Mr. Deity says it all

Mr. Deity​ says it well enough that my comments are not required.
#fucktheviolence

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Who is David Duke? A few key points

1950-68: In July of 1950 a bouncing baby boy is born in Tulsa, Oklahoma as the son of an engineer for Shell Oil Company. The family frequently moved to various oilfield jobs around the world, finally settling in Louisiana. In the late 1960s young David met William Luther Pierce, the leader of the white nationalist and anti-Semitic National Alliance, who so impressed the young Duke that he would call Pierce his main influence. By his own admission, Pierce remained a lifelong influence on Duke.

1967: Duke joins the KKK.

1968-70: Studied at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge. Formed the White Youth Alliance as an affiliate of the National Socialist White People's Party. Protest William Kunstler's appearance at Tulane University. Appeared at a demonstration wearing a Nazi uniform. Held parties on Hitler's birthday. First came to public attention at LSU's "Free Speech Alley" when he makes white supremacist speeches.

1973: Writes the book "African Atto,'' under the pseudonym Mohammad X, encouraging violence against whites. Later, duke said the book was a satire.

1976: Duke, in blackface, disrupts the Legislature which was unveiling a bust of P.B.S. Pinchback, a black man who served briefly as Governor during reconstruction.

1976: Writes "Finderskeepers," a sex manual, also under a pseudonym.

1976: Receives 11,000 votes during an unsuccessful bid for the Louisiana Senate.

1978: During a visit to Great Britain, dodges bobbies trying to expel him from the country. Also that year, he was arrested in Jefferson Parish and charged with inciting a riot.

1980: Leaves the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, where he was grand wizard, in a dispute over the alleged sale of membership rolls. Forms the National Association for the Advancement of White People.

1987: Arrested during a demonstration in Forsyth, GA.

1988: Runs for President. Barred from running as a Democrat, he moved to the Populist Party and hired ex-American Nazi leader Ralph Forbes as campaign manager. His name was on 15 state ballots and he received 0.5 percent of the national vote.

1988: Duke found little acceptance and even less success running for office as a Democrat, so he jumps ship and runs as a Republican. By a 227-vote margin, Duke won a runoff for a Louisiana House Seat in Metairie. He leaves that office without explanation after a single term in 1992.

1990: Running again as a Republican, Duke loses a primary for the U.S. Senate to Democratic incumbent J. Bennett Johnston. Even the GOP was getting sick of Duke, so they forced the official GOP candidate, Ben Bagert, to drop out of the race and avoid a runoff. Duke still gets 43.5 percent of the vote. 

1991: Again running as a Republican, Duke runs in the gubernatorial primary, knocking incumbent Gov. Buddy Roemer out of the race. Loses the primary in a landslide to Edwards, gets 39 percent of the vote.

1992: Short-lived presidential bid ends with South Carolina primary.

Mid-1990s: As seems to be a pretty easy thing for haters to do, Duke gets a gig hosting a radio talk show in the New Orleans. Organizes the European-American Unity and Rights Organization. He manages a computer mailing list and sends out mailings to members claiming to be in financial straits and under harassment by the IRS. Begs for money. 

1999: Federal Grand Jury investigates the $100,000 sale of a list of Duke supporters to gov. Mike Foster. No charges are returned. Runs for Congress for a New Orleans-area seat but comes in third in the primary.

January 2000: Shortly after Duke leaves for a speaking tour in Russia, federal agents raid his home in Mandeville, LA. A search warrant, based on testimony from confidential informants, alleged that Duke took hundreds of thousands of dollars he solicited from supporters and gambled the money away at casinos.

2000-2002: Duke spends most of his time out of the United States on speaking tours.

December 16, 2002: Duke returns to the U.S. to work out a plea bargain with federal prosecutors.

December 18, 2002: Duke pleads guilty to charges of mail fraud and filing a false tax return in a plea agreement with a maximum $10,000 fine and 15 months in prison.

April 15, 2003: Duke reports to federal prison in Big Spring, Texas to begin serving his sentence.

January 27, 2014: Louisiana Republican Congressman Steve Scalise is revealed to have spoken before a 2002 meeting of David Duke’s European-American Unity and Rights Organization. Scalise claims to not having any knowledge of who David Duke is or what he stands for.

Scalise is set to take the third seat in Republican leadership when the 114th Congress convenes after the first of the year. Seems the rest of the leadership and the bulk of the right side of the aisle have Scalise's back on this.

Business as usual. What else did you expect?

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Who is right?

... and who is wrong? You tell me.

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The modern conservative

Watch the video....

 

Then follow the links to the various sites with comments about the video... and the reaction to the video. These people are the far right fringe of those who proudly call themselves "social conservatives". They band together and vote Republican... which is why I will not. 

They call themselves conservatives. I call them hateful bigots. The good thing is that the positive comments are outnumbering the racism about two to one. 

Ad Week

Gawker

Reddit, read the comments

YouTube, read the comments

YouTube again, read the comments

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Another brick in the wall

Phelps and crew bottom feeding again...

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In the news

A Kentucky man is in hot water after displaying a racist display of President Obama on his front lawn.

According to a local NBC affiliate, Dan Hafley of Casey County has displayed a mannequin of President Obama holding a piece of watermelon in front of his home. While interviewed by the local news, Hafley says that the mannequin was meant to be a "joke" and that it was simply free speech.

"The way I look at it, it's freedom of speech...I don't know how other people will take it."

Hafley continued to joke about the display, noting that many people even stop to take pictures.

"That's my buddy. He don't talk. Don't make no smart comments. If I had a dollar for everyone who stopped and took a picture of it I'd be a millionaire."

While Hafley laughs at his racist attempt at humor, not everyone thinks that the display is so humorous. A local neighbor voiced his displeasure, noting that African-Americans could be offended by viewing the display.

"We don't have black people in this community but I'm sure they travel this road like everybody else does. They could be offended. I don't agree with it."

This isn't the first time someone has put up a racist anti-Obama display. Earlier this year in New Jersey, the owner of a men's clothing store depicted President Obama as a witch doctor on his store window.

HT via www.lex18.com

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Why Westboro Baptist gets away with obnoxious shit

and why... even though they are a bunch of obscene, obnoxious, offensive assholes... that is okay.

The 5-4 Supreme Court case of Rosenberger v. University of Virginia has been cited by those arguing that the government may not impose viewpoint-based restrictions by revoking the tax-exempt status of the Westboro Baptist Church. The case involved the University’s refusal to use the Student Activities Fund (SAF) to pay for a Christian student newspaper, Wide Awake. The University argued that an SAF Guideline prohibited funds going to an activity that “primarily promotes or manifests a particular belie[f] in or about a deity or an ultimate reality.” The District Court ruled for the University, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit disagreed saying that there is a “presumptive violation of the Speech Clause when viewpoint discrimination was invoked to deny third party payment otherwise available.” 

The Court held that “[t]he Guideline invoked to deny SAF support, both in its terms and in its application to these petitioners, is a denial of their right of free speech.” J. O’Connor, wrote in her concurrence, that “[w}hen two bedrock principles so conflict, understandably neither can provide the definitive answer.”

 J. Kennedy, in the opinion of the Court, wrote:

The first danger to liberty lies in granting the State the power to examine publications to determine whether or not they are based on some ultimate idea and if so for the State to classify them. The second, and corollary, danger is to speech from the chilling of individual thought and expression.

 J. Souter, in his dissent, wrote, after noting the publication’s proselytizing: 

Using public funds for the direct subsidization of preaching the word is categorically forbidden under the Establishment Clause, and if the Clause was meant to accomplish nothing else, it was meant to bar this use of public money.

 J. Souter quoted James Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance, in which Madison opposed “A Bill establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion,” and wrote:

Who does not see that . . . the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?

J. Thomas points out that Madison’s opposition to the bill that required contribution to religious entities was because the bill singled out those entities for special benefits.

Madison noted that the bill “violates the equality which ought to be the basis of every law.”

 J. Souter notes the inequality, and writes that evenhandedness:

as one element of a permissibly attenuated benefit is, of course, a far cry from evenhandedness as a sufficient condition of constitutionality for direct financial support of religious proselytization, and our cases have unsurprisingly repudiated any such attempt to cut the Establishment Clause down to a mere prohibition against unequal direct aid.

The direct financial aid found in Rosenberger is different from the indirect aid found with tax-exempt entities such as the Westboro Baptist Church. J. Souter’s compelling arguments against direct aid wouldn’t see to apply to the indirect financial aid we find in tax exemption.

Mr. Drumm has this one nailed. We may not like some of the sewage that bubbles up in a cloak of constitutional protection, but we must swallow the desire to deny them that right. If we do not, we disallow ourselves the same protection. 

As abhorrent as I find the Westboro loons, I see no legal remedy that would allow the force of law to silence them that would not come around to bite us all in the butt. 

H/T: David Drumm,  Eugene Volokh, Jonathan Turley.

Voter fraud

Well, I'm not too proud to admit it when I'm wrong. Since the beginning of the Republican efforts to stamp out voter fraud I've argued that these bills were addressed at a crime that was all but nonexistent. I'm ashamed to say that the Republicans have proved me wrong. 

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More evidence...

...that cops are no more trustworthy with weapons than your average person, and far less so in many instances.

Students hospitalized after pepper spray incident at a Pine Bluff junior high school

The shame is that it's taking tasers, pepper spray and the Internet to finally demonstrate this.

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VIA

Desperate attempts to reframe a story

Shorter Greggy wingnut...

Texas Attorney General Tilts at yet another Windmill in futile Effort to Blame Obama for Bible-Thumping Old White Men Shutting Down Texas Women's Health Program...

Texas has no money for schools and has slashed the budgets for State agencies responsible for everything from food safety and roads to daycare centers and nursing homes. In a year plagued by the worst wildfires in Texas history, ole Guv. Goodhair and a majority Republican legislature cut funding to rural fire departments by 75%...

...but little wingnut Greggy seems to have no trouble finding bucks to hire high priced outside attorneys to futilely defend political wars against women and Obama. This is a huge waste not only of precious State funds, but also causes our federal legal system to expend unnecessary time, energy and monies.

GOP... the party of fiscal responsibility.

The unfortunate reality is that a majority of Texans are ignorant (or deluded... or bigoted) enough to believe this garbage is a good thing, and the thugs that do this kind of crap because they know it. With BS moves like this our little Greggy is purposely building a fine foundation for his political aspirations among the politically under-informed of the state.

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Girl Scouts couldn't ask for better advertising

If you read it on the internet it's gotta be true... right?

“My family and I took a view and we’re sticking by it,” Morris said Tuesday, adding that his daughters were joining an alternative group for young girls run by conservative Christians. “My girls are no longer Girl Scouts. They’re now going to join American Heritage Girls.”

Morris’ comments were the butt of jokes inside the House on Tuesday, with Bosma spending much of the day handing out Thin Mints to lawmakers. He joked that Morris’ comments led him to buy hundreds of cases of the famous Girl Scout cookies.

Morris has ushered his spawn off to an indoctrination camp more suitable to his whacko politics. This exemplifies what the religious, "Conservative" shift in America has allowed to rise to the top. Like my daddy used to say about Republican politics... "It's like the old cesspool out there. The biggest chunks rise to the top."

Thank you, Tea Party. Nothing else needs be said.

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We trust them with guns

But the spooky part is that they don't want the public to be armed. With behavior like this, maybe I understand why.

H/T

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What is a family values voter to do?

This story is all over the sphere, but most of the sources are omitting the photograph. I will too, but if your are morbid enough to want to see it, the link is HERE.

Jake Burris lives with his family in Russellville, Arkansas. Jake is also the campaign manager for Democrat Congressional hopeful Ken Aden. Last night, along with his four kids, Jake drove home for the evening. When they got out of the car one of his children discovered their family cat dead on the front porch. One side of the animal’s head had been bashed in and an eyeball was hanging out of its socket. Scribbled on the cat's white fur in black marker was the word "LIBERAL."

Yep, they got them some good, god fearing, family values folks there in Arkansas.

Teach them pinko, socialist, commie fags a thing or two. Get out the Vote!

Amen.

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Behaving badly

The so called "conservatives" want to be able to tell you how you should behave, but then they behave...

BAD

Shorter Aidan Burley, conservative British MP, when photographed departing a stag party in France accompanied by another man dressed as a Nazi SS officer…“I could have left in complete disgust but I noticed it was only 7pm, so I figured I was good to go.”

WORSE

American conservative Bill Johnson, bible pounding, anti-gay former candidate for Governor of Alabama, married to a two-time Ms. America contestant… volunteering his services as a “sperm donor” to six and maybe nine New Zealand women (some of them lesbians in committed relationships) and knocking up three so far… all of this outside the law and without knowledge of his wife. Johnson has been paying “support” to the pregnant women.  He hadn't told the current wife about his philanthropy, but  “I was going to tell her when my kids were born.”

THE ABSOLUTE PITS

Then of course there my own home boy… good old Guv. Goodhair. Ol’ Rick, having spent the past several years chastising Texas teachers and changing laws so that they couldn’t take advantage of a means to make a few more bucks in the same manner Texas politicos had been doing for years… took the dip himself and padded his annual paycheck by $92K. He was already drawning about $150K from the dry well.

This is a direct Goodhair quote: “It’d be rather foolish to not access what you’ve earned.”

Rick, in case your memory needs refreshing, this state is suffering from a $32 Billion shortfall directly related to 11 years of you and six years of the shrub before YOU. GOPers took over the Legislature in 2002 and we’ve listened to that flushing sound since... the well is going dry but you're damn sure you are first in line to get your bucket full. Screw the teachers and working poor, right?

Other than a summer peddling books door to door and a hitch in the Air Force you have never worked an honest job in your life, entering politics as a Democrat at the age of 34. Since becoming Governor you’ve trashed healthcare, pandered to the insurance companies so that Texans now pay the highest premiums for some of the crappiest coverage of any state in the union, shit on teachers for so long that we are now vying for top billing in high school dropout rate and adults without high school diplomas, have more people working for minimum wage than any other state…

Your "Texas miracle"brought business to the state and created jobs, so that wage earners who once kept their families comfortable are now working two or three of your new jobs just trying to save the mortgage. Most of Texas is going broke... except for you and your cronies. Strangely enough you entered the Governor’s mansion with assets of only a couple hundred thousand… and now you’re a millionaire. Gotta wonder just how that could have happened. Just lucky I guess.

And now you have the gall to do that old dirty double dip that you’ve demonized common, hard working teachers for doing. You'll never be President, and with this kind of shit finally making the news we can all hope that even the crazy bible pounders in east and west Texas aren't crazy enough to reelect you here.

Garbage.

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Verbatim

Verbatim, from the Burnt Orange Report. More ambitious DA's behaving badly.

Hiding the Ball - The Morton case in Williamson County by: Edward Garris Mon Dec 05, 2011 at 10:10 AM CST

In recent years DNA evidence has made painfully clear the extent of wrongful convictions meted out by the criminal justice system with a corresponding number of innocent parties wrongfully imprisoned.  This disturbing trend hit close to home recently in the case of Michael Morton. On October 4, Morton was released from prison after serving 25 years for the 1986 murder of his wife; he was convicted in 1987 in Williamson County [Texas] and finally exonerated of the crime with DNA evidence this year.   The incarceration of an innocent man for a quarter of a century would be sufficiently troubling.  Even more disconcerting would be learning that the prosecution put that innocent man behind bars, knowing or likely knowing that he was innocent and hiding evidence that would clear his name simply to secure a conviction. The Texas Coalition on Lawyer Accountability (TCLA) has come forward and allegedly exactly that.

On November 28, the TCLA filed three grievances with the Office of the Chief Disciplinary Counsel of the State Bar of Texas, complaining of Ken Anderson, Mike Davis, and John Bradley.  Anderson was the District Attorney for Williamson County, Texas, in 1987, and prosecuted Morton for the murder of his wife.  In 1987, according to the grievance, Davis was the chief Williamson County Assistant District Attorney, and assisted Anderson in the prosecution of Morton.  Bradley is the current Williamson County District Attorney, and the grievance cited his "suppression of evidence and the cover up of illegal and unethical conduct by the prosecutors who tried the case."  In short, Bradley was joined as a respondent for attempting to block the DNA evidence that was brought forward and ultimately used to free Morton. The grievance cites four pieces of evidence which were recently found in files in Williamson County and which would have been critical to Morton's defense but which were withheld.  As set out in the grievances, they are: "A typewritten memo to the lead investigator of the murder disclosing a telephone tip that a $20 check that had been made out to the victim was cashed nine days after the murder; A handwritten telephone message to the lead investigator disclosing that the victim's Visa card had apparently been recovered at a San Antonio store after the murder; A sheriff's deputy report, written one day after the murder, stating that a neighbor described seeing a man park a green van on the street behind the house where the victim was murdered on several occasions; A transcribed tape recording in which the victim's mother tells the lead investigator that the victim's child (who was at the house when the murder occurred) stated that Mr. Morton was not at the murder scene when the murder occurred." The grievances also noted two other concerns: the discrepancy between the trial testimony of the medical examiner and Anderson's representation of that testimony during closing arguments; and the fact that Anderson was ordered to produce the entire four-inch thick lead investigator's report, but produced only a five page report. The grievances cite the violation of eleven rules of professional conduct by Anderson and Davis, and ten by Bradley. In all three instances, they seek disbarment of the three attorneys for undermining "the integrity and fairness of our state's criminal justice system" and destroying "the life, liberty, and happiness of an innocent man" and "to partially counterbalance the grievous wrongs they have inflicted, the unspeakable injustice and undeserved punishments they have imposed and maintained against Mr. Morton, and the severe damage they have caused to the criminal justice system in Texas." Anderson was deposed on October 31.  The transcript of his testimony can be seen here. Copies of the grievances can be viewed here.

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Don't know what to think about this

The story is HERE. The video is below.

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Class warfare?

Do these guys know any other parrot words?

And he never did answer the question about laying off employees.

Only $400K?

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Stephen Bainbridge on Nancy Grace

Professor Bainbridge and I don't always find common ground, but on this one we are in full agreement.

Musing on Nancy Grace

I don't like Nancy Grace. In fact, let's be honest, I find her utterly loathsome. In the name of ratings, she rushes to prejudge every case (and always on the side of the prosecution), she blatantly takes sides, she's an abusive interviewer, she's intellectually dishonest, and she's a coward.

Wish I had said that...

Nancy Grace and CNN should be treated to the same dose of public outrage as FOX  and Glenn Beck received. Worthless assholes deserve nothing less.

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Just another Weiner

Rachel give Texas' own Weiner a well deserved roasting...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

oh... my... gawd!

Reason #4,929 why no rational human being should ever vote for Rick "Guv. Goodhair" Perry.

Consider if you will that these words are spoken by a man who has become a millionaire over two decades of "public service," and currently lives in a rented mansion costing the bankrupt citizens of his state $6,000 just for rent. The roughly $4,000 monthly utility bills, upkeep for the heated pool, Neiman Marcus custom window coverings, subscription to Wine Monthly, and $1,000 emergency repair for the filtered ice machine are all extra.

...and here are a few of the previous 4,928 reasons not to vote for this charlatan.

He was like the invisible man, Dallas Morning News

Teacher Retirement Fund scandal, leaked memo

The Texas Youth Commission coverup, The Texas Observer, Hidden in Plain Sight

Selling State Government, or how Goodhair uses the "Emerging Technology Fund" as bait to lure political contributions...the Burn Orange Report

The list goes ON, and ON and ON, and ON, and ON and ON.

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H/T Juanita