Amanda Marcotte on why cats are better than Ron Paul (or any Republican candidate really):
Cats get delusional ideas all the time, but what’s nice is that their ambitions are small. Instead of trying to destroy the Fed, they climb trees they can’t get out of. Or, instead of having an irrational fear of black people, they have an irrational fear of vacuum cleaners. Given the choice to vote for Paul or for cats, you should take cats every time.
Gin & Tacos neatly sums up the existential contradiction inherent in the wingnut personality:
I can’t say it surprised me that people defended the cop. There are always people who will defend the cop. Believe it or not, I was taken aback by just how stupid their arguments were even though such things should not surprise me anymore. Most of all, though, it’s amazing the extent to which these people who believe that government is pure evil will argue that A) the role of the citizen relative to the police is one of absolute, unquestioning obedience, B) the police are to be taken at their word at all times, and C) whatever type and amount of force the police choose to use is inherently right.
It’s the same sort of person who has no problem with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan but who thinks having state obligated health insurance is the thin edge of fascism.
Andrew Breitbart is an internet asshole specialising in lying about political opponents and groups in an attempt to get people fired or the funding taken away from them, using video taken without their consent or knowledge and edited to make the victims look as bad as possible. Previous victims include Shirley Sherrod, where Breitbart took comments of her out of context to make her sound racist, which led to her sacking from her job at the United States Department of Agriculture, though afterwards the unedited video showed the truth. This is Breitbart whole stick, ginning up controversy to get easily panicked organisations to sack innocent people and frightened politicians to cut funding for organisations he dislikes. Time and again he has been shown to lie about his victims, time and again the truth has revealed them to be innocent of the charges he brings to them, yet people still keep falling for his tricks.
After Mr. Breitbart’s Web site posted the videos on Monday, the university system initially responded with a statement distancing itself from the comments that the lecturers are depicted making. “Obviously, the comments on the video do not reflect the position of the University of Missouri,” said the statement from Jennifer Hollingshead, a system spokeswoman. Officials at the St. Louis and Kansas City campuses, where the lectures were delivered, “are looking into the situation,” her statement said.
On Thursday, however, Gail Hackett, provost of the University of Missouri at Kansas City, issued a statement denouncing how the videos are presented on Mr. Breitbart’s Web site, based on the campus’s continuing review of the raw classroom footage used to make them.
“From the review completed to date,” her statement said, “it is clear that edited videos posted on the Internet depict statements from the instructors in an inaccurate and distorted manner by taking their statements out of context and reordering the sequence in which those statements were actually made so as to change their meaning. Such selective editing is disturbing, and the release of students’ images without their permission is a violation of their privacy rights.”
[…]
Mr. Giljum said he had been told by his immediate supervisor at the St. Louis campus, Deborah Baldini, associate dean for continuing education, that both the campus’s chancellor and provost had called for him to resign, even though he had never been given a chance to discuss with them the allegations made in the video. Mr. Giljum said the only opportunity he has been given to defend himself was a brief conversation with Ms. Baldini in which, he said, he told her the statements he is shown making in the video “were taken totally out of context and completely edited. It is nothing but a hatchet job by this person who wants to destroy unions and destroy labor education.”
[…]
Regardless of what happens at St. Louis, Mr. Giljum, who politically identifies himself as a communist, has already lost one source of income because of the controversy over the videotapes. The St. Louis-based Local 148 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, for which he had worked as business manager, demanded his resignation on Wednesday. Mr. Giljum said he is worried that Southwestern Illinois College, where he teaches a class on labor relations, will ask for his resignation as well.
Shouldn’t the university and especially the union, which should know it itself is one of Breitbart’s targets, have rejected these claims out of hand rather than take them serious? Shouldn’t they know about Breitbart and his campaigns by now?
Well…
It’s difficult for any administrator finding themselves in a situation where suddenly hundreds of people mail or phone you demanding you take action against an employee for doing something outrageous and you find yourself in a media storm where you need take action now in order to not be demonised yourself. It may not be clear to you who is behind these complaints, that this is a Breitbart operation; if you’re not a political junkie you may only have a vague knowledge of who he is, you may have some idea that he was the guy who helped out ACORN, not realising it was all a lie. Your first instincts therefore may be to placate the critics, sack or suspend the offending employee and then start an internal investigation, to show how concerned you are about those grave allegations. Which is all very understandable, but it’s this mentality that Breitbart counts on to win. Even if his victim is reinstated afterwards, he has won the propaganda war, showing both his power to get people fired and undermining the trust of the people on the recieving ends — if your employer threatens to sack you on the directions of an internet loon, would you trust them afterwards?
So what’s the solution? Raise awareness, counterattack Breitbart’s organisation itself, support the victims. Keep exposing him and his mission. Sue the bastard for defamation, ruin him like her ruined his victims.
On the Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band: Live 1975-1985 box set, which I got for my birthday in 1986 on cassette (!) and which was my first encounter with Springsteen live, there’s a cover of Woodie Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land”. In the introduction to this song Bruce mentions that “there’s a book out there by a fellow named Joe Klein” about Woodie Guthrie and it’s “real good” and that’s what always goes through my head when I read posts like this. There was once a time that Joe Klein wasn’t a know nothing asshole proud to lick the boots of every two bit wingnut coming down the spike and you wonder if it’s sadder if he knows how deep he has sunk in the twentyfive years since that snippet was recorded or if he doesn’t know.
P. Z. Myers tells us what he really thinks about the Arizona murders and their larger political implications:
What we have here is an attempted assassination of a politician by an insane crank at a political event, in a state where the political discourse has been an unrelenting howl of eliminationist rhetoric and characterization of anyone to the left of Genghis Khan as a traitor and enemy of the state…and now, when six (including a nine year old girl) lie dead and another fourteen are wounded, now suddenly we’re concerned that it is rude and politicizing a tragedy to point out that the right wing has produced a toxic atmosphere that pollutes our politics with hatred and the rhetoric of violence?
Screw that. Now is the time to politicize the hell out of this situation. The people who are complaining are a mix of lefty marshmallows whose first reaction to the fulfillment of right-wing fantasies by a lunatic is to drop to their knees and beg forgiveness for thinking ill of people who paint bullseyes on their political opponents, and right wing cowards who are racing to their usual tactic of attacking their critics to shame them into silence. This is NOT the time to back down and suddenly find it embarrassing to point out that right-wing pundits make a living as professional goads to insanity.