Thirty-eight years ago today, on June 14 1972, West German police raided the house of Fritz Rodewald, a teacher who’d been habitually sheltering German-based U.S. Armed Forces deserters in his Langenhagen home. This time, they were after the two young German strangers who’d appealed to him for accommodations. The cops had already apprehended armed and wanted Red Army Faction terrorist Gerhard Mueller at a public phone, and Rodewald had tipped them off that Mueller’s comrade Ulrike Meinhof was inside.

It had been a busy couple of years for Ulrike the activist/journalist. She’d left her job at the leftist magazine konkret and—sometime soon after the interview below—entered the realm of armed revolutionary struggle in what was then one of the richest democracies on earth.  This clip must have been recorded just before she helped break out RAF leader Andreas Baader from his detention in a research institute in May 1970. Twenty-four months of bank robberies and bombings later, she was in prison, where she would be found hanged under dubious circumstances. Later it was speculated that a 1962 operation to remove a brain tumor might have played a tragic part in her violent fate. Regardless, along with Patty “Tania” Hearst, Meinhof had become one of the most well-known female terrorists of the century.

Following the interview is part one of the BBC’s documentary on the RAF, Baader-Meinhof - In Love With Terror.
 

Photo by Lily E. via Wonkette
 
This pretty much sums it up.
 
All of America Captured In Single Photograph

 
He may be done with politics, but he’s not done with policy!  Nor, it seems, is “43” done with mangling English, or radiating an air of general douchery befuddlement.

 
A commenter on Digg.com writes that Beck’s new novel looks like “a cross between The Cat in the Hat and Left Behind.”

 
“Black Dynamite I wanna be just like you.” Based on a true story…
 
Thanks Elvin Estela!

Opposition leaders in Iran have called off demonstrations on the anniversary of the contested June 11 2009 national election that led to the unrest that launched the pro-democracy Green movement there. Meanwhile, amidst the speculation as to whether that movement is dead, the Iranian government is doing what it can to squelch the dissemination of For Neda, HBO’s documentary about Neda Agha-Soltan. Agha-Soltan was the young Tehranian woman whose shooting death during a street demonstration was captured on video and became a symbol of the heart-rending struggle against Iran’s authoritarian regime. Here’s the full doc, dedicated to the people’s fight against fascism worldwide.

 
Earlier this year, in a stunning verbal gaffe, South Carolina’s (soon to be former) Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer compared helping the poor to feeding stray animals, because they “breed”! Obviously a Republican, Bauer, a wealthy white man who flies small planes, later said he wasn’t saying those who receive government help “were animals or anything else.” (What were you trying to say, fuck wit?) Well, he lost his election bid yesterday, coming in DEAD LAST in a state where over 50% of all schoolchildren receive subsidized or free lunches from the government. Clearly his political instincts are shit. Just like his brains.

This is someone showing you the very stuff his black, immoral little soul is made of. From CBS News:

“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals,” Bauer said during a town hall meeting, as the Greenville News reported over the weekend. “You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”

As the Greenville News notes, more than half of the students in South Carolina participate in a program that allows them to get their lunch for free, or at a reduced cost.

Bauer later said he wasn’t saying those who receive government help “were animals or anything else.”

What an utterly contemptible ass-clown this guy is. This is the kind of comment that haunts you forever, hanging around your neck like a big, dumb, dead albatross. Google Andre Bauer for the rest of his life, and there future employers, voters and anyone else who cares enough about this twat to type his name into a search field will find people like me telling this story. It serves him right, but the thing is, look at him. Do you think there is a chance in Hell that Andre Bauer has a self-reflexive bone in his body? Not a chance. If he did he wouldn’t think this way in the first place. He got what he deserved yesterday from the voters of his state: the bum’s rush. Karma’s a bitch, Andre!

And more in politics from the hilariously funny great state of South Carolina: A random unemployed guy who no one seems to know much of anything about (update) wins Democratic senate primary: The mysterious Alvin Greene has become “an inspiration for random unemployed dudes everywhere,” as Gawker tells it. The chairwoman of the S.C. Democratic party speculated to the AP that “people who didn’t know either candidate and voted alphabetically may help explain Greene’s win.”

Random Unemployed Dude Wins South Carolina Democratic Primary (Gawker)

South Carolina’s Mysterious Dem Senate Candidate Likes Showing Sexy Pics to College Ladies (Gawker)

 
Attention California readers of Dangerous Minds: it’s primary day, so, like Deee-lite‘s Lady Kier says, vote, baby vote!  Especially you Republicans!  Only you can help put the brakes on the insanity that is Birther Queen, Orly Taitz, and her desire to clinch the GOP nomination for Secretary of State.  For those of you unfamiliar with this lawsuit-happy buddy of Michele Bachmann, here’s a snip from Salon:

Orly Taitz, who is a legitimately crazy person, is running for California secretary of state.  Taitz, a dentist and attorney, has dedicated her life to suing Barack Obama over and over again until he finally admits that he was secretly born in Kenya.  And she just might win the GOP nomination today.  Taitz’ opponent has apparently barely even campaigned, just relying on the fact that he’s running against a crazy person to win the nomination. (Taitz, meanwhile, has filed a number of suits against him, attempting to get him off the ballot because he was once a registered Democrat.)  But that might not be enough.

No, it “might” not.  As longtime GOP campaign strategist, Allan Hoffenblum, notes, “It will be a complete embarrassment if she wins, but these things can happen.”  Indeed, they can.  And as much as I’d love to witness the eruption of nuttiness that a Taitz win might trigger, that would pretty much sink the eventual GOP ticket (Republican Senate candidates Carly Fiorina and Chuck DeVore are doing whatever they can to flee her orbit), and, come November, California’s chances for political debate that somehow didn’t bring up, YET AGAIN, the notion of birth certificates.

So, regardless of your party of affiliation, if you’re a fan of democracy but a foe of idiocy, get thee to your local precinct (and if you Republicans are still on the fence, watch Taitz go batshit below)! 

Twenty-three years ago today, Fawn Hall became the most famous secretary in America. On June 8, 1987 Hall testified in the Iran-Contra hearings  to helping her boss Lt. Col. Oliver North shred documents having to do with the affair, in which senior Reagan administration officials facilitated arm sales to Iran in order to fund the Nicaraguan contras.

According to Hall’s unsubstantiated Wiki entry, that wasn’t her only lapse of judgment:

Fawn Hall dated Contras politician Arturo Cruz, Jr. In one mishap, she transposed the digits of a Swiss bank account number, resulting in a contribution from the Sultan of Brunei to the Contras being lost. On November 25, 1986, she smuggled confidential papers out of her employer’s office hidden inside her leather boots…

Life after the hearings proved just as interesting for the late-20s Hall, who predictably pursued a modeling career and eventually met and married former post-Morrison Doors manager and archetypal L.A. music business maven Danny Sugerman. The Inside Edition clip below—hosted by a then-second-tier Bill O’Reilly—provides a snapshot of mid-‘90s tabloidism as the sordid strands of politics, drugs and entertainment tangle together deliciously. Sugerman later died of lung cancer in 2005 at age 50.

 
What’s with Sir Elton John performing for the, ahem, fourth (traditional) wedding of flaming asshole and noted homophobe, Rush Limbaugh?!?! And not only that fat piece of shit, but Karl Rove and Sean Hannity as well? Isn’t something very, very odd about this situation? Sir Elton has not—so far at least—made any statements regarding why an outspoken—and of course, notably flamboyant—gay man would sing for such a vile occasion, but I hope the answer is that he simply wanted to bleed Rush Limbaugh of a million bucks to donate to anti-Prop 8 and gay rights activists across the country. (I recall reading once the John donated all of the money he made from performing (or was it royalties?) to the Elton John AIDS Foundation which has raised $220 million dollars since 1992, so maybe it’ll go there).

I really don’t want to believe that Elton John would demean himself to perform for fucking Rush Limbaugh for a mere payday—if it was that idiot Sting singing for Kim Il Jong, I’d have no trouble believing that—but if he’s donating it to charity, then I can understand it.

As for Limbaugh, well, fuck that asshole. As for his new bride, Eva Braun Kate Rogers, with any luck, good ol’ Rushbo will drop dead before she’s 40 or 45 and she’ll still have plenty of time left to spend all of that lovely blood money of his. Ka-ching! (The News Corp wire report about the wedding quotes the new bride as saying of the couple’s 26-year age gap: “I’m sometimes not able to relate to the average person my age.” Memo to Kate: No one believes a word of it, doll…)
 

Kate Rogers, left,and her big fat idiotic payday.