Month: September 2007

O’Reilly Luther King

by digby

Billo is misunderstood:

Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly said Wednesday his critics took remarks he made about a famed Harlem restaurant out of context and “fabricated a racial controversy where none exists.” He criticized the liberal group Media Matters for America as “smear merchants” for publicizing statements he made on his radio show last week.

O’Reilly told his radio audience that he dined with civil rights activist Al Sharpton at Sylvia’s recently and “couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference” between the black-run restaurant and others in New York City.

It was just like a suburban Italian restaurant, he said. “There wasn’t any kind of craziness at all,” he said.

O’Reilly told The Associated Press that Media Matters had “cherry-picked” remarks out of a broader conversation about racial attitudes. He had told listeners that his grandmother — and many other white Americans — feared blacks because they didn’t know any and were swayed by violent images in black culture.

Remember, this is exactly what O’Reilly said:

I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks.

This is not a man who lives in a small town in Minnesota that has few African Americans. He lives in New York City and yet he “couldn’t get over the fact” that a restaurant run by blacks with black patrons is exactly the same as any other restaurant. He revealed himself as someone who has formed his impressions of African Americans based on racist stereotypes. And there is nothing that Bill O’Reilly hates more than revealing himself (unless it’s to one of his female employees.)

He explains that he was actually being extremely color blind, because once he had this racial epiphany at Sylvia’s, he spread the good word to all those who hadn’t had the eye-opening experience of seeing black people behaving just like “normal” Americans, that they could finally relax:

And that’s really what this society’s all about now here in the U.S.A. There’s no difference. There’s no difference. There may be a cultural entertainment — people may gravitate toward different cultural entertainment, but you go down to Little Italy, and you’re gonna have that. It has nothing to do with the color of anybody’s skin.

Except, of course, there is a huge difference:

White Convicts As Likely to Be Hired As Blacks Without Criminal Records

Anyone claiming that racism is no longer alive and well in the United States, in addition to considering the race-driven circumstances surrounding the Jena 6, or statistics demonstrating that prosecutors are far more likely to seek the death penalty when the victim is white than when the victim is black (particularly if the defendant is black), or studies demonstrating that blacks receive harsher sentences than whites for equivalent drug crimes, or the fact that even though more whites per capita smoke marihuana than blacks, blacks are arrested and prosecuted at a far higher rate, should read a recent study by Princeton University examining employment discrimination titled “Discrimination in Low Wage Labor Markets.” In the largest and most comprehensive project of its kind to date, 13 young male applicants, presenting the same qualifications and experience, split into teams and went on nearly 3,500 entry-level job interviews with private companies in supposedly left-leaning, “progressive”, multicultural New York City, jobs ranging from restaurants to manufacturing to financial services. After recording which applicants were invited back for interviews or were offered jobs, two sociology professors looked at the hiring practices of 1,500 prospective private employers, focusing specifically on discrimination against young male minorities and ex-offenders. Some of the study’s findings are depressingly familiar. For instance, young white high school graduates were twice as likely to receive positive responses from New York employers as equally qualified black job seekers. It also reaffirmed not only that former prisoners are at a distinct disadvantage in the job market, but also that, again, black ex-prisoners are in a much worse position: positive responses from employers towards white applicants with a criminal record dipped 35 percent, while for black applicants similarly situated it plummeted 57 percent. However, the study revealed that our society’s racism extends even deeper: black applicants with no criminal record were no more likely to get a job than white applicants with criminal records just released from prison! In other words, while whites with criminal records received low rates of positive responses, such response rates were equally low for blacks without a criminal background. Further exposing the overt racism at play was the study’s finding that minority employers were more accepting of minority applicants and job applicants with prison records.

O’Reilly was speaking to African American journalist Juan Williams at the time he made the comments and Williams said this about the flap:

His radio show was a conversation with Fox News contributor Juan Williams, author of a book about the coarseness of some black culture. Williams defended O’Reilly during a Tuesday appearance on “The O’Reilly Factor.”

“It’s so frustrating,” Williams said. “They want to shut you up. They want to shut up anybody who has an honest discussion about race.”

An honest discussion about race would be nice. And it’s entirely possible that if Williams had asked O’Reilly about his assumptions when he said these things, a real dialog could have taken place. But he didn’t. So one must assume that Williams thinks there’s nothing wrong with what O’Reilly said.

Of course, Juan Williams is an employee of Fox News who is also selling a book about how badly behaved black people are, so you have to consider the source.

We all know what we heard from O’Reilly and he knows it too. He was surprised to find that black people act just like everyone else does in a public place, even in their “own milieu” where he apparently expected the patrons to scream for another “glass of motherfucking iced tea.” He thinks he is being very open minded and un- bigoted by revealing to the world on his important radio show that he’s discovered that black people are just like everyone else. The problem, of course, is that only a racist thinks that this is big news.

I am expecting that we will see a motion in the House and Senate condemning Media matters for criticizing Bill O’Reilly any day now…

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McCarthy Lite

by digby

The Democrats in the House docilely laid down for another round of GOPukkake today and voted to condemn MoveOn. I hope they all enjoyed the ritual humiliation.

For some reason, the many Democrats have a major problem understanding the concept of principle:

Wisconsin Rep. David Obey, a veteran Democrat, recounted how he left the Republican Party during the era of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., and said that lawmakers have an obligation to criticize their allies as well as their enemies when they go too far.

‘I have got an obligation to be equally upset when that kind of juvenile debate emanates from the left,’ Obey said.

Now, Obey is a confused sort who apparently thinks that because a civilian group criticized a general in a newspaper ad they are the equivalent of McCarthy using the coercive constitutional power of the US Senate to smear the Army as being riddled with communists. That’s ridiculous, of course. The principle right minded Americans hold against McCarthyism is the use of government power to suppress dissent.

McCarthy would have been thrilled to have a vote like this today. Over the moon. There was nothing he liked more than forcing the Democrats to repudiate their allies and bow down like supplicants to someone they knew was completely full of shit. It set the stage for everything that has come since.

February 4th, 1954, Senator McCarthy spoke of one party’s treason. This was at Charleston, West Virginia where there were no cameras running. It was recorded on tape:

The issue between the Republicans and Democrats is clearly drawn. It has been deliberately drawn by those who have been in charge of twenty years of treason. The hard fact is — the hard fact is that those who wear the label, those who wear the label Democrat wear it with the stain of a historic betrayal.

That’s what Democrats like Obey are afraid of. And that’s why they acquiesced to the phony GOP hysteria on Move-On. They’ve been kow-towing in one way or another on this stuff since the first HUAC standing committee hearing back in 1948.

I suppose we should be grateful that Duncan Hunter and Mitch McConnell didn’t hold up pieces of paper purporting to have the names of more than 500 Move-On members who are in the government today, but give it time. A Global War on Terror is the perfect vehicle for such tactics — it’s one of the reasons they insist on designating it as such.

During the height of the cold war, both parties in congress, and even President Eisenhower, were scared to death of McCarthy, allowing him to run roughshod over the entire US government with thuggish, hysterical accusations of treason against everyone from librarians to Army generals.

MoveOn, an independent political group, bought an advertisement in a newspaper expressing an opinion. And the entire right wing political machinery immediately lurched into high gear to shrilly condemn it as unpatriotic and unacceptable, leading both the Senate and the House of Representatives to pass official, government censures of the group.

Surely, any sentient being can see where the real equivalence with Joseph McCarthy lies.

Edward R. Murrow famously called out McCarthy on his national TV show See it Now with a memorable broadcast that gathered together clips of all the accusations of communism and anti-American, unpatriotic behavior he’d hurled at his fellow Americans over the years. People were shocked to see it all in one place.

Murrow made his most famous comment that night, which ended like this:

His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully. Cassius was right. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

The last few years of suppression of dissent and fear mongering have not reached the level of the McCarthy era, obviously. But the echoes are still there and the tactics are still being used, in symbolic form, to get the Democratic Party to submit to right wing paranoia. They just did it again today. And why not? It’s been working for decades.

Update: Jamison Foser made a similar point when discussing Richard Cohen’s similarly twisted McCarthy analogy last week.

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More California Dreamin’

by digby

LOS ANGELES – Rudy Giuliani expects a plum endorsement this week from one of California’s leading Republicans, former Gov. Pete Wilson.

The Republican presidential candidate and former New York mayor planned to announce Wilson’s support at a news conference Thursday in Santa Monica, according to several people with knowledge of the endorsement. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Wilson’s stamp of approval will bring together two Republicans who served as big-city mayors and occupy similar political terrain.

Both are known for being able to draw votes from across party lines, and blend moderate social views on issues like abortion with conservative thinking on the economy and national defense.

Of course Wilson destroyed the California Republican party for a decade with his anti-immigrant Proposition 187. We’ll see if Rudy can thread that needle better than he did.

Update: From Calitics:

In what can only be described as yet another dirty trick, the campaign pushing the initiative to steal California’s electoral votes disclosed its main donor in a campaign finance report earlier this week. The lone $175,000 donor was attributed to a Missouri based company called Take Initiative America (T.I.A). The only name we have is Charles A. Hurth III, an attorney in the small town Union, MO and big donor to Rudy Giuliani’s campaign.

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Read More Me

by digby

I have a new post up over at The Big Con about Republican racism, the Little Rock 9 and the Jena 6. I even quote our nemesis Mudcat, who says something right every once in a while:

“On race, I say it’s time to hit the Republicans straight on. When they use race-baiting to divide God’s children, let’s call them on it. It’s now been 27 years since Lee Atwater introduced one of the most effective great lies in political history—the ‘Welfare Queen’. Yet we have not even hit that one in the mouth. I say let’s shout out with the fury of hell, ‘If you are a racist, go ahead and vote for the Republicans.'”

Also check out Perlstein’s “Bed-wetter Nation”. It’s a goodie.

But look now what we have lost. Now when a bad guy crosses our threshhold, America becomes a pants-piddling mess.

Iran’s president speaks at a great American university. That university’s president, in the act of introducing his lecture, whines like a baby bereft of his pacifier that his guest is a big meany poopy-head. City Council members, too, and a rabbi, make like ten-year-olds, giving their press conference in front of a sign with his face struck through and the legend “Go To Hell.” Up in Albany, Democratic leader Sheldon Silver treat the students of this great university like ten years olds, threatening to defund Columbia University lest censors like himself prove unable to shut the poor children’s ears to difficult speech. (What, was he worried they’d be convinced, join the jihad?) Then a Republican presidential candidate chimes in—bye, bye, federalism!—saying Washington should starve the school of funds, too. American diplomats used to have the gumption to spar face to face with dreaded foreign leaders. Now they go on cable TV and whine about what a “travesty” it would have been to visit a site which properly should belong to the world. Hundreds of foreign nationals died in the World Trade Center on 9/11 (maybe even some of them Iranian!). Yet we have to systematically repress that—as if our national ego would crack like fine crystal if we were forced to acknowledge the mingling of American blood with that of mere foreigners…

How cowardly our conservative Republic of Fear has made us. How we tremble at the mere touch of a challenge.

There’s much more…

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Timing is Everything

by digby

Kevin Spacey, Laura Dern, Denis Leary, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson, Ed Begley Jr. and Bob Balaban have been set by HBO Films to star in “Recount,” the drama about the controversial Florida results in the 2000 presidential election. Jay Roach is directing a script written by Danny Strong.Spacey, who hasn’t done television since the 1991 biopic “Darrow,” stars as Ron Klain, former chief of staff for vice president Al Gore and one of the lead attorneys who challenged the disputed results of voting in Florida. Dern plays Katherine Harris, the Secretary of State of Florida who became the center of controversy when she certified that George W. Bush won the state.Begley plays David Boies, the lawyer who appealed the results and argued for the Democrats in court. Leary plays Michael Whouley, a pollster on the Democrat side and Hurt plays Warren Christopher, a key player in the Gore camp. Wilkinson plays James Baker, brought in by the Republicans to see that the disputed results held up. Balaban plays Ben Ginsberg, the lead attorney for Bush and Dick Cheney.
[…]

Recount,” which will begin shooting shortly next month in Florida, will air during the heat of the presidential campaign in 2008.

The people involved show that this is not going to be a “Path to 9/11” hit job so the wingnuts are going to have an epic case of the vapors not seen since … well, their last epic case of the vapors. Good. It’s past time Hollywood pulled out the big political guns and started making some straight-up political movies.

We’ll probably have to fight off the Democrats more than the Republicans because as always, they’ll feel the need to distance themselves from even the tiniest bit of partisan controversy, but to hell with them. This story has never actually been told and it’s long ov erdue..

I hope the screenwriters are aware of this little detail:

The new deadline for all recounts to be submitted to Katherine Harris was 5 p.m. Sunday, November 26. Now, that Sunday afternoon you could watch any of the television coverage and see that Palm Beach was still counting. And by late afternoon you heard various officials in Palm Beach acknowledging that they were not going to be finished by five. Now, we maintain that was completely illegal, because the law said you had to manually recount all ballots. [See Village Voice top five outrages for why this is such a slimy position for him to take.]

But as five o’clock approached, we heard that the secretary of state was going to accept the Palm Beach partial recount — even though the Palm Beach partial recount was blatantly illegal. We were told that the secretary of state’s view was that unless Palm Beach actually informed her — in writing or otherwise — that the returns were only a partial recount, she could not infer that on her own.

So we made some calls to a few Republicans overseeing the Palm Beach recount. We told them to gently suggest to the canvassing board that it might as well put PARTIAL RETURN on the front of the returns that were to be faxed up in time for the deadline. The reason we gave was clarity — that the words PARTIAL RETURN would distinguish those returns from the full count that would be coming in later that night. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I think the Palm Beach board did in the end write PARTIAL RECOUNT on the returns. We all know that the Secretary of State, in the end, rejected them. [By rejecting them, he means that she said that a partial return missed the deadline altogether and all the previously uncounted votes that were counted in the partial recount were never added to the tally. This had the effect of never allowing Gore to take the lead.]

I think the board members probably agreed to write the PARTIAL RECOUNT notation for two reasons. First of all, I think they hadn’t slept in 48 hours, so I think they’d sort of do anything. Second of all, I don’t think they or anybody else would have suspected that it would actually make any difference. Who would imagine that without the simple notation of PARTIAL RETURN the partial count would have been accepted as a complete count by the secretary of state? Even while the television showed them still counting?

But I don’t think it was Machiavellian to suggest to the board that it write PARTIAL RECOUNT, because that is what it was. I think it would have been sort of Machiavellian to suggest to pretend they were not partial returns. [Talk Magazine, March 2001, p. 172

I don’t know if Carvin is featured in the movie, but if he is, he should be played by Jason Alexander doing a reprise of his evil role in “Pretty Woman.”

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Confirming The Fox To Guard The Henhouse

by digby

It seems like I’ve been writing about the GOP dirty trickster/political operative Hans Von Spakovsky forever. He came my the radar way back during the “Killian memos” flap and subsequently has been revealed to be one of the prime movers in the Bush administration’s attempt to rig the vote.

Bush is trying to get Von Spakovsky’s recess appointment to the FEC confirmed today. If you’reof a mind, Christy has all the dirt on who to call to register your opposition to this mind-boggling appointment. We are facing a very important election. It’s a very bad idea to have a professional Republican vote stealer as a member of the FEC.

In case you are unfamiliar with Von Spakovsky, Here’s my post from last spring called Hans Across America.

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Sweetness And Light

by digby

Jonathan Schwartz has unearthed yet another example of “War For Oil” Republicans:

Now that we know George Bush and Karl Rove recently spent 45 minutes listening to Norman Podhoretz’s views on Iran (kill! kill! kill!), it’s worthwhile to remember this May 21, 2004 statement by Podhoretz’s wife, author Midge Decter:

We’re not in the middle east to bring sweetness and light to the whole world. That’s nonsense. We’re in the middle east because we and our European friends and our European non-friends depend on something that comes from the middle east, namely oil.

(You can listen to it yourself here at 35:55. Decter was appearing on KCRW’s show To the Point.) Bush gave Podhoretz the nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 2004. And he hired Elliot Abrams, Iran-contra criminal and Podhoretz and Decter’s son-in-law, for his National Security Council staff. (Delightfully, Abrams’ title is “Deputy National Security Adviser for Global Democracy Strategy.” I understand the position was originally called Deputy National Security Adviser for Sweetness and Light.) So Bush really digs this family. How strange that he loves hanging around with a clan whose matriarch he disagrees with so fundamentally.

But never say Bush doesn’t love a codpiece. I believe that her paean to Donald Rumsfeld’s manly bulges will stand as the single most sycophantic work of Bushian fangirl fiction (and believe me the competition for that honor is …erm … stiff.)

Here’s a little excerpt:

Men are likely to say they admire the way he knows his mind and talks tough or straight, or the way he managed so deftly to keep the press in its place, or, in the more general terms, what he has done and is doing for the country. Women, on the other hand tend to express their feelings about him less specifically, saying that they find him to be a particularly attractive combination of good-looking and smart and sexy. Both descriptions, however, can basically be summed up in a word that has for a considerable period of time been deprived of public legitimacy.

The word is manliness.

… [B]y the time he departed the White House there were few women and even fewer men who would with any sincerity have awarded Clinton the status of sex-hero, let alone — O happy invention! — “studmuffin.” That designation would have to await the arrival of a high-achieving, clear-headed, earnest, no-nonsense, Midwestern family man nearly seventy years old.

The times, in other words, they were a-changin’.

It’s true that the entire country did go mad for a time. But the Rummy the “Studmuffin” movement was pretty much limited to the Village press and Decter and her fellow oil-for-war Republicans, who apparently find a rambling, sadistic, nutbag septuagenarian hotter than hot. If that were something that a massive number of women find attractive, McCain would be winning in a landslide.

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California Dreamin’

by digby

I don’t know about you, but whenever Republican hacks offer political “advice” to Democrats I tend not to take it a face value. I get especially suspicious when they leak to the media that the loathed Republican president is secretly giving Democrats advice through back channels. Somehow, leaking that doesn’t strike me as something done in the best interests of the Democrats.

I also hate to be cynical, but when they call the election early and tell us that a candidate has won and that it’s really good for Republicans, I get a little bit suspicious.

KING: And looking ahead to that general election, pollster Neil Newhouse believes Senator Clinton would guarantee high GOP turnout even if many Republicans were less than thrilled with their nominee.

NEIL NEWHOUSE, GOP POLLSTER: There is a shared dislike for Hillary Clinton and that motivates our base more so right now than any of our individual candidates does.

KING: There are numbers to support such talk. About half of Republicans have an unfavorable view of Senator Barack Obama. 80 percent view Senator Clinton negatively.

CULLEN: Nothing unifies Republicans more than the idea of President Hillary Clinton.

If you’ve been following politics for the past few days you’ve heard this constantly, from virtually every Republican: Hillary Clinton has won the Democratic nomination and Republicans couldn’t be happier. This means they are going to win the election and live happily ever after! If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were trying to get the Democrats to nominate someone else, wouldn’t you? Or maybe not. In any case, it is a long established Republican tactic to try to pick the candidate they wish to oppose.

I am not taking a position in the primaries, but I know a couple of things. First, never count the votes until the votes are cast. During the last primary season, everyone anointed Howard Dean long before a vote was cast and we know how that worked out. Second, whenever the Republicans suddenly start singing exactly the same song, Ze Party has decided to push a certain line for its own reasons.

It’s possible that they are simply trying to raise money on the prospect of a Hillary nomination. The CW has been for years that evoking her name could produce projectile spews of cash among the faithful. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’ll take their word for it.

However, I think this latest outbreak of parroted talking points may be something more in keeping with GOP tradition. It’s very rare for the pooh-bahs not to anoint a candidate. In fact, I think it may be unprecedented. So, considering that they have Bush himself out there making this argument about Hillary, I suspect this means they are anointing … Rudy Giuliani. The sub-text of this whole argument is that they need a candidate from outside their regional limitations who can potentially win one of those big blue states. (Certainly, that’s the argument Giuliani is making.) Although Giuliani certainly believes he can win New York, going up against a favorite daughter makes it far more dicey than it normally would be. I would not be surprised if they think their Sweet Rudy Blue State will be California — Schwarzenneger has been kissing Rudy’s ring for a while now. (That awful electoral college dirty trick could only help.)

Just last week:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he expects former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to secure the Republican presidential nomination.

The governor said his prediction does not constitute an endorsement, but Giuliani is “the most consistent, stable person who is out there who makes the most sense to the people. That’s why his poll numbers are high,” the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

(Stable?)

I think they think they might be able to position Rudy as Arnold. Certainly, they may think they can position him to appeal to someone like Tina Fey, of 3rd Rock fame, who said this in a recent NY Times article:

In another episode, in which Liz reflects on things about herself that others wouldn’t know, she says, “There is an 80 percent chance” that she will “tell all my friends I’m voting for Barack Obama, but I will secretly vote for John McCain.”

Ms. Fey, who wrote that line, said it was semi-autobiographical, a way of “admitting I have a lot of liberal feelings, but I also live in New York, and I want to feel safe, and I secretly kind of want Giuliani.”

(Another heroine bites the dust….)If a Hollywood/New York liberal thinks this about Giuliani, they very likely think they can cop the Arnold vote. And, sadly, it’s possible they can. Arnold came back from a huge deficit and won big last year by moving to the middle. Rudy could try that too — once he programs the GOP borg they’ll do as they’re told.

Whatever their motives, the Republicans are not saying this because they had simultaneous epiphanies. The Party is directing this meme for a reason. It’s always important to keep that in mind, even if the media, like newborn babes, dutifully burp and spit it back up without any context or explanation. They don’t go on jihads or spread memes like this spontaneously.

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Group Buy

by tristero

Greenwald has merry fun eviscerating Brooks but as enjoyable as that is, I was struck by his roundup of stats about the unpopularity of Congress, even if though I’d seen them before.

Many Congressional Democrats, sez Glenn and I think he’s right, have embraced and are acting upon the pundit consensus of what they should do, not upon what this country actually thinks. Meanwhile, polls consistently report less than 20% approval rates for Congress’ performance. And polls consistently report that the blogosphere, whose opinions about the war and the direction of the country are considered too outre for serious consideration by the likes of Brooks, are quite in sync with huge numbers of Americans, if not the majority.*

What to do? The answer is obvious and straightforward, although it will take some time for significant influence to be felt. That is to funnel as much money as possible through an organization like MoveOn to the Democratic Party in general and also to specific candidates.

Control the money and you control the party. Again, whether or not MoveOn is *the* organization is less important than making sure that the Democratic Party and its candidates realize that their income comes from people who expect the party to act as representatives of the country, not David Brooks’.

I cannot urge you enough to donate in the coming election cycle. AND to donate through an organization rather than directly to the Democratic Party and its candidates. The Village clearly likes that the United States is a democracy about as little as James Dobson likes the Bill of Rights. You want to change things? Aggregate the money and demand accountability. And make sure there’s lots of money in that aggregate. It’s that simple.

Both democracy and a civil government are much better ways to run a country than High Broderism or theocracy. I think it’s worth paying for a good government, given that buying a government is the system we currently use. But we must spend our money wisely. That means that even large donors must use aggregators. It’s called a group buy, and it works.

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*For what it’s worth, the opinions of the American people, that great unwashed mass of quivering, ignorant, humanity, are echoed by some of the most knowledgeable and experienced experts on foreign policy in the world, several of whom have been known to shower at least once a week.

Take A Big Ole Whiff ‘O Freedom

by digby

Lovely:

Despite the uproar that ensued after a questioner was shocked following a forum Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) held in Florida, not everyone is unhappy with the Taser.

At the National Rifle Association’s “Celebration of American values” conference Friday, as Sen. John Thune (R-SD) delivered his opening remarks, a protester stood up and began yelling, according to a 183-word brief by Ben Pershing in Monday’s Roll Call.

The audience responded.

“As she bellowed, a source who was present told [the paper], ‘All these old dudes started shouting, ‘Tase her! Tase her!’’

“Alas, security personnel just quietly walked the offender out the door, sans the 50,000 volts of electricity and — as NRA members might appreciate — ‘more stopping power than a .357 Magnum’ that Taser claims to provide,” Pershing wrote. “Maybe next time.”

I guess we should be grateful, considering the venue, that they didn’t just shoot her. I assume they were all packing heat.

Tasing is a barbaric tactic designed to make people submit to authority. It is no different than slamming someone in the head with a baton, except it leaves no marks. I’m not surprised that the NRA neanderthals would gleefully call for non-violent protester to be tasered — they think the constitution only has one amendment — the second. I am surprised the NRA security didn’t actually do it, though.

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