Posts Tagged ‘Teabaggers’
Glenn Beck Fans “Restoring Honor”, One Assault At A Time
So much for free speech huh? If someone ripped signs out of a tea baggers hands like this you know Fox would be calling for their heads and Palin would be tweeting so much she’d break her thumbs.
Jan Brewer Starts Badly, Finishes Worse, In Last Night’s Arizona Gubernatorial Debate
Last night, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer got down to debatin’ with her opponent, Democratic Attorney General Terry Goddard, and Ben Smith has video of Brewer’s opening statement which could charitably be called a “complete and utter disaster.” Brewer’s inability to, you know — introduce herself, thank the debate sponsors, and welcome viewers at home — hit a snag when her train of thought derailed, leaving dead-air gaps that rival any of the ones on the Arizona-Mexico border.
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Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” Rally - Interviews With Participants
On 8.28.2010, Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally was held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The purpose of the rally, which Beck claimed to be “non-political” despite featuring Tea Party-favorite Sarah Palin as a speaker and its being attended entirely by conservatives, was unclear. The participants spoke abstractly about the need to restore “honor” and “pride” to a country that had lost it. When pressed for when our country had lost its honor, most cited the election of Barack Obama.
8.28.2010 also represented the 47th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, and Glenn Beck has been criticized for by civil rights groups for trying to misappropriate the occasion.
Last year, Beck referred to Barack Obama—our country’s first African-American President–as a “racist… who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.” When offered the chance to respond to Beck’s statements, his fans either agreed with him or simply refused to believe that he had ever made them.
While the speaker list was diverse, the overwhelmingly white crowd expressed paranoid and conspiratorial fears of multiculturalism—that atheists or black liberation theologists or radical Muslims or “free-loading” Latinos were going to ruin our country. There was the constant suggestion that white Christians and their way of life are somehow under assault, and that the attendees of this rally were here to put an end to it and return the country to what it used to be.
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This NEW LEFT MEDIA film was produced and edited by Chase Whiteside (interviewer) and Erick Stoll (camera operator) with additional camera work from Kasey Hosp.
Fire at Tenn. Mosque Building Site Ruled Arson
Federal officials are investigating a fire that started overnight at the site of a new Islamic center in a Nashville suburb.
Ben Goodwin of the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Department confirmed to CBS Affiliate WTVF that the fire, which burned construction equipment at the future site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, is being ruled as arson.
Special Agent Andy Anderson of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told CBS News that the fire destroyed one piece of construction equipment and damaged three others. Gas was poured over the equipment to start the fire, Anderson said.
The ATF, FBI and Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office are conducting a joint investigation into the fire, Anderson said.
WTVF reports firefighters were alerted by a passerby who saw flames at the site. One large earth hauler was set on fire before the suspect or suspects left the scene.
The chair of the center’s planning committee, Essim Fathy, said he drove to the site at around 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning after he was contacted by the sheriff’s department.
“Our people and community are so worried of what else can happen,” said Fathy. “They are so scared.”
The fire was smoldering by the time Fathy and the center’s imam, Ossama Bahloul, had arrived. Fathy was told that responders had smelled gasoline near the fire.
Fathy was later contacted by members of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, who told him the incident was under investigation and to remain calm.
Digging had begun at the site, which was planned as a place of worship for the approximately 250 Muslim families in the Murfreesboro area, but no structure had been built yet, according to Saleh Sbenaty, a member of the planning committee and a professor of engineering technology at Middle Tennessee State University.
“This is a shock,” said Sbenaty. “We’ve had small act of vandals. But this is going to be a crime and whoever did it, they should be punished to the full extent of the law.”
The center had operated for years out of a small business suite. Planning members said the new building, which was being constructed next to a church, would help accommodate the area’s growing Muslim community.
“We unfortunately did not experience hostilities for the 30 years we’ve been here and have only seen the hostility since approval of the site plan for the new center,” said Sbenaty.
Opponents of a new Islamic center say they believe the mosque will be more than a place of prayer; they are afraid the 15-acre site that was once farmland will be turned into a terrorist training ground for Muslim militants bent on overthrowing the U.S. government.
“They are not a religion. They are a political, militaristic group,” Bob Shelton, a 76-year-old retiree who lives in the area, told The Associated Press.
Shelton was among several hundred demonstrators who recently wore “Vote for Jesus” T-shirts and carried signs that said “No Sharia law for USA!,” referring to the Islamic code of law.
Others took their opposition further, spray painting a sign announcing the “Future site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro” and tearing it up.
Earlier this summer opponents criticized the planned mosque at hearings held by the Rutherford County Commission, as supporters held prayer vigils.
At one such prayer vigil, WTVF reported opponents speaking out against construction.
“No mosque in Murfreesboro. I don’t want it. I don’t want them here,” Evy Summers said to WTVF. “Go start their own country overseas somewhere. This is a Christian country. It was based on Christianity.”
*NOTE FROM THE EDITOR*: Having been to this area many times, the location for this mosque is about a mile south of the Walmart, a mile east of a junkyard and about 6 miles NW of the nudist colony. Those Muslims are really going to bring the neighborhood down aren’t they?
Hostile Reactions From Teabaggers?
Crazy huh? Velvet Revolution sent a camera man into the crowd at Glenn Beck’s 8-28 March on Washington/book promotion to speak to tea baggers and were met with your typical derp.
Another Domestic-Terror Attack Gone Wrong
Hm. Wonder how long before this planned domestic-terrorism attack on a police headquarters in McKinney, Texas, is labeled “just another isolated incident”:
A man apparently bent on destroying the police headquarters in McKinney was shot and killed this morning after spraying the building with bullets.
Parick Gray_d9af1.JPG Police say 29-year-old Patrick Gray Sharp drove a Ford F150 pickup pulling a trailer to the station and set it on fire in an apparent attempt to draw people out of the building. Inside the trailer, police said, were wood chips, roadside flares, gasoline, and ammonium nitrate fertilizer, the type used in the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.
“He had a plan. He was executing his plan,” McKinney Police Chief Doug Kowalski said at an afternoon news conference at which he confirmed Sharp’s identity and talked about the unusual nature of the attack.
Kowalski said more than 100 shell casings were found in the area, and 23 windows were broken in the building. Officers returned fire, and Sharp was killed 50 to 200 yards south of the police station. It was unclear whether he was shot by police or died from a self-inflicted wound.
No one else was injured in the incident, which began about 9 a.m. and according to Kowalski lasted less than five minutes.
“We know the who, what, when, where. “We don’t know the why,” Kowalski said.
He said Sharp, who lived in Anna, did not have a criminal record.
“We’re delving more into his background,” the chief said.
CBS-11 has more details:
Police say Sharp may have been trying to draw people out of the building and blow up a trailer loaded with explosives. Kowalski says Sharp fired more than 100 rounds before he died.
During a morning news conference McKinney Police Deputy Chief Scott Brewer confirmed that around 9 a.m. a man driving a Ford F-150 truck drove up on south side of the Public Safety Building, pulling a trailer. The building houses both the McKinney Police and Fire Departments.
Immediately after Sharp exited the vehicle it became engulfed in flames. Police believed there was ammunition inside the pickup. “Subsequently the fire itself set off that ammunition, causing rounds to be dispersed in immediate area,” explained Brewer.
Sharp began yelling something toward the building and opened fire. Officers in and outside the building began searching for the shooter. The suspect was located and there was an exchange of gunfire.
The Dallas Morning News went out and talked to his neighbors. Apparently Sharp had a roomie named Eric McClellan who was nowhere near the scene:
McClellan was vacationing in Philadelphia when the shooting occurred, according to his mother. Police said Tuesday afternoon that they had reached him, and he was surprised by the news.
McClellan and Sharp, 29, “were cool guys,” Mullins said. “They stuck to themselves.”
Both neighbors said they had no idea what could have been behind Sharp’s actions Tuesday.
Police say Sharp had no criminal record, but had been a witness in court cases.
He had been working at Encore Wire Corp. in McKinney, according to the company, which said he resigned a few days ago.
Cheryl Cox, McClellan’s mother, said Sharp and her son both worked in security at Encore.
Eventually we’ll find out more about why Sharp targeted his local police station, though it’s worth noting that his strategy was not entirely different from the Hutaree Militia’s. Moreover, certain other aspects — particularly the presence of an ammonium-nitrate bomb — indicate a well-established modus operandi.
But of course, it will all be written off as just another “lone wolf” indulging in an “isolated incident.” Funny how we keep having all these “isolated incidents”, isn’t it?
How the “ground zero mosque” fear mongering began
A group of progressive Muslim-Americans plans to build an Islamic community center two and a half blocks from ground zero in lower Manhattan. They have had a mosque in the same neighborhood for many years. There’s another mosque two blocks away from the site. City officials support the project. Muslims have been praying at the Pentagon, the other building hit on Sept. 11, for many years.
In short, there is no good reason that the Cordoba House project should have been a major national news story, let alone controversy. And yet it has become just that, dominating the political conversation for weeks and prompting such a backlash that, according to a new poll, nearly 7 in 10 Americans now say they oppose the project. How did the Cordoba House become so toxic, so fast?
In a story last week, the New York Times, which framed the project in a largely positive, noncontroversial light last December, argued that it was cursed from the start by “public relations missteps.” But this isn’t accurate. To a remarkable extent, a Salon review of the origins of the story found, the controversy was kicked up and driven by Pamela Geller, a right-wing, viciously anti-Muslim, conspiracy-mongering blogger, whose sinister portrayal of the project was embraced by Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post.
Here’s a timeline of how it all happened:
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Marg Baker, Tea Party Candidate, Proposes Internment-Style ‘Camps’ For Illegal Immigrants
Tea Party-backed candidate Marg Baker was given the chance to explain what she meant when she said she wanted to put illegal immigrants in “camps,” and it turns out she meant pretty much what it sounded like.
“We can ship them out to the middle of the country and put up high walls and leave them there,” Baker, who seeks the Republican nomination in a Florida statehouse race, told Salon Thursday.
Baker first announced the proposal earlier this month at a meeting sponsored by Glenn Beck’s 9-12 Project. Baker’s opponents quickly distanced themselves from her plan.
More from Salon’s report:
Asked if what she had in mind was more like the Japanese internment camps of the World War II era, Baker said, “something like that. But unfortunately in the Japanese camps they detaineed American citiziens. The only ones I want to detain are the ones who are illegal.”
She added, “You’ve gotta have places for them to eat and sleep and breathe fresh air. It can be a tent city … You don’t want to make them too comfortable or they’ll want to come back.”
Tea Party leader Mark Williams says Muslims worship a ‘monkey god’
A National Tea Party leader protesting a proposed mosque near Ground Zero set off a firestorm of anger Wednesday by saying that Muslims worship “the terrorists’ monkey god.”
Mark Williams, chairman of the Tea Party Express, blogged about the 13-story mosque and Islamic cultural center planned at Park Place and Broadway, calling it a monument to the 9/11 terrorists.
“The monument would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists’ monkey-god,” Williams, a frequent guest on CNN, wrote on his Web site.
His statements drew a sharp rebuke from City Hall and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national Muslim civil rights and advocacy group.
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Conservative Group Calls for Blanket Ban on New Mosques
The right-wing propaganda machine continues its manufactured freak-out over plans to build a Muslim Center near Ground Zero. Now, the American Family Association has weighed in, with predictable results — grotesque anti-Muslim propaganda, open calls for discrimination, endorsement of totalitarian tactics, etc.
Kyle at Right-Wing Watch:
Yesterday we noted that the AFA’s Bryan Fischer was demanding the end to the construction of all mosques on the grounds that “each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.”
He made the same case on his radio program, at first talking about the “Ground Zero Mosque,” but then issuing a call for a blanket ban on the construction of any new mosques anywhere in the country: