After Shirley Sherrod

Thankfully, things are working out well for Shirley Sherrod. There is still justice of some kind in the Universe. But there is no justice in a political atmosphere dominated by lies and hated, countered only by the weakest of push back.

Some of us are trying to fight back with what we have--words--hoping to raise awareness and motivate us to action. David Michael Green posted this yesterday on OpEd News (excerpted here):

This week saw the ignominy of the Shirley Sherrod case, in which regressive hitman Andrew Breitbart blasted across the media a doctored up video of a speech the black former director of the Agriculture Department's Georgia state office gave, decades ago, talking about how she transcended her own impulses to discriminate on the basis of race. Transcended, I say again. But that was the part that got edited out. It was as if you lost your job because you said publicly that "I am not a terrorist", but some right-wing freak (whose parents evidently neglected him as an infant and we're all paying for it still to this day) took out the third word of the sentence and gave the rest to your boss and wife and kids and everyone else, and now you've lost your marriage and family and home and job and no one will talk to you anymore.

What this illustrates for the umpteenth time . . . is that the scum that is today the American right will absolutely say and do anything in order to score political points, while so-called progressives say and do nothing even to stop their crimes, let alone to advance a positive agenda. They do nothing, that is, unless crumpling up like frightened kittens in a thunderstorm counts as doing something. . . .

(W)e're like a two-bit drunken banana republic, thrashing about in the gutter of history as we implode from the toxic combination of greed, stupidity, indolence and hubris.

We once used to conduct a war on poverty. Now we just incarcerate the impoverished. In privately-owned, for-profit, jails . . . .

It's been nearly half a century since JFK so aptly reminded us, "Those who do nothing are inviting shame as well as violence. Those who act boldly are recognizing right as well as reality."

And yet we remain well ensconced in the first category.

The problem is that we have yet to define exactly what actions we need to take, beyond speaking up and challenging right-wing lies. But speaking up is a start, a way to begin to act on our convictions and challenge the political tide that is carrying us deeper and deeper into a very ugly place.

The Shirley Sherrod & The Right-Wing Hate Campaign

I am so angry about what happened to Shirley Sherrod that finding words is very, very hard. Why the fuck are Fox "News" and the right-wing hate mongers running this country?

Shirley Sherrod is the victim of their racism and the impotence of the Obama Administration. Thank God CNN didn't swallow Andrew Breitbart's bullshit whole. This morning, CNN took them on, giving Ms. Sherrod a chance to state her case. Before the interview was over, it was very clear that Ms. Sherrod had been horribly smeared by Andrew Breitbart. No one should ever believe anything that comes from a man who is nothing more than a liar with an agenda. No one should ever believe anything that comes from Fox news or their psycho talking heads. Enough!

Shirley Sherrod MUST be reinstated. She is a good woman who is just about the last person to deserve what has happened to her. If she is not reinstated, the Obama Administration will suffer HUGE losses in terms of voter support. Furthermore, EVERYONE who is a not part of the Fox/right-wing hate campaign MUST start calling them out at every turn. We cannot continue to let them jerk us all around like a bunch of sock puppets.

It's time to get a backbone.

One blogger said it well: Stop running the country on bullshit!

Here is the full video that not only vindicates Ms. Sherrod but proves that she is a good-hearted, moral woman: NCAA Sherrod video.

The McVeigh Tapes

I watched The McVeigh Tapes on MSNBC last night. The documentary is fascinating & disturbing from many perspectives. I found myself working hard to understand McVeigh. As someone with PTSD, I understand some of the thoughts and feelings he described, but I cannot wrap my mind around the extreme numbness that engulfed him.

The ultimate irony is that he became what he himself hated. As clever as he was--and he was very, very clever--that brutal fact escaped him.

The documentary is well worth watching: MSNBC Video

Commentary & info:
Yahoo! News: In never-before-aired tapes, McVeigh tells families: 'Get over it'
Washington Post: Hank Stuever reviews MSNBC's 'McVeigh Tapes'
New York Times: A Terrorist, Plain-Spoken and Cold

To the Tea Party Patriots . . . You Didn't Get Mad

Here's my version of the open letter to the Tea Party crowd.

What Does It Take To Make You Mad?

You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.
You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed energy company officials to dictate energy policy.
You didn’t get mad when he outed a covert CIA operative.
You didn’t get mad when our government illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.
You didn’t get mad when they spent over 600 billion on that illegal war.
You didn’t get mad when they refused to provide adequate armor for our troops.
You didn’t get mad when they allowed war profiteers to bilk and defraud the American people.
You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars of tax money simply vanished in Iraq.
You didn’t get mad when they let Bin Laden get away.
You didn’t get mad when they passed the Patriot Act.
You didn’t get mad when they illegally wiretapped American citizens.
You didn’t get mad when you saw the Abu Grahib photos.
You didn’t get mad when you learned about the torture.
You didn’t get mad when you heard about the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.
You didn’t get mad when they let a major US city drown.
You didn’t get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark.

You finally got mad . . .
when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.

Yes; illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, and stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer are all OK with you.

But helping Americans . . . over that you will arm yourselves and take to the streets.

Is that about right?

More Tea Party Commentary

An article from LA Progressive:
Lobbyist Money + Right-Wing Extremists = Tea Party

You Tube video:
CNN Reporter Finds "Dark Undercurrent" in Tea Party Movement

From The Reality-Based Community (includes photos of 9/12 protesters in DC):
Unhinged

But "Tea Party" Sounds So Harmless

Today's "Tea Party" in Washington, DC, was sponsored in part by NARLO, The National Association of Rural Landowners. If you are a citizen of the US, you need to know about NARLO and their involvement in the Tea Party movement.

This is from their home page:

"THE SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION"
Has just begun. Join it or buy a gun,
because you are going to need it!

Here is one of their videos: The Coming Civil War.

They use the rhetoric we are all so used to by now:

• Obama is a socialist.
• The country is overrun by "illegal aliens" who are going to get free health care and amnesty.
  
• Global climate change is a "fraud."

And some we have not yet heard much about:

• The government is mandating indoctrination into socialism, multiculturalism, and the one-world-order in our schools.
• It's time to put a stop to the "producers" paying for and supporting the "nonproducers" in this country.
  
• The government is lying when it claims this is a democracy.

That's RIGHT! According to NARLO, this is NOT a democracy, not even a democratic republic. They demand that the government "return to a Constitutional Republic" that protects not the rights of citizens but "the rights of states."

Their solution:

• Citizens must rise up against national health care, cap and trade, environmental protections, and all other evils of this socialist government.
  
• Citizens must warn the President and Congress that if the government does not comply with their demands, the result will be disorder and cessation in accordance with the 10th Amendment.
• They are willing to be civil for now, but that willingness will come to an end if their demands are not met.
  
• This will eventually lead to civil war in America "that will tear out it's very heart."
  

"Rest assured," they say, "the coming Civil War will not be like the Civil War of 1861." They warn of mass vigilante violence against individuals, the government, immigrants, and revolts of every sort leading to devastating economic collapse.

These people are serious about destroying America--every bit as serious as Al Qaeda, and they are a hell of a lot closer to home.

Sadly, they are gaining support among the politically naive who have no idea what they are getting into. Groups like this, along with the Republican Party, are manipulating worried, gullible people into joining "the movement."

The leadership of the GOP, television commentators like Glenn Beck, and radio radicals like Limbaugh know exactly what they are doing. I wonder how long they plan to play this dangerous game. They are fooling themselves if they think they can control the mobs they are creating. What they are doing is so irresponsible, so outrageous, so . . . well, you can come up with your own adjectives; there are so many that fit.

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Here are a few pictures with commentary from someone who actually went to today's rally: Teabaggers love their signs, from The D.C. Universe. He's taking all of this much better than I am.

The Right Is Scaring Me

. . . but not in the way they hope. I mean, crazy stuff is happening. Check this out:

The Obama Birthplace Memorial Challenge

These people are fooling somebody--a lot of somebodies--even some people I know. (If you're one of them, please read this from FactCheck.org.)

WTF is going to happen with all these crazies who are disrupting town hall meetings on health care reform? One caller to a radio show suggested today that citizens may need to resort to violence in order to reclaim the freedom to attend these forums without disruption from lunatics.

Actually, many of them are not lunatics. They may not even believe the crap they spout. The are intentionally trying to rob citizens of their right to be informed and be heard. They are quite purposeful in the use of anti-democratic tactics to further an extremist agenda.

What scares me is, where will it end? Some citizens aren't willing to give up what remains of this democratic republic without a fight. We used to be pissed at Bush. Now that he's gone, has the battle simply moved closer to the streets?