Nativists, Nazis, Tea, and Sarah

Where does Sarah Palin come into the picture? Well recently she opted not to speak at CPAC since one of the sponsors is the John Birch Society. Instead she has decided to be the headliner at the Tea Party National Convention in Nashville. Since Nashville is a hotbed of activity for Council of Conservative Citizens, she’s basically jumped from frying pan into fire.

Normally I would not link to an Al Jazeera video report because I know with certainty that they are biased on matters pertaining to the Middle East and they have been the mouthpiece as well as distribution point for many terror organizations. (Al Qaeda screeds against the west usually appear first at AJ – same goes for Hamas and Hezbollah.)

That said they have done a factual report on Nativists and White Supremacism in the US, as well as their ties to organizations like the Minutemen, Council of Conservative Citizens, and to the tea party movement. As the tea party movement carries on it’s important to note that many of the organizers and leaders are not Republicans, but rather Constitution party, JBS, CoCC, and other like groups. I can back up the reporting in this video with links and proofs if you hesitate to rely on AJ, since I’ve seen this in my own research by crawling through the sewers of white supremacist sites on the web. I’m not going to subject my readers to that unless someone requests it in comments.

There’s a couple of important things in this video – you can see where the Tanton nativist movement is rebranding to the Flavor of the Day in politics (economy is issue one instead of the border now,) and you can see that the younger leaders of the white supremacists are working hard to mainstream their movement. Pay particular attention when one of the handlers muzzles an elder nazi when he goes off message and honestly displays what the group is really about.

Where does Sarah Palin come into the picture? Well recently she opted not to speak at CPAC since one of the sponsors is the John Birch Society. Instead she has decided to be the headliner at the Tea Party National Convention in Nashville. Since Nashville is a hotbed of activity for Council of Conservative Citizens, she’s basically jumped from frying pan into fire. You can bet CoCC will be there, and since it’s only a short drive from Millington up I-40 to get to Nashville, I would wager that the Political Cesspool might cover the event as well.

One other note about the National Tea Party convention: Judging from the high ticket prices I would also wager that the event will be an interesting mix of just the leaders from these groups, and that the media will be tightly controlled to prevent the “wrong photo op” of Sarah with one of these White Supremacist leaders. More on Rainmakers Crashing the Teaparty at Newsweek. Hint: Rainmakers aren’t the only crashers.

Update: If you think I am being unfair to Al Jazeera, here’s just the latest example of them furthering false agitprop without even basic fact checking; quotes are not that hard to verify. I trust this documentary more than their usual swill because it is from independent filmakers and because I am already familiar with the groups and facts detailed in it.

Update: As predicted above The National Tea Party Convention will be held behind closed doors without press coverage except by “selected Journalists.” It will  be a tightly controlled event with only sympathetic members of the press allowed. Would that be Robert Stacy McCain, Michelle Malkin and possibly the rest of the VDARE “tea-cup”white supremacists? Time will tell the tale.

Why I Would Never Run for Office in Kansas

Why I Would Never Run for Office in Kansas

I’ve pondered if I should run for office; this because I am a life-long Republican in a red state with strong political opinions and in favor of reasoned action when it comes to politics. I speak well, debate well, and have convincing authoritative voice, and I could be a shoo-in. There’s a big however here…

My conservatism is staunch in most areas and my votes have been pretty much straight R most of my life, however I could never get past a primary in Kansas – the Sam Brownback religious wing would see to it.

There are several social positions they would torpedo my candidacy with rather than any true and meaningful policy positions that really affect the future of the country.

  • I support the 2nd amendment strongly; but they would counter that I am a godless atheist and therefor I must be some sort of  secret communist who wants to grab guns through stealth.
  • I support necessary, efficient, but limited government; they would counter that with my support of Gay marriage.
  • I support an abundant energy future for the world through science; but they would counter that with — get this — my support of science.
  • I support a strong military, strong foreign policy, and fiscal restraint in Government; they would counter that with my support of a woman’s right to choose with reasonable restrictions.
  • I strongly support the 1st Amendment and Article VI of our constitution; they would counter that with my support for real science in science classes over the pseudo-science of intelligent design and culture war crapola.
  • I support free trade and capitalism; they would counter that with my support of taking reasonable steps to limit our effects on climate.

The sad fact is that I could not win here even if I registered as Democrat – the reconstructionists have too strong a grip on political process in Kansas, and organized religion drives politics far more than it should. In other words, even the Democrats in Kansas are to the right of Republicans in NY, CA, PA, CO, OH, and FL on social issues.

Purposeful reasoned actions are what I strive for, and actions that are purposeless such as me running for an office I couldn’t hope to win are ridiculous – so that will never happen.

Could I win in some of those other states? Possibly, but not in current times.

Right now there is a huge putsch going on from the Religious right in the Republican party. It started with the Club for Growth tossing out Reagan’s maxim of never speaking ill of other Republicans back in 2005, grew into the “Great RINO hunt” and has continued ever since. The oxymoronically named “Club for Growth” pretends to be all about fiscal conservatism (which is all the rage now that Obama was elected as our president,) however I challenge you to point to a candidate they endorse who is not a dyed in the wool religious social conservative.

They have Rubio challenging Crist in Florida, and in New York 23 they are supporting a religious right third party candidate against Diedre Scozzafava, the GOP choice for the special election. In NY 23 we are quite likely to lose that seat for a good long time due to that third party support, and that’s in a few short days. In their quest for “purist” candidates who can pass all 20 of their litmus tests they are making it impossible for R’s to win in populous urban states. They seem intent on driving all moderates out of the party and they are succeeding so far.

Right now you have Michelle Malkin agitating against Dede from James Dobson’s studios, you have the nativist xenophobe minuteman lobby endorsing Hoffman over Scozzafava, and you have White Supremacist blogger Robert Stacy McCain blogging from NY for Hoffman’s campaign.

This strange alliance is a coalescence of desperation that gelled in the post election power vacuum, but they have set course for a Republican party that cannot govern at a national level. They favor the religious right combined with neo confederate and Paleo pup tents over the big tent, they favor freak show barkers like Glen Beck over putting together a consistent production  that can compete on the main stage of US Politics.

The loudest voices are rarely the ones you should follow, but these folks sure know how to make a lot of purposeless noise. We are set for defeat in 2010 – my prediction is that we will gain fewer seats than an out party in an off presidential election year should garner. They will trumpet the pittance we do gain to high heavens, but in these times and with this president our gains should be huge. You can come back and rub this post in my face in 2010 if I am wrong, but I suspect I am not wrong here.

*note: since I am linking to Little Green Footballs which is on the hater’s outcast list, comments will be closed the next few days. Workload prevents me from monitoring comments to stop jackanapery from the people after Charles for sticking to his principles.

The Yellow Peril Revealed

All it takes is one kook to cook a kookspiracy.

The Yellow Peril Revealed

In the last two days there’s been a new story appearing on some of the less than credible conservative blogs, and it’s also making the rounds in email. The story amounts to saying that as part of China buying into our debt that all land in the US was used as collateral, meaning your house, your business, your property.

It’s ridiculous if you think about it anytime at all, but the small nexus of hate that exists in some dark corners of the Conservative blogosphere knows little about sanity. This isn’t going to be a full-fisking of the story because I don’t want to send the nutballs traffic or direct too much attention their way since that’s the point of them posting it.

I will point out the genesis of the latest Kookspiracy theory. There are three pretty well known conservative blogs carrying the “China’s going to take our land through Eminent Domain” story, but tracking the links puts you in a circle between the blogs, until you arrive at an anti-semite neo-nazi site. I won’t name the blogs and I won’t link to them because they live on hysteria and sensationalism, building an audience of frothing crazies to gather notoriety and page hits. In other words the real yellow peril is not the Chinese, but rather the yellow journalism of the kookosphere.

On the 11th Bloomberg ran a story (and this is the only “hard cite” they’ve got,) regarding China needing assurances that their investment wouldn’t go South if they buy our paper from the Stimulus – in other words they need to know that we are serious about fiscal restraint and keeping the dollar secure.

So how did we get from a Bloomberg story on the background of China’s concern about buying our paper (which drove the subsequent Obama announcement and conference on fiscal restraint and reducing the deficit,) to “OMG! China’s Going to Take YOuR HowSE through Eminent DoMaiN!”?

All it takes is one kook.

Hal Turner is a raging anti-semite white supremacist nutball in every sense of the word. He’s prone to making threats and cooking up Kookspiracies. I will not link to his site because the stench of madness flies up the flue at that house, but you can see various historic pages from his site here in the Wayback machine. Note the ads in the sidebars etc., there are also news articles in archives like this one to be found.

For those who don’t believe that Hal Turner is a raging nutball with lots of neo nazi fans, here’s a snip from an article on his blog:

Many visitors to this blog thought I was some sort of nutcase for my story which revealed that upwards of 775,000 American citizens are on lists to be rounded up by our government.

Just from a skim of his current blog content and comments he also appears to be a white supremacist neo-nazi who floats a lot of conspiracy theories. He does a radio show as well, but I’m not sure if that’s just podcast or what.

Harold Charles “Hal” Turner is an American white nationalist and white supremacist from North Bergen, New Jersey. He ran his program, The Hal Turner Show, as a webcast from his home once a week, and depended on donations from his listeners. He quit the show in July 2008. In August his website also closed down, though he retains a blog.

Wikipedia has a long entry on him, with lots of links at the bottom if you require further verification. Some of those links are now gone since his blog was swarmed by Anonymous, but many of the news links are there to confirm, and the Wayback machine is also linked here to confirm.

So what is the point here? Just this: There are legitimate voices on the right that value Conservative principals like honesty deeply, but this story doesn’t come from any of them.

People who run with this are not very credible because it took me all of 20 minutes last night to sift this out. Republican politicians, pundits, and bloggers need to be careful of their associations because this stench doesn’t come out — and you certainly don’t want your picture taken with these kooks.

Where does the truth in the Stimulus paper lie? Well the Chinese will get something strategic or political out of this, but trust me that it won’t be your house.

*note: Some history on the original “Yellow Peril”  please take note of the marked similarities in source and slanders.