Tag: United States Senate

Statue of Noted Anti-Semite and White-Supremacist to be Removed

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Uncategorized

Statue of noted anti-Semite and white-supremacist to be removed from Georgia state capitol entrance             
By Scott Kaufman
watson

The statue of Tom Watson that graces the entrance to the Georgia state capitol will soon be removed from the grounds.

Watson was a newspaper magnate in the late 19th and early 20th century, and began his political career as a populist. In 1894, two years before he would be considered a serious candidate to accompany William Jennings Bryan on the Democratic presidential ticket, the masthead of his paper said that it “will oppose to the bitter end … Moneyed Aristocracy, National Banks, High Tariffs, Standing Armies and formidable Navies — all of which go together as a system of oppressing the people.”

He would later complain that Bryan was threatening to “turn the Democratic Party into the N****r Party.”

In the wake of his failed vice-presidential bid, and as his wealth increased, he began to speak out against populism, especially in its more socialist incarnations. He became well-known for his anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic diatribes — which he published in his papers — and openly supported the reconstitution of the Ku Klux Klan.

“Wherever the white man puts his foot, he rules,” Watson wrote at the time. “Don’t give the educated Negro the chance to register, and establish Negro Domination. MAINTAIN WHITE SUPREMACY!”

Particularly invidious was his behavior during the 1913 trial of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory superintendent who was accused of strangling 13-year-old Mary Phagan. Despite an abundance of evidence that Frank could not have been the murderer, he was convicted and sentenced to hang. In 1915, his sentence was commuted to life by Governor John Slaton, who said he would “be a murderer if I allowed [Frank] to hang.”

Watson responded to the commutation by writing “[t]his country has nothing to fear from its rural communities. Lynch law is a good sign; it shows that a sense of justice lives among the people.” A group that included a former Georgia governor John Mackey Brown and styled itself “Knights of Mary Phagan” took Watson up on his offer and lynched Frank on August 16, 1915, a deed for which Watson proudly took credit.

When he was elected to the United States Senate in 1920, The Nation wrote that “[n]ever before has so conspicuous, so violent, so flaming an apostle of every variety of race hatred been invested with the power and dignity of the Senatorial Toga.”

The statue outside the Georgia capitol declares that Watson was “A CHAMPION OF RIGHT WHO NEVER FALTERED IN THE CAUSE.” It will be removed within the month.

 

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Ten Crazies Now No Longer Members of Congress!

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Birthers, Politics, Rape Politics, Republican Crazies

Ten People We Are Grateful Are No Longer Members Of Congress

By Ian Millhiser and Annie-Rose Strasser

Under the Twentieth Amendment, “[t]he terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January.” Accordingly, as of this very moment, many members of 112th Congress are now unemployed. Here are ten that we are particularly grateful will no longer be able to contribute to federal legislation:-

Jim DeMint

It’s more ‘see you soon’ than ‘goodbye’ for former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who will take his far-right, tea party-loving persona over to the conservative Heritage Foundation. DeMint leaves a bleak legacy. Over his time in Congress, he’s gained notoriety for his anti-union, gay-bashing, anti-abortion, anti-obamacare, pro-austerity positions, among the most extreme in the Senate.

Todd Akin

Former Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) thought he was moving up in the world when he abandoned his House seat to seek a spot in the Senate. Instead, Akin’s campaign made a crash landing after he told a radio host that victims of “legitimate rape” can’t get pregnant because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Ron Paul

Most members of Congress leave politics with a few new laws to their credit if they are lucky, former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), however, can take credit for reviving generations worth of terrible ideas and building a national movement behind his poor grasp of the Constitution and basic economics. Paul believes the Departments of Energy, Education, Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and Labor are all unconstitutional — as are Social Security and Medicare, which he compared to “slavery.” He would return to the gold standard. And he thinks states can simply nullify federal laws they don’t feel like following. Yet it is a testament to the grip Paul has on America’s lunatic fringe that his supporters will whip themselves into a frenzy every time anyone dares to question his ill-considered views. Don’t believe us? Just wait and see what they write in comments on this very post.

Joe Lieberman

Former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) likes war, a lot. He was a leading proponent of the war in Iraq. He cheerleaded for war in Iran, and even pushed for more belligerence against Syria. Lieberman once defended waterboarding. He accused President Obama of “encourag[ing] Israel’s enemies.,” and he once called for Social Security cuts to pay for “war with Islamist extremists.” Lieberman loves Fox News, and he ended his tenure in the Senate will a call to raise the Medicare retirement age.

Joe Walsh

Now-former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) got himself kicked out of Congress by continuously bashing his opponent, a female war veteran and amputee who Walsh said was not a “true hero.” The tough-talking Congressman also once said that Muslims are “trying to kill Americans every week,” and once screamed at his own constituents.

Cliff Stearns

Former Rep. Cliff Stearn’s (R-FL) leaves the House with a reputation for stirring up unnecessary controversy. Stearns was among the birthers in Congress, publicly questioning the validity of President Obama’s birth certificate. He also advanced the Republican witch hunt over failed energy company Solyndra, a part of his anti-climate agenda.

Jean Schmidt

Newly former Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) is another birther departing the House today. On Schmidt’s highlight reel? She once called a Congressman and decorated marine a “coward,” insisted that China is drilling off the coast of Florida, and wept with joy over the (incorrect) news that Obamacare had been repealed.

Roscoe Bartlett

An avowed tenther, former Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) not only claimed — falsely — that federal student loans are unconstitutional, he compared helping students pay for their education to “[t]he Holocaust that occurred in Germany.” Bartlett also apparently studied at the Todd Akin School of Medicine, as he once minimized the need to ensure rape and incest survivors have access to abortion by claiming that “there are very few pregnancies as a result of rape, fortunately, and incest.”

Allen West

As an Army lieutenant colonel, former Rep. Allen West (R-FL) was relieved of his command, fined $5,000 and eventually allowed to retire in order to avoid court martial for allegedly abusing a prisoner in Iraq. Upon entering Congress, West emerged as one of the body’s top Islamophobes. He also compared food stamps and Social Security to slavery, opposed early voting as an “entitlement,” claimed 80 House Democrats were “members of the Communist Party,” and called Obama supporters a “threat to the gene pool.”

Dan Burton

Former Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN) spent most of the 1990s conducting increasingly bizarre investigations to prove that President Clinton was engaged in criminal activity. Burton did not simply buy the conspiracy theory that former Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster was murdered, he tried to reenact the crime in his own backyard by firing a pistol into a pumpkin. Additionally, Burton’s investigation into the supposed Whitewater controversy was based on research conducted by the founder of Citizens United. Yes, that Citizens United. When Burton wasn’t conducting forensic ballistics investigations using large orange gourds, he was terrified of contracting AIDS — so terrified that he reportedly refused to eat soup at restaurants. Because soup transmits AIDS.

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Right Wing Neanderthal Tod Akin | Using Government to Coerce Women

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Abortion Politics, Tod Akin, Tod Akin Militia Ties, Tod Akin Neanderthal, Tod Akin Religious Fanatic, Tod Akin Right Wing Nazi

Todd Akin, right-wing hero

The Republican Senate candidate in Missouri doesn’t just spew anti-abortion rhetoric, he acts on it

BY , THE AMERICAN PROSPECT

Todd Akin, right-wing hero

This article originally appeared on The American Prospect.

The American ProspectTodd Akin, the Republican challenger for Claire McCaskill’s U.S. Senate seat representing Missouri, has made himself a national figure so far this election season by declaring that women can’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape” and claiming that abortion clinics routinely perform abortions on women who aren’t actually pregnant. But what’s garnered less attention, until this week, has been Akin’s history of not just saying but also doing disturbing things. His history shows a lifelong dedication to a misogynist right-wing ideology that flirts with using force to get its way when persuasion fails.

Akin has friends in high places. He spent his time in Congress working with vice-presidential candidate and Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, with whom he crafted anti-choice legislation that would—surprise—redefine rape narrowly to eliminate many rapes that don’t involve overt violence to subdue the victim. This would better reflect Akin’s belief that many to most rapes are not “legitimate.” It’s tempting to imagine that radicals like Akin are outside the mainstream but, as I’ve written before, he and his ilk have come to control the party. So, who is Todd Akin?

It’s no secret that Akin used to be part of militant abortion groups that have lulled the public into calling them “protesters,” even though their tactics—taunting abortion-clinic patients and stalking providers in a threatening manner—are better described as harassment that verges on terrorism. We’ve grown to accept these ghouls who’ve become part of abortion-clinic scenery and who clearly long for the days when sexually disobedient women could be put in the stocks.

What’s faded from memory somewhat is how much worse they used to be, before a string of vicious murders and bombings in the 1990s caused Congress to pass federal legislation in 1994, signed by President Bill Clinton, that increases the penalties for using physical force to close clinics and scare patients away from getting abortions. Todd Akin “protested” in those days of extreme anti-choice militancy, and as the liberal research group People for the American Way has reported, was arrested in 1987 as part of a Mother’s Day attack on a St. Louis clinic, when militants tried to physically block patients from entering the clinic. (Celebrating Mother’s Day by trying to physically force childbirth on the unwilling sounds an awful like celebrating Labor Day by strike-breaking.) The Huffington Post revealed Tuesday that Akin had been arrested at least three previous times for criminal trespass in 1985 during invasions of abortion clinics, events that included screaming invective at patients and trying to block access to clinics.

Akin was caught on tape last year bragging to a right-wing group about his arrest, and when People for the American Way confronted him about it, he claimed he would fill them in on the details later. His campaign broke that promise, and little wonder why. The group’s researchers dug around and found that Akin associated with the Pro-Life Direct Action League and Whole Life Ministries, groups that used aggressive action aimed directly at private citizens as the mainstay of their activism.

As reported by Salon, Akin’s aggressive activities didn’t stop with his recorded attempts to force individual women to bear children by blocking access to abortion. Akin once publicly defended a friend who assaulted another woman at an abortion clinic. It was 1989, and Akin was campaigning for Congress and serving as a Missouri state representative. Using official state letterhead, Akin wrote a letter on behalf of the friend, Teresa Frank, who was convicted of battery for shoving another woman to the ground during a July action at an abortion clinic. The language he used further reveals his ugly, outdated view of women, even those he’s defending: “Teresa is a deeply sensitive and caring person,” he wrote, “but along with this, she is also one very frightened little girl.”

At the time, Frank was 41 years old, a mother, and a friend of Akin’s wife. But Akin’s is a worldview in which women don’t ever get to be full adults but are, at best, little girls. That persists even when he’s not accusing them of inventing rape to cover up for having consensual sex, or suggesting they’re so stupid that doctors routinely trick them into thinking they’re pregnant so they can perform unnecessary abortions on them. It’s easy to see how a man with such a low opinion of women convinced himself that he has the power and the right to physically stop them from exercising their reproductive rights. To him, women fall somewhere on the creation scale between small children and wild animals, and the only appropriate response is to exert control instead of letting them make up their own minds about their lives and their bodies.

After Clinton signed the law that attempted to squelch the rising tide of violence and harassment against abortion providers—activism that Akin participated in—seven clinic workers were murdered between 1993 and 1998, before the violence receded. In the past decade, only Dr. George Tiller, a doctor in Kansas who performed late-term abortions, was killed by such violence, in 2009. Most anti-abortion militants are limited to yelling invective or trying to shame women who want abortions by passive-aggressively praying at them. Most understand that aggressive actions can result in federal prosecutions. But as Akin’s continued pride in front of anti-choice audiences shows, this doesn’t mean the movement has abandoned the ideologies that justify the use of force to mandate that all pregnant women give birth. They’ve just learned to elect their warriors to political office, where they can use the government to exert the force that militants used to employ directly.

Read more of The American Prospect at http://www.prospect.org.

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What American Conservatives Say About Rape – Includes Chart

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Conservatives and Rape, God and Rape, Godly Rape, Republican Dumbasses

news
What American Conservatives Say About Rape
Via:- Amelia McDonell-Parry

I don’t know about you, but I have such a hard time remembering which conservative politician said what ridiculously offensive thing about rape.

They’re all old and white and most of them are in some state of partial baldness. They all look the same!

And they all sound basically the same too, given that woman-hating bile spews from their open pie holes.

Alas, they are all individual people, who hold or have held positions of power within government, and aspire to inflict their beliefs upon your life, so it behoves us to be able to keep them straight. Know thine enemies!

Above, a quick overview of the most noteworthy five: Richard Mourdock (running for U.S. Senate in Indiana, current state treasurer), Iowa Congressman Steve King, Missouri Representative Todd Akin, Tom Smith (running for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania), and and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.

You know, there are people who listen to and agree with these terrible concepts and who admire all five of these Republicans. You can bet Mitt and his buddy Ryan are included in these.

I will be amazed when someone comes out with the statistic after the election of how many women voted Republican. It is as if they would enjoy being treated like cattle

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