Update: The Republicans are now apparently trying to distance themselves from this perennial Republican candidate. But they’re sticking with Paladino.

Via Digby, The Albany Project has the skinny on this troglodyte, who just happens to be the Republican candidate for congress in New York’s 18th district:

It has been demonstrated that finches raised by foster parents of a different species of finch will later exhibit a lifelong sexual attraction toward the alien species. One wonders how a child’s sexual imprinting mechanism is affected by forcible racial integration and near continual exposure to media stimuli promoting interracial contact. The most serious implication of human sexual imprinting for our genetic future is that it would establish the destructiveness of school integration, especially in the middle and high-school years. One can only wonder to what degree the advocates of school integration, such as former NAACP attorney Jack Greenberg, were conscious of this scientific concept. It also compounds the culpability of media moguls who deliberately popularize miscegenation in films directed toward adolescents and pre-adolescents. In the midst of this onslaught against our youth, parents need to be reminded that they have a natural obligation, as essential as providing food and shelter, to instill in their children an acceptance of appropriate ethnic boundaries for socialization and for marriage.

The sociobiological warfare that our youth is subjected to is likely to be even more diabolical since it appears to deliberately exploit a biological theory of sexual imprinting at the critical period of sexual maturity. Movies like this past year’s spate of miscegenationist titles, Save the Last Dance, Crazy / Beautiful and O, a parody of Othello, appear deliberately designed to exploit the critical period of sexual imprinting in their target audiences of white pre-adolescent girls and adolescent young women.

There is now afoot a conscious effort to de-Europeanize and to re-Judaize Christianity, through scriptural revision, internal treachery and external pressure.

The importance of applying eugenic measures in the West becomes evident from Richard Lynn’s recent work on Dysgenics and his just-released seminal work Eugenics: A Reassessment. [emphasis added]

As Digby notes, he fits right in with the New York Republican candidate for governor, Carl “All in Good Fun” Paladino. It’s a good thing Democrats, liberals, progressives and leftists are the real racists, or else this could have been real bad for the Republicans.

Blue America has another good video knocking Boehner and the Republicans for running up deficits and the debt (via Digby, who has a couple other videos up today):

In previous times it was other religious and immigrant groups that became the American national scapegoats. Today it is all muslims, from would be directors of community outreach centers to random cab drivers. Real Americans sure do love to hate those lesser people among us. And, for the record, those ‘lesser people’ include everyone who doesn’t think Sarah Palin and Rand Paul are the best things out there.

The Real Americans define who is a fellow Real American and who is lesser. In their considered opinion, the lesser are almost all non white people, although some will be let inside the gates as junior conditional members after a suitable show of obsequiousness. They are all muslims. They are many jews. They are all christians who dare to believe in social justice. They are all, airport bathrooms and meth fueled gay hooker massage sessions aside, all non straight people. They are not only liberals but rightwingers who served in the Reagan and Bush administrations but who don’t completely toe the far rightwing fringe line.

The self proclaimed Real Americans are puffed up but scared and wounded, mostly white people who are afraid of losing their white privilege. They are not unique to America, at base. Every society has a certain proportion of scared reactionary troglodytes who will always hate and suspect the other, however that other is defined at any particular moment.

But, in times of economic hardship, their vile can spread beyond their nominal ranks. In recent years, the trogs seem to make up between 20 and 30 per cent of the population. But, Ed Brayton at his blog Dispatches from the Culture War at Science Blogs, brings us this depressing news:

click on link to The Economist

Brayton seems to have misread a particular result and claims that fewer than half of the Democrats approve it, which is noted in the first comment, but still. Fewer than 60 per cent of these Dems approve it and a quarter oppose it. Another commenter, ‘Abby Normal,’ makes this good point:

This poll was from an opt-in internet survey of 1000 people. Perhaps it’s just wishful thinking on my part. But it seems likely that those who opt in would be those with the strongest (i.e. emotionally driven) opinion. If so, bias toward anti-Islamic opinions skewing the results seems entirely likely.

That’s somewhat hopeful, but only slightly so. It seems that all human societies are prone to this sort of xenophobia. Despite all the rightwing hoopla about ‘American Exceptionalism,’ America is not, never has been, and likely never will be immune from this.

But one thing is different now. People are on record with their opinions and positions on this and the record is archived. The xenophobes will never be able to run from the bigotry and prejudice they are spewing these days. There are tens if not hundred of millions of people on the web who will make sure that the vileness they are indulging in now will be hung around their necks for the rest of their lives and forever after that.

They don’t get to walk away from this ugliness when they decide it is no longer politically beneficial.

The rightwingers and Republicans are ramping up the nativism and other-bashing with what they are misnaming the ‘ground zero mosque.’ Refudiations are in order.

Greg Sargent had a good post yesterday in which he called on people to either condemn the bigotry or be an adult and admit that you conflate all of Islam with murderous terrorists:

The only way to see this as a provocative act is to buy into the notion that the building of a center devoted to Islamic heritage is, by accident or by design, tantamount to rubbing the victims’ noses into what happened on 9/11 — that it is inescapably a “victory mosque.” To believe this is to legitimize — wittingly or not — the world view of the center’s bigoted foes.

In fact, it is not legitimate to see the building of a center devoted to the study of Islam near Ground Zero as an inherently provocative act. You can’t endorse the idea that it’s provocative to study the heritage of Islam in the vicinity of Ground Zero while simultaneously arguing that the bigots are wrong to conflate the 9/11 attacks with Islam as a whole. Period. It’s not a coherent or sustainable argument.

People need to choose sides. Either it’s justifiable to see the act of building an Islamic center near Ground Zero as provocation, intentional or not, or it isn’t. If you endorse the former, you are in effect supporting the view that it’s defensible to vaguely associate Islam as a whole with the attacks. If people want to endorse that view, fine: Just say so. No fudging here. It’s one or the other.

Violent murderous Christian terrorists have killed numerous doctors who perform abortions — should all Christians have to refudiate them?

The ADL squandered whatever moral authority it had left by siding with the bigots and Fareed Zakaria returned, rightfully, an ADL award.

The rightwingers and Republicans see Muslims as the new commies, complete with dark suggestions of nefarious plots. But the American Taliban — Christofascists, really — have more in common with Islamic extremists than they do with the mainstream of American people, and both are very far from mainstream Christianity and Islam. I think the American Christianists secretly jealous of the control over others the radical Islamists are able to wield in parts of countries like Afghanistan and Somalia.

This heated argument over allowing Mosques to be built & expanded here in the U.S. is getting ridiculous. I can understand people’s reservations about a Mosque being built near ground zero (the site is 2 blocks away, NOT actually on ground zero as I’ve heard some uninformed callers claiming when calling up radio talk shows). I understand that it was a group of RADICALS that believed they were doing what was best for the Muslim faith that flew those planes into the Twin Towers on 9-11, so of course some people are not going to be happy about this move.

But now a town in Tennessee is up in arms because a Mosque is looking to expand their current facilities, http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/08/09/plans-build-tennessee-islamic-centers/. What I really can’t understand is that these protestors don’t understand (or value) a core part of our Nation’s beginnings. The freedom of religion is and always has been an extremely important part of the American identity.  If a group was looking to build a Church, a Synagogue, or an altar to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, no one would care. Just because a group of extreme radicals from one religion committed horrible atrocities, does not give us as a country the right to completely discriminate against a HUGE population of American citizens.

I agree with those who say that any first responder, regardless of citizenship status, should get help. And the Republicans knew the Democrats would vote against such an odious amendment but they would use that vote to accuse them of giving millions to ‘illegals’ in sound bite driven campaign commercials.

It was really sleazy of the Republicans. King was diverting attention away from his failure to get Republican support by attaching amendments he knew the Democrats would reject. The Democrats finally got smart and forced the Republicans’ hand and called them out for their naked partisanship. Good for them.

In other news, some rightwing blogs and sites are walking quietly away from the bogus Laredo invasion fabrication, while the initiators are still sticking to their story. A post on the invasion appeared on redstate (link to google cache), but was disappeared by the powers that be. If you click on the link to the current page, you are directed to new posts. Maybe this is why they are so hostile to google at that site.

It’s another sign, along with the banning of the birfers, that redstate is trying desperately to overcome Erickson’s comparison of White House health care spox Linda Douglass to Goebbels and the unfortunate tweet in which he called Supreme Court Justice Souter a ‘goat fucking child molester.’

My guess is that they still have work to do in that regard.

All over the political radio talk shows today was Rep. Anthony Weiner (D- NY) ranting & raving in a very emotional House floor speech. For most of the afternoon I flipped between Sirius Left, Sirius Patriot (the right wing station), and POTUS (Politics of the United States) on my sattelite radio. All three were playing the audio clip of the video posted above. At first I was all pumped up, I loved it. Finally someone in politics getting REAL on an emotional topic (the argument was over a failed attempt to pass legislation that would provide healthcare & aid to 9-11 first responders who are now showing terrible health problems as a result of their work at ground zero). I was excited that a Democrat was FINALLY calling out all the greedy Republicans, how could anyone vote NO to help these heroes that have gone 9 long years with little or no medical help from the Government.

However, after listening to a Sean Hannity interview with both Weiner & Peter King (Republican who worked on the bill) I learned this story gets REALLY interesting, and shows how political & horrible BOTH parties can be. Let me explain:

For 5 years now Weiner & King have been working on a bipartisan effort to bring about legislation that would finally help those who are now suffering from 9-11 effects. Last night it was brought to a vote in the house. Now apparently there are two ways a bill can be passed (don’t ask me specifics) one way would require only 218 votes (Dems were able to drum up 255 votes). Another way, which would have been more bipartisan required 290 votes. This meant that King was supposed to garnder support from his fellow republicans to vote for the bill to make up the difference. Unfortunately King was only able to find 11 republican votes. Apparently last minute Weiner and the Dems decided to use the 290 vote method (they claim to make it more bipartisan; which makes sense, because had they pushed it through only on Dem support, Faux News would be all over them for “shoving things down our throat”). This was where Weiner’s rant came from last night when the Republicans voted down the aid.

However, on Hannity’s program, King blasted the Dems right back saying that had they actually cared about the people and really wanted to pass the bill, the Democrats could have passed it with the 255 votes they had (and only 11 republican votes). He claims that Weiner only chose to go the 290 vote to make the Republicans look bad. Which they do look bad.

SO did the Democrats go the 290 vote route to make the Republicans look bad? Or to make it a more bipartisan effort? Either way you shake it, only 11 Republicans in the House were ready to vote for legislation that would give aid to heroes. The use the same old disgusting excuses for saying no to the bill “It’s an entitlement program” “illegal aliens might get the aid money”. Makes me sick, but I can’t let the Democrats off easy either, they had a chance to really help people and they chose to be political instead.

Last weekend I visited Memphis, TN for a fun weekend full of BBQ, Blues and of course beer. Since we realized that drinking & eating all day, every day was probably a bad idea, we decided to educate ourselves a little bit. We took an hour and a half river boat tour of the Mississippi which was not all that exciting. But, on Saturday we took the trolley a few blocks south of the fun of Beale street and visited the National Civil Rights Museum  located in the original Lorraine Motel (the site of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.).

Seeing the face of the hotel still exactly as it was in 1968, was incredibly moving. We decided to spring for the extra $2 and get the audio tour (very dorky looking). I’m glad we did as the museum was FULL of incredibly interesting information, photos, documents, videos, audio recordings, etc., that without the tour I would have missed some really important information.

What really amazed me about my visit to the museum was all the arguments whites used throughout the 60s to fight equal rights for blacks.  There was one cartoon that really got to me. It was basically a slippery slope argument of what would happen to your perfect little white family if schools were forced to integrate. At first I thought it was a positive message as it showed little kids white and black playing together hand and hand. Then it showed the same kids dating, falling in love, marrying and eventually having babies together (the images were of a white girl with a black man). The final pane of the cartoon showed an elderly white woman with two grandchildren, one pure white, the other pure black (again, white girl, black boy). The final quote said something along the lines of “You never thought it would be possible. With school integration, this could be your family”. Apparently aiming at the fears of white people that having a black grandchild would be the worse thing in the world. AMAZING.

Other arguments I noticed were large signs calling integration, and equal/voting rights for black citizens as COMMUNISM. It amazes me that the same backwards thinking people that were hollering communism 45 years ago, are yelling the same thing today. Why is progressive thinking (gay marriage rights, unemployment benefits, etc.) now being deemed “communism”. Is there some tie between our black president, and these rants of the 60s against blacks? I don’t know, but maybe I just wasn’t paying attention before Bush, or perhaps I was too young, but I don’t remember the calls of socialism and communism being screamed as loudly before Obama took office.

This is sad. Via PZ Meyers at Pharyngula, sprinkler rainbows as proof that the government is evil: