Mike Huckabee Says He Wants Americans To Be Indoctrinated At Gunpoint
Did Mike Huckabee just flush his presidential aspirations down the proverbial toilet? Well, if American mainstream media has an ounce of journalistic gumption remaining the answer most certainly would be “yes”. Huckabee has just been caught on video, at a Christian supremacist conference, stating that Americans should be forcibly indoctrinated at gunpoint. The organization which hosted the “Rediscover God In America” conference, United in Purpose, has edited Huckabee’s comment from footage of his speech, but not before People For The American Way’s Kyle Mantyla captured the unedited footage, in which Mike Huckabee states, “I almost wish that there would be, like, a simultaneous telecast, and all Americans would be forced–forced at gunpoint no less–to listen to every David Barton message, and I think our country would be better for it. I wish it’d happen.”
David Barton is the leading promoter of a brand of falsified American history altered to support the claim that America was founded as a Christian, rather than a secular, nation. As Chris Rodda, who has authored an entire book debunking Barton’s brand of pseudo-history, writes,
I was quite surprised… to come across a video clip from this conference on the People for the American Way (PFAW) Right Wing Watch blog with the headline “Huckabee: Americans Should Be Forced, At Gunpoint, To Learn From David Barton.” I had watched Huckabee’s speech. How on earth could I have missed a statement like that? Well, I didn’t. It had been edited out of the webcast that I had watched.
Kyle Mantyla over at PFAW’s Right Wing Watch had recorded Huckabee’s speech when it was streamed live on Thursday, and posted the ‘forced at gunpoint’ clip on Friday. By Saturday, when I watched the webcast on the United in Purpose website, that part of Huckabee’s speech had been edited out.
The webcast that I saw showed Barton leaving the stage as he ended his presentation, then the screen going black for a moment, and then what appeared to be the beginning of Huckabee’s speech. What was edited out was Barton returning to the stage to introduce Huckabee, and the first two minutes and forty-five seconds of Huckabee’s speech, during which Huckabee made his ‘gunpoint’ comment and praised David Lane, the man behind all of the American “Renewal” and “Restoration” projects that have popped up across the country during the past few elections.
[below: the unedited footage from Huckabee’s speech, with the “joke” about indoctrinating Americans at gunpoint to be found at at 1:06. Footage courtesy of Kyle Mantyla of Rightwing Watch, who might have almost single-handedly consigned Huckabee’s presidential hopes to the dustbin of history.]
I should also note that what Chris Rodda has to say about this has especial weight given that she’s arguably been the most indefatigable author to challenge David Barton’s sprawling falsified American history oeuvre, as a Talk To Action site search on Rodda’s extensive posts debunking Barton would suggest. Chris Rodda is author of the book Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right’s Alternate Version of American History which prominently features David Barton, head of Wallbuilders and arguably king of the “liars for Jesus”. Rodda is also Head Researcher for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.
Pity the lowly astrocyte, the most common cell in the human nervous system.
Astrocytes are star-shaped cells that are the most common cell in the human brain and have now been grown from embryonic and induced stem cells in the laboratory of UW-Madison neuroscientist Su-Chun Zhang. Once considered mere putty or glue in the brain, astrocytes are of growing interest to biomedical research as they appear to play key roles in many of the brain’s basic functions, as well as neurological disorders ranging from headaches to dementia. In this picture astrocyte progenitors and immature astrocytes cluster to form an “astrosphere.” Photo provided by Robert Krencik/ UW-Madison
Long considered to be little more than putty in the brain and spinal cord, the star-shaped astrocyte has found new respect among neuroscientists who have begun to recognize its many functions in the brain, not to mention its role in a range of disorders of the central nervous system.
Now, writing in the current (May 22) issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology, a group led by University of Wisconsin-Madison stem cell researcher Su-Chun Zhang reports it has been able to direct embryonic and induced human stem cells to become astrocytes in the lab dish.
The ability to make large, uniform batches of astrocytes, explains Zhang, opens a new avenue to more fully understanding the functional roles of the brain’s most commonplace cell, as well as its involvement in a host of central nervous system disorders ranging from headaches to dementia. What’s more, the ability to culture the cells gives researchers a powerful tool to devise new therapies and drugs for neurological disorders.
“Not a lot of attention has been paid to these cells because human astrocytes have been hard to get,” says Zhang, a researcher at UW-Madison’s Waisman Center and a professor of neuroscience in the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. “But we can make billions or trillions of them from a single stem cell.”
Although astrocytes have gotten short shrift from science compared to neurons, the large filamentous cells that process and transmit information, scientists are turning their attention to the more common cells as their roles in the brain become better understood. There are a variety of astrocyte cell types and they perform such basic housekeeping tasks as helping to regulate blood flow, soaking up excess chemicals produced by interacting neurons and controlling the blood-brain barrier, a protective filter that keeps dangerous molecules from entering the brain.
Astrocytes, some studies suggest, may even play a role in human intelligence given that their volume is much greater in the human brain than any other species of animal.
“Without the astrocyte, neurons can’t function,” Zhang notes. “Astrocytes wrap around nerve cells to protect them and keep them healthy. They participate in virtually every function or disorder of the brain.”
The ability to forge astrocytes in the lab has several potential practical outcomes, according to Zhang. They could be used as screens to identify new drugs for treating diseases of the brain, they can be used to model disease in the lab dish and, in the more distant future, it may be possible to transplant the cells to treat a variety of neurological conditions, including brain trauma, Parkinson’s disease and spinal cord injury. It is possible that astrocytes prepared for clinical use could be among the first cells transplanted to intervene in a neurological condition as the motor neurons affected by the fatal amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, are swathed in astrocytes.
“With an injury or neurological condition, neurons in the brain have to work harder, and doing so they make more neurotransmitters,” chemicals that in excess can be toxic to other cells in the brain, Zhang says.
“One idea is that it may be possible to rescue motor neurons by putting normal, healthy astrocytes in the brain,” according to Zhang. “These cells are really useful as a therapeutic target.”
The technology developed by the Wisconsin group lays a foundation to make all the different species of astrocytes. What’s more, it is possible to genetically engineer them to mimic disease so that previously inaccessible neurological conditions can be studied in the lab.
Well, it’s official; former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain has formally launched his presidential campaign today. And according to Fox News “political analyst” Angela McGlowan, if Cain just picks wingnut Rep. Allen West as his running mate, he can beat Obama in 2012.
COLMES: Herman Cain… it’s not a coincidence that he announced his candidacy on doomsday. This is a guy who said he’d put no Muslims in his Cabinet. He said Muslims want to either convert you or kill you. He’s a birther. He has absolutely no chance whatsoever of becoming President of the United States.
McGlowan interrupted Colmes and reminded him that “being that extreme” could win him the primary to which Colmes basically responded, bring it on if that’s who Republicans want to run in 2012.
COLMES: If that’s who you want to have represent you. You want someone who can win the primary who could never win the general election, if that’s the way you want to go, be my guest. Have a good time. Have fun.
MCGLOWAN: If he chooses Allen West, he could win.
COLMES: Absolutely not. Allen West is another cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs far right extremist.
McGlowan also went on to suggest that after the latest Fox attack on President Obama after his speech on the Middle East this week that Hollywood Jews are going to abandon him in droves.
Right-wing media unleashed a crazed onslaught after President Obama’s speech on the Middle East, outrageously asserting that Obama “sided with terrorists” by saying that the 1967 borders should guide negotiations over the formation of a Palestinian state. But this position is nothing new, and American Jewish groups praised today’s speech. Read on…
Atheists enjoy much better sex lives than religious people who tend to be guilt-ridden during the act and for weeks afterwards, say researchers.
A study discovered that non-believers are more willing to discuss sexual fantasies and are more satisfied with their experiences.
Both groups admitted indulging in masturbation, watching porn, having oral sex and pursuing affairs. But believers did not enjoy the experiences as much, being overcome by intense feelings of regret after climaxing, thanks to the stigma created by their belief systems.
The findings emerged in the ‘Sex and Secularism’ survey of more than 14,500 people carried out by psychologist Darrel Ray and Amanda Brown from Kansas University, the Daily Mail reported.
All of the people who were questioned were found to have sex around the same number of times a week. They also became sexually active at similar ages.
But devoutly religious people rated their sex lives far lower than atheists. They also admitted to strong feelings of guilt afterwards.
Strict religions such as Mormons ranked highest on the scale of sexual guilt. Their average score was 8.19 out of 10. They were followed closely behind by Jehovah’s Witness, Pentecostal, Seventh Day Adventist, and Baptist.
Catholics rated their levels of sexual guilt at 6.34 while Lutherans came slightly lower at 5.88. In contrast, atheists and agnostics ranked at 4.71 and 4.81 respectively.
The study found that in individuals, the stronger their religious beliefs were, the more powerful were their feelings of sexual guilt afterwards.
The Audacity of Hate: Birthers, Deathers, Deniers, Racists and Barack Obama
WALTER BRASCH
The latest garbage spewing hate as it circles the Internet in a viral state of panic continues a three year smear against Barack Obama.
The attacks had begun with the extreme right wing spitting out Obama’s full name-Barack HUSSEIN Obama, as if somehow he wasn’t an American but connected to the Iraqi dictator who, despite the Bush Administration’s best efforts, had no connections to 9/11.
When the right-wingers and Tea Party Pack get tired of their “cutesy” attempts to link Obama to militant Muslims, they launch half-truths and lies to claim he wasn’t born in the United States. Like Jaws, Jason, or Freddy Krueger, “birther” propaganda keeps returning, even when independent state officials and analysts proved the claims false.
The issue simmered on Fox TV and talk radio until Donald Trump, the man with the planet-sized ego and the bacteria-sized brain, inserted his persona into the issue, while pontificating about becoming the next president. The media, exhausted from having to cover the antics of Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen, turned their news columns over to the man who would be God-if only it paid better.
The Wing Nut Cotillion, with Trump getting the headlines, then demanded Obama produce a long-form birth certificate-which he did while leading a combined White House-CIA-Pentagon effort to find and destroy Osama bin Laden. The truth still hasn’t quieted the conspiracy nuts.
Not willing to accept truth and logic, the extreme right wing, grasping for anything they could find, have attacked the raid that killed bin Laden. Among their screeches are that bin Laden isn’t dead . . . that he was killed a week earlier or even years earlier . . . that Obama had hidden the death until there was a more political time to reveal it . . . that it was George W. Bush (who publicly said six months after 9/11 that he didn’t care about bin Laden) who deserves all the credit . . . and that while Navy SEALS should get credit, Obama is too weak to have overseen any part of the mission.
And now from the caves of ignorance and hatred comes a much-forwarded letter, which the anonymous author says “shouldn’t surprise anyone.” Written as fact, the letter informs us Barack Obama: “never held a ‘real’ job, never owned a business and as far as we know, never really attended Harvard or Columbia since those transcripts have never been released and no one remembers him from their time at either school.”
The email of hate further “enlightens” us that “Being a community activist only gives someone insite [sic] on how to assist the less fortunate and dregs of society on how to acquire government housing and government benefits without ever contributing one penny in taxes.”
That’s right. The Whackadoodles Wearing Tinfoil Caps crowd has escaped again.
Among those community activists who worked with the “dregs of society,” apparently on ways to scam the government, are St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226), founder of the Franciscan order and patron saint of animals and the environment; Jacob Riis (1849-1914), a journalist and photographer who exposed the squalor of slums and tenement buildings; Dorothy Day (1897-1980), a journalist who founded the Catholic Worker Movement that advocated nonviolent action to help the poor and homeless, and who the archdiocese of New York, at the direction of Pope John Paul II, began a process leading to beatification; and Jane Addams (1860-1935), who fought for better conditions for children and mothers, was active in the progressive campaigns of Teddy Roosevelt and who, like Roosevelt, earned a Nobel Peace Prize. Those who rail against community activists for not having “real” jobs would also oppose Saul Alinsky (1909-1972), who tirelessly established the nation’s most effective organizational structure to help the poor and disenfranchised to gain a voice against political, economic, and social oppression; Dr. Benjamin Spock (1903-1998), America’s foremost pediatrician, for leading antiwar campaigns; Cesar Chavez (1927-1993), who helped get farm workers respectable pay and decent working conditions; Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) who, with hundreds of thousands of others, forced a nation to finally confront its racism; and innumerable leaders of the feminist and gay rights communities who got America to confront their other prejudices. All were community activists.
Not dregs because they have “real” jobs are the bankers and Wall Street investors who brought about the housing crisis that led to the worst depression in the past seven decades. Also exempt from contempt are the business owners who downsized, right-sized, and shipped their production overseas, throwing millions of Americans out of work.
Barack Obama, castigated for not having a “real job,” worked more than a year as research associate and editor at the Business International Corp., three years as director of Developing Community Projects, a church-based group for eight Catholic parishes, and summer jobs at law firms. Other “not real” jobs include being an author, civil rights lawyer, and a professor of Constitutional law at one of the nation’s more prestigious colleges. Frankly, it’s rather nice to have a president who actually understands the Constitution-as opposed to the rabble who misquote, misstate, and misappropriate it all the time.
Those propagating the email of hate believe Obama couldn’t earn degrees from Ivy League colleges; the subtext is as clear as their refusal to believe in an integrated nation. So, I contacted the registrars at Columbia and Harvard. In less than 10 minutes, the registrar at Columbia confirmed that Barack Obama received a B.A. in political science, and the registrar at Harvard Law School confirmed Obama received a J.D. These are public records. Anyone can ask the same questions, and get the same answer. Logic alone should have shot down these accusations. Obama was editor of the Harvard Law Review, something as easy to verify as his graduation, and he passed the Illinois bar exam-which requires graduation from college and law school, and a personal character test-also a matter of public record.
Even if Obama provided official transcripts, which are confidential, the wing nuts of society will claim that, like the birth certificate and the death of bin Laden, the transcripts were faked.
The truth is that the politics of hate, combined with media complicity and Internet access, has led not to a discussion of issues but to character assassination, with racism and bigotry as its pillars.
The GOP’s Lame Presidential Candidates: Are They Crazy Enough for the
Right-Wing Screamers?
Most of the GOP favorites have certain critical flaws that
could cripple their chances of winning over the Limbaugh-Fox News-Malkin axis of
the GOP base.
May 20, 2011 |
//Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
There was a time when Rush Limbaugh fans would happily trot to the ballot box
and vote for soulless corporate lackeys like Bob Dole simply because they
represented that last bulwark defending Real America from Hitlerly KKKlinton’s
mandatory castration program.
But times have changed and nowadays Rush and his fellow right-wing media
shriekers are far more demanding. As the nominations of Sharon Angle, Joe
Miller, Carl Paladino and Christine O’Donnell demonstrate, Limbaugh and his
like-minded allies have inspired their audience to thumb their nose at the
Republican establishment by supporting candidates who not only protect them from
Democrats but who also speak to their deeply held cultural values.
Oftentimes, these values take the form of a checklist of key issues: Does the
candidate want to privatize Medicare? Do they want to start wars with multiple
Middle Eastern countries? Do they properly relish punishing teachers, policemen
and firefighters for daring to seek higher wages? And most importantly, do they
oppose any efforts to encourage children to exercise and eat vegetables?
Unfortunately, most of the 2012 Republican favorites all have certain
critical flaws that could cripple their chances of winning over the Limbaugh-Fox
News-Malkin axis of the GOP base. In this piece we’ll break down the major 2012
contenders and see how they stack up to the conservative media howlers’ ideals
of misanthropy, bloodlust and authoritarianism.
-Candidate #1: Mitt Romney
Romney is the classic type of plastic corporatist puppet that the Republican
Party has proudly nominated for decades. He has perfect hair, chiseled looks and
a business background that would typically make him an ideal candidate in any
Republican primary.
But there’s a major problem with Mitt: He started his political career in
Massachusetts, which ranks somewhere between North Korea and Mordor in the eyes
of talk radio personalities. While running for and serving in public office in
Massachusetts, Mitt made a number of statements that are standard fare for Bay
State politicians but that sound like chants from the Satanic Bible to the
Limbaugh-Beck axis. For instance, in 2003, then-Governor Romney said he’d
support a nationwide gas tax hike. He also worked very hard to establish his
pro-choice credentials by filling out a (gulp!) Planned Parenthood questionnaire
on reproductive rights. Oh, and he also once said during a debate with Ted
Kennedy that “we must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern.”
Uh-oh!
But the very worst thing Romney did while governor or Mordorchusetts was to
help people get access to health care. It didn’t matter that Romney did so in a
corporatist manner that enlarged the take-home pay for insurance company boards
– his efforts to get people in Massachusetts health insurance may well doom him
in the coming election. You see, helping people get health care is the one of
the most horrific crimes against humanity according to Fox News and friends
largely because… well we’re not sure, but helping people get health care seems
to be the worst thing any Republican governor can do.
The point is, many conservatives have called on Romney to apologize for
helping people get health care, even though he touted it as one of his signature
strengths while running for president in 2008. And for a candidate whose
persistent flip-flops have led Dittohead guru Erick Erickson to brand him as
“Multiple Choice Mitt,” another reversal on health care could be deadly.
Romneycare should be a lesson to all Republicans everywhere: Do not touch
health care at all unless it involves privatizing Medicare or slashing health
benefits for veterans. The GOP’s Limbaugh faction will stand for nothing
less.
-Candidate 2: Mitch Daniels
Daniels is a favorite of Beltway Republicans, who are enamored with the fact
that he seemingly knows how to count. Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson
best summed up his love for the dweeby Indiana bean-counter when he wrote that
“Daniels’s appeal is not ideological; it is mathematical.”
Since memories of calculus classes are not appealing to very many people,
Gerson elaborated: “The passions aroused by ideology, in his view, hamper the
ability of political adults to deal rationally with disturbing budget
numbers.”
OK, so he’s a union-busting version of Michael Dukakis. Big whoop.
You would think that such an uninspiring figure would elicit apathy from
conservative bloggers, who typically don’t devote much energy to reading over
policy papers or parsing wonky budget speeches.
Unfortunately for Daniels, though, his blandness hasn’t inoculated him from
the ire of the Nutteratti, since he’s committed multiple sins against
conservative orthodoxy during his time as governor of Indiana. First of all, as
Jennifer Rubin has noted, Daniels has assiduously avoided kissing the collective
asses of our conservative overlords and has instead been courting (shudder!)
people in that godforsaken hellhole known as “New York City.”
“Daniels didn’t go to the Tea Partyers or to the National Rifle Association
for a testing-the-waters confab,” cries Rubin. “Instead, he went to
Manhattan.”
You see, before any Republican candidate can win over the Limbaugh axis, they
have to engage in a thoroughly humiliating round of ass-kissing where they
pretend that Sean Hannity is the most courageous and inspiring journalist since
Edward R. Murrow. It doesn’t matter if the candidate supports exciting policies
such as mandatory castration for all men who make less than $30,000 a year:
without rampant ass-kissing, the candidate stands no chance of winning over Fox
News.
Daniels’ second big problem is that, like Mitt Romney before him, he tried to
help people get health care. As Michael Cannon writes in the National Review,
“Daniels expanded Indiana’s Medicaid program to families of four earning
$44,000.” What’s more, Daniels implemented a set of policies known as the
“Healthy Indiana Plan” that Cannon says “offers high-deductible coverage
combined with a taxpayer-funded health savings account” that not only “hands out
coverage plus something a lot like cash.” The bottom line is that Republicans
who have national ambitions should never under any circumstances try to help
people get health care. It will always come back to bite them in the behind.
Daniels’ final sin could be his worst one of all, however: Apparently Muslims
actually like him. In fact, Daniels’ ties with Sharia Law are apparently so
strong that he even received an award from the American Arab Institute. For
conservative activist Pam Geller, this was the final straw.
“Notorious Jew hater James Zogby is the co-founder and President of the Arab
Institute,” Geller howled. “Mitch Daniels has been involved (sic) with this
nototrious (sic) anti-Israel Israel (sic) organization (sic) for 25 years. How
repulsive.”
Candidate #3: Newt Gingrich
Yes, we all know about Newt’s multiple marriages and past infidelities and we
know that might make him unpalatable for social conservatives. And I may be
wrong but I don’t think many evangelicals will be convinced by Newt’s assertion
that he cheated on his wife because he was “driven by how passionately I felt
about this country” and thus “worked far too hard and things happened in my life
that were not appropriate.”
But Newt’s past naughtiness is actually just a tiny part of an even larger
problem that has dogged Gingrich for decades now: That he is shockingly full of
shit on just about everything, not just marriage.
Newt’s core problem is that he’s perpetually torn between being a classic
conservative bomb-thrower and being a cultivated “Man of Ideas” who wins respect
from the mainstream press. So while Newt scores points with the Limbaugh axis by
deriding Barack Obama’s supposed “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior,” he loses many
more potential mega-dittos with his “I’m-a-serious-problem-solver” shtick.
To cite one classic example, Gingrich’s desire to be considered a Serious
Intellectual back in 2008 led him to speak a major right-wing heresy by
acknowledging the existence of global warming. In fact, Gingrich’s desire to be
taken seriously on climate change even led to him cutting an advertisement with
(shudder!) then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:
From a right-wing media shrieker perspective, Newt might as well have cut an
ad with Osama bin Laden and said, “We may not agree on much, but we do agree on
the need to provide America’s children with mandatory prayer rugs. Allahu
akbar!”
And like Mitt Romney, Gingrich has a long history of supporting an individual
mandate to purchase health insurance. You see, the conservative position on
health care used to be that we needed to mandate that people buy private health
insurance to avoid a socialistic single-payer system like the ones in communist
hellholes like Canada. But with the rise of the Tea Party in 2009, Republican
candidates had to shift their views away from individual mandates and toward a
system where people are left to die in the streets, just as they did in the days
of the Founders. So statements such as “you have a responsibility to buy
insurance” and “we need some significant changes to ensure that every American
is insured” from Gingrich’s 2005 book “Winning the Future” just aren’t going to
cut it anymore.
Newt’s full-of-shit-about-everything problem is particularly magnified in the
age of YouTube, where videos showing past contradictions can be plastered all
over Facebook walls and Twitter feeds. You saw this crop up during the Gingrich
campaign’s comically awful first week, which saw Newt denounce Paul Ryan’s
insane neo-Social Darwinist budget before hastily retreating in the face of
conservative backlash. Newt predictably went full-bore in an attack against the
Lamestream Media and even said that it was now out of bounds to accurately quote
his past statements.
“Any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood, because I have
said publicly those words were inaccurate and unfortunate,” Gingrich howled.
After just one week, the Gingrich campaign became so bloodied that it had
been reduced to releasing epic poems that portrayed Newt as a conquering hero
who would dispel all doubters and outsiders in good time.
“A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the
onslaught,” wrote Gingrich flack Rick Tyler. “But out of the billowing smoke and
dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who
won’t be intimated by the political elite and are ready to take on the
challenges America faces.”
This inspired me to try penning my own Newt epic, based on Tennyson’s classic
“Ulysses”:
“Newtlysses”
It little profits that an idle former House Speaker,
By this still
hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged third wife, I mete
and dole
Bombs and predator drones unto a savage race,
That hoard, and
sleep, and have a Kenyan anti-colonial mindset, and know not me.
You get the idea.
The good thing about being perpetually full of shit about everything is that
it’s easier to make people forget all about your past positions. People who
actually feel slightly guilty about bullshitting people don’t have that same
luxury. So if Newt can manage to get some – any! – message discipline over the
next few months he could turn out OK.
Candidate #4: Tim Pawlenty
I tried to do some research about Tim Pawlenty. Then I got bored. Like,
really, really, really bored.
Chances of winning over Dittohead Nation: Meh. Pawlenty is a straight-laced
Midwestern conservative who gets check-marks on all the major issues but who
doesn’t generate all that much excitement among the Limbaugh crowd. For even
though Pawlenty is staunchly anti-abortion and has received an “A” on fiscal
management from the Cato Institute, his dry demeanor fails to provide Fox News
fans with the emotional gratification that comes from angrily screeching at your
adversaries as loud as you possibly can. Oh, and he apparently doesn’t hate
Muslims, or something. The bottom line is that conservative media shriekers will
support him but not enthusiastically so.
Candidate #5: Sarah Palin
Palin is seemingly the perfect candidate for the conservative screamer
movement largely because she’s one of them herself. Let’s review the facts: She
kisses Sean Hannity’s ass, she doesn’t care about governing, she works for Fox
News, she’s never helped people get health care, she’s never filmed a video with
Nancy Pelosi and she cries like a baby grizzly whenever anyone says anything the
least bit uncomplimentary toward her. Indeed, Palin’s extreme sensitivity to
criticism of any sort has led to her start more pointless feuds than anyone this
side of 50 Cent.
And yet… well, here’s the problem with Sarah Palin: She would lose to Obama,
big-time. And no, it doesn’t matter if Barack Obama replaced the
stars-and-stripes with his Muslim prayer rug on the White House flagpole. Every
single poll has shown that Palin is widely disliked by the American public and
that nominating her would result in a 20-point defeat for the Republican
Party.
And to paraphrase George Patton, “Conservative screamers love a winner and
will not tolerate a loser.” The same will eventually prove true of current
Dittohead favorite Herman Cain, the pizza magnate and Tea Party activist whose
lone attempt to run for public office ended in a humiliating defeat to current
Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson in a 2004 GOP primary. And if you can’t campaign
well on wingnuttery in Georgia, there’s no way you’ll be able to campaign on
wingnuttery nationwide.
That means the Fox News axis will likely have to bring a fresh face onto the
scene that will shake up the primary race. A fresh face such as…
Candidate #6: Somali Warlord Musa Sudi Yalahow
As you can see, none of the big-name Republican candidates really lives up to
the high standards set by Fox News screamers. This is why I predict the Right’s
leading lights will embark on a campaign to draft a dark-horse candidate to
shake up the race. And there’s no better candidate to rally support on the Right
than Somali warlord Musa Sudi Yalahow.
First of all, just think about how well Somalia fits in with modern
conservative ideals of how society should be run. There ain’t no gubmint
bureaucrats tellin’ you that you can’t own a gun in Somalia! The right to bear
arms in that country is so sacrosanct that they don’t even need a Constitutional
amendment to make it a reality!
Similarly, there ain’t no gubmint bureaucrats in Somalia tellin’ you that you
gotta buy health insurance. In fact, according to Doctors Without Borders,
people in Somalia don’t have to suffer under the tyranny of having health
insurance at all! Check out an excerpt from this report:
“For many years Somalis have endured violence, displacement, malnutrition,
and lack of access to adequate health care. […] Over the course of the year, the
gap between critical needs in Somalia, particularly in and around Mogadishu, and
the level of humanitarian response grew even larger, mainly due to aid agencies’
extremely limited capacity to deliver assistance in this highly insecure and
volatile environment.”
You can just smell the freedom and liberty all the way across the ocean,
can’t you?
Next, consider the kind of man Mr. Yalahow is. According to his Wikipedia
page, Yalahow was part of an America-backed warlord coalition to fight Islamist
extremists in the country back in early 2006. In other words, he has a lot more
real-world experience fighting terrorists than the Kenyan Kommie currently
occupying the White House ever will. And when many of his fellow warlords agreed
to stop fighting and voluntarily disarm their militias, Yalahow instead issued
veiled threats to revolt if the new government didn’t live up to its
promises.
Now that’s the kind of fightin’ spirit that Fox News could get behind – maybe
Yalahow could pick Sharon Angle as his running mate to form a Second Amendment
Remedies Dream Ticket?
Brad Reed is a writer living in Boston. His work
has previously appeared in the American Prospect Online, and he blogs frequently
at Sadly, No!.
Separated at Stone Age: Holocaust-denier R J
Rushdoony…
…and Holocaust-dreamer
al-Zawahiri?
On Tuesday May 3, a lawyer for the rightwing Rutherford
Institute sent a threatening letter to The
eXiled to punish and intimidate us because we reminded our readers about
the dark, extremist homophobic ideology behind the early years of the Rutherford
Institute and its co-founder, John Whitehead. The Rutherford Institute has waged
a 15-year public relations campaign to recast itself as a “civil liberties”
outfit similar to the ACLU, yet this same “defender of civil liberties” wants to
crush The eXiled’s First Amendment rights to free speech over the crime of
reminding readers that the outfit was co-founded by one of the most extreme
anti-Semitic, homophobic monsters of our time, a Holocaust denier and eugenicist
named R. J. Rushdoony.
1) Characterizing Rutherford Institute president
John Whitehead as “a one-time Christian Reconstructionist,” which is true;
2) That his “outfit once advocated the death
penalty for homosexuals,” which is true.
Rutherford’s lawyer, Tom Neuberger, wrote, “Neither
The Rutherford Institute nor Mr. Whitehead, its president, have ever subscribed
to Christian ‘reconstructionist’ ideologies. … And the outrageous assertion that
the Institute ‘once advocated the death penalty for homosexuals” is clearly a
complete fabrication.”
This is an outrageous, baseless and disgusting
attack on independent journalism. An outfit that claims to be for civil
liberties yet threatens journalists who print the truth, simply because the
Rutherford Institute is trying to whitewash its past, is the height of hypocrisy
and reveals that the Rutherford Institute has not changed one bit from its
beginnings as an attack dog for far-right Holocaust deniers, anti-Semites and
neo-Confederate fascists whose one goal was to intimidate and crush any
opposition to their plan to turn America into a fundamentalist Christian nation
along the lines of the Taliban.
We will report more about the Rutherford
Institute’s threats to The eXiled and to others–one reader pointed us to a story
in Delaware which resulted in a kind of pogrom against two Jewish families
fighting a lawsuit against rabid Christian fundamentalists represented by the
Rutherford Institute– and we’ll get into the dark, sordid history of the
Institute’s founders and their beliefs, which make our factual statements that
they object to seem as though, if anything, we were going far too light on
Rutherford.
And to survive this assault, we will be asking for
our readers’ support. Gary Brecher has agreed to return to the field of action,
but only on condition that you support our effort to resist a 30-year-old
rightwing outfit’s efforts to crush independent journalism.
God Hates Fags…So did Rutherford Institute
co-founders
But first, there are so many credible sources
backing our statement in our article characterizing John Whitehead as “a onetime
Christian ‘reconstructionist’… whose outfit once advocated the death penalty for
homosexuals” that they are too numerous to list. Here we provide a small sample
of sources which repeat, expand on, and/or support this:
* From American University Professor Alan
Lichtman’s book White Protestant Nation, a
finalist for the 2008 National Book Critic’s Award for Non-Fiction:
“A movement known as Christian Reconstruction or
Dominion Theology, led by Rousas John Rushdoony of the Chalcedon Foundation,
Gary North of the Institute for Christian Economics, and John Whitehead of the
Rutherford Institute, extended Schaffer’s absolutist thinking. Dominion leaders
aimed to make America a Christian nation. They desired to ‘take back government
from the state and put it in the hands of Christians.’ This meant replacing
secular ‘self-law’ with ‘God’s law,’ which meted out harsh punishments,
including death penalty for adulterers and homosexuals.” [pp 349, Atlantic
Monthly Press, hardcover edition]
* David Brock’s bestselling book from 2002, Blinded By The Right:
“When various settlement offers were rejected by
[Paula] Jones [the woman who sued President Bill Clinton for sexual harassment],
Davis and Cammarata quit the case and were replaced by lawyers working with the
right-wing Rutherford Institute, which had been founded with the support of
Christian Right reconstructionist R. J. Rushdoony, who was an early board
member.* …The Reverend R. J. Rushdoony believed that civil law should be
replaced by Biblical law ‘to suppress, control, and/or eliminate the ungodly.’
He advocated the death penalty for abortion, adultery, sodomy, and incest as
well as for blasphemers and ‘propagators of false doctrines.’ Rushdoony was also
a Holocaust denier.” [pp 201. Three Rivers Press. 2002 paperback
edition.]
* Jeff Sharlet’s book The Family, a 2008 New York Times bestseller:
“John W. Whitehead, a constitutional lawyer who
counts Rushdoony as one of his greatest influences [pp. 349]…Rushdoony is best
known as the founder of Christian Reconstructionism, a politically defunct but
subtly influential school of thought that drifted so far to the right that it
dropped off the edge of the world, disavowed as ‘scary’ even by Jerry Falwell.
Most notably, Rushdoony proposed the death penalty for an ever-expanding subset
of sinners, starting with gay men and growing to include blasphemers and badly
behaved children.” [pp.347. Harper Perennial. 2008 paperback.]
* Mark Crispin Miller’s 2004 book, published by
W.W. Norton, Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney’s New
World Order:
“John Whitehead, an ex-student of Rushdoony’s, and
introduced by him once at the council as a man ‘chosen by God,’ directs the
Rutherford Foundation, a legal arm of the Chalcedon Foundation (which until his
death was run by Rushdoony and funded by Howard Ahmanson). Rutherford’s
important mission is to fight the legal battles on behalf of Reconstructionism.”
[pp. 263]
* Frederick Clarkson, journalist, author and
activist, in a chapter from the 1999 book Eyes
Right: Challenging The Rightwing Backlash edited by Chip Berlet:
“The Rutherford Institute’s John Whitehead was a
student of both Schaeffer and Rushdoony, and credits them as the two major
influences on his thought. … [I]t is not surprising that Whitehead goes to great
lengths to deny that he is a Reconstructionist. Rushdoony, introducing Whitehead
at a Reconstructionist conference, called him a man ‘chosen by God.’ Rushdoony
then spoke of ‘our plans, through Rutherford,
to fight the battle against statism and the freedom of Christ’s Kingdom.’” …
“The Rutherford Institute was founded as a legal project of R. J. Rushdoony’s
Chalcedon Foundation, with Rushdoony and fellow Chalcedon director Howard
Ahmanson on its original board of directors. Whitehead credits Rushdoony with
providing the outline for his first book, which he researched in Rushdoony’s
library. ” [p.69]
* Chris Hedges, writing about Whitehead’s mentor
and partner in the Rutherford Institute in his 2006 book, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On
America:
“The racist and brutal intolerance of the
intellectual godfathers of today’s Christian Reconstructionism is a chilling
reminder of the movement’s lust for repression. The Institutes of Biblical Law
by R. J. Rushdoony, written in 1973, is the most important book for the
dominionist movement. Rushdoony calls for a Christian society that is harsh,
unforgiving and violent. The death penalty is to be imposed not only for
offenses such as rape, kidnapping and murder, but also for adultery, blasphemy,
homosexuality, astrology, incest, striking a parent, incorrigible juvenile
delinquency, and, in the case of women, ‘un-chastity before marriage.’ The world
is to be subdued and ruled by a Christian United States. Rushdoony dismissed
the widely accepted estimate of 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust as an
inflated figure, and his theories on race often echo those found in Nazi
eugenics, in which there are higher and lower forms of human beings. Those
considered by the Christian state to be immoral and incapable of reform are to
be exterminated.” [pp.12-13]
* The Southern Poverty Law Center’s magazine Intelligence
Report called Rushdoony “a racist and a holocaust denier.” The SPLC describes the Rushdoony-founded Chalcedon
Foundation, for which the Rutherford Institute was set up to act as its
legal arm: “Rushdoony supported the death penalty for homosexuals, among other
‘abominators.’ He also opposed what he called ‘unequal yoking’ — interracial
marriage — and ‘enforced integration,’ insisting that “[a]ll men are NOT created
equal before God” (the Bible, he explained, ‘recognizes that some people are by
nature slaves’). Rushdoony also denied the Holocaust, saying the murder of 6
million Jews was ‘false witness.’”
* Another co-founder of the Rutherford Institute,
Rushdoony’s son-in-law, Gary North, has been described as a “bloodthirsty
theologian” who “may actually be a psychopath” by Jeff Sharlet in his 2008 book The Family: “North […] may actually be a psychopath—he favors stoning as a method of
execution because it would double as a ‘community project.’” [pp.348].
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Gary North advocates hiding the
true agenda of the Christian Reconstructionist movement for obvious reasons:
“Theonomists, and especially Reconstructionists, know their views are an
anathema to most Americans. Reconstructionist ideologue Gary North, in fact, has
written that Reconstructionists need ‘the noise of contemporary events’ to hide
their goals. ‘If [non-believers] fully understood the long-term threat to their
civilization that our ideas pose, they … would be wise to take steps to crush
us.’” (“Confederates on the Pulpit” SPLC Intelligence Report.
Spring 2001).
“Whitehead believes, according to an article by
Martin Mawyer published in the May 1983 issue of the Moral Majority Report, ‘That courts must place
themselves under the authority of God’s law.’ Mawyer’s article explains, ‘The
Institute states that ‘all of civil affairs and government, including law,
should be based upon principles found in the Bible.’ That statement is a
simplified definition of Christian Reconstruction, an important movement within
evangelical Christianity.”
* Bill Moyers, interviewing R J Rushdoony in 1988, (six years after the founding
of Rutherford Institute):
Moyers:
You’ve written that the Bible calls for the death penalty, and I’m just running
down a variety of things as you can see. You’ve written that the Bible calls for
the death penalty of some 15 crimes: rape, sodomy, adultery. Rushdoony: Adultery because in the Bible the basic institution is the family.
There’s no law of treason against the state. The Bible doesn’t even imagine
anything remotely like that. But the basic institution is the family. And so,
several of the death penalties are associated with the family and its life. Moyers: So
adultery was considered a theft of the family. Rushdoony:
It was, yes, it was treason to the family. Moyers: Homosexuality. Rushdoony: Yes, it was treason to the family. Moyers: Worthy of the death sentence? Rushdoony:
What? Moyers: Worthy of the death sentence?. Rushdoony:
Yes. Moyers: Deserving of the death sentence? Rushdoony: Yes, that’s what [Apostle] Paul says.
…
Moyers: But you would re-instate the death penalty for some of these or all of
these Biblical crimes? Rushdoony: I wouldn’t— Moyers: But
the reconstructive society– Rushdoony: I’m saying that this is what God
requires. I’m not saying that everything in the Bible, I like. Some of it rubs
me the wrong way. But I’m simply saying, this is what God requires. This is what
God says is justice. Therefore, I don’t feel I have a choice. Moyers: And
the agents of God would carry out the laws. Rushdoony: The civil government would, on
these things. Moyers: So you would have a civil government,
based upon– Rushdoony: Oh yes. I’m not an anarchist. I’m
close to being a libertarian. But– Moyers: But the civil law would be based on
the biblical law. And so you’d have a civil government carrying out a religious
mandate. Rushdoony: Oh yes.
* Rushdoony and North were not only co-founders of
the Rutherford Institute, but they were also regularly featured members of the
“Rutherford Institute Seminars” speakers bureau. In other words, they were
intimately tied to, part of, and speaking on behalf of the Rutherford Institute.
Here is from a 1994 Anti-Defamation League report:
In the fall of 1986, the Traditional Values
Coalition and Citizens for Excellence in Education advertised “Rutherford
Institute Seminars” in which Rushdoony was a featured speaker — along with
Rutherford Institute founder John Whitehead. Rushdoony was described in the
advertisement as a ”theologian…who presents scriptural framework for building
orderly structures in society [sic].”
Whitehead, one of the country’s leading
conservative evangelical attorneys, has called Rushdoony one of the two major
influences on his thought. Rushdoony wrote the introduction for Whitehead’s The
Separation Illusion, and the reconstructionist patriarch is the most frequently
cited author in the bibliography for Whitehead’s The Second American
Revolution – a favored text among evangelical activists (The Institutes for
Biblical Law is among the works cited).
Rushdoony reportedly helped Whitehead found the
Rutherford Institute, and has been a director of the Institute and a participant
in its speakers bureau.
[Source: The
Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance & Pluralism in America. A
publication of the Anti-Defamation League. (1994). pp 111]
Finally, we are not surprised that the Rutherford
Institute—which claims to defend civil liberties, but seemingly behaves more
like a right-wing attack dog outfit trying to intimidate critics of its
far-right Christian agenda— sends a letter from a lawyer to suppress journalists
from exercising their first amendment rights. From its very beginning in the
early Reagan years, as Whitehead explained in a 1983 interview, “We need to be
very aggressive, not passive. Take the initiative. Sue rather than waiting to be
sued. That’s where we’ve [the Christian far-right] been weak. We’ve always been
on the defensive. We need to frame the issue and pick the court. The
[Rutherford] institute, if necessary, will charge that government is violating
religious freedoms rather than the church waiting for the government to charge
it with violating the law.” [Institute for First Amendment Studies.]
We’ve answered the Rutherford’s outrageous,
anti-Constitutional threats and attempts to crush our civil liberties. Now we
would like the Rutherford Institute to explain to us and to readers of The
eXiled why it failed to successfully challenge the statements made by the
authors in passages cited above, and how it claims to be a “civil liberties”
outfit that has distanced itself from its extremist hateful past when it
threatens to crush anyone who dares to report the truthful past.
Former Mideast Envoy George Mitchell: Obama’s Israel Statements Not New
The media’s meme is false
George Mitchell, who recently resigned as President Obama’s envoy to the Middle East, said today that Obama’s statements on the “1967 lines” were not a major shift in policy.
The question is, why have the mainstream media been working so hard to hype this as a huge departure from previous policies, when it’s very clearly nothing of the sort?
Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, who resigned this month as President Obama’s envoy to the Middle East after serving two years, said that while President Obama’s comments on the 1967 borders were “a significant statement,” they do not signal a major shift in policy, especially when land swaps are taken into consideration.
“The president didn’t say that Israel has to go back to the ‘67 lines. He said with agreed swaps,” Mitchell told Amanpour. “Swaps means an exchange of land intended to accommodate major Israeli population centers to be incorporated into Israel and Israel’s security needs. Agreed means through negotiations. Both parties must agree.”
“That’s not going to be a border unless Israel agrees to it and we know they won’t agree unless their security needs are satisfied, as it should be,” Mitchell added of the 1967 borders.
Mitchell noted that Obama’s Thursday statement on borders were identical to a proposal made by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who served until 2009.
“In a later interview, let me read to you what he said: ‘I presented Abbas with a comprehensive plan. It was based on the following principles. One, there would be a territorial solution to the conflict on the basis of the 1967 borders, with minor modifications on both sides,’” Mitchell said of Olmert’s previous comments.
Netanyahu, who will address the pro-Israel lobby Monday and Congress on Tuesday, played down the rift.
“The disagreements have been blown way out of proportion,” he told The Associated Press on Saturday. “It’s true we have some differences of opinion, but these are among friends.”
The Rev. Tim LaHaye, co-author of the “Left Behind” series of Christian prophecy novels, said [Harold] Camping “trivializes the very serious study of Bible prophecy by ignoring Jesus’ statement that everyone seems to know except him, and that is that no man knows the day nor the hour” that Jesus will return.”
That would be the same Tim LaHaye who launched his apocalyptic potboiler The Rapture on 6 June 2006, just so that he use the advertising tagline “The Rapture—Coming 06.06.06“. And let us not forget
versions of “Left Behind” for young readers, a comic book adaption, “Left Behind” t-shirts, a daily devotional guide, desk calendars and even a “Left Behind” board game. (In the game, players collect “Left Behind Tokens” that they can later use to defeat the Antichrist.)
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is endorsing the Palestinians’ demand for their future state to be based on the borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war, in a move that will likely infuriate Israel. Israel says the borders of a Palestinian state have to be determined through negotiations.
In a speech outlining U.S. policy in the Middle East and North Africa, Obama on Thursday sided with the Palestinians’ opening position a day ahead of a visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu is vehemently opposed to referring to the 1967 borders.
Until Thursday, the U.S. position had been that the Palestinian goal of a state based on the 1967 borders, with agreed land swaps, should be reconciled with Israel’s desire for a secure Jewish state through negotiations.
Wow. Rarely have I seen such blatant distortion in a mainstream news release. Here’s the exact quote from Obama’s speech:
The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.
Note: he didn’t say “1967 borders,” he didn’t “side with the Palestinians,” and he absolutely did still insist on mutually agreed swaps and secure borders for both countries. It’s nothing but a re-wording of the same position the US has taken for many years.
Based on this distorted and very misleading AP article, Fox News instantly put together a screaming fake outrage headline, currently leading on their front page:
Drudge Report also jumped on it, running a huge headline: “OBAMA SIDES WITH PALESTINIANS!”
And of course, it’s already all over the right wing blogosphere that President Obama “told Israel to move back to the pre-1967 borders.”
No. He didn’t.
All this fake outrage spread throughout the Internet within minutes after the President’s speech, like a virtual wingnut flash mob.
I guess it’s too much to ask these people to report what the President actually said.
Count me among those who have covered spats between the U.S. and Israel in some detail, and are a bit perplexed why sources from the New York Times to Benjamin Netanyahu are acting as though a Rubicon has been crossed by Obama’s restating universal assumptions and U.S. policy, and meanwhile slapping down the key Palestinian diplomatic drive.
I’m amazed at the amount of insta-commentary out there suggesting that the President has proposed something radical and new by declaring that Israel’s 1967 borders should define — with land-swaps — the borders of a Palestinian state. I’m feeling a certain Groundhog Day effect here. This has been the basic idea for at least 12 years. This is what Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat were talking about at Camp David, and later, at Taba. This is what George W. Bush was talking about with Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. So what’s the huge deal here? Is there any non-delusional Israeli who doesn’t think that the 1967 border won’t serve as the rough outline of the new Palestinian state?
UPDATE at 5/19/11 5:00:44 pm
This section of Obama’s speech is certainly not “siding with the Palestinians” — in fact, he’s clearly saying that Palestinians will never have a state while they reject Israel’s right to exist:
For the Palestinians, efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure. Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won’t create an independent state. Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection. And Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist.
Pamela Geller Rages at the Independent’s Accurate Article
Shrieking Harpy says, ‘I love Muslims!’
She’s looking more and more like SKELETOR!
“I ♥ me some Muslims!”
The Independent’s Robert Chalmers has a very balanced and fair look at Pamela Geller: American patriot or extremist firebrand?And of course, any balanced and fair examination of the Shrieking Harpy can only come to one conclusion: she’s desperately unhinged.
What’s striking about this article, though, is that Geller completely lacks the courage of her convictions. When confronted about her bizarre, hate-filled posts, she invariably attempts to pretend she didn’t really say what she did really say. It’s a “joke,” or it’s somebody else’s writing that she just happened to put on her blog for no particular reason, or it’s “taken out of context.” Like many extremists and bigots, underneath the bluster and the hateful statements Geller is a coward.
For example:
Among the many new things I have learnt from the work of Pamela Geller is that President Obama reputedly used to knock around with a crack whore.
“That,” the author, blogger and broadcaster insists, “is not what I said. You are taking this out of context. The post [on her website atlasshrugs.com] was pointing out how people were reporting lie after lie about Sarah Palin. I said to myself, there is so much about Obama we don’t print. In his youth,” she continues, repeating a story for which there exists absolutely no foundation, “he supposedly liked a girl who was a crack whore. I never reported it as fact. They say all these vile things about Palin but do we ever talk about Obama and the crack whore?”
The incredibly libellous post, entitled: “IT’S TIME TO EXPOSE THE TRUTH ABOUT OBAMA” appeared on 1 August 2009. “Why not tell the truth about Obama and his reported strange sexual predilections?” Geller wrote. “It is well known that he allegedly was involved with a crack whore in his youth. Very seedy stuff … Find the ho, give her a show! Obama allegedly trafficked in some very deviant practices.”
Pretty hard to take that out of context, wouldn’t you say?
Chalmers emailed me to ask for my reaction to Geller’s insults:
She began blogging on littlegreenfootballs.com, run by the professional musician and software expert Charles Johnson. Between 2004 and 2007, she posted thousands of entries. “She was always as reactionary,” he tells me, “as you see her now.”
Johnson, who, as that remark would suggest, does not share Geller’s opinions, is described as a “mental patient” on Atlas Shrugs.
“I know Pamela Geller often calls me crazy,” he told me. “But I’m not the one who talks about the president’s birth certificate being faked or says that he’s the illegitimate son of Malcolm X, and I’m not the one who defends a war criminal and makes alliances with white supremacist groups. That would be Ms Geller. She has a very long record of absolute lunacy, mixed with bigotry and racism and I am far from the only person to point this out.”
Please note: the article says Geller posted “entries” at LGF, but that’s not accurate. She posted comments only; even when LGF focused heavily on Islamic extremism, there was no way I’d ever let someone this crazed and illiterate post front page entries here.
Robert Chalmers could not disappoint his judgemental peers and risk losing his cache with the lemmings; hence he commiserated with intellectual frauds like Charles Johnson and an unnamed journalist who actually attempted amateur Geller psychoanalysis (as if), but Chalmers chose not to speak to the people I actually work with, like Robert Spencer, Pamela Hall, James Lafferty etc.,
Geller seems to believe that Chalmers was actually sympathetic to her, but too afraid to say so. Good grief.
Pamela Geller is definitely not the “most dangerous woman in America,” but she just might take the title of “most deranged blogger in America.”
The Age of Blasphemy 
