Rising GOP star Dave Agema, neither a hater or bigot, just a good, clean-living, God-fearing conservative Republican

The humiliating self-immolation of Dr. Ben Carson apparently wasn’t enough, so the comedy gods must be demanding another GOP sacrifice. Dave Agema, the Republican National Committee member from Michigan—a small-minded dumbass whose anti-gay Facebook posting that suggested gays were responsible for “half the murders in large cities” (among other things, but Agema didn’t write it, he just posted it) made national news last week—isn’t going to go away quietly as he proved during a remarkably idiotic conservative talk radio interview.

Move over Louie Gohmert, you’ve got some brain-damaged competition in the “Male Michele Bachmann” sweepstakes!

Via Deadline Detroit:

“It’s not about hate, folks,” he says of warnings about purported physical and mental health risks of homosexuality. “What it is, is hey, if you’re in this lifestyle, if you really love somebody that’s in this lifestyle, you want to ask them and try to get them out because they’re not going to live as long. It’s going to hurt them emotionally and physically.

“That’s what it’s about. So it’s really more about caring than it is hate,” Agema adds during an outspoken, defiant conversation Monday with sympathetic hosts at WPIQ in Manistee in northern Michigan.

That talk-format station airs syndicated shows from Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. Comfortable turf, in other words.

Comfortable turf for unhinged morons like Agema who don’t know when to quit and detestable Republican fuckwits, in other other words…

Agema, a Michigan state representative from 2007-12 first got himself noticed about a year ago, when the newly-minted RNC member made some very confused remarks about Muslims, terrorism and how Obama was a Muslim terrorist. Or something like that. Agema is so witless that he once agreed to appear with Koran-burning Yosemite Sam look-a-like Pastor Terry Jones before backing out.

A bigot? Where’s the proof? Ahahahahahahahah. This guy’s fucking funny!

The Republican National Committee-man had this to say during his time on air with WPIQ’s Morning Breakfast Show hosts, Davin Lawrence and Doug Sedenquist, a Republican activist:

School messages: “I don’t want my kids – my grandkids, I should say – taught in school that this is an alternate lifestyle, [that] you should accept it. I would rather have them taught, hey look, here’s what happens in this lifestyle. Here’s what’s going to happen to you physically. Here’s what’s going to happen to you emotionally. Instead we’re going to teach just the opposite..”

Personal experience: “I’ve been involved in this issue for years, way back when I worked for American Airlines this became an issue, because we had, you know obviously we had a lot of homosexuals in the flight attendant realm, and, uhh, we had issues.”

Social change: “Society in general has been tolerant of any behavior that doesn’t affect others in a general stance. But this does affect others. . . . When you look at this stuff, it’s just amazing what’s happening in our society, how fast it’s happened, I mean just 20 years ago, you wouldn’t think this would happen, or 25 years ago, and look where we are now—we’re just like they are in Europe. And some of those studies over there show the same thing: This is not a good thing for us, folks. And all I want to do is maintain our principles, and I want to stay on the conservative side, not on the liberal side.”

Critical response: “They’re trying to say you’re a bigot if you’re bringing it up and I think that’s what bothers me more than anything. I never heard such amount of name-calling, threats and bigotry on their part, calling me a bigot, for bringing up this information. I have never seen anything like it. . . . I’ve been threatened just by speaking out. And that’s the key, they are trying to shut anyone and everyone down from saying anything, that’s what they do. . . . What you get thrown back in your face is nothing but hate.”

Threat to churches: “The next thing I fear is they’ll come to your churches and say oh, you won’t marry same-sex couples? Well that’s interesting. This is a hate crime, you just lost your tax-exempt status. This is going to go from one step to the next, it’s part of the plan.”

Challenge to party: “I just wish our leadership would get behind this, and stand, have backbone, and stand for what our core principles are in the Republican Party.”

I have to agree with Agema on that last point. Don’t ever change GOP!

Don’t. You. Ever. Change.
 

 
H/T Wonkette

Can you find all four idiots in the above image?

Was it entirely predictable that Dr. Ben Carson, the head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University and rightwing media darling would implode this publicly and this fast?

You’d think—or at least I did—that a man intelligent enough to run a department at a prestigious medical university would be… you know… well… smarter than the average conservative. Less prone, perhaps, to making idiotic comments when there’s a live microphone around?

You’d think that, but you’d be wrong. Dr. Ben Carson is a fucking idiot, as he proved on Fox News’ Hannity program last week when he compared marriage equality with bestiality and sex with children, and as he continued to demonstrate Monday on conservative talk radio troll Mark Levin’s show. Via TPM:

Carson, who is the head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University, said he represents an existential threat to liberals. “They need to shut me up, they need to get rid of me,” Carson said. “They can’t find anything else to delegitimize me, so they take my words, misrepresent them and try to make it seem that I’m a bigot.”

“And you’re attacked also, in many respects, because of your race,” Levin said. “Because you’re not supposed to think like this and talk like this. A lot of white liberals just don’t like it, do they?”

“Well, you know, they’re the most racist people there are,” Carson said. “Because, you know, they put you in a little category, a little box, you have to think this way. How could you dare come off the plantation?”

Um… sorry Dr. Carson, you might see yourself that way, but it seems rather obvious, based solely on, hey, your own words, that clear-thinking people, be they white, liberal or whatever else they may be, think you’re a plank. You and ANYONE else, of any race, who would say such nasty, ignorant and petty things. In public.

Dr. Carson, this is not a black thing or a white thing, this is a stupidity thing. YOUR stupidity. To imply otherwise is preposterous!

No one needs to look any further than your own words to conclude that YOU are the bigot in this equation. It’s got everything to do with the actual words that came out of your mouth, on national television!

You say that your words were twisted? HOW? Where is the nuance in comparing civil rights for America’s LGBT population to sex with animals and children?

Quite a leap to compare the reaction to what you said to, well, you know… actual bigotry!

If you were white, Dr. Carson, not a whole lot would change—you might even still be invited to come on Fox News, for instance, if you weren’t black—but people would still still be perfectly justified to call you an idiot. Because you are one.

The students at Johns Hopkins who want you out as their commencement speaker aren’t racists, but you sir, are most certainly an asshole.

HOW DARE these liberal bigots speak the truth to you…

UPDATE: I just read the following on Huffington Post in a piece by Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert on Carson’s travails and found it quite amusing:

“You know, intelligent people tend to talk about the facts,” Carson recently said, condemning those who reduce political disagreements to the kind you find on a “third grade playground.” He urged partisans to “find some accommodation” and to “tone down the rhetoric a little bit.”

He said these things while appearing on Fox News, the cable bastion of name-calling and blind partisanship. (Emphasis added)

Superb!

Here’s a link to yesterday’s Hannity, where one of the whitest men in America discusses supposed “racism” directed at black conservatives and gets his dumb ass handed to him on a platter by LA-based civil rights attorney (and talk radio host), Leo Terrell.
 

 
According to an absolutely infuriating item posted on Jezebel this morning, Juicy Couture, the shitty fashion line aimed at tacky wannabe Beverly Hills wives—at least the ones who want the word “Juicy” festooned across their ass cheek implants—has come up with a new LOW for treating their employees before the Affordable Care Act comes into effect, in particular the clause that states that a company employing more than 50 people working over 30 hours per week must pay for the employee’s basic healthcare costs.

Juicy Couture management’s outrageously offensive solution to duck out of their responsibilities to their thousands-strong workforce was pretty predictable: Cut all of their retail staffers down to less than 30 hours a week!

Two former employees of the chain’s New York City flagship store say Juicy Couture has a shady new policy of replacing full-time workers with part-timers — because only full-timers are eligible for paid sick leave, and because it wants to skirt its obligations under the A.C.A. The two workers, Darrell and Duane, say they were hired as full-timers and had their hours cut without explanation. Darrell had worked as a full-time employee at the store for two and a half years. Duane says that when he asked about why his hours were cut from 40 per week to 14, the store manager told him it was because he had a 5-year-old daughter and couldn’t guarantee his complete availability.

Nice, right? Ain’t that America?

Darrel and Duane are working with the Retail Action Project to get the word out and are sponsoring a petition demanding that Fifth and Pacific, the fashion house’s parent company, drop this policy:

When we began working at Juicy Couture, many of us were full-time. Now, only 19 of the store’s 128 employees are full-time! Not only are they firing full-time workers and replacing us with a part-time workforce, just this month Juicy capped all part-time workers hours at 21 hours per week. We quickly realized that Juicy Couture is doing everything they can to not take care of its workers.

See, it was hard enough for us to make ends meet in New York City as full-time retail workers. But by keeping hours under 30 per week, Juicy Couture will no longer be required to offer their workers affordable health care — part of the Affordable Health Care Act’s plan to make sure more working Americans have basic health care. Further, we were told we’re only eligible for paid time off in case we’re sick or have other responsibilities if we work 1400 hours in one year. We did the math, and realized part-time workers reach that at 21 hours per week. This means that the vast majority of Juicy Couture’s workers will not ever get one single paid sick day.

But here’s the best part: Fifth and Pacific made a profit of $57 million dollars last quarter!

I doubt if many of our readers wear their awful clothes, but a boycott seems far more appropriate than a mere petition. Fashion is a fickle business, how many people are going to want to wear the logo of a company that just shits on its workers’ heads like this?

Sign the petition: Tell Juicy: Take Care of Your Workers!
 

 

 
In yet another stunning example of, well, fucking idiocy—why look for an alternate way to state it, this shit doesn’t deserve the dignity, only cruel mocking—one of the top GOP officials in Georgia, Sue Everhart, the chairwoman of the state Republican Party there, told the Marietta Daily Journal that gay marriage will just encourage straight people to exploit the system to scrounge benefits!

“Lord, I’m going to get in trouble over this, but it is not natural for two women or two men to be married,” Everhart said. “If it was natural, they would have the equipment to have a sexual relationship.”

Everhart said while she respects all people, if same sex marriage is legalized across the country, there will be fraud.

“You may be as straight as an arrow, and you may have a friend that is as straight as an arrow,” Everhart said. “Say you had a great job with the government where you had this wonderful health plan. I mean, what would prohibit you from saying that you’re gay, and y’all get married and still live as separate, but you get all the benefits? I just see so much abuse in this it’s unreal. I believe a husband and a wife should be a man and a woman, the benefits should be for a man and a woman. There is no way that this is about equality. To me, it’s all about a free ride.”

Everhart said if she had a young child, she wouldn’t want them to have gay parents who would influence that child’s sexual orientation.

“You’re creating with this child that it’s a lifestyle, don’t go out and marry someone else of a different sex because this is natural,” Everhart said. “But if I had a next door neighbor who was in a gay relationship, I could be just as friendly to them as I could be to you and your wife or anybody else. I’m not saying that we ostracize them or anything like that. I’m just saying I’m against marriage because once you get the gay marriage you get everything else.”

Sorry Sue, but just like Chuck and Larry, gay people do want it all.

Via TPM:

Oh look… a shining city on a hill!

The Tea party, that supposedly populist political movement who never saw a tax cut for a billionaire it didn’t like BECAUSE FREEDOM, doesn’t really seem to quite “get” pop culture, even as they try desperately to emulate it, in ham-fisted efforts to appear hip.

Take for instance, Tea Party Patriots: A Movement On Fire! an odd exercise in far right, endtimes-themed agitprop that was screened at the recent conservative Republican confab, CPAC. The clip is a slickly produced, but paranoiac nod to both V for Vendetta and The Hunger Games that seems to be advocating for a decidedly non-democratic overthrow of the government. I picture inbred morons with Mountain Dew mouth watching and thinking “I would totally do that… if I could just lift myself off this couch…”

What “side” do these fucking planks pretend to themselves that they’re on, anyways?!?! Imagine what these folks would do if they were able to “take back” their country…

In The Hunger Games, the 1% live in obscene, preposterous luxury while the miserable proles are forced to work themselves to death and if they’re really unlucky, they get to participate in a spectator sport reality show (Sound like any country you know of, or maybe live in?). I don’t really think the Tea Party Patriots see themselves the same way that others see them, do you?

Heroes or zeroes, this is how the Teahadists are trying to appeal to young people. Imagine the flies this shit will attract! Superb!
 

 
FUN FACT: In 2011, Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler was arrested at LaGuardia Airport in New York and charged with criminal possession of a weapon when he presented a Delta Airlines agent with his Glock!
 

 
Ultimately, the thing that Tea Party Patriots: A Movement On Fire! reminded me of was this brilliant sketch from That Mitchell and Webb Look:
 

 
My wife recently asked me: “So why aren’t you writing any more of your political screeds for the blog lately?”

Some readers have written in and asked the same thing: When did I stop hating on Republicans, anyways?

I promise you I haven’t, but generally speaking, I get pretty burnt out on politics after an election year. This time, though, I think it goes deeper than that. The main reason I think I care less about politics today than I did only five months ago is that for years I’ve long expected to see a steep decline in the size of the GOP’s voter base and the party’s influence and I think that’s now pretty much a fait accompli. We’ve seen it happen. 2012 was the very last year that the Republicans still had a decent shot at getting in on a national level and cementing the rules of, ahem, “democracy” to favor themselves—but as we all know, that didn’t happen.

I certainly think there were very valid reasons for fearing the rise of the far right—the brief Tea party moment was admittedly not something that I saw coming—but I’m not feeling that so much anymore.

The Tea party foolishness, Glenn Beck, the birthers and the rapid rise and fall of Sarah Palin can already be seen in the rear-view mirror as the frenzied flailing of a dying elephant. By 2016, a pretty good chunk of the Grand Old Party’s aging baby boomer base will have at least one foot in the grave and by 2020 and 2024, well, forget about it.
 

 
In the very near future, America will be truly unrecognizable to itself, and this will be especially hard on the folks who don’t even live in the present to begin with. Progress cannot be stopped. Entropy is simply not possible in a country this big and with such a radically changing demographic makeup, no matter how certain personality types—low IQ authoritarians, xenophobes, racists, religious busybodies, I’m talking about the GOP base, here, of course—try to force it on everyone else.

I’m just so over it. Aren’t you?

The dam has burst on a lot of issues: immigration reform, LGBT civil rights, cannabis laws, healthcare, and the water is rushing past the reichwingers and they just got drenched.

This is not to say that I’m not still amused by soaking wet Republicans, it’s just that the 2012 election showed, I think definitively, the hard and fast limits to their influence and that the national brand is truly a spent force, one perhaps best left behind as a relic of another era (like plaid golf pants, Brylcreem, Lawrence Welk… or Jim Crow laws).

To my mind, it all looks pretty downhill from here on out for the Republican Party. Any argument that posits a resurgent national GOP moving forward is an argument made by someone who apparently still thinks that the most recent US Census was just a big ole fat gubmint LIE and who probably voted for Michele Bachmann in the Iowa Caucus.
 

 
There simply aren’t enough of them anymore. That’s a demographic fact, Jack. Don’t believe me? Go argue with reality, I don’t care what you think. Get real: The so-called “two party system” is not some immutable law of American political physics that needs to carry on without end, especially not when one of the parties has opted to radically remake itself, taking on the classic features of an extremist fringe group.

Some Republicans kinda got the “voter revulsion” message, but not really. When Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus presented the 97-page report of the RNC’s “Growth and Opportunity Project,” a post-mortem on the GOP’s 2012 losses at the National Press Club on Monday, he said:

“When Republicans lost in November, it was a wake-up call. And in response I initiated the most public and most comprehensive post-election review in the history of any national party. As it makes clear, there’s no one reason we lost. Our message was weak; our ground game was insufficient; we weren’t inclusive; we were behind in both data and digital; our primary and debate process needed improvement.”

In short, a sizable majority of the American electorate thinks the Republicans suck eggs and their own internal polling backs that up to the extent that they don’t even try to spin it anymore! (Something remarkable in and of itself).

The report is actually pretty brutal, acknowledging that women, gays, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, college-educated Caucasians and the mainstream media basically hate Republicans. These, er, “special interest groups” are, for all intents and purposes, immune to the GOP’s charms. They’re not going to just suddenly jump on the Republican train for any reason, this much seems assured.

Not to mention:

“Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents…”

Yeah, the young people. They simply aren’t that into inheriting a country with insane wealth inequality, the 1% elite owning half of everything and keeping the productive capital within their own families, tainted meat, bad air and undrinkable water. Try rounding up an electoral majority when women, gays, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, college-educated Caucasians and young people of all races think you’re shit!.

‘Nuff said, eh GOP?
 

 

“We sound increasingly out of touch.”

That’s putting it mildly. The GOP talk about minority outreach, and then they introduce voter ID bills in their statehouses! It’s even a matter of Republicans appearing not to be able to differentiate fiction from reality anymore, let alone shit from shinola.

I mean, they’re exactly what Bobby Jindal said they—and by extension he, himself—are: “the stupid party.” Many Americans simply perceive the GOP as being closely synonymous with idiocy and they have no trouble articulating this to the GOP’s own pollsters. And like, this somehow appears to be NEWS to them! The stench of stupid is so thick on the modern Republican party brand that it’s going to be a really difficult odor to wash off.

Hands up, who wants to be a member of the stupid party? How about you?
 

 

“At our core, Republicans have comfortably remained the Party of Reagan without figuring out what comes next. Ronald Reagan is a Republican hero and role model who was first elected 33 years ago—meaning no one under the age of 51 today was old enough to vote for Reagan when he first ran for President.”

OUCH, OUCH AND DOUBLE OUCH! A knife thrust deep into the Republican heart! Why it’s conservative treason… even if it’s true!

They’ve had no new ideas since the Reagan era, either. Since before most people owned a personal computer. Since there were just three TV networks and PBS for most of America! Why would the smartest, most capable young conservatives of the up and coming generation want to make a career investment in the GOP instead of someplace… you know, not so dumb? How will the party attract talent?
 

 
And furthermore, how will the party raise money when they’ve proven to be such a shitty investment for their deep-pockets donors. Even the Koch brothers seem to be turning their back on the GOP. Who could blame them, they’re ruthless businessmen? They know the score. The ROI the GOP offer blows. Expect them to act accordingly. If Rand Paul would bolt the party for the Libertarians (as his father once did) the Kochs would be right there behind him.

“If Hispanics think we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies.”

Hahahaha. No shit. Well, then someone had better essplain that to the loudmouthed lamebrain from Texas, Rep. Louie “anchor babies” Gohmert, who insists that the GOP must never give into immigration reform because “they” will never vote for Republicans if offered a pathway to citizenship. It’s a “trap” Democrats have laid for the GOP, in Gohmert’s eyes.

Look, Louie Gohmert’s a fucking idiot, that’s glaringly obvious to everyone but him and his fellow idiots, but if you think about it, he’s actually quite right in this instance. It’s a real damned if they do, damned if they don’t sort of situation these Republicans have put themselves in regarding immigration reform, isn’t it? But they’ve insisted upon it, the Democrats didn’t trap them with anything. This is a giving them an awful lot of credit for what amounts to a Catch 22 that’s been hatching under their noses and in their own districts, literally for DECADES, don’tcha think?
 

 
As New York’s Jonathan Chait wrote about the RNC’s seemingly intractable woes:

The report determinedly avoids confronting the party’s most fundamental problem: Its attachment to an economic agenda that most voters correctly identify as serving the needs of a wealthy minority. Rather than confront the problem, the report is a detailed and generally shrewd plan for working around.

Yup. Tuesday on MSNBC, RNC chair Reince Priebus told Luke Russert that the party’s platform on gay marriage has not changed despite efforts to make the party appear more inclusive:

“I know our party believes marriage is between one man and one woman.”

That’s some “effort,” Reince (if that is, in fact, your real name).
 

Paul Ryan, the GOP’s pathetic idea of an intellectual…

Obviously there’s a gigantic problem with this entire RNC re-branding enterprise: It’s dead on arrival and anyone with a brain capable of critical thought on the level of, say, a peanut, can see the fatal flaw that’s got a flashing neon sign and a bunch of old coots in Revolutionary War uniforms pointing their replica muskets right at it. Republican voters, especially the ones who never went to college, the cranky old farts who are to varying degrees racist, close-minded Christianists, anti-immigrant homophobes and just angry, disapproving people, en générale, will have none of this shit!

And these troglodytes make up about half the party’s registration rolls and everyone knows it. Good luck with the fucking rebranding, boys.
 

 
Writing about the RNC autopsy at the NY Times, Thomas B. Edsall had this to say:

The highly visible presence of the candidates these voters prefer – recall the party’s Senate nominees in Missouri and Indiana, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, and their bizarre views on rape and abortion — suggests that the Republican Party has a severe, if not toxic, problem: a septic electorate that, in the words of the Mayo Clinic, “can trigger a cascade of changes that can damage multiple organ systems, causing them to fail.”

But let’s leave these trifling inconveniences aside for now, shall we? Suffice to say, there’s a major split occurring in the GOP that’s going to seriously impact their ability to ever get back to a place of national influence. This was already obvious at the start of the primary season. As a national party, they’re no-hopers within a decade, splintering into factions (Tea party and social conservatives, RNC establishment and the wealthy elites, “Ron/Rand Paul Libertarians,” etc) and facing an increasingly insurmountable demographic irrelevancy that will grow by leaps and bounds every four years.
 

 
I don’t think the Republicans can do that much—or at least as much—damage to the country moving forward. It’s clear that there are (at least) two factions of the party who are locked in a civil war. The endgame of everyone taking their toys and going home seems like a forgone conclusion. They’re just not going to be able to work together anymore. You’ve got the wealthy elites who would like the game to stay rigged vs. the Rick Santorum “stupid” folks. They desperately need one another to add up to a nationally viable party. Divided they don’t really amount to much anymore.

They’ve been humbled, their electoral impotency was on full display for the entire country to see on election night.

Furthermore. there are boundaries now that they know they can’t cross. Those boundaries weren’t there before, but they are now. Public opinion can be employed much easier as a prophylactic against the worst Republican power grabs (like this talk of changing Electoral College rules, something that everyone is already wise to). Of course, I’m not suggesting completely ignoring what the GOP gets up to—I’m not usually someone to underestimate the power of stupid people in a group—but their best days are behind them, and I think that’s a pretty uncontroversial thing to say at this point, without any caveats coming readily to mind.
 

 
I’m noticing that this attitude is increasingly, and I think correctly, becoming the default position of the mainstream media, that the uh… I guess threat of low IQ authoritarian Republicanism has diminished considerably. Bill Maher touched on this topic on his Real Time program on HBO last week when he mocked Christian bluenose group One Million Moms (the churchladies who protest the Skittles and Geico commercials for promoting bestiality) who have not one million Twitter followers, but fewer than 3000.

When Bill Maher is brushing off silly reichwingers as a source of comedy, like a canary flying out of a coalmine, hey, he’s probably onto something: They’re a joke.

It’s a pretty steep fall from Andrew Breitbart to Ben Shapiro to put it a different way.

The 2012 election was a real “man behind the curtain” moment for the Grand OLD Party and its increasingly tenuous relationship to modern America and the up and coming generation. The slow, agonizing death of the Republican Party seems all but certain, done in by hubris, idiocy, greed, hypocrisy, terrible ideas, loathsome shit-for-brains politicians, moronic uninformed voters, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the list can go on and on and on. They suck, but fuck ‘em, they’re not really worth nearly as much energy being expended in their direction.

Maybe it’s simply time to push past them and leave these nitwits behind to play in their sandbox of stupidity. The zeitgeist is not with the Republican Party and I think the big story of American politics in 2013 is that most people are starting to realize this.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
The nightmare (free market) scenario the GOP faces: THEY’RE A VERY BAD INVESTMENT

The Republicans are way, way, more screwed than they thought!

Republican explains to other Republicans why the GOP is so totally fucked

 
To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

—Tomas Young
 

 
The Crucifixion of Tomas Young (TruthDig)

Who wouldn’t want to punch this stupid face?

Hahahahahaha. I guess getting punched in the face by a “union thug” wasn’t quite the career break that Fox News dickweed and self-styled “comedian” Steven Crowder thought it would be. A Michigan prosecutor has declined to pursue assault charges against the man who punched him. On video.

Via Raw Story:

The Lansing State Journal reported on Tuesday that Ingham County Prosecutor Stuart Dunnings III decided not to pursue a case after watching unedited video of Crowder’s appearance at a protest against right-to-work legislation, which culminated in Crowder getting punched in the face.

Crowder filed a police report and claimed he was assaulted, saying in interviews that he was “beat down” and that protesters “literally would have killed me where I stood if I defended myself.” He also published an edited version of the confrontation online.

But after watching both that video and a longer, unedited account of the incident as aired on Current TV, Dunnings said, “It’s pretty clear the person that they wanted to charge was acting in self-defense.” In the longer video, the man who punched Crowder was pushed by an unseen person before striking him, giving the encounter a different context.

“I’m not holding that against him, but why would they provide the edited video?” Dunnings said. “The longer video clearly shows the guy got pushed down and came up swinging.”

Why would Steven Crowder have provided an edited video, I wonder?

Anyone care to hazard a guess?

Another fun fact about Crowder: He’s an abstinence advocate…

Roger Ailes really knows how to pick credible people for Fox News, doesn’t he?

Previously on Dangerous Minds
Fox News dickhead punched at labor protests in Michigan

Fox News chucklehead under scrutiny for creative editing of ‘union thug’ video

Fox News bastard who got cold-clocked at labor protest tells his own idiotic side of the story

 
This ridiculous footage was shot over the weekend at the conservative Republican convention, CPAC, during a seminar titled “Trump The Race Card: Are You Sick And Tired Of Being Called A Racist When You Know You’re Not One?” led by a black conservative by the name of K. Carl Smith. (As Bill Maher pointed out Friday on his HBO show Real Time, if you’re “sick and tired” of being called a racist, chances are that you ARE a racist, but nevermind that rather obvious logic for a moment).

TPM’s Benjy Sarlin was present at the seminar and wrote that Smith “mostly urged attendees to deflect racism charges by calling themselves ‘Frederick Douglass Republicans.’” (Now THAT’S rebranding for ya, ain’t it?)

Watch what happens when CPAC attendee, Scott Terry of North Carolina, speaks. It’s mind-boggling. This asshole—who was with a buddy in a Confederate flag tee-shirt—shocked even his fellow CPAC attendees with his “food and shelter” remark about slavery. I don’t think that was easy to do in a place like CPAC—in particular to offend the kinds of clowns who’d sign up for something called “Trump The Race Card: Are You Sick And Tired Of Being Called A Racist When You Know You’re Not One?”—but somehow Scott Terry managed it.

Scott Terry is “proud” of “his people”! So proud that he felt the need to go to a meeting about perceived racism in the conservative movement and explain how as a white, Southern male, HE’S BEING DISENFRANCHISED by all this talk of minority outreach!

Genius!
 

 
On her MSNBC program last night, Rachel Maddow warned people who were personally affected by the mass murder in Newtown, Connecticut that they might want to change the channel as new information has been made public about the tragedy. Via The Raw Story:

The Hartford Courant reported Wednesday that the shooter, Adam Lanza, fired a total of 152 bullets in less than 5 minutes, killing 20 young children and 6 adults. Lanza used a Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and had 30-round magazines. As Maddow noted, he only needed to reload his weapon four times before killing himself with a pistol.

“Had he only had access to ten-round magazines instead of 30-round magazines he would’ve had to reload 14 times,” she continued. “He would’ve needed 14 spare magazines beyond the one in the gun with the extra round in the chamber. Reloading 14 times. You think he would’ve still pulled off the whole thing in less than five minutes?”

Contemplate that for a moment. I don’t ever think there’s ever going to be a time when guns won’t be a part of American life, but this cuts straight to the heart of the matter about allowing semi-automatic weapons as a society.

As someone who was born and raised in rural West Virginia, I grew up in a household where there were guns. Guns for protection, my father isn’t a hunter. He’s not really a gun “enthusiast” in any way, really, but he’s got a few. Considering where my parents live, it did then and it still makes total sense to me why my father would want to have a gun around the house for an emergency situation—it would take the sheriff at least 30 minutes to get to their house. In a life or death situation, frankly, I can well understand wanting to own a firearm for protection, but especially if you live way out in the boonies.

In the American spectrum of opinion, on most matters, I would describe myself to the far, far left. On the matter of gun control, however, I’d describe myself as almost “neutral,” but can anyone tell me why in the world any civilian would need to own an weapon that can fire a fucking 30-round magazine for ANY PURPOSE OTHER THAN KILLING A LOT OF PEOPLE IN A VERY SHORT TIME FRAME?

I’m truly not an anti-gun person, but the NRA and its little bitches, the GOP, have got to scale one hell of a logical precipice to make a better argument than is made here.  I mean, seriously, come the fuck on, WHO NEEDS A BAZOOKA???? This is getting ridiculous…

I think Michael Moore is right: If the country saw photos of those dead kids in CT, the ban on semi-automatic weapons would be all but assured and there would be nothing the NRA or the Republicans could do about it.
 

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