04.07.10

Crazy Mean Ted Nugent — MC of Coalstock

Posted in Extremism, Rock 'n' Roll at 4:21 pm by George Smith

Ted Nugent once was a great rock musician.

Now he’s just astonishingly crazy and mean, inflammatory for the sake of cruelty and outrage.

This fits his role as one of the new mega-mouthpieces of the crazy and mean Republican Party. If one takes Nugent’s writings and regular public utterances even half seriously, he is by any reasonable definition an incomprehensible fellow lacking even small vestiges of good will and grace.

It’s entertaining then to review Ted Nugent’s role as MC at ‘Coalstock’ last Labor Day, a political rally held by Don Blankenship, CEO of the now nationally known, and not in a good way, Massey Energy coal company.

While being paid by Blankenship, you’ll notice Nugent couldn’t help but make a favorite joke about ‘dead tyrants,’ tyrant now being one of the favored words for referencing Barack Obama — used by the Tea Party, the GOP and American extremist groups.

Coalstock, which you probably never heard much about, was not a success. For reasons perfectly obvious.

From various newspapers:

First on the stage was pro-gun provocateur, musician Ted Nugent.

�I love America, but mostly I love defiance,??? he said. “I like when the punks from England overtax us and we throw the tea in the bay. Isn�t that kind of a cute move?”

“But I particularly like it when the British came to get our guns so we went to Concord bridge and shot them,” he added.

“I like dead tyrants. Isn�t that your favorite type of tyrant, a dead tyrant?” Nugent said.

Nugent went on to defend someone he called his �blood brother,??? Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship. He also defended mountaintop removal mining. — here

–

[The rally] wasn’t sponsored by some unions. Instead it was hosted by Massey Coal’s Don Blankenship, the coal industry’s most gleefully Dickensian figure, a man who treated his own maid in conditions “reminiscent of slavery,” according to a West Virginia high court judge in a 2008 ruling. Blankenship spent $1 million on the event. It featured Sean Hannity, Ted Nugent and Hank Williams Jr., son of the great Hank Williams, but alas, not a musical genius and instead a reactionary boobhead. — from the Guardian

–

Coal magnate Don Blankenship, who made his name as a union buster, hosted a Labor Day shindig on a reclaimed mine site in West Virginia. This is part of what he said:

“In Washington, they sometimes say that those of us in Appalachia need help because we’re not very smart. Well, we’re smart enough to know that only God can change the earth’s temperature not Al Gore.”

This is a fascinating observation from a leader of an industry that has forever changed the landscape of Kentucky and West Virginia.

The strip-mining of coal has leveled some of the world’s oldest mountains and richest forests, poisoned water and destroyed hundreds of miles of mountain streams and the life to which they give rise.

If anyone has demonstrated humankind’s ability to change the environment on a massive scale, it’s Blankenship and the coal industry.

Blankenship is CEO of a large coal company, Massey Energy, so his myopic rant was an act of supreme self interest. He railed against “cap-and-trade” legislation, pending in the Senate, that would reduce heat-trapping gases by making it more expensive to burn coal and other fossil fuels. His message understandably falls on receptive ears in places where the only decent-paying jobs are in mining (even if they require going into one of Blankenship’s notoriously unsafe mines).

… Blankenship reportedly spent $1 million to attract an estimated 75,000 people to hear him, along with performances by Hank Williams Jr. and Fox News’ Sean Hannity, emceed by Ted Nugent.

Dropping $1 million to manipulate public opinion is small potatoes for Blankenship, though. He spent $3.1 million to elect a West Virginia Supreme Court Justice who protected him from a costly civil suit only to be foiled by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In another case, involving Blankenship’s former maid’s successful attempt to collect unemployment, another West Virginia justice said Blankenship’s treatment of the woman was “reminiscent of slavery.”

Blankenship can command a huge audience, level mountains and buy elected officials (though not respect). — from the Lexington Herald Leader in Kentucky

–

Tens of thousands of people throughout West Virginia and several other states traveled to the town near the Logan-Mingo County border Sept. 7 for the Friends of America Rally, according to media reports.

The rally, which was marketed to people as a way to show support for American workers and jobs, featured musicians Ted Nugent, Hank Williams Jr., John Rich and Fox News personality Sean Hannity.

“Today was a good day for American workers past, present and future,” said Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, who organized the rally. “This historic event brought tens of thousands of people together to show their support for the men and women whose hard work built this country and we were proud to welcome them.”

Blankenship told those gathered at the rally that the gathering was about “our government and what it is doing to American labor.”

“It is also about what our government is allowing others to do to American labor. Our government, environmental extremists, American corporations, and politicians on the right and the left are all endangering American labor. They are making American labor the real endangered species as they tell us that their goal is to save the planet,” he said

He went on, speaking against the proposed cap and trade legislation in Congress.

“We don’t need a government that wants to shut down our coal mines. We don’t want a government that wants to increase our power bills. We don’t want a government that loans our tax money to our overseas competitors and that refuses to loan money to our employers. We don’t want a government that is run by people who believe they can change the earth’s temperature when they can’t balance a budget.”

Blankenship said the rally was about more than just protecting jobs.

“It’s not only American labor that’s at risk. It’s America itself,” he told the crowds. “Let’s all work hard and be friends of America. Let’s send the message to Washington that enough is enough.” — the State Journal of West Virginia

–

From the stage, people heard dull lectures from Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship about his corporate philosophy. Ted Nugent, the right wing�s berserker, gave a speech in which he declared, �I say, start up the bulldozers and get me some more coal, Massey.??? Why would anyone want to dedicate their Labor Day to listening to these kinds of public relations messages from corporate management? — here

–

A group including mine operators Massey Energy and International Coal Group say country singer Hank Williams Jr. and rock musician Ted Nugent are going to take part in a free Labor Day concert in southern West Virginia.

Organizers say the Sept. 7 concert will be part of what they’re calling the Friends of America rally.

The lineup also includes radio personality Sean Hannity.

Ruth Lemmon, president of the West Virginia Automobile & Truck Dealers Association, says the rally is being held to let the nation’s leaders know that organizers support American jobs. — from the Associated Press

But that was about being a toady to Don Blankenship and Massey Energy. Idly, one wonders how big the check was for that role.

However, what’s bugging Ted now, specifically?

More than fifty percent of the country. You and me, probably, if he knew who we were, us blood-sucking parasites.

Last week — on Ted Nugent

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Amusing Fuhrers — continued

Posted in Extremism, Rock 'n' Roll at 8:24 am by George Smith

Allentown rock band Poker Face’s Paul Topete has been nothing if not voluble about his beliefs. Today, thank to the Internet, they are easy to see.

However, our friends at the Morning Call newspaper are having a little trouble. They need our help to see such things. The layoffs by Tribune have cut deeply, impacting oversight. They have reduced manpower, which in turn cuts into the time needed to do more thorough work. Plus, it’s only human nature to resist the idea that you have somehow been remiss in overlooking the fact that Poker Face — one of your “Bands of the Week,” is really weird in its belief that Jews are a satanic cult. Among other things.

From an interview here, DD has extracted some of Paul Topete’s greatest ‘hits’:

The FBIs bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 thru their informant Edam Salem, was just a continuation of the Satanic Elite�s program to undermine America�s freedom, and subject the rest of the world to whims of a global parasitic order based on neo-paganism and greed, with a little bit of perverted sex thrown in for good measure …

And the always popular ‘9/11 was an inside job’ trope:

Over the course of the day we could show movies like �AMERICA � FREDOM TO FASCISM� by Aaron Russo, 911Mysteries.com � Controlled Demolitions of the Towers, or many others that we have seen, that the rest of America needs to see.

On the Catholic church:

As for the Catholic church … Well since Christ�s death, Ha-Satan has been attacking it at its roots. Today we have at least 40,000 Christian who are actually in a cult. The Catholic Church has always been the biggest impediment to Satan�s plan of destroying this 2nd earth age as he did the first. In my opinion, there are millions of good, God loving people in and involved with the church. But I also believe that Satan finally took over the hierarchy of the church in 1963 with the election of Paul the 6th to the POPE�s throne. I think that the same year a satanic mass took place in Rome as well as The Citadel in South Carolina.

Other groups like the Jew-Suits (JESUITS) were created by zealots for the papacy (are more often times Crypto-Jews), and are manned by Atheist-Judeos like Adam Weishaupt. He was a founder of one of the most recent incantations of the Illuminati May 1st, 1776.

On Jews:

What is a Turkish Mongol � Yiddish speaking race of Ashekenazi/Khazars who have little to no SHEMite blood in them doing in Palestine to begin with? This was the frothy dream of zionazis like Theodor Herzl, Rothschild and Balfour, along with the creation of the United Nations. Why are these Jews in name only, even there to begin with? This cause was helped along by Zio-enabler Hitler with unifications like The HAAVRA Agreement. This agreement, in 1933 moved 500,000 German-Jews with all of their wealth, possessions and companies into Palestine thru 1938. Funny how this major topic is NEVER discussed in history! The problem for the zionazis of the day was.. it wasn�t enough of European-Jewery that moved to Palestine, so plan 2 came into play. Getting them out of their comfort zone by moving them out of Germany, first East, and then South into countries like Cypress and Greece, before shooting into Palestine.

Hitler creeps into the conversation:

In 1931 Hitler sent the Jew, Rosenberg to England to meet with the Pro-Fascist group The CLIVEDEN group, so that when Rosenberg came back to Germany, the coffers of the bankers and industrialists started to overflow the NSDAP � What became Hitler�s Nazi party. Whether Hitler was a real player, or a just water boy for the elite is still to be decided.

The interviewer, adding helpfully: “As for Hitler, I think he was a Zionist stooge, but a very well placed stooge …”

On the true perpetrators of the Oklahoma City bombing:

That the Varsity A team of the suits pulled off what the JV B team of blue jeans led by boy [Clinton]couldn�t pull off. Varsity A team got the 15 + years in the making; THE PATRIOT ACTS I & II with all of its subsequent departments of tyranny in tow. Klinton the Klown barely pulled off the OKC bombing debacle, who had a little help on the ground by his traitorous pals in the [Southern Poverty Law Center].

More stuff on the jews:

The root cause today in the middle east is the transplantation of the non-semetic Ashekenazi-Khazarian jews in name only who invaded Palestine in the early 1900s. This was planned by late 19th century World Jewry. Whose use of a pseudo political/spiritual created movement of Zionism, got these Yiddish speaking jews in name only to set up shop in Palestine so Rothschild and his agents could create an area of the world that would forever have political and religious tensions that will never be solved by man. And if the day should come in our lifetime that one man makes it happen, know the very last days of this earth age are here and rejoice. This man will be the flesh carrier of Satans spirit that will be thrown down upon the earth in a lightening bolt. He will proclaim himself Christ. Looks like Christ but will speak like the dragon. The instead of Christ comes first. If you can still pinch yourself and still feel it, the real deal aint here yet.

The Paul Topete recommended book list:

THE SECRET EMPIRE I&II by Cushman Cunningham

-The Sabbatian Jews, The judeoMasonRosicrucians and the World Gay mafia are the unholy trinity killing the earth today�

Judaisms Strange Gods by Michael A. Hoffman II

-you will understand why their god is not our GOD. The Talmud and the satanic Kabballah were not a part of the majority of Israelite tribes beliefs. This strange leaven of evil came back with the Babylonian-Judaised members of the tribe of Judah. Yesteryear Phareesism is todays Judaism. Jesus Christ railed against these Pharisees calling them sons of the devil John8:34-44

Here’s an idea for a story!

One could explore the relationship between white christian identity militias across the country, their rebound after the Clinton years due to the current polarized political climate and election of Obama as president, their warped beliefs and why they cling to them, and how the Internet now allows them to quickly communicate and share with each other — from the Lehigh Valley to the locales of the Hutaree and coast to coast — a capability which did not exist during the time of Tim McVeigh.

Who, incidentally, Poker Face thinks was a patsy, an equally fascinating question to ask them about.

Now I should think that’s a job any reporter would love to sink his or her teeth into.

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04.06.10

Amusing Fuhrers

Posted in Extremism, Rock 'n' Roll at 8:53 am by George Smith

Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up.

When the local rural neo-Nazis lurking in the woodpile make it into the newspaper as “Band of the Week,” you know the firings have gone too far.

”I am looking forward to becoming even more closely involved with The Morning Call and in the Lehigh Valley community,” [new publisher Tim Ryan] said in a written statement, news of which was published at the Call here in a story about the firing of the old publisher last week.

”With the strong management team in place here at The Morning Call, I am confident that we will continue to provide readers with compelling local content in whatever form they want and advertisers with effective solutions for growing their businesses.”

Unintentionally humorous, that.

Tribune company was bought by Chicago mogul Sam Zell a few years ago. Zell considered himself a business captain among captains. But reality did not cooperate and under Zell, Tribune was forced to file for bankruptcy.

The only constant at Zell newspapers pre- and post-bankruptcy, which includes the Morning Call and the Los Angeles Times, has been regular mass firings.

Dismiss enough people and those left can’t provide much of a product, no matter press release insistence to the contrary.

So the free-lance workers, editors and reporters miss the obvious, like the white Christian identity militia nature of the Allentown hard rock band, Poker Face.

In the Call’s publicity bit:

How band came together: Band came together because of the message/mission that we are on to expose the tyranny and rights violations out of our nation’s Capitol.

“Our audience [is] 7 years old to 70,” the band tells the newspaper. “If you love freedom and liberty, then you will love what we are about.”

And Poker Face’s “biggest gig?”

Playing at the Knob Creek, Ky., machine gun shoots. Tens of thousands show up for this awesome freedom loving event.

Well, certainly nothing says you’re a bunch of tyranny-fighting freedom-loving protest rockers more vigorously than rants like this one on your band website:

From last week — on this matter.

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04.02.10

April Fool’s Everyday for Angry Americans

Posted in Extremism, Rock 'n' Roll, Why the World Doesn't Need US at 8:07 am by George Smith

American extremism is impossible to satirize. It’s a reality cartoon from which there is no escape. And one standard example is rocker Ted Nugent.

The zinc-plated proof of it is that he was too-too-too-much for even his conservative hometown newspaper, the Waco Tribune, which 86’d him as a columnist last year.

“No more namecalling,” said the newspaper.

Asking Ted Nugent to not namecall is like telling Fido that from now on he will have to defecate in the toilet like the rest of the family.

Anyhoo, for yesterday, colleague Chuck was commissioned to do a short piece for the Rhapsody on-line music site. It was an April Fool’s announcement that Nugent had just announced a run for the presidency:

Angry times call for angry measures, so rock ‘n’ roll’s Angriest Old White Man of all � Ted Nugent � is the first candidate to officially declare presidential ambitions for 2012. “The Nuge,” as his bow-hunting buddies call him, will run on a hybrid True Republican/Tea Party/Michigan Militia ticket, he announced Thursday morning at O-Dark-Thirty while clad in full camouflage gear and straddling a great white buffalo on his homestead not far from the ATF-seized former Branch Dividian compound in Waco, Tex . . . With the Atrocious Theodocious at the helm, the G.O.P. arsenal can now train its full stormtroopin’ firepower on Obamacare Maoists, animal-rights numbnuts, states’ rights deniers, illegal invaders, global-warming charlatans, paycheck-blowtorching Fedzillas, bailout-happy congressional cockroaches overloading America’s credit cards like drunken sailors in a Planet of the Apes whorehouse, sperm-whale-shaped children fed on junk food, smokers who expect the healthy to fix their self-poisoned lungs, human leeches claiming poverty [etc] …

He even got the foaming, shouted into a tape recorder run-on style of Nugent’s columns at Human Events pretty close.

Of course, if you watch Glenn Beck for even fifteen minutes you know everyday is an April Fool. You can’t make up more ridiculous stuff and pass it than he does on a daily basis. And since his large audience believes every word, one sees the problem. There’s no longer any real distinction between telling them a story on April Fool’s day as opposed to any other day of the year.

All these people can’t be nuts. But there is something else that has taken root in them over the last decade of polarization and however one tries to describe it — it points only to an increasingly bleak future. (See Digby today.)

So DD thought it unsurprising when the majority of Rhapsody readers who chose to comment did not actually get the Ted Nugent thing was part of the April Fool’s party. Even when other commenters tried to tell them so. They believed it because they wanted to, it seemed entirely consistent with news they get from their regular sources.

Be sure to read the entire thing here. I’ve posted only two of its ‘better,’ or more discouraging — if you will, bits:

You go for it Ted, We as True-Blooded Americans need someone like you as a FrontMan to start kicking some A– so we and the younger generations to come can enjoy a lifestyle as the Constitution was written. I have no doubt the end is near if we don’t remove these “Fedzillas”. I will support you 100% in any way I can.

I’m 100% disabled, but I make my own way; I don�t give em nuthin and I don�t want nuthin! I’m with ya all the way “Lock n Load”

Woodman

I had planned on voting for Palin, but If Ted runs, he’s got my vote! I’ve never been a big fan of his music, but I agree with his line of thinking!

I’ve got a strange hunch that Obama will not complete his 4 years in office as president.

From the end of 2008 here:

I used to catch my dad reading trash like Mandingo and “Masters of Falconhurst” in the early Seventies, books he’d hide away in a closet whenever the neighbors were about to come by. Although something like [Nugent’s political manifesto] “Ted, White and Blue” is non-fiction, it’s a book of quality in the same way that Fifties-made fiction for white men about sex between plantation owners and slaves, fisticuffs and torture made for books of quality.

Approximating $25/hardback, Regnery … made about $600,000 gross on “Ted, White & Blue.”

Sales of 24,000 would have merited Nugent being summarily dropped by a major label in the Seventies.

Another publication for right-wing nutjobs feigning sanity, the City Journal, featured an article by a conservative book reviewer who admitted to some heartburn over the success of “Ted, White and Blue.”

“William Regnery once told his publisher son, ‘If you ever begin to make any money in that business you are going into, you can be pretty sure that you are publishing the wrong kind of books,” writes the reviewer.

“Regnery is now highly profitable, and the elder Regnery�s words loom over such titles as Chuck Norris�s Black Belt Patriotism and Ted Nugent�s Ted, White, and Blue.”

Ted Nugent — from the archives.

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04.01.10

Pennsyltucky Newspaper Funnies with Poker Face

Posted in Extremism, Rock 'n' Roll at 10:04 am by George Smith

Updated

Although the Allentown Morning Call seems not to have yet noticed that local rock band Poker Face was on Hutaree iPods, the rival Easton newspaper, the Express-Times — did. However, even in this, the more interesting stuff on the band — quoted below — was overlooked.

Said the Easton newspaper here:

A group of Christian militants arrested last week for plotting to murder police officers might have been listening to music from the Lehigh Valley while they prepared.

One of the songs by Poker Face, an Allentown-based rock band, has been featured in a militia training video used by Hutaree, the Michigan-based Christian militia group.

Nine members of Hutaree were arrested last weekend for plotting to shoot a police officer then plant homemade bombs at his police funeral and kill even more officers.

Poker Face, a staple of the Lehigh Valley music scene for two decades, dubs itself a “protest rock” band whose mission is “to expose the lies and scandals coming out of the Union’s Capitol,” according to its Web site.

Paul Topete, singer and guitarist for the four-man band, said he has had no interaction with Hutaree or any knowledge about the group’s activities beyond the use of the song.

However, Topete defended militias in general and told the Detroit Free Press the charges against Hutaree “sound like they’re trumped up.”

[Other Poker Face lyrics include] “Rise up! Rise up! Militias throughout the world / It’s time to end The Order’s globalist plans. / The Revolution is the only solution / When good government has gone bad.”

The Detroit Free Press has been covering the Hutaree and a story yesterday had this to say in reference to the Lehigh Valley band:

One of the [Hutaree’s] Facebook friends is Paul Topete, singer of the band Pokerface, from Allentown, Pa. Topete said Tuesday that he has had a few interactions with Hutaree because militia members play his band’s music for training videos.

“These are defensive training videos,” Topete said, describing his music as revolutionary protest rock. “Militias are defensive. We love our country, and we love our constitution, and we are not the ones trying to subvert our country.

Yep, it’s something of an honorific when your protest band calling for removal of “Obamas commie-fascist nation” has its music adapted for white Christian identity militia training videos.

The next comments — bluntly self-impeaching as they are — come from a long interview with Poker Face’s Paul Topete here.

Freedom Fighters will mainly come from the liberty-loving common man, whose ideology can be reduced to Life, Liberty and Property or simpler terms � Freedom vs Tyranny, and no taxation without representation. People from other groups will enjoin the fight, but it will be of convenience, and jumping on a bandwagon. Remember, all –isms of the last 500 years came from and grew out of the Sabbatean-Jewish mindset. Bolshevism, Communism, Socialism, Feminism, Jacobism, Neo-Conism . . . It is these satanic Jews, and the Rosicrucian Goyim henchmen that need to be erased from our planet. They are the cancer that is destroying humanity. All for the sake of greed and power. They want what little you and I have, while we want NOTHING of them or their ill-gotten fortunes. We believe in live, let live, while they practice: just who will get to live in the future.

The satanic Jews as a cancer destroying humanity slip of the tongue certainly stands to win a lot of friends for the band once it gets into even wider circulation.

But there’s more, lots more:

American Patriot talk radio has done a lot for us. Especially after we were attacked by a racist organization called OPP who are funded and directed by everyone�s favorite traitors, the [Anti-Defamation League] & the [Southern Poverty Law Center]. Both organizations should be investigated, tried and imprisoned for their roles in the 1995 Domestic
Terrorism bombing of the Federal Murrah building in Oklahoma City. Instead the false flag patsy Tim McVeigh, took the Lee Harvey Oswald FALL for it.

And a couple years ago, a Poker Face gig was cancelled at Rutgers University, for now obvious reasons.

Topete explains his view of it:

The event at Rutgers University was cancelled on us. We where suppose to have played for the New Jersey State Libertarians. Instead this story about our gig getting canceled by these twats’ efforts reached an international audience and gained Poker Face an even greater listening audience then [sic] before … Thanks to Darnell … We were labelled haters, racists, supremacists, anti-semites for just saying and posting the truth about the holoco$t, the domination of the African slave trade into the New World by Jewish merchants, Israel and NeoCons behind 9/11 events, Globalist forces shoving the North American Union and the Illegal alien Invasion down our throats etc � go to our politically incorrect forum board for yourselves …

Poker Face’s homepage links directly to the “Barnes Review,” an agency devoted to Holocaust denial. It is semi-well known for infamously asserting Hitler was an overlooked candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.

And as if that is not enough, there is Poker Face’s link to an Internet radio broadcast called Pastor Dan, in which long anti-Semitic white Christian identity sermons are served up for consumption. (On their website it’s called ‘Yaweh by Design’.)

In November, the Morning Call newspaper wrote about Poker Face’s new record. The paper somehow managed to miss all of this, accidentally making a good argument that Tribune Company’s firing of everyone it can in editorial for the sake of the bottom line doesn’t make a better product. It’s apparent stripping editorial of experience and talent does not make the place a richer source of accuracy and helpful consumer news.

The Call’s unintentionally hilarious review is here.

Yesterday, DD wrote of it here.

Said the Morning Call of Poker Face:

There is a goofy brilliance on �Peace or War: Songs for the Revolution,??? and I mean that as a compliment. In a time when so many bands sound alike, these guys are following their own road.

Knock, knock — features editor Jodi Duckett! Anyone home?

Commented another website in 2008, on Poker Face’s rocking out for presidential candidate Ron Paul:

In the stuffy world of politics, the Ron Paul campaign has earned the reputation of being something like a raucous, freedom-loving party. A raucous, freedom-loving party with lots of paranoid bigots. So it would probably be more surprising if the band reportedly headlining RonPaulapalooza didn’t have a few teeny-tiny problems with the Jews, who they feel are trying to destroy everybody. The band Poker Face enjoys churning out a hard-chargin’ “freedom rock” that they developed under the influence of Boston, the Beatles, and Frank Zappa, as well as a firm conviction that the Holocaust did not happen and that the Jews are in fact the lead agents of a “Satanic World Order.”

The original announcement at Ron Paul Warroom.

Amusingly understated Morning Call newspaper music blog headline. Ongoing discussion title on Poker Face website: “The Holohaux & the neo-religious CULT of Holohauxianity ~ Witnesses to the Gas Chambers of Auschwitz – there are none.”