04.05.11
Posted in Extremism, Ted Nugent at 8:44 am by George Smith
There can be no doubt Ted Nugent is a talking parrot for the stars of the Tea Party.
If Glenn Beck goes on about Frances Fox Piven one day, Uncle Ted will write a column nonsensically insisting he has been attacked by the old lady professor.
If Frank Gaffney delivers a report on the alleged creeping menace of sharia-law overtaking the nation’s judicial system, Uncle Ted will tell his readers at the Washington Times that sharia needs outlawing.
Michele Bachmann, Tea Party leader and star of my “Act Naturally” video, had what was called the “Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act.” It went nowhere.
It was for the prevention of the creeping menace of fluorescent light bulbs, mandated for phase-in by Congress and “signed into law by President Bush” back in 2007.
More recently, the Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote:
Rep. Michele Bachmann has not forgotten about light bulbs.
The Minnesota Republican is reintroducing her “Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act,” which aims to repeal the 2007 mandate that would phase out traditional incandescent light bulbs in favor of compact fluorescent bulbs by Jan. 1, 2012.
To ‘energize’ the Tea Party base, Bachmann makes it a constitutional and hazardous materials issue. It’s un-constitutional to mandate energy savings, which is what Bush’s signing did. And the light bulbs are unsafe because she alleges they contain too much mercury.
Back in 2008, the conversation went like this in the Star Tribune:
“It’s almost as if you have to call the haz-mat team out to your home,” Bachmann said.
Environmentalists argue that most of the steps are the same as cleanup from any broken glass accident, except for the special disposal requirements.
Industry experts say the amount of mercury in new compact fluorescent lights — about 5 milligrams, on average — is small but significant enough to warrant common-sense safety precautions and consumer recycling efforts to keep it out of landfills.
“There are minuscule amounts of mercury, but it’s a hazardous waste, and we want to take it seriously,” said Kim Sherman, product portfolio manager at Xcel Energy.
MPCA spokesman Sam Brungardt said the use of compact fluorescent lights, which use one-fourth the energy of regular bulbs, should certainly be encouraged. If new legislation is needed, he said, it should be to encourage consumers to recycle. “You have to make it easy to do this,” he said.
“This is an issue of science over fads and fashions,” said Bachmann, who believes global warming is a hoax, to the newspaper.
“Carbon dioxide, Mister Speaker, is a natural byproduct of nature,” she said, among other things in 2009. “Carbon dioxide is natural. It occurs in Earth.” The rest is here.
Nugent is a global warming denier. And he has a deep hatred of the Department of Energy.
So in today’s column for the Washington Times, he advocates for more nuclear power while dragging along Bachmann’s light bulb thing:
Amazingly, a component of this administration’s energy policy is to ban Thomas Edison’s light bulb and force Americans to use “environmentally friendly??? compact fluorescent light bulbs by 2014, all of which are made by communist China and pose serious health and environmental threats due to their mercury content.
Actually, it was George W. Bush who signed the bill. And, yes, fluorescent light bulbs are offshored — by corporate legal tax cheat General Electric, naturally.
Nugent has long been for more oil drilling. While the massive spill was going on last year, Nugent was one of the cheerleaders for BP.
And in his column he presses for more domestic drilling because:
Once again, the Middle East is sending America a message and the message is that that region is unpredictable and downright goofy.
When people in Egypt threw out Hosni Mubarak they were being “downright goofy.” When the people in Yemen react badly to being shot by the guy we’re propping up, that’s “downright goofy.” All those people throughout those nations, now trying to overthrow their dictators, are sure doing “downright goofy” things.
Nugent’s column at the WaTimes is here.
Downright goofy! Oot-greet!
Remember, although the advance of technology and the Internet has allowed you to make superb videos in the comfort of your home, you are not allowed to make any money on that. Only YouTube and Google and the same big players as always are permitted that.
Today’s dogshit video pimped on the back of DD’s Taxavoidination — an advertisement for the Sham Wow!
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03.23.11
Posted in Extremism, Ted Nugent at 5:36 pm by George Smith
Today Nugent parroted Glenn Beck’s conspiracy theory that the revolutions in the Middle East could be aimed at establishing an “Islamic caliphate.”
From the Washington Times:
Real rebellion is cool so long as the rebels replace the current system with something better, such as that which the American Revolution achieved.
As of right now, no one knows what will be the result of the Mideast rebellions. No one knows – or is telling us – if Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood is behind the scenes bankrolling or fanning the flames of the Mideast rebellions to re-establish the Islamic caliphate.
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03.17.11
Posted in Extremism, Permanent Fail, Predator State at 11:18 am by George Smith
Google AdSense is the low level nuclear waste of the Internet.
Today, spun out on DD blog reprints at GlobalSecurity.Org, some more really special stuff, including:
1. What looks like an ad for Chinese prostitutes and sex slaves aimed at old white American pervs. It reads: “Feel alone? Meet sweet chinese girl & find your companion in China. Join!”
2. An ad for on-line degrees from here. That’s impressive, particularly the pitch aimed at suckering US military men. (Actually, Google AdSense spins out a lot of on-line degree ‘opportunities.’ One has quite the pick of diploma millinery.)
3. Explosion proof ammo boxes, presumably aimed at the crypto neo-Nazi extreme right survivalist kook who’s hoarding weapons, explosives and gold for the time when the US collapses. Or for crashing the next MLK Day parade.
4. A pro-Scott Walker union-busting astroturf site which recommends taking away the pensions of public sector workers.
Google AdSense: Making money off promotion of tearing the middle class down, extremism, what looks like criminal activity and vulture economics, one micropayment at a time.
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03.10.11
Posted in Extremism, Ted Nugent at 9:34 pm by George Smith
This is so pathetic and lame it’s virtually beyond comment. From an outdoors columnist at the Mitchell, South Dakota, newspaper:
Ted Nugent, the rock star professional hunter, put me on today’s topic. On his television program a few years ago, Nugent had placed his blind over a spot in a corn field where the combine or truck had accidently dropped a few bushels of corn. While baiting was illegal where Nugent hunted, he whole-heartedly endorsed finding such places and using them to one’s advantage. At the time I thought that Uncle Ted was pushing his luck a wee bit.
While watching his television program last week, Nugent emphatically stated that baiting was by far his favorite form of hunting. He then went on to say that the states that permit baiting have had no problems whatsoever, and that if our home state didn’t allow baiting, we should let our representatives know about this bit of bureaucratic mismanagement. Ted was fired up! In discussing the issue with Betsy, my wife, she said and I quote, “Real hunters don’t need to bait.’ ???
As previously mentioned, I don’t have a problem with South Dakota’s baiting restriction, and I am not going to endorse Ted Nugent’s view, although I admire his enthusiasm and political activism.
This isn’t the lousy part, just the backgrounder. Baiting, of course, is what got Nugent in trouble this past summer. Typically for the US press when dealing with Nugent, the public embarrassment and failure always gets left out.
“Political activism,” however, as a description of what Nugent does only continues to illustrate how a radical and nasty extremism has come to be redefined as mainstream.
Anyway, continuing:
Have I ever been involved in baiting? The African kudu, an elk-sized animal with splendid spiral horns, is nicknamed “The Gray Ghost.??? He has a habit of appearing and disappearing before one can take a shot. On my first African hunt, I wanted a good kudu bull in the worst way, but because of my tremor, I couldn’t hold steady enough, and there wasn’t time to use the tripod. After two days of fruitless pursuit, Dirk, my professional hunter, suggested baiting, which is legal in Africa.
Dirk radioed for a load of oranges while he and BaBa built the blind. By mid-afternoon we were ready to go. During the late afternoon, cows and young bulls began to show up. Though we were 75 yards away, they were extremely cautious as they didn’t like the blind. At sunset, a big bull came in and I dropped him with a single shot. I’d guess most South Dakotans don’t care for baiting as I received some critical mail about my kudu.
The thought crosses the mind that if you have a handicap that makes you inferior to the animal you wish to bring down maybe you ought to let him pass rather than rig the game.
The entire thing is here.
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Posted in Extremism, Permanent Fail at 1:36 pm by George Smith
Teachers get their rights taken away by a GOP ambush in Madison and the President spends the day on the scourge of Facebook bullying.
Democracy Now has an interview with Michael Moore where he states the obvious — the wealthy, through the GOP, are waging open class war. It’s here. He needs to do it a lot more in many more venues.
The Milwaukee newspaper ran a fairly conservative opinion piece. Although it had to admit:
Both parties are playing with fire. A walkout to thwart legislation will be as attractive to Republicans when they are no longer in power as it is to Democrats now. And scorched-earth tactics, such as those practiced by Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald, will seem just as attractive to Democrats when they regain control of the matches and accelerant.
Walker never campaigned on disenfranchising public-employee unions. If he had, he would not have been elected. He got a spare 52% of the vote – hardly a mandate for what he is trying to do.
Later in the day I’ll run a piece cut for the Economic Treason series.
It focuses on defense contracts to Wisconsin.
Here are the figures you need to know:
Contracts for defense manufacturing to Wisconsin, this year: $9 billion.
Wisconsin state budget gap claimed by Scott “We’re Broke” Walker in order to destroy public sector unions: $137 million.
Teachers, no! They’re selfish parasites.
But:
“Oshkosh Corp. has recently geared up to produce 23,000 Army trucks and trailers in a five-year deal valued at $3 billion. It is the largest Wisconsin-based defense contractor.” — a Madison newspaper
The defense industry in the United States is an exercise in socialism for the private sector. It’s jobs are protected and underwritten by the US government and taxpayer.
And while these contracts means manufacturing jobs, the remain virtually the only such jobs protected in the United States. While everyone else gets tossed to the mercies of the wind from Wall Street.
In a related rumination it’s seems fairly obvious the Wisconsin voters put Ted Nugent in a suit in the governor’s seat.
While Nugent is unelectable because of his public unsavory character and views, the current crop of GOP leaders are as extreme as he is. And they kept some of it under a basket for November. Now that they’re in power, it’s a different story.
It unequivocally shows the peril of staying home come voting time because the lame Democratic Party and its disinterested President have depressed you.
In California, it didn’t happen and the Visigoths were turned away at the gate. And it’s because the GOP tried to paint Latinos as arch enemies of the state. They voted.
Whether or not Wisconsin’s voters can recall the GOP extremists remains to be seen since the latter have shown they’re willing to break and bend laws to disenfranchise their opponents.
Paradoxically, it now seems like it was easier to arrive at some kind of result with a people’s revolt in Egypt than here, the so-called biggest democracy in the world.
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03.08.11
Posted in Extremism, Permanent Fail at 11:02 am by George Smith
The GOP playbook is about the politics of scapegoating. In hard times, it a tool that’s even more potent.
This Associated Press article demonstrates it without spending much time getting at the root of what has gone on. This is surprising since all polls seem to indicate Scott Walker is now viewed as a totally unsympathetic character for attacking teachers in Wisconsin.
And so the AP story goes for the gratuitous and predictable comment furnished by someone of the Tea Party.
It reads:
A USA Today/Gallup poll last month found show that Americans largely side with the employees, though about two in five that want government pay and benefits reined in.
Barbara Davis, a retiree from Cherry Hill, N.J., has been watching public workers in rallies in Madison, Wis., as well as Trenton. She says the protesters are wrong about tightening benefits hurting the middle class.
“I’m sorry, but what they’re doing is telling off the middle class,” said Davis, 76, and a co-chairwoman of the Cherry Hill Area Tea Party. “The middle-class people don’t get all the goodies that they do.”
At its heart, the issue is this: Some public workers get a sweet deal compared to other workers. And it’s taxpayers who pay for it.
That’s set off resentment in a time when economic doldrums have left practically everyone tightening their belts. Many people have found their tax bills rising even if their earnings haven’t.
In Davis’ case, it’s the property tax that smarts. She and her husband pay about $12,000 per year for the house she describes as a three-bedroom “tract home.” That’s a high tax even in New Jersey, where the average property tax bill tops $7,000 and where the Tax Foundation has found homeowners pay three and a half times the national median.
A half century ago, industrial jobs at car and steel plants provided high salaries and rich benefits. But as manufacturing moved overseas, many formerly well-paid workers had to take lower-paying jobs. By the end of the Great Recession, the economic order was undeniably changed.
“It’s the government sector worker who’s the new elite, the highest-paid worker on the block,” said David Gregory, who teaches labor and employment law at New York’s St. John’s University.
The previous sentence ought to read:
“It’s the government sector worker person still hanging on to their middle class job who’s the new elite, the highest-paid worker on the block,” said David Gregory, who teaches labor and employment law at New York’s St. John’s University.
When everyone is pushed to the bottom by economic failure, collapse and predatory business which has nothing to do with them, there’s a visible clawing and striking at others — often the neighbors who, in the case, might not have had it so bad, because unions — eliminated everywhere else — were able to protect them.
This is what operates. Instead of the question of how did we arrive at this awful place and who really put us there.
So instead of marching on Goldman Sachs and burning the place to the ground, vindictiveness is turned on the people beside you. Because you have had it bad, then so must others you know or see in queues also suffer.
I’ve made the point before that this describes Ted Nugent in a nutshell.
Nugent lost his career as an arena-busting rocker. And he no longer enjoys much respect from other aging rockstar peers.
So he went vindictive. Nugent turned being rancid into a new career as a “celebrity” voice for Tea Party views and sock puppet for the most extreme political positions from the right, those aimed at destroying the lives of those who used to fill the stadiums he played in. He passes it off through a couple of transparent strategies — bigotry as a cultural war social antidote to political correctness and a poor man’s Atlas Shrugged for the rabid outdoorsman shtick.
With Nugent, the subtext is always payback, revenge and getting even with wimps, cowards, weaklings and bloodsuckers, all favorite words.
If you look at any interview from his salad days, the polite younger man in the reels isn’t around anymore.
Books written about the politics of nihilism and getting even are around. I just don’t have one in front of me.
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03.07.11
Posted in Extremism at 11:44 am by George Smith
Fifteen minutes ago a Muslim guest on MSNBC dubbed GOP Gongressman Peter King a bigot. Like most of the GOP, he’s Ted Nugent in a suit and overweight, proving you can never be too odious and repugnant to be in the Republican party in 2011.
In the United Kingdom they’ve had a justified hate on for Peter King for a long long time. He’s simply despised across the pond. Before half the country turned rancid, respectable people here were also fairly united in their revulsion of him.
One journalist, Alex Massie, delightfully calls King loathsome in an entire series of columns devoted to “America’s worst Congressman.”
King is probably tied for that position now with at least ten others. But his columns are worth a read in light of this week’s affairs.
Here’s a sample from 2009:
The loathsome Peter King is at it again. Speaking to Politico, he’s up in arms that some people think torturing prisoners is wrong …
It’s at this point that it is traditional to note that Congressman King has previous on all this. The only terrorists Peter King thinks should receive protection from the Geneva Conventions are Irish Republican terrorists. That terrorism – ie, blowing up pubs, slaughtering kids as they were out shopping and trying to assassinate the British Prime Minister – was a “noble” cause as far as King was concerned. If he had a problem with the IRA’s old interrogation tactic of threatening a “six-pack” – that is a bullet through each elbow, wrist and knee – one can’t remember him ever saying so. And, sure, if it was good enough for the IRA it should be good enough for the CIA. After all, the Provos were “the legitimate voice of occupied Ireland” weren’t they?
Even by the low standards of the House of Representatives, King is a disgrace. But I suppose, at least he can be relied upon to provide copy.
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03.04.11
Posted in Crazy Weapons, Extremism at 9:16 am by George Smith
Today’s dose of mainstreamed extremism comes through TIME magazine, a publication that exists to pander to aging not real bright white people. So, perforce, its supermarket readers must include retirees/Tea Partiers whose disposition must be taken into account when covering various odious southern reptiles.
Therefore one gets the paroxysm entitled “On Civil War — Confederate Group Stirs Debate.”
In it one learns of the sincere effort to put an old Ku Klux Klanner on a Mississippi license plate. The obese Haley Barbour says he will not allow it into law, which is nice of him.
It’s lede reads somewhat like the announcement of an unusual ladies tea in Cranford, New Jersey:
In 1867, former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest became the first Grand Wizard of a newly formed organization called the Ku Klux Klan. Forrest had been a slave trader before the Civil War; he was also the commanding officer during a battle known as the “Fort Pillow massacre” in Tennessee at which some 300 black Union troops were killed in 1864. (Whether they died in combat or were killed after they surrendered is still a matter of dispute.)
Now, in honor of the Civil War’s 150th anniversary, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) are seeking to put Forrest on a Mississippi license plate. But the state government opposes it.
“Chuck Rand, a member of the SCV, calls any assumption that the Forrest license plate is racist a ‘knee-jerk reaction’ by people who don’t understand the ‘real causes’ of the Civil War,” it reads, sampling the p.r. of the bona fide douchebag without actually getting around to calling him that, so to speak.
Moving right along, DD’s electromagnetic pulse crazy news filter netted an item from Townhall on the Google news tab. It’s not so interesting for the standard Glenn Beck theme that the revolutions in the Middle East may turn into a drive to establish a Muslim caliphate but for the startling advocacy of a US Foreign Legion:
This also means we’ll need a much larger U.S. military, which to minimize public opposition here at home should be mostly individually recruited from freedom loving souls around the world (not from existing foreign armies). This “International Freedom Force??? of 1,000,000 or more would be commanded and supported by our own military.
However, the French Foreign Legion is a small unit — 7,700 men. That’s not really up to the Townhall writer’s ambitions.
Historically, it should be noted the Waffen SS tried this approach, too. That did not turn out so well.
Of course, one can imagine all the good will which would meet a Muslim-containing US “International Freedom Force” in, uh, Middle East places to be freed from the “caliphate.”
Anyway, here’s the electromagnetic pulse script:
… an Islamic Caliphate stretching its axis of evil from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, and the radicals gaining a stranglehold on well over half the world’s oil and the Suez Canal to boot. They would then likely extend their reach southward across much of Africa.
With huge natural resources under their control and aided by massive Chinese investment capital and technical support, the radicals would pose an intolerable threat to the economies of the free world. But far worse, with their newfound wealth they would amass a nuclear arsenal that could enable them to either bring the West to its knees by threatening Armageddon, or actually bring about Ahmadinejad’s dream of “a world without America??? and “annihilating Israel.??? And let us also be mindful that but a single nuclear missile, fired from a freighter off our shores and detonated some 300 miles above Kansas, could generate an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that would knock out virtually our entire electric grid system and, according to the chairman of the congressionally authorized EMP Commission, kill 70 to 90% of the entire U.S. population from starvation and disease within one year!
It’s written by a wealthy white kook who made a reputation selling locally named custom versions of Monopoly.
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03.03.11
Posted in Extremism, Permanent Fail at 12:58 pm by George Smith
You can recite what’s real for a comedy show. But no matter how damaging, no change occurs. Instead, you get dozens of upper class media type prescribing medicine they and their masters won’t have to take. Like today’s example number one, Fareed Zakaria.
(Along with Tom Friedman and the president, on top of Muammar Gaddafi’s alleged reading list. It’s quite a recommendation, furnished by WikiLeaks, now virtually neutralized by infame, celebrity misfortune and former collaboration with the New York Times.)
Anyway, yYou can threaten protesters with job loss, or try to rig a situation in which they can be arrested.
But suggest the rich need real threats and the gears don’t move a millimeter. It’s just another reason to deliver another sermon on how austerity and sacrifice must be shared.
The Patriotic Class War Song — remastered.
I was a little bitty baby
I was rocked in the cradle
In an old Middle Class-style home
Now that I’m old and broke
I wanna give the rich a poke
In those big places they call home
We’re gonna invite ourselves to dinner
And shoot ‘em in the kisser
And raze their ritzy mansions to the ground
It won’t be very hard
To piss in the front yards
Of all the shiny houses they called homes
We’re gonna pull ‘em out of cars
And dip ‘em in some tar
Then throw ‘em in a hole and have a laugh
We’re gonna find a big ol’ oak
Hang ‘em all ’til they croak
In America, the place that we call home
In America, the place that we call home
In America, the place that we call …
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03.01.11
Posted in Cyberterrorism, Extremism, Phlogiston at 8:28 am by George Smith
If you were in Washington today you were given quite a revelation, courtesy of the WaTimes.
The Great Recession, the economic collapse, perhaps not caused by Wall Street! No, we’ve been looking in the wrong place.
“Financial terrorism suspected in 2008 economic crash,” it reads on-line.
The terrorists here aren’t the banksters. Nope, they’re from China, maybe Russian criminals, and also the forces of “shariah compliant finance.”
“This is a front-page story in the paper, and the headline can be seen in vending machines all over DC,” reports one reader who we will keep anonymous. “I walked past one this morning and thought, ‘Huh?'”
For this piece of mischief, we see a touching upon of some of the hobby-horses of the of the lunatic right, conveniently furnished by a paper we have all unjustly ignored, apparently.
The paper in question was produced by small business contract with the Department of Defense in 2009.
Generally speaking, you can view articles and analyses generated in this manner as nuisances, ways for the small to take on a validation by being paid cash money by the US government for revelations and insights to be eventually tossed in the trash.
Unless someone like Bill Gertz runs across them at the WaTimes.
The paper setting off the story, entitled “Economic Warfare: Risks and Responses” is by one Kevin D. Freeman of Keller, TX. Gertz’s story never actually gets around to mentioning the bit that this isn’t from some inside-the-Beltway think-tanker.
DD is going to skip most of the fine detail of the thing. You can read it on ScribD.
The WaTimes article sums up well enough the intent: To get us looking somewhere else because no one has ruled out a direct attack on Wall Street.
“Evidence outlined in a Pentagon contractor report suggests that financial subversion carried out by unknown parties, such as terrorists or hostile nations, contributed to the 2008 economic crash by covertly using vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system,” reads the lede graf at the Times.
But here’s what you really want to know.
There’s no proof at all offered for the implication in the WaTimes as to the nature of the 2008 economic collapse.
Much time is devoted to the creeping advance of “shariah-compliant finance” as a danger to capitalism. For this part, notable Islam-o-phobe and kook Frank Gaffney gets cited.
Hugo Chavez and Iran get some space on the marquee, too.
And there are bits one usually finds coming from the Tea Party.
Namely, the “third phase” of an attack on the American economy will come through the printing of too much money and the revenge of bond vigilantes who will magically show up, causing a mass dump of Treasury bonds. The dollar will become worthless.
The “Ah-ha!” moment is furnished by a quick search of the Web for Kevin Freeman in Keller, TX.
A list of political contributions, conveniently from here:
Kevin Freeman (Freedom Global Investment/Counsel), (Zip code: 76248) $250 to BACHMANN FOR CONGRESS on 10/16/06
Kevin Freeman (Artist/Cross Graphics), (Zip code: 76248) $500 to BACHMANN FOR CONGRESS on 06/27/05
Kevin Freeman (Cross Graphics/Artist), (Zip code: 76248) $527 to BACHMANN FOR CONGRESS on 05/18/06
Kevin Freeman (Cross Graphics/Artist), (Zip code: 76248) $750 to BACHMANN FOR CONGRESS on 05/18/06
Marnie Freeman (Cross Graphics/Artist), (Zip code: 76248) $1800 to BACHMANN FOR CONGRESS on 05/18/06
The paper’s author, Kevin D. Freeman, identifies on its title page as belonging to Cross Consulting and Services, LLC.
The Internet domain whois entry for the e-mail domain provided on the paper’s cover page points to Keller, TX, at GoDaddy.
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