Image via jimspolitico
 
I would be remiss if I didn’t start the year properly, by offering my personal and heartfelt thanks to the fine, morally upstanding people of the great state of Wisconsin. You—and the brave state legislators who got the ball rolling, let’s not forget them—make me proud to be American and one of your fellow citizens. Wisconsin is the birthplace of the American Labor movement and the home of its rebirth in 2011.

The fight against loathsome Republican Governor Scott Walker has inspired and re-invigorated working people across the country—in Ohio, in Michigan, in Zuccotti Park and other OWS sites and events around the country—but it is in Wisconsin where they’re demonstrating to the rest of us how a revolution is won, or can be won, in an appropriately American fashion, at the ballot box.

And the other side just has guys like this mouth-breathing, psychotic reichwing fruitcake—and ridiculous crybaby—Carl Sosnoski, apparently the owner of an Oshkosh sports bar called “Players” and a heating and cooling contractor (Google Players + Oshkosh, if you’d like to order some pizza or… whatever). Little clown-boy Carl got a little bit too close to Robert Bergman—nicknamed “Fighting Bob”—who was exercising his First Amendment rights by soliciting signatures for the Walker Recall effort and this is what happened:

On Tuesday afternoon (12/27/11) I set up to collect signatures in a middle school parking lot. There was no school in session, and it is a public school. I put out my signs, and pretty immediately a signer pulled in. I went to collect his signature. Another truck pulled in behind him. I headed over to it, and asked, “Would you like to sign the petition to recall Scott Walker?” I always ask this, as I don’t want to assume anything. Right away this man asked me why I wanted to recall Walker. For me this is a red flag. Walker supporters want to waste your time. They think you come from out of state, and think you haven’t a clue as to the damage Walker is doing to the state. And they act like you owe them an explanation. At that point I said, “Just one minute - I’ll get back to you,” so that I could finish up with the first guy.

Knowing the man in the truck was there to harass me, I went to my truck and got my video camera. I went to the first signer, and got the clipboard and put it away, so that it couldn’t be destroyed. I started going the long way around his truck because I have learned not to walk in front of vehicles because people will try to run you over. I got half way around when I heard him say, “What are you doing?”

Here’s a transcript of part of their exchange. The last part you just have to WATCH.

Carl: What are you doing?
Bob: I’m video taping you, sir.
Carl: You’re really kind of a jerk, aren’t you? Aren’t you?
Bob: Okay, if you’ve got questions, the reason I’m doing this? (referring to Mr. Sosnoski’s earlier question about his motivation to recall Walker).
Carl: Yeah, I do.
Bob: Okay, the reason I’m doing this is because I don’t believe in Scott Walker.
Carl: What! That’s not a reason! What’s your reason?
Bob: I don’t owe you any explanations, sir.
Carl: Well, then, you can’t use this tape for anything, you know that.
Bob: I can too, sir. I feel like I’m being harassed.
Carl: You are being harassed. And pretty soon, you’re going to be killed! Okay?

Want to see an ugly little Republican man completely losing his shit in a very comical way? Watch the video that many people who know Carl—his wife, family, friends, relatives, and FORMER CUSTOMERS—have also probably watched in the past few days…

Even more outrageous is how the cop—a Walker supporter—handled the matter. The thing is, how “pro-Walker” would this police officer be if the Walker administration tried to fuck over the firefighters and police unions the way he fucked over the school teachers and other state employees? What’s in it for HIM to “support” Scott Walker? What an idiot he is, too. Why would any member of any union support Scott Walker?

You can read the rest of the story at Daily Kos. The Northwestern.com website, a Gannett operation, reports that:

Sosnoski said he has contacted a lawyer and intends to fight the citation and possibly explore further action against Bergman.

Good luck with that, you stupid son-of-a-bitch. HE’S GOT YOU ON VIDEOTAPE MAKING WHAT AMOUNTS TO A PRETTY DIRECT DEATH THREAT, YOU FUCKING FOOL!

Why not call more attention to yourself, Republican loser? Carl must be even dumber than he looks! I have to wonder if when he called the police, he said anything even remotely like the rather obvious truth: “Um, yeah, I just made a, um, like, um, sort of, um, death threat to this guy who had the audacity to videotape me doing it. He’s locked himself in his truck, can you come over here to protect me from him?”

Conservatives are always ready to cry “foul” when their First Amendment Rights get stepped on, but when they’re the ones doing the goose-stepping on other people’s rights, hey, that’s a-okay!

BTW, as reported on Daily Kos, “Fighting Bob” Bergman, who worked a double shift last night as non-union machine operator, has personally collected 1411 signatures to recall Scott Walker, and 1403 signatures to recall Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch. So far!

“Fighting Bob” was never political in his life until last spring. Interesting to contrast what Walker inspires in his opponents vs. what he inspires in his own brain-dead supporters like this shithead, Carl here, and the creeps who pulled this stunt. I can’t imagine that Walker’s case benefits much with undecided voters from such self-defeating activities like these on the part of his supporters!

“Fighting Bob” and the people of Wisconsin, I salute you and think you’re all heroes. Thank you, very, very much for the important work you are doing, for ALL AMERICANS (including Fox News viewers too stupid to understand how what you are doing benefits them, I thank you on their behalf, too).

A vastly better world is possible!. Help consign Scott Walker’s administration to the dustbin of history by donating to United Wisconsin.
 

Tim Minchin portrait by gtgauvin

Australian comedian, piano whizz and enthusiastic exponent of guyliner Tim Minchin has had a satirical song of his called “Woody Allen Jesus” cut from the broadcast of one of the UK biggest chat shows, The Jonathan Ross Show. Minchin had been asked specifically by Ross and his producers to write and perform a Christmas ditty for the show, but when an advanced tape was passed to the station’s director of television, Peter Fincham, it was decided that the song needed to be dropped.

Minchin is miffed, and rightly so. Are well living in the 21st century or not? Does freedom of speech and thought (and music) exist in this country or is the Christian religion in such a dire state that it needs to ban anything that questions its relevance? Actually, that might be the case. Despite David Cameron’s particularly idiotic and toadying claims that the UK is a “Christian country”, the figures simply do not back this up, as this report in the ultra-conservative Daily Mail shows: “Number of Christians is down 10% in just five years.”

Minchin writes on his blog:

Being Christmas, I thought it would be fun to do a song about Jesus, but being TV, I knew it would have to be gentle. The idea was to compare him to Woody Allen (short, Jewish, philosophical, a bit hesitant), and expand into redefining his other alleged attributes using modern, popular-culture terminology.

It’s not a particularly original idea, I admit, but it’s quite cute. It’s certainly not very contentious, but even so, compliance people and producers and lawyers all checked my lyrics long before the cameras rolled. As always with these bespoke writing jobs, I was really stressed for about 3 days, and almost chucked it in the bin 5 times, and freaked out that it wasn’t funny and all that boring shit that people like me go through when we’re lucky enough to have with a big audience with high expectations. And if I’m honest, it ain’t a world-changing bit of comedy. Regardless…

And then someone got nervous and sent the tape to ITV’s director of television, Peter Fincham.

And Peter Fincham demanded that I be cut from the show.

He did this because he’s scared of the ranty, shit-stirring, right-wing press, and of the small minority of Brits who believe they have a right to go through life protected from anything that challenges them in any way.

Yesterday I wrote a big rant about comedy and risk and conservatism; about the fact that my joke has no victim; about sacredness (oh God, not again!) and about the importance of laughing at dumb but pervasive ideas. But I trashed it because it’s boring and takes it all too seriously. It’s hardly the end of the world.

But I have to admit I’m really fucking disappointed.

It’s 2011. The appropriate reaction to people who think Jesus is a supernatural being is mild embarrassment, sighing tolerance and patient education.

And anger when they’re being bigots.

Oh, and satire. There’s always satire.

Jonathan Ross is no stranger to controversy within the British media - in 2008 he and Russell Brand found themselves in deep shit after a phone call to Andrew Sachs was deemed to have gone “too far” by the tabloid press. Those ever-original and forward thinking people at the tabloids christened the incident “Sachsgate” and the outrage that was drummed up was enough to have both comedians ousted by their employer at the time, the BBC (one was suspended and the other quit.) This background hum of potential “outrage” may have been enough for Fincham to pull Minchin’s segment on the Ross show, but now it looks like a whole new controversy based on freedom of speech and expression is blowing up in ITV’s face. Oh dear.

Here is Tim Minchin performing “Woody Allen Jesus” on The Jonathan Ross Show:
 

 
In case you’d like to peruse the uh… far-out newsletters that Republican Presidential Ron Paul published in the 80s and 90s, there are 50 of them posted online at the Et tu, Mr. Destructo? blog.

The newsletters, which were described by TPM’s Benjy Sarlin as “compar[ing] African Americans to zoo animals, warned of a coming race war, and generally promoted racist, anti-semitic, and fringe militia views” will still probably not convince Ron Paul fanatics of a damned thing!

Mr Destructo writes:

“[...] there’s no way Paul could have been ignorant of the content [of] 8-12 page newsletters published under his name for over ten years. Paul supporters face three losing propositions:

• He lacks the competency to control content published under his own name for over a decade, and is thus unfit to lead a country.

• He doesn’t believe these things but considers them a useful political tool to motivate racist whites, which makes him fit to be a GOP candidate, but too obvious about it to win.

• He’s actually a racist, which makes him unfit to be a human being.

Further, you can’t dismiss this in the name of higher political or socioeconomic aspirations. Since Paul has no chance of winning — seriously, no chance at all — his only value is as a voice, a conduit for principles. And if your only hope is to change the discourse by amplifying ideas, you can do that via many voices and avenues. As I said in my Vice follow-up, acknowledging some of Paul’s good ideas, when you opt to support anti-imperialist and civil liberties ideals by supporting Paul the Candidate, you end up supporting everything else about him. That includes those newsletters and the unambiguous message to those who enjoy them: You can write these things and succeed; this works. The other good ideas to which he’s signatory can’t erase the fact that he put his name to those words printed above. The moral weight of those newsletters drags down even the most high-minded aspirations he has about civil liberties, and everything crashes down on all of us.

Back to Benjy Sarlin at TPM:

But his explanation is still relatively incomplete. As USA Today’s Jackie Kucinich noted on Thursday, when Paul responded to a similar controversy over the newsletters in a 1996 interview with the Dallas Morning News, he said that he was indeed aware of some of the offending passages and even offered explanations as to the thinking behind them. For example, he said a passage suggesting that “[g]iven the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the criminal justice system, I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal,” was based on outside research.

Video researcher Andrew Kaczynski unearthed a clip in 1995, before the newsletters had become an election issue in his district, in which Paul discussed the publication as one of his passion projects in his years out of Congress. He described it as a “political type of business, investment newsletter.”

Ron Paul’s base is by far the most devoted of any candidate and it’s unlikely the story, which came up in the 2008 election as well, will have much impact on his core supporters. But with Paul surging in Iowa and increasingly broadening his reach within the party, it might put a ceiling on his momentum.

In addition to the objectionable content of the newsletters, his odd explanation contrasts heavily with his hard-earned brand as an unconventional anti-politician who always tells the truth as he sees it and never waters down his views to pander to voters. It’s hard to square this with a candidate who claims that he somehow never bothered to read a newsletter published under his own name that generated as much as $1 million in revenues in just one single year. Even accepting that premise, how many politicians looking to start a publication would just happen to pick a half dozen writers with blatant white supremacist and milita leanings to run the effort?

Paultards, don’t shoot the messenger here. If you’re going to comment, comment on THIS STUFF, okay? Keep it ON THE TOPIC.

In the clip below, Paul discuses the newsletter at approx 1:40 in:
 

 
Thank you Ned Raggett!

Above, Rep. Steny Hoyer’s press conference today.

“Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask for unanimous consent that we bring up the bill to extend the tax cut to 160 million Americans, as you walk off the floor Mr. Speaker, you’re walking away, just as so many Republicans have walked away from middle-class tax payers, the unemployed, and very frankly as well from those who will be seeking medical assistance from their doctors — 48 million senior citizens.”

This CSPAN footage of House Republicans having a right little snit fit is something you’ll be seeing over and over again in DNC political ads in the coming year. THIS is what the GOP version of bipartisanship looks like, their way or the highway, quite literally. Everyone knows what who the roadblocks are in Washington anyway, but this was a graphic reminder!

What was the House Republican leadership thinking (nothing) to just hand over an image like this to the opposition? It’s like they’re suicidal lemmings. Via TPM:

While Republican leaders gathered in Speaker John Boehner’s Capitol office Wednesday morning for a photo op with reporters — hectoring Democrats and making the case that they’re on the right side of the payroll tax fight — an unusual scene played out on the House floor.

In an attempt to illustrate just who’s at fault for the payroll tax stalemate Minority Whip Steny Hoyer showed up to ask for a vote on the Senate’s compromise bill. Republicans could have simply objected and given Hoyer his talking point. Instead they gave him so much more.

Republicans just ignored Hoyer and refused to hear his unanimous consent request. The fill-in Speaker simply walked away.

The GOP is imploding even faster than I thought they would. This week’s antics have been particularly breathtaking... Keep it up lads and finish the job! I know you can do it!
 

 
Occupy Des Moines protesters razzed Newt Gingrich at the Iowa capitol this morning, disrupting the endorsement he was about to get from from Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, before heckling and chasing Gingrich and his wife Callista out of the building.

At first a fellow named David Goodner, of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, yelled “mic check” but security escorted him out almost immediately. A few minutes later several people began chanting, “Put people first,” but the press conference continued and Paulsen’s endorsement was conferred.

Soon after several protesters tried to corner him Gingrich to ask questions about his position on taxes and other things, but Gingrich’s staff held then back or he’d give them curt, dismissive answers.

The group – along with several dozen media employees – followed Gingrich and his wife Callista down the stairs of the Capitol and to a vehicle that was waiting to escort them.

They yelled at Gingrich as he walked away:

“You gave me 10 seconds, sir.  What if I had a million dollars. Would I get 10 minutes? How about an hour?”

“Speaker Gingrich, you can run but you can’t hide. We’re going to come for you everywhere you go.  You can’t show your face in public without seeing us.”

“You say you don’t like super PACs. How much money are super PACs spending on your campaign right now?”

Adam Mason of CCI explained his group’s actions today by saying they have been forced to result to disruptions since politicians won’t listen to their concerns.

“Speaker Gingrich and politicians like him have had deaf ears towards the concerns of everyday folks for too long,” Mason said. “That’s why the tea party stood up and that’s why Occupy has stood up and that’s why we continue to have to raise our voices to get them to listen.”

Keep it up folks, these bastards need to understand where you’re comin’ from… Hopefully more footage will surface of this incident as the day goes on.
 

 
Looks like TPM cribbed a title from the Firesign Theatre (not that I’ve ever done such a thing!) with this ridiculous clip from the mixed-up, muddled-up, zany Bizarro World of Fox and Friends, where up is down, black is white, the sky is whatever color Roger Ailes tells them it is and where Republicans want to help the little guys…

Watch in stunned bemusement as these three tax experts shockingly ignorant people (plus wicked radio witch Laura Ingraham) tie themselves into Klein bottles as they crawl up their own assholes trying to explain why it’s really the Democrats’ fault that the Republicans want to raise taxes on the middle class—but not on billionaires, no way—to an audience comprised of people even dumber than they are!

And they still can’t do it.

Gretchen Carlson really outdoes herself here. And Laura Ingraham falsely claims that we live “in a country where 50% of Americans pay no tax at all.” This is a bold-faced lie and she knows it. Ingraham is slimy and she’s mean, but she’s not dumb (Politifact, where are you???).

There are classic Fox News moments and then there are classic Fox News moments... This pathetic example of amusingly amateur Orwellian doublespeak is a new low even for the three stooges on that couch. People who get their news from Fox fill their heads with shit and this is a good illustration of that in action, as plain as day.

For shits and giggles, share this one in advance with that Tea party-supporting uncle of yours who you’ll be seeing later this week. If the Democrats were smart—and they aren’t—they’d let this one play itself out over the holidays so Tea baggers can twist in the wind bragging about what the Republican congressmen and women they got into office in the last election cycle have achieved for the country. Nice fuckin’ work, gramps!
 

 
Little Kim is reputedly a tightly wound arrogant alcoholic with a fetish for military gear, fast cars, platform shoes and Daffy Duck videos just like his dead daddy. This pudgy mouth-breather is Kim Jong-il’s Mini-Me without the Dr. Evil allure.

He has the yeasty puffiness of the Pillsbury Dough Boy and the slightly dazed look of an overweight baby that’s just wet its bed. With a bit of leather trim and a touch of brocade, he might be mistaken for one of Hitler’s ottomans, a comfortable foot rest where a pair of shiny black jackboots might find a perfect nesting place.

Let’s hope the lil’ dick-tator doesn’t do something real stupid to prove he’s a tough guy. Things get ugly when one of of these elevator-shoe-wearin’ autocrats try to over-compensate for their size and start gettin’ all nuclear and shit. Plus, the dude’s only 28-years-old. Has he even been laid? If you’re unfucked, you have no business being anywhere near a nuclear device. Sex, along with a good meal and rock and roll, makes life worth living. A virgin Pillsbury Dough Boy with his finger on the button is the stuff of nightmares.

We don’t need no fascist groove thang.
 

 
Lost in all the reporting of Newt Gingrich’s humiliating implosion in the polls leading up to the Iowa Caucus, is the fact that Public Policy Polling asked nearly 600 Iowa Republican voters if they thought that President Barack Obama was born in the United States and found that over half of them are “birthers” or “not sure” about his country of birth.

Only 47%  of the GOP voters polled in Iowa said that Obama was born in the United States.

For god’s sake… half?? Still? People this “reality challenged” and ignorant shouldn’t have such an out-sized influence on who gets to be leader of the free world. An electorate as uninformed and as unintelligent as this is a danger to all of us.

That’s why we should cut funding for education…it’s KENYAN SOCIALISM!
 

 

 
“I’m Rick Perry and I approve this message.”
 

 
Via I Heart Chaos

 
Hero of anti-immigrant, racist Republicans everywhere, AZ Sheriff Joe Arpaio was charged by the Justice Department with a rather long and utterly appalling list of civil rights violations.

Arpaio’s comically egotistical thirst for self-promotion (he briefly starred in a reality TV series) and flagrant disregard for civil rights have been well-known for a long time—it’s why the likes of Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Rick Perry all wanted to fellate this crotchety old bastard for his endorsement—but now the media notoriety he’s sought after might prove to be Arpaio’s undoing. Associated Press writes:

The civil rights report said Latinos are four to nine times more likely to be stopped in traffic stops in Maricopa County than non-Latinos and that the agency’s immigration policies treat Latinos as if they are all in the country illegally. Deputies on the immigrant-smuggling squad stop and arrest Latino drivers without good cause, the investigation found.

A review done as part of the investigation found that 20 percent of traffic reports handled by Arpaio’s immigrant-smuggling squad from March 2006 to March 2009 were stops - almost all involving Latino drivers - that were done without reasonable suspicion. The squad’s stops rarely led to smuggling arrests.

Deputies are encouraged to make high-volume traffic stops in targeted locations. There were Latinos who were in the U.S. legally who were arrested or detained without cause during the sweeps, according to the report.

During the sweeps, deputies flood an area of a city - in some cases, heavily Latino areas - over several days to seek out traffic violators and arrest other offenders. Illegal immigrants accounted for 57 percent of the 1,500 people arrested in the 20 sweeps conducted by his office since January 2008, according to figures provided by Arpaio’s office.

Police supervisors, including at least one smuggling-squad supervisor, often used county accounts to send emails that demeaned Latinos to fellow sheriff’s managers, deputies and volunteers in the sheriff’s posse. One such email had a photo of a mock driver’s license for a fictional state called “Mexifornia.”

The report said that the sheriff’s office launched an immigration operation two weeks after the sheriff received a letter in August 2009 letter about a person’s dismay over employees of a McDonald’s in the Phoenix suburb of Sun City who didn’t speak English. The tip laid out no criminal allegations. The sheriff wrote back to thank the writer “for the info,” said he would look into it and forwarded it to a top aide with a note of “for our operation.”
 
Federal investigators focused heavily on the language barriers in Arpaio’s jails. Latino inmates with limited English skills were punished for failing to understand commands in English by being put in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day or keeping prisoners locked down in their jail pods for as long as 72 hours without a trip to the canteen area or making nonlegal phone calls.

The report said some jail officers used racial slurs for Latinos when talking among themselves and speaking to inmates.

Detention officers refused to accept forms requesting basic daily services and reporting mistreatment when the documents were completed in Spanish and pressured Latinos with limited English skills to sign forms that implicate their legal rights without language assistance.

The agency pressures Latinos with limited English skills to sign forms by yelling at them and keeping them in uncomfortably cold cells for long periods of time.

As Miranda Blue, writing on the People for the American Way blog, adds:

These allegations are disturbing enough in themselves. But what’s even more troubling is that the person behind them has been not only held up as a hero by the Right, but has served as an inspiration for immigration legislation around the country. In a report last year, we examined the ways the anti-immigrant Right has worked to dehumanize immigrants in order “to inflame anti-immigrant sentiment and build political opposition to comprehensive immigration reform.” It should come as no surprise that Sheriff Joe is the movement’s figurehead.

Nope, none at all!

At the Justice Department press conference today, Arpaio was accused of violating the Constitution and Federal laws.

Thomas Perez, who heads the Justice Department’s civil rights division said the Arpaio investigation represents the most egregious case of racial profiling in the nation’s history, worse than anything he’s seen himself or reviewed in professional literature. Investigators interviewed more than 400 people, reviewed thousands of pages of documentation and toured Maricopa County jails as part of the probe.