotten her wish, and trigger an attack from deranged Muslim fundamentalists:

Two gunmen were killed after they opened fire Sunday evening outside an event hosted by an anti-Islam group in Garland, Tex., featuring cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, local officials said. According to the authorities, the two assailants shot a security guard and were, in turn, shot and killed by police officers.

Officials did not name the gunmen or assign a motive for the attack. A spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in Dallas said the agency was providing investigative and bomb technician assistance to the Garland police.

The City of Garland confirmed the episode in a Facebook posting.

The shooting began shortly before 7 p.m. outside the Curtis Culwell Center at an event organized by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, an anti-Islam organization based in New York.

“As today’s Muhammad Art Exhibit event at the Curtis Culwell Center was coming to an end,” the Facebook posting said, “two males drove up to the front of the building in a car. Both males were armed and began shooting at a Garland I.S.D. security officer.”

The “American Freedom Defense Initiative” has, among other things, campaigned against a mosque being built in Manhattan, because ……… Muslims.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has classified this group, along with most of the other groups she is affiliated with.

Geller is one of the founders of that organization.

Much like issue of the Nazis who wanted to march in Skokie, Illinois, I defend her right to free speech, but like those Nazis, we need to understand that she is a contemptible bigot who should be shunned by all right thinking people.

Instead, I expect to see her on mainstream news media (primarily Fox, but also the others) at least a dozen times over the next few months.

Snark of the Day

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In response to a Michigan auto mechanic saying that he would refuse to serve gays, a lawyer has offered his services.

The kicker is that he is a bankruptcy attorney:

In a mocking open-letter to a Michigan auto repair shop owner following his anti-gay Facebook rant, a Grand Rapids bankruptcy attorney has offered his services to deal with the economic consequences of the business owner’s “inane, incoherent and just plain dumb comments.”

On Tuesday, Grandville auto shop owner Brian Klawiter posted a rambling attack on gays on Facebook, saying he would not service their cars, adding, “Homosexuality is wrong, period. If you want to argue this fact with me then I will put your vehicle together with all bolts and no nuts and you can see how that works.”

………

Sensing a business opportunity, Grand Rapids bankruptcy attorney Jeffrey Mapes, posted an open letter on Michigan Live, saying he too is “white, male, Christian, a business owner, and a gun owner,” and is willing to handle Klawiter’s future needs despite his “inane, incoherent and just plain dumb comments” on Facebook.

………

He then offered words of inspiration in the wake of the Facebook post that has caused Klawiter grief , quoting from the Adam Sandler film, “Billy Madison.”

“What you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

Heh.

More Evidence That Conservative Christianity Has Degenerated Into a Vehicle for Hate

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This is beyond contemptible

Once Again I need to invoke Shelby Spong‘s question, “I have quoted the controversial theologian’s question, “Has religion in general and Christianity in particular degenerated to the level that it has become little more than a veil under which anger can be legitimatized?”

In Tennessee, a Talibaptist cleric has equated equal rights to Satan:

A Tennessee pastor said this week that his church was “not trying to offend anyone” when it put up a sign linking “equal rights” to Satan.

 Members of the community expressed outrage over the weekend after photos of marquee outside the Knoxville Baptist Tabernacle Church were circulated online. The sign read, “Remember, Satan was the first to demand equal rights.”

 “Who was your target audience? Who were you speaking to when you put it up there?” Knoxville resident Rick Staples, asked, according to WBIR. “And when you say you’re asking for your equal rights, who’s asking for their equal rights and who are you comparing to Satan? That was very strong language.”

 Andy Henry said that the church was trying to make a statement about gay rights.

 “It’s clearly a sign that was meant to offend a particular community – the LGBT community. Because of (the church’s) lack of foresight, they ended up offending everybody who had ever fought for equality or civil rights in general,” Henry observed.

But Pastor Tony Greene insisted that everyone misunderstood the message.

 “Our sign referencing Satan demanding his equal rights to ascend into the heavens and be God was simply ‘I’ and all about that individual,” Greene told WATE. “It was not a statement against any one group in particular, you know what about the rights of the unborn babies, the rights of children, the rights of everyone?”

 He added: “My heart breaks in the dividedness of our country.”

No, Rev. Greene is not calling for unity, he is expressing a world view for which faith is indistinguishable from hate.

At its core, this is the same spirituality that we see from Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taliban.

H/t Neo at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Rudolph Giuliani: Making Donald Trump Look Good

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Have you heard Rudy’s latest? He is saying that Barack Obama should be more like Bill Cosby.

He then followed this statement with a noun, a verb, and “9-11”:

Bill Cosby may stand accused of drugging and raping dozens of women, but Rudy Giuliani thinks President Obama could learn a thing or two from the disgraced comedian.

Speaking with talk radio host John Gambling of AM 970 The Answer on Thursday, the former New York City mayor charged that Obama was ignoring “enormous amount of crime” committed by black Americans, citing a recent highly-publicized scuffle at Brooklyn McDonald’s and the shooting of two Ferguson, Missouri police officers early Thursday.

Referring to Cosby’s history of scolding remarks inveighing against black culture, Giuliani said, “I hate to mention it because of what happened afterwards, but [he should be saying] the kinds of stuff Bill Cosby used to say.”

Seriously. This is not The Onion, this is real.

Rudolph Giuliani has based his entire political career on hating on Black people and other minorities.

Can we call him a bigoted nut-job yet?