Mark Burnett of "The Apprentice" Fame Was Also The Racist Who Did This:

Hmmm... Doesn't Satan look familiar here?

For Shame, Mark Burnett, For Shame...

The History Channel has some made some mistakes in the past but few come close to this one.  Mark Burnett came under fire when he elected to have Jesus played by a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white guy in his miniseries The Bible.

But the travesty (and historical inaccuracy) didn't end there.

"Satan" was actually played by a doppelganger for Obama!

Mark Burnett (a Trump supporter) says he felt powerless to do anything about the casting... But he was the shows only producer.

Now, he is co-producing another season of The Apprentice with Donald Trump himself... KellyAnne Conway, spokeswoman for the President-elect, says that what the President wants to do in his "spare time" should be up to him!

Nancy Grace Vindicated In On Air Argument by Mother Jones Article

Back when Frank Taaffe was curiously and suddenly the mainstream media's "go to" guy on all things relating to the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case, an interesting argument took place between HLN's Nancy Grace and Taaffe.   Nancy Grace asserted that Zimmerman used racial slurs in his calls to police and Taaffe denied this fact.

Taaffe tried to explain that Zimmerman used the word "cold" rather than the word "co0n".  Taaffe's argument was beyond absurd, of course, because the context that followed was "... They always get away."  ([These "colds" always get away]???  Sure. Whatever.)

Nonetheless, the media and the courts refused to believe their ears and the racial slur was dropped from being considered serious evidence in the case.

But as of today, Mother Jones Magazine has released a detailed expose which indicates that Frank Taaffe and Zimmerman were co-conspirators in the creation of his defense story and that Taaffe is a racist himself with a criminal history.

Read the Mother Jones story about Taaffe's racist history here. (click here)

Reasonably, Zimmerman's self-defense argument did not hold water.  But the jury was apparently dazzled by defense attorneys who somehow made them forget it's legally and ethically wrong to chase unarmed teenagers with loaded weapons in the dark. Racists will argue with any and all this reason on this point, though.

As Mother Jones points out:

Taaffe isn't the first member of Zimmerman's circle to be caught making racially charged statements. In March, Zimmerman's brother, Robert Zimmerman Jr. (another outspoken defender), tweeted a photo of a black Georgia teenager who allegedly murdered a one-year-old boy with a gunshot to the face, alongside a picture of Trayvon Martin.

This brings us to another interesting point.  The story that Robert Zimmerman was tweeting about in connection to Trayvon Martin has now ALSO been exposed as a racist fraud.  The mother of the infant, Sherry West is now thought to have killed her own child and blamed it on two black teenagers...  as racist white people have been known to do in the past.

A great number of the crimes supposedly perpetrated by black people against white people are eventually exposed as fraudulent... A few examples are Sherry West, Susan Smith, Ashley Todd and Charles Stuart.
These horrific crimes are always touted, bandied about and shared on social networking sites by conservatives, the Tea Party and racist groups as "evidence" that black people are horrible criminals and not to be trusted... But in the end, as prosecutors like Nancy Grace know... "sometimes it just aint so."

8 Ways that Republicans have Been Acting Like Nazis Lately

In the past few years since President Obama assumed office, Republicans have been getting "more extreme".  The evidence of this is everywhere - from their sudden passion to restrict women's choices, to their outlook on subjects like rape, to their lock-step anti-gay views and blatant racism.  This sudden bent toward fascism is forcing liberal Democrats to repeal "Godwin's Law" left and right... but mostly right.

Here are just a few examples that are pretty hard for anyone to defend:

1) Republican states can't find enough drugs to execute as many prisoners as they want to so now they are considering the use of GAS CHAMBERS.   That's right, we haven't seen gas chambers look like a favorable option for anything in awhile, have we?   Missouri is the state that draws focus here and while their Governor is technically a conservative Democrat, both chambers of their legislature are ruled by the Republican Party.

2) Some Republicans apparently think it's okay to display a Nazi Swastika flag in their front yards as a protest of President Obama.  But lest ye think that it's his clever way of calling Obama a Nazi himself, Joseph Sincavage of Connecticut also proudly flies the Vatican Flag and the Marines Flag right next to the Nazi Swastika, presumably in approval with the former two organizations.   Neighbors say that Sincavage has also flown the confederate rebel flag in years past as a protest against Democrats.  But don't think of this as an isolated incident because a man in Elkhart, Indiana has been doing the exact same thing since the Boston Marathon terrorist attack.

3) There are actual Nazis within the Republican Party too.   Yes, you read that correctly.  The Republican choice to defeat a congressional Democrat in Lyons, IL last year was a 64 year-old man named Arthur Jones and he holds Birthday Parties for Hitler and says "The Holocaust never happened."

4) Republicans have gone to extreme lengths to defend racist killers too.  Just recently, it was discovered that a man named Larry Klayman, a Tea Party activist and Republican blogger, had propagandized the public in an effort to defend George Zimmerman, the murderer who shot an unarmed black teenager in his neighborhood in Florida.  Klayman made up fake court documents alleging that the black female prosecutor in that case had been indicted on criminal charges... She had not.

5) Texas Republicans have tried to infiltrate public education with classes taught by White Supremacy groups.  A recent decision to put a halt to educating children about the Constitution was questioned until it was discovered that those lessons weren't as benign as originally thought. 

6) Sinclair Lewis once famously stated: "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."   Nowhere is that more evident now than in Lousiana, where Republican officials are attempting to ban any kind of flag from being waved on public property other than an American flag.  This is, of course in response to complaints about gay rights marchers waving their rainbow flags on courthouse steps and in parks. 

7) It doesn't stop there with the anti-gay sentiments from Republicans.  One Republican-affiliated Pastor with a Christian Church (Pastor Charles Worley of North Carolina) has even suggested "rounding up homosexuals and putting them behind electric fences".  CNN had a field day with this guy, particularly a newly-out Anderson Cooper.  You can watch all that drama by clicking right here. 

8) Republican legislators are teaching their children to say horrible things.  That might not sound so dramatic unless you consider the circumstances.  Arizona is the only state where a Jewish Female Democrat was shot in the head by an armed attacker with a shaved head who said on YouTube that "Mein Kampf" was his favorite book...  That alone is damning enough for the Copper State, but then Republican Senator Jeff Flake had to go on an apology tour for his son who unleashed a hateful, violent slew of rants against gays, Jewish people and other minority groups on both Twitter and gaming boards.

Bachmann Tea Party Activist Fakes Court Documents on Behalf of George Zimmerman

Once again, proving another link between the Tea Party and their racist underpinnings, Larry Klayman, who operates the Republican Tea Party website FreedomWatchUSA.org, has been caught faking a news story about the special prosecutor in the George Zimmerman murder trial...

Larry Klayman is a Tea Party activist who is frequently seen everywhere you see Michele Bachmann.  He is also a racist.   This week, he created a FAKE indictment of Angela Corey by creating a group called "Citizens Grand Jury" and then using that moniker to write up an almost-authentic looking indictment.  Then he posted the faux court document as a news blast on his other website (FreedomWatchUSA) and allowed his conspiratorial followers to believe it was the real thing...

A brief note to young white liberals who just attended their 1st Tim Wise lecture...

"White privilege"... We get it.  We have it.  You don't need to keep lecturing us.  Telling other white people about how privileged they are in American society does not make you exempt from the same phenomenon.

It's great that you are suddenly so interested in working to end racism but it's not a competition.

This message has been brought to you by white people who are not racist and tired of being treated like we are in facebook conversations just because you feel like lecturing somebody.

Thanks.

Republicans: Cookin' Up a Whole New Batch of Crazy!

Democrats shouldn't get too comfy between now and November because the Republicans are cookin' up all kinds of crazy and that always has its consequences for everyone... especially when there's a lot of money behind it.

Here's a brief rundown of the madness:

To refresh yourself on some of the GOP insanity from 2010, click here.

We'll kick off crazy-fest 2012 with our reigning queen of drunken bigotry, Jan Brewer.  Since her mostly failed attempts at Birtherism, immigration deform and hating on gay people, Jan Brewer has taken it upon herself to join her Tea Party fan-base in defining "personhood".  She says that the idea that women can secretly prevent pregnancy from rape is only "a little bit outrageous" and that it's totally up to legislators and voters whether or not they agree.  Brewer has outlawed abortions in Arizona after 20 weeks... making NO EXCEPTIONS for the life/safety of the mother if the doctor doesn't feel like it. It's an outrageous law that is not seeing nearly enough media attention considering that a woman could conceivably die from this in Arizona before the election.

Of course, we can't really discuss fetal personhood without an honorary mention of the grandfather of all screwy looney-toons soundbytes, Todd Akin. By now, you should know all about the idiotic belief system he holds and the statement that stirred the pot. But if you don't watch Rachel Maddow, then you wouldn't know all of THIS.  Akin's coo-coo for cocoa puffs lunacy stems from other pro-lifers with these crazy ideas before him... including a man by the name of John C. Willke. Willke, if you’re curious, endorsed Romney’s 2008 presidential run—a fact Romney freely boasted about at the time. “I am proud to have the support of a man who has meant so much to the pro-life movement in our country,” Romney said in a 2007 release, according to the New York Daily News. Even some Florida Republicans have seriously twisted ideas about rape.

Todd akin did not act alone in this insanity, though. Which brings us to your Republican Vice Presidential hopeful, Paul Ryan. “Nobody is proposing to deny birth control to anybody,” said Paul Ryan in a CBS interview where he backed away from every single point in the pro-life agenda. This is a very DRASTIC flip-flop for the congressman. Akins and Ryan had conspired immediately upon Ryan's entrance to the House of Representatives to draft a fetal personhood bill called H.R. 3 which, if it had become law, would have legislatively overturned the Roe Vs. Wade Supreme Court decision and made NO EXCEPTIONS for a woman who is raped or the victim of incest. The Paul Ryan lie that "nobody is proposing to deny birth control" is a BIG LIE indeed, however.  You can read all about these attempts (by Catholic Republicans like Ryan, no less) right here, here and here.

From Paul Ryan on the subject of fetuses, we come to the big guy - Mitt Romney. The "fetal skeletons" in Romney's closet were LITERALLY swept away by his corporation called Stericycle. It was an awful blow to the pro-life movement when they discovered that Mitt Romney had inked the deal for his Bain Capital corporation to purchase Stericycle. It is a company that they had been protesting all the while because it facilitates abortions by removing the "medical waste" and disposing of it properly. I don't need to tell you why pro-lifers have a problem with the term "medical waste". This is just the tip of the iceberg with Romney and Bain though.  The time at which Mitt Romney saw over the acquisition of Stericycle was a time that he said he was NOT in the employ of Bain Capital. Obviously, since the signatures are there, and it was Romney himself conducting this business, he lied.  This is also, conveniently, one of the many years for which Mitt Romney never released his tax returns. But it gets EVEN WORSE for the Presidential hopeful... It turns out that Romney lied yet even once more before all of this about his taxes... and the consequences of this other lie are insurmountable for him in his bid for the Presidency.  Mitt Romney never paid any taxes from an address in Massachusetts.  Why is that important?  Because his eligibility to run for Governor of the State of Massachusetts was entirely predicated on the idea that he had.  Romney had not been a Massachusetts resident for the required seven years. He brushed that concern aside by LYING. He told the people of Masshachsetts that he had paid TAXES in Massachusetts for seven years.  It turns out that everyone just assumed nobody would tell a lie that big... They had apparently never met someone like Mitt Romney before... because he did in fact, lie.

Somebody who's very concerned about how all of this will pan out for Republicans is a man by the name of Bryan Fischer. Fischer is one of those guys that Paul Ryan now claims doesn't exist.  He is totally in agreement with the Akins fantasy about "legitimate rape" not causing pregnancies. He also doesn't want women to have access to contraceptives.  Fischer heads up the American Family Association.  Immediately, you recognize that name because they are the secondary source of all things "anti-gay" in the United States.  The first and foremost source being the hate group known as the Family Research Council. While party leaders were immediately frightened by the onslaught of adverse reactions to Akins' crazy "magic vaginas" story, Fischer was upset with them for reacting to it.  His Twitter account relays: "Akin staying in. GOP elites, by gangtackling Akin instead of having his back, have put this seat in play. Loss is on them."  This is basically like saying that a legislator should not be held accountable for being wrong about something... That even if something is a total fabrication - we'll all be fine as long as we stick with it.

Bryan Fischer draws from the same fanbase as 700 Club Televangelist, Pat Robertson.  Of course, Pat Robertson has the heavy burden of explaining to Christian America what should be done with all the "persons" who will not be aborted when Republican policies take effect... You can apparently do whatever you want with unwanted kids after they're born... as long as you DON'T dare adopt them, says Robertson. No man is going to want to be tied down to the "whole United Nations" which includes "weird" kids of other races "who may have been molested" he says.
Pat Robertson seems to be on a rampage against our nation's young people lately. The religious school that he owns is called Regent University. Of course, it's not a real university because it's a private religious school. The word "regent" means "governing in absense of a higher authority". School boards and county-area branches at all levels of government are often called "regents" or regencies. It has been this way for over 100 years, actually. But you guessed it... Robertson has assembled a crack-team of lawyers to restrict the government from being able to use the term. He is suing local community colleges and non-religious public schools to try to take ownership of the word that he's only been using since 1979.

Speaking of "other races" whose children one should supposedly not adopt, lest they find themselves hosting a United Nations convention in their living room - we would be remiss in not reminding you that the Tea Party Express still has plans to plow over every last brown-skinned American until there are none left.  No man is better suited for this task than white America's favorite skinhead - Joe The Plumber.  Joe has given up the glamorous job of plunging toilets so that he can enjoy Government funded healthcare at taxpayer expense as a United States Congressman. His plan is apparently to shrink the size of Government by adding himself to it.  He is running in Ohio on a platform of "don't spread my wealth" and "let's start shooting at the Mexican Border".  Yes, you read that correctly.  Apparently, Joe is very sensitive about being called a racist by "liberal Obama supporters"... he routinely complains about that on his facebook page, but he just leaves that statement dangling there without apology.  Apparently, if Marco Rubio's parents happened to be anywhere near the border between Mexico and the United States, Congressman Plumber would suggest that border police should shoot at them.  No joke.

Let's not forget that Joe The Plumber was brought to us by the same public relations department in the GOP that delivered Sister Sarah Palin to us.  Palin, if you recall, put shooting targets over a map of Democrats in the United States, including one over the name and location of congresswoman Gabby Giffords who was shot, almost fatally, yet still luckier than a number of other innocent people at her event.  The mainstream media has failed to mention that Jared Laughner (the shooter in Arizona) listed "Mein Kampf" as his favorite book on his YouTube profile.  He also had a very creepy video he took of himself burning the American Flag in the Arizona Desert.  The media mostly in concert with CNN and Fox News, decided apparently that since Laughner was "crazy", that it somehow ruled out the possibility that he was ALSO an antisemitic white supremacist and gun-nut. Shockingly, violent racists who are connected in any way to Sarah Palin are never held up to scrutiny for their political alliances.

Since Palin has gone national with a lot of support from Fox News and the Oil and Coal lobby - a new Republican has emerged in Wasilla, Alaska.  His name is Mark Ewing... Palin would be so proud of Ewing.  Some of his latest stump speech talking points have included "I love coal. I love the smell of burning coal in the morning." and "We need to educate our children, but there are certain individuals that are just not going to benefit from an education... like kids who have a hard time making their wheelchair move."

Really?  The latest Republican attack will be... against kids in wheelchairs!  That's just made of win, isn't it?

Randy Travis Vs. George Zimmerman: What a broken nose looks like.

Two mugshots were released today... One highly anticipated, the other a sort of surprise...

The first mugshot was not a real mugshot at the time it was taken... It was a police evidentiary photograph of George Zimmerman, taken approximately one hour after he shot and killed an unarmed teen, Trayvon Martin, in Sanford, Florida.

Zimmerman later cooked up a story about the teen had supposedly attacked him and broke his nose, thereby giving him a self-defense claim for the shooting.

As you can see clearly here, Zimmerman's nose is NOT broken (at least not within that week)... A broken nose almost always causes a black eye.  Zimmerman's nose bends to his left... indicating that he had suffered a broken nose a long time ago, maybe even years ago... but not recently.

The second mugshot is a genuine mugshot - a jail booking photo.  Country music star Randy Travis, was arrested on DWI charges after he reportedly was driving around drunk... and COMPLETELY NAKED.

Randy Travis has had a troubled life - in the mid 90's he was photographed in gay nightclubs and LGBT rights activists urged him to come out of the closet... If Travis was indeed gay, he went further in the opposite direction, getting married and joining a radical fundamentalist and anti-gay church.  From there, his career took a nose-dive and now he is an actor in anti-Muslim propaganda films. Yes, Randy Travis is now known for being a Michele Bachmann/Pastor Hagee styled Islamophobe.

As you can clearly see in Randy Travis' mugshot, his nose also bends to his left... and the break likely happened during the process of his arrest... because he has the black eye to prove it.

Is Florida's 'Troy Davis' An Old White Dude?

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget
what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

- Maya Angelou

When Dr. Amy Goodman's phone died, she stopped trying to look at the time. Others had huddled around Ben Jealous from the NAACP and began to pray. The execution of Troy Davis in Jackson, GA had been mysteriously delayed by the Supreme Court for hours but ultimately, it happened.

People in every major city took to the streets. The mainstream media soon realized that they were losing viewership with every moment that they were not discussing the possibility that an innocent man was being murdered by his state. Time stood still for just a moment at 11:08 and then resumed again. Part of what we know as "America" died with Troy Anthony Davis... the presumption of our innocence.

Although there were undeniable racial components to the controversy that finally simmered to a boil on September 21st, it was not what any of us would call "racially charged". White people were also deeply concerned - even if they suspected, as the Supreme Court must have, that Troy Davis was guilty. No matter what our race, gender, age or other qualifiers, we all have an uncomfortable suspicion of persecution. It's part of the American DNA... We translate these messages from our government with bits of code that we gathered from the Salem Witch Trials, the Southern Strategy, the McCarthy Era, the Anita Bryant Crusade and the Satanic Panic.

Some of us are more keenly attuned to persecution than others. William Thomas "Tommy" Zeigler is just such a person. He has been sitting on Death Row for 35 years for a crimes that largely stink of being a set-up.

Back in the early 70's, Ziegler owned a furniture store in Winter Gardens just outside of Orlando. He had become friends with the local police cheif and was taking it upon himself to root out corruption in the area caused by the Ku Klux Klan who had begun pulling some kind of sharecropping scam on the mostly black citrus pickers.

On Christmas Eve, he intended to give his wife's parents a reclining chair as a gift. He went to his store to either meet them there or gather the chair and was unable to turn on any lights. Upon entrance, he was beaten unconscious and shot in the abdomen by unseen attackers.

When Zeigler regained consciousness, he phoned his friend (the Police Cheif) and informed him that he had been attacked and needed help. What Zeigler did not know is that his wife, his wife's parents, and an African American customer were all scattered on the floor of the store and riddled with bullets. They had been that way even before he entered.

What followed was the most convoluted and utterly ridiculous cooked up case against a man that you could ever imagine. Investigators decided that Zeigler had massacred his own family on Christmas Eve just moments before he was scheduled to go to dinner with the police cheif and a judge and then shot himself in the abdomen to make it look like a robbery.

The case against Zeigler was sketchy at best. Then, evidence began turning up from strange sources and new motives were "discovered" by investigators with a little help from the FBI. Suddenly, there were two eye-witnesses who just happened to see everything except the actual shooting.

When it came time for a trial, Zeigler was surprised to find out that the judge just happened to be his nemesis from his earlier activism against loan-sharking, sharecropping, or otherwise taking advantage of the migrant workers. A young police officer witnessed that judge and the prosecutor hanging out with each other and discussing the case.

By the end of Zeigler's trial, 72 people testified against him and the jury was utterly confused by the fantastic series of events that the State's Attorney expected them to believe. Both Zeigler and his attorney attested that they felt they were being railroaded. One juror was not convinced of Zeigler's guilt and raised questions during deliberation. She was threatened and intimidated by the jury foreman and this made her even more resolute. She attempted to contact the judge to inform him of how she was being treated and the judge ordered that she be given heavy doses of valium. Once they had her all drugged up, she was compliant with a guilty verdict but still insisted on recommending only a life sentence and not death.
When the verdict was handed down, the judge overruled the jury's sentencing reccommendation and gave Zeigler the death sentence.

Now - this sounds a little crazy, right? Well, the State of Florida's story was even crazier. But what really arouses suspicion is who all these players went on to become during the 35 years that Zeigler has occupied death row.

The blood-spatter analyst who gave a half-cocked testimony which falsely identified the blood on Zeigler's shirt (DNA Evidence later contradicted him) went on to become the nation's leading criminologist of this nature and even worked the OJ Simpson trial and appeared on numerous television shows.

In 2008, when a citizen advocate wrote to Herbert L. MacDonell (the blood-spatter analyst), to question him about the DNA discrepancies, the analyst responded with a brand new, never before heard theory of how all the blood got where it did... by accusing Zeigler of being bisexual and having sex with the body of the customer who was found in the store. That response, aside from its complete randomness and audacity, seemed to be a hostile response to being questioned about the case.

The State's Attorney, Robert J. Eagan was moving up in the world until a 1985 corruption sting fell upon him that involved allegations of bribery on his part. A judge was involved as well as a number of Eagan's informants and the allegations stemmed all the way back to a drug arrest in the late 70's, just after Zeigler's trial. At one point Eagan was quoted in the St. Petersburg Times as admitting that "one of his informants", whom he declined to name, may have accepted bribes without authorization from himself.

One needs only to look at the courtroom transcripts from Zeigler's trial to understand that Eagan is a master of manipulation and will do anything to whip a jury into a senseless frenzy... As long as there's a "guilty" verdict, he's not concerned with the aftermath.

The Judge, Maurice Mitchell Paul, was later promoted by President Ronald Reagan to US Federal District Judge and he still hears cases in North Florida today. Specifically, he decides whether to advance cases against the government for maltreatment of prisoners in Florida's corrections facilities. The Zeigler case is not the only one that Justice Paul is infamous for. In 1995, he intervened in a case that juveniles had against the Florida Corrections System and ruled in favor of the Dozier Training School for Boys. This will ring a bell for anybody who is familiar with Florida's most grotesque tale of child abuse - The White House Boys.

The Seven False Gods of the Right Wing

7. Nationalism - Throughout history, Nationalism has usually been the driving motivator for war, fascism and all sorts of other reactionary misdeeds. Nationalism is a hyper-idealized view of one's country in which the nationalist ascribes their own sense of morality to the foundation of the entire nation. Usually dressing itself as ordinary patriotism, Nationalism is far more feverish and irrational than simply being a fan of the government. It is the result of mass propaganda, fear and an erasure of the lines that usually separate business, media, religion and government.

6. Charity - It has been said that Republicans give more to "charity" than Democrats do and I'm inclined to believe it. In fact, our charitable donation system in America seems specifically designed for the purpose of justifying that statement. The fact is, things get much worse when you indiscriminately throw money at your television screen. Religious charitable funds are some of the biggest and most unregulated industries in the world and many of them do as much harm as good. Mormon adoptions of underprivileged children from over seas are largely a justified version of human trafficking< and just recently, CBN (the Christian Broadcasting Network) told their donors that Haiti had caused its own earthquake destruction by signing a pact with the Devil. The network drew in millions of dollars in one week and much of that funding will go toward furthering their own presence and infrastructure in the small, underprivileged nation. Very little (if any) of the donations will actually help the people of Haiti.

5. Racialism - Racialism is the thought process that skirts around racism and disguises itself as harmless observation of racial differences. The most important thing to understand about racialism is that even when the racialist appears to be only pointing out racism in others, they are obsessed with it. Their first instinct is always to discuss race. Their hypersensitivity and bizarre misunderstandings generally give them away as outright racists in the end. A classic example of this was when a young John McCain campaigner named Ashley Todd cooked up false accusations about a ficticious black male Obama campaign worker who supposedly assaulted her by cutting a letter "B" into her face. The story was immediately picked up by Fox News and celebrated within Republican ranks as a sure-fire win for McCain in the 2008 election. The idea was that voters would react in a racist manner by associating Miss Todd's "attacker" with the skin tone and gender of Barack Obama. So while Miss Todd could simply indicate that the man who "savagely" attacked her was black, that unto itself would not be perceived as racist... except for the fact that she made it all up.

4. Public Opinion - Republicans and Conservatives are married to the idea that a majority of Americans agree with them. They love to indicate polls and percentages of "true Americans" who think exactly as they do. Truthfully, the general public can manipulated to believe just about anything. Certain people in the media have developed an intimate understanding of how propaganda can be used to create the illusion that mob rule is the law in America. The most glaring example of this is CNN's Nancy Grace. Nancy Grace runs a gossip show on CNN where she focuses on muders, rapes and abductions. She leads her viewers down a path of mob rule in which they feel as though they can investigate these matters from the comfort of their living rooms. The problem with Nancy Grace's style of entertainment is that her viewers rarely suspect that her show is simply entertainment. Nancy Grace fans feel as though they are actually doing the work of judge, jury and executioner and they hand down a guilty verdict every single time. The result of an actual trial matters very little to these people. It is the court of public opinion that they aim to try cases in. It's basically a mass-media form of public flogging and shunning without a trial, evidence or proof. Guilty until proven innocent, every single time.

3. Oil - One of the most shocking revelations of the 2008 election season was when video was leaked on to YouTube of Alaska's then-governor leading her hometown in prayer for a gas pipeline. To many right-wingers, there was nothing wrong with this scene and it all seemed quite normal to them. They even chanted "drill baby drill" as a campaign slogan of sorts. What resulted was a shockwave in the larger community of educated persons - the sudden realization that Republicans had created a new religion in which God & Oil had been merged into one holy concept. This also includes, of course, Global Warming Denialism and a celebration of private ownership over natural resources. Incidentally, that brings us to the 2nd False God of the Right Wing...

2. The Corporation - What can be said for a situation where Republican traders at an energy company laugh at elderly Bush voters and say they can go fuck themselves because their electricity has inexplicably gone out but the company got what it wanted? Well, this is exactly the situation shown with shocking clarity in the documentary calledEnron: The Smartest Guys in The Room. Republicans used to openly argue for what's called "deregulation" - a process of removing government restraints and safety nets on corporations. These days, they disguise deregulation as Independent Regulation which is not really regulation at all. To put it in simpler terms - they appoint the fox to guard the henhouse. Another interesting Republican tool is to disguise large multi-national conglomerates in terms that sound less severe, making the public think that they are protecting "small businesses" and somehow deregulating in favor of Ma & Pa shops in the American countryside. Nothing could be further from the truth.

1. Sexual Purity - This is the number 1 false God of the Right Wing because it is the most powerful. Everywhere you go in America, you are met with people who confuse virginity with innocence and religion with heterosexism. But there are contradictions to be found in this view of reality. For instance, Salt Lake City Utah, the epicenter of Mormonism, is the capitol of online pornography consumerism in the United States. Furthermore, those who protest sexual impurity the loudest are invariably caught with their pants down at any given moment. Two of the most devastating examples can be found in the cases of Ted Haggard (the disgraced President of the National Association of Evangelicals) and Carrie Prejean (the disgraced leader of the "opposite marriage" movement). But the real reason that Sexual Purity is number 1 on the list is because the consequences of worshiping this false god are the most deadly. In recent news, the Republic of Uganda has decided to implement the death penalty for persons who are charged with what they call "aggravated homosexuality" and prison sentences for anyone who refuses to testify against the behavior.

As a Buddhist myself, I cannot tell you which God to follow. I have no desire to influence your religious or spiritual life other than to indicate what I know does NOT work. The Seven False Gods of the Right Wing have shown themselves to be nothing more than snake oil and should be viewed with heightened skepticism in America. Namaste.

The Bizarre Self-Abusing Psyche of Michael Steele

The Mainstream Media was all a flux with the latest diversion from the Proposition 8 trial at the beginning of this week: Another non-scandal dreamt up by Karl Rove - The Harry Reid talking point.
The GOP had hoped that it would turn into something big enough that they could call "Negro-gate".

Alas, as usual with the Republican Party, it blew up in their faces when Michael Steele was interviewed by Face To Face with John Ralston. Steele did his best to perpetuate the latest accusation against the Democratic Party but what resulted was a stunning revelation that Steele himself is an anti-black racist who just happens to be black. Furthermore, he seems to hold a significant amount of jealousy against the President for a perceived ability to "pass" as white.

Many liberals have regarded Steele's entire chairmanship to be a desperate attempt by the Republican Party to prove a lack of racism within their ranks. Although history and commentary illustrates otherwise, Steele's participation in the GOP must still at least represent some modicum of acceptance, right?

Let's go straight to the interview:

Ralston: "You didn't think Trent Lott should step down for his remarks? You think he used a poor choice of words? But you think Harry Reid should step down?"

Steele: "Yes. When THEY [The Democrats] get caught, it's a quick apology, everyone pats eachother on the back, they roll out a few African Americans to defend them,and everything's good. But if a Republican says something like Trent Lott, he's gotta be drummed out of office [...]
I know Trent Lott, I don't know Harry Reid.
I don't think anybody in leadership in 2010 should refer to an African American as "light-skinned" and with a "negro" dialect that they can turn off and on."

Ralston: But isn't what Lott said [in 2002] that essentially if Strom Thurmond, who ran on a segregationist agenda, had been elected President that this country would be better off?

Steele: "I don't know what would have happened in 1948 but [Lott and Senate Republicans] were at a Birthday Party and the leader of the Senate was only saying nice things about the honoree [Strom Thurmond]. And all they do in Washington is pat eachother on the back and give eachother nice platitudes. [Lott] just got caught between his happy talk and the reality. So, I think [Democrats] are absolutely being hypocritical because this isn't 1948 or 2005. This is a different mindset and a different time. You have an African American running for President and all you can say about him is that he's light-skinned... You know, in the context that he could pass. You know... that's what [Reid] is really saying, he could pass..."

Now, as any gay person can tell you, there is always a small segment of any minority who tries to "play it straight" and identify themselves with the majority while ignoring their own minority status. In the gay world, we call this "being in the closet". In the black world, it's called "being an Uncle Tom". What Steele is doing here falls so far beyond the pale (excuse my pun) that he actually becomes racist against his own race.

Let's review:

Steele: The Democrats "roll out a few African Americans" to defend themselves.
(So he thinks that blacks cannot decide for themselves what to say or whom to defend.)

Steele: But when someone "says something like Trent Lott", they have to be drummed out of office. (So he thinks Segregation is defensible and that Trent Lott's comment was just fine.)

Steele: "This isn't 1948 or 2005" - it's a "different time".
(So 1948 and 2005 are in the same era as far as Steele is concerned, time moves much slower for him. And the age of a black President represents a drastically different era in his world.)

Steele: "I don't think anybody should say that he's light-skinned", "All you can say about him is that he's Light-Skinned."
(So the operative phrase that bothers Steele so much here is not the word "Negro" but rather "light-skinned". Evidently, Steele doesn't remember that our President is half white and chooses to focus only on the tone of his skin. It really bothers him. He's jealous.)

Steele: "You know... He could pass."
(This is the final analysis. Barack Obama (in Steele's view) could pass as white. According to Steele's messed up mindset, it's all about fitting in with white people. Steele believes that Obama has an edge in this strange competition that he's imagined. He feels robbed. After all, if you are willing to (as a black man) chair the Republican Party and defend segregation, that must count for something, right?)