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Politics

At Orange County Hate Rally, GOP Councilwoman Says She Wants Marines To Send Muslim Families To ‘Paradise’

By Zaid Jilani on Mar 3, 2011 at 4:50 pm

Last month, the local chapter of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) held a fundraiser in Orange County, CA to raise money for a womens’ shelter and for services for the homeless in Southern California.

While this isn’t a cause that most Americans would find objectionable, hundreds of far-right protesters descended on the event and jeered at and maligned the events’ attendees, who were mostly Muslim families who lived in the area. The local chapter of the civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations videotaped many of these demonstrators harassing the families as they entered the building, screaming, “Go back home!” and “You beat up your wife too? Are you a molester?” Watch it:

Perhaps even more disturbingly, a number of GOP elected officials spoke at the rally. Rep. Gary Miller (R-CA) said to the raucous and hateful crowd, “I’m proud of you, I’m proud of what you’re doing.” Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) said that the multiculturalism “has paralyzed too many of our citizens to make the critical judgement we need to make to prosper as a society.” Most horrifying of all, Republican Villa Park Councilwoman Deborah Pauly, who spoke alongside the congressmen, said that the fundraiser represented “pure, unadulterated evil.” She continued, “I don’t even care if you think I’m crazy anymore. I have a beautiful daughter, I have a beautiful 19 year old son who is a United States marines. As a matter of fact, I know quite a few marines who will be willing to help these terrorists to an early meeting in paradise,” referring to the attendees of the fundraiser:

PAULY: Let me tell you, what’s going on over there right now? Make no bones about it. That is pure, unadulterated evil. I don’t even care, I don’t even care if you think I’m crazy anymore. Because I have, I have a beautiful daughter. I have a wonderful 19 year old son who is a United States Marine. As a matter of fact, I know quite a few marines who will be willing to help these terrorists to an early meeting in paradise.

Watch it:

One has to wonder if, as elected officials in the United States Congress, Royce and Miller truly approve of such vile hate speech being used against Muslim Americans like those in Orange County. You can contact their offices here and here to ask them. (HT: @GGreenwald)

Update

Many of the protester’s complaints centered around the presence of “Imam Siraj Wahhah & Br. Amir Abdel Malik” at the fundraiser. Wahhaj was named by a U.S. attorney as a co-conspirator to the 1993 WTC bombings but was never found guilty of any crime. Malik has voiced support for anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in the past.

Yglesias

Shifting Attitudes Toward War

By Matthew Yglesias on Mar 3, 2011 at 4:30 pm

I don’t share Duncan Black’s political pessimism about this: “We’ll never get there, but I’ll know that actual serious people are in charge when we seriously question just whether the proper response to a bunch of guys flying planes into buildings was a large invasion and decade-long occupation of a country none of them were actually from.”

I think it’s quite noteworthy that if you compare the Vietnam War to Iraq and Afghanistan combined that we’ve had strikingly fewer American soldiers killed and strikingly fewer foreigners killed by American soldiers. George W Bush was way to the left of Lyndon Johnson in terms of tolerable levels of devastation to hail down on other people. The events of 9/11 led to a surge in nationalist and pro-violence sentiment, but the trajectory here over decades is downward. I don’t think that’s a trend that will inevitably continue, but there’s no particular reason to think it won’t, and people should be encouraged to see this as an area in which enormous progress has been made and where more work will be rewarded with more progress.

Alyssa

Graduating Class

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Mar 3, 2011 at 4:24 pm

I think much of Todd VanDerWerff’s analysis of the similarities between Community and Glee in this piece is correct, particularly this:



On Community, the baseline reality of the show will change from episode to episode, with each new half-hour setting up a completely new set of circumstances for the characters to navigate through. In the second season, the basic premise of the show itself—a group of characters comes together at a community college—hasn’t always been the premise. Sometimes, they’re not at the college but in the desert. Sometimes, they’re fighting zombies. Sometimes, they’re animated. It’s been audacious, to be sure, but the series has managed to work its way through most of these episodes by keeping the characters mostly consistent. The level of detail work the writers have done on the characters is remarkable, meaning that Britta and Annie will react roughly similarly whether they’re taking a class on feminism or battling in an all-out paintball war. The circumstances of the show change; the characters do not.

The exact opposite is true on Glee. The writers of Glee will change the characters to suit whatever whims they have that week.

One thing he doesn’t mention that I think is a significant challenge for both shows is that they both run against a ticking time clock. In Glee, the main characters will graduate and go off to college at some point. Presumably, the characters in Community will finish their two-year Associations programs at Greendale and transfer to other schools to get their B.A.s, though Dan Harmon could decide to keep them there for a full four years. Either way, at some point, some of the characters have to move on.


I think Community is more vulnerable to this structural challenge than Glee is. Whatever else can be said about Ryan Murphy, his show has done a terrific job of introducing new characters and integrating them into the main cast. At the moment, it means Glee is in danger of cast overload. But in the long term, it means it will be much easier to phase characters out as they go off to college and to have replacements ready to step into the gaps that they leave. Does that mean the show can survive without Rachel, its crazed core? That question remains to be answered, but the experiment of sending Kurt off to another school has worked well, expanding the show’s universe.


Community‘s got much less flexibility built in. The show keeps introducing and building out new characters, but they remain largely at the periphery of the show. Chang isn’t even a full member of the study group, and he’s been a core secondary character for the entire two seasons. Dean Pelton’s a permanent part of the landscape, and would be an important part of the transition, but he’s an administrator, not a student. Starburns, Fat Neil, Rich, and Leonard are all fantastic parts of the scenery, but there’s no way to be able to tell if they’d be able to fill a full slot in the study group. I think it might actually be smart for Community to commit to four seasons, but be firm about ending the show after that run. The chemistry it’s created is so specific to the core cast that it would be too bad to see it falter.

Politics

Americans Overwhelmingly Support Millionaires Surtax To Tackle Deficit, Reject Cuts To Social Programs

By George Zornick on Mar 3, 2011 at 3:53 pm

For months, Republicans have relentlessly promoted the Tea Party-driven message that the government spends too much, and that social welfare programs should be first on the chopping block. “To not address entitlement programs, as is the case with the budget the president has put forward, would be an economic and moral failure,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) declared.

But a comprehensive new Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll suggests Republicans significantly overestimated the public’s eagerness to tackle the federal deficit by cutting programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. As reflected in the growing “Main Street Movement,” the poll, released yesterday, found sizable majorities of Americans prefer steps like eliminating oil company subsidies, enacting a surtax on the income of millionaires, and rolling back the Bush cuts. Only 23 percent think it’s acceptable to, for example, make cuts to Medicare, while 81 percent favor instituting a millionaire’s surtax:

Additionally, only 22 percent of respondents favored cuts to Social Security (with 77 percent finding it unacceptable). Majorities also opposed reducing funding for K through 12 education, unemployment insurance, and Planned Parenthood. (House Republicans already pushed through an effort to defund Panned Parenthood, claiming Americans supported their efforts.)

Reacting to the results, one GOP pollster told NBC’s First Read that Republicans may have gravely miscalculated in their headlong rush slash spending, as demanded by the Tea Party. “It may be hard to understand why a person might jump off a cliff, unless you understand they’re being chased by a tiger. That tiger is the Tea Party,” he said.

Climate Progress

Poll: 74 Percent Of Americans Support Ending Big Oil Subsidies

By Brad Johnson on Mar 3, 2011 at 3:52 pm

On Tuesday, House Republicans unanimously voted to continue big oil subsidies worth billions of dollars a year, even as oil companies are enjoying windfall profits from skyrocketing prices. The House GOP have used budget deficits to justify draconian cuts on services for working families but will do nothing to stop this corporate welfare. In a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll conducted by Hart/McInturff, an overwhelming majority of Americans — 74 percent — support “eliminating tax credits for the oil and gas industries” in order to “reduce the current federal budget deficit”:

Nearly half of the American public “totally” supports eliminating government subsidies for the richest companies in the world, while another 27 percent find it “mostly acceptable.” Even former Shell CEO John Hofmeister and Koch Industries CEO Charles Koch claim to support ending the “crony capitalism” of “mandates, subsidies or protective tariffs.”

The only policies more popular among the American public for restoring fiscal health to the United States in this poll are eliminating unnecessary weapons systems (76 percent), eliminating earmarks (78 percent), and raising taxes on millionaires (81 percent). It’s time for Congress to start serving the American people instead of multinational polluters.

Related Posts

Yglesias

Huckabee and the Politics of Greed

By Matthew Yglesias on Mar 3, 2011 at 3:29 pm

Sarah Laskow rounds up considerable evidence that Mike Huckabee won’t run for president because he’d rather earn money. If so, that’s too bad, since the kind of guy who’d pass up a presidential bid because he doesn’t want to take the financial hit is exactly the kind of person we need more of in politics. That’s why I always have a little bit of a soft-spot for elected officials who find ways to corruptly enrich themselves in office. At the margin, I’m comforted by the idea of more greedy elected officials and fewer power-crazed egomaniacs.

Another way of looking at this is that there’s a kind of indirect political economy cost to skyrocketing inequality. Elected officials are high-status individuals, and it’s natural for them to spend a lot of time talking to other high-status individuals. But the ratio of a congressman’s income to the income of a person who’s high-status because he’s a CEO or a financier has plummeted over the past thirty years. This doesn’t just suck people out of politics, I think it’s actually quite psychologically distorting. If half the people you see earn 20 times as much, then you can easily start convincing yourself that a salary of $174,000 a year (plus pretty generous benefits) is actually really low. From there it’s easy to see that a couple with $250,000 in household income isn’t “really” rich even if some annoying blogger is trying to tell you that’s five times the national median.

(As for Huckabee personally, I wonder if he’s familiar with that part of the Bible about the camel and the eye of the needle)

Politics

Koch Fight: Join Our Effort To Expose The Billionaire Brothers’ Far-Right Agenda

By ThinkProgress on Mar 3, 2011 at 3:28 pm

Over the last three years at ThinkProgress, we’ve made the Koch brothers and their far-right agenda famous. Now we’ve got their attention. A senior Koch executive recently complained to the National Review that ThinkProgress is leading an “orchestrated campaign” against Koch and vowed to fight back against us.

So, a few days ago we launched a fundraising campaign with a goal of raising $10,000 in five days. We blew through that goal in less than four hours.

In response, the Koch-funded machine lashed out at ThinkProgress, using its vast corporate and political communication networks to promote insulting, ad hominem attacks. John Hinderaker of the far-right PowerLine blog called ThinkProgress “helpless wretches,” “ignorant kids” and “driven entirely by prejudice.” His writings were then broadcast by the official Koch Industries Twitter feed.

What neither Koch nor Hinderaker reveal is that Hinderaker’s law firm, Faegre & Benson, represents Koch Industries.

We aren’t backing down in this fight. We are upping the ante. We are going to expand our effort to reveal the truth about the Koch brothers and have set a new goal: $50,000 in five days.

Please click here and chip in $5 right now

As more and more of you join us, we can strengthen and expand our three-year long effort to reveal the Kochs. Our strategy includes:

– Detailing the far-right policies that the Kochs are quietly trying to push through Congress and in state capitols across the country

– Putting the heat on politicians who want to place the Koch agenda above the public interest

– Exposing corporate malfeasance throughout the Koch empire and promoting awareness of Koch-controlled consumer brands

We won’t be intimidated. And with your help, we’ll continue to give the Koch brothers what they can’t handle: the truth.

Politics

Newt Gingrich Launches 2012 Presidential Campaign Website With Stock Photo Of Supporters

By Lee Fang on Mar 3, 2011 at 3:00 pm

After teasing a bid to run for president for almost a decade, Newt Gingrich finally announced an actual campaign today. Gingrich’s campaign website NewtExplore2012.com features a stock photo from GettyImages also used by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s (D-MA) website:

You can purchase your own campaign website of “Gingrich” supporters here: “Large Crowd of People Holding Stars and Stripes Flags.” (HT: @laurenm)

LGBT

State Marriage Watch: Maryland To Advance Marriage Bill, New Hampshire Postpones Marriage Repeal Effort

By Igor Volsky on Mar 3, 2011 at 2:55 pm

A marriage equality bill may have enough votes to move to the House floor in Maryland and the issue may soon advance in Rhode Island. That’s in today’s State Marriage Watch:

– MARYLAND: The two delegates who walked out of a House Judiciary Committee preparing to vote a bill that would extend marriage to gays and lesbians are now ready to vote for the legislation, the Washington Times reports. Delegates Tiffany Alston (D) and Jill Carter (D) said Wednesday they are prepared to provide the 11th and 12the votes needed to move the bill to the House floor. The Maryland Senate passed the measure last week. Meanwhile, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is flooding the state with misleading direct mail warning residents about the “dangers” of same-sex marriage to children and families.

— NEW HAMPSHIRE: The House Judiciary Committee voted today to take repeal of the state’s same-sex marriage off the table this year. The 15-0 vote “effectively means two bills repealing the 2009 law won’t return to the full House of Representatives until early next year. There was no debate in committee about the move.”

– RHODE ISLAND: House Speaker Gordon D. Fox says he is “doing everything in his power” to move forward the state’s same-sex marriage legislation. A vote in the House Judiciary Committee could come as soon as March 10th, “the day that the Senate has scheduled a hearing on the Senate version of the legislation.” “Quite frankly, I know that we’re going to have the governor’s budget coming in next week, and the marriage-equality discussion is an important discussion but it’s the kind of discussion that can quickly dominate and [hinder] your ability to handle other issues,” Fox said.

– WYOMING: Lawmakers in the senate defeated a measure that would ban the recognition of out-of-state same-sex marriages, leaving the issue to the Wyoming Supreme Court. State senators John Hines (R) and Bill Landen (R) cast the deciding votes against the measure and “said they opposed it because it didn’t guarantee same-sex couples access to Wyoming courts to get a divorce or for other disputes.” Last week, lawmakers killed a proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

– UTAH: On Monday, the Utah state senate “declined to schedule a hearing for a bill that would prohibit discrimination against LGBT people in housing and employment, The Salt Lake Tribune reports.”

– MICHIGAN: On Wednesday, the Senate Reforms, Restructuring and Reinventing Committee approved a resolution to overturn ruling by the Civil Service Commission that would extend “benefits to same-sex partners and others living with 35,000 state employees.” Next week, the resolution, which is being framed as a cost-reduction measure, will move to full Senate, where it is expected to pass. It faces a more uphill battle in the House, where Republicans hold a smaller majority.

For a complete overview of the latest developments in the marriage battleground states of Rhode Island, Maryland, New York, California, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wyoming, Iowa, and New Mexico, click here.

Climate Progress

Wall Street Journal poll: Most popular spending cut is to subsidies for new nuclear plants

By Joe Romm on Mar 3, 2011 at 2:49 pm

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/images/np/price-chart-hires2.jpg

It is no big surprise that Americans don’t want cuts in Social Security, Medicare, or K-12 education.   But the new WSJ/NBC poll does have some surprises:

The survey found that the most popular potential spending cuts were subsidies to build new nuclear plants, with 57 percent support….

Of course, nuclear is absurdly over-subsidized (see “Nuclear Pork “” Enough is Enough“).  In fact, a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable without Subsidies (the source of the chart above) finds:

Read more

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