Pat Robertson: Obama Inciting 'Black-On-White Violence'

Regional embarrassment and racist Pat Robertson has let off another explosion of verbal diarrhea.  This time he is blaming Barack Obama for "inciting black-on- white violence."  The data to support this claim?  There is, of course, none.  And its all an delusion in the mind of a man who seems increasingly out of touch with any kind of objective reality who daily panders to the sense of outrage of the white supremacists of the GOP and conservative Christian groups.  These people just cannot get over their hate and bigotry and go off every time they remember a black man is in the White House.  As I have said before, it's a wonder that today's GOP city and county committee meetings don't start with all attendees donning white robes and hoods. And for non-Virginians, it is important that they remember that Robertson is historically the largest GOP donor in Virginia.  Right Wing Watch has these details:

Pat Robertson today, while discussing the shooting of an Australian baseball player in Oklahoma by three teenagers, two of them black and one white, accused President Obama of inciting anti-white violence. The 700 Club host said, “We are having a tremendous amount of this black-on-white violence and I have a feeling that instead of bringing racial harmony, having an African-American president has exacerbated the problem.”
“He seems to be wanting to bring division among people instead of bringing them together; he is one of the most divisive leaders this country has ever had,” Robertson continued. “It just seems he wants to rub the edges raw every chance he gets.” Robertson argued that Obama is trying to divide people by race and class: “There’s always something there to stir up controversy.”
- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/robertson-obama-inciting-black-white-violence#sthash.InZVuMwo.XNB1TTht.dpuf

Pat Robertson today, while discussing the shooting of an Australian baseball player in Oklahoma by three teenagers, two of them black and one white, accused President Obama of inciting anti-white violence. The 700 Clubhost said, “We are having a tremendous amount of this black-on-white violence and I have a feeling that instead of bringing racial harmony, having an African-American president has exacerbated the problem.”

“He seems to be wanting to bring division among people instead of bringing them together; he is one of the most divisive leaders this country has ever had,” Robertson continued. “It just seems he wants to rub the edges raw every chance he gets.” Robertson argued that Obama is trying to divide people by race and class: “There’s always something there to stir up controversy.”

 

As Blue Virginia reminds us, some of Robertson's other statements include:

Of course, this is the same top Virginia GOP donor who has said: Gays Destroy Society, Want Christians in Jail; that gays are really straights with "chromosomal damage", that Planned Parenthood backs genocide and inspired Hitler, that "Wild" Liberals Support "Society of Death" 

For the record, back in my GOP activist days I got to meet Robertson in person.  In my opinion, he is an arrogant egomaniac who is having a tempestuous love affair with himself.  Obnoxious doesn't even begin to describe him. His mere presence - not to mention Regent University and CBN - are a huge negative for Hampton Roads.

   

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Colin Powell Slams North Carolina Voting Law

Retired General and former Secretary of State Colin Powell like myself once considered himself to be a Republican.  But, like me, most of my extended family members and many others, Powell is repulsed by the agenda of today's Republican Party.   Especially its agenda of disenfranchising minority voters, particularly blacks.  One would think that the GOP has merged with the KKK.  A piece at Talking Points Memo looks at Colin Powell's slamming of North Carlina white supremacist favored voter ID law in the presence ot North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory who signed the vile legislation into law.  Here are highlights:

Colin Powell spoke out forcefully Thursday against a sweeping new voting law in North Carolina, arguing that Republicans should be courting minority voters rather than driving them away from the polls.

"I want to see policies that encourage every American to vote, not make it more difficult to vote," the former secretary of state said in a speech at Raleigh, N.C., according to The News & Observer. 
Powell added, "It immediately turns off a voting bloc the Republican Party needs. These kinds of actions do not build on the base. It just turns people away."

Powell's remarks were even more notable given North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory's (R) presence at the CEO Forum in Raleigh.

McCrory (R) signed the voting bill — passed by the GOP-controlled legislature — with little fanfare earlier this month. The law, slated to take effect in 2016, will require government-issued photo IDs at the polls while shortening the early voting period in the state. Democrats and groups such as the NAACP and the ACLU have criticized the law for its punitive effects on minority and young voters.
Powell, who endorsed President Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012, has addressed his party's problems with minorities before. In January, he said that he still considers himself a Republican but acknowledged the presence of "a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party."

He revisited that theme in a big way on Thursday, arguing that measures like North Carolina's voting law punish minority voters.

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The Tea Party’s Path to Irrelevance

One of the things most notable about today's Republican Party is the embrace by the party base of ignorance, bigotry, and racism, the later being openly displayed by the push for voter ID laws to disenfranchise blacks and opposition to immigration reform which is openly anti-Hispanic.  Fueling this trend is the Tea Party and white supremacist Christofascists like The Family Foundation here in Virginia.  While the Tea Party/Christofascist overlap is not complete, some 85% of the Tea Party crowd describes itself as conservative Christian.  Both groups are fighting a rear guard battle against modernity and demographic changes that are irreversible.  It's a case of long term political suicide.  The only question is how long before these bigotry filled Neanderthals drag the GOP to irrelevance.  I would argue, not soon enough.  An op-ed column in the New York Times looks at the lessons the GOP ought to learn from history.  And by history, I mean real history, not Christofascist revisionist history.  Here are some column highlights:

THE Tea Party has a new crusade: preventing illegal immigrants from gaining citizenship, which they say is giving amnesty to lawbreakers. Judson Phillips, the founder of Tea Party Nation, recently told Politico that his members were “more upset about the amnesty bill than they were about Obamacare.”

They’re so upset, in fact, that Republican supporters of immigration reform, like Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have become marked men in their party, while House Republicans have followed the Tea Party lead by refusing to even consider the Senate’s bipartisan reform plan. 

Tea Partyers often style themselves as disciples of Thomas Jefferson, the high apostle of limited government. But by taking the ramparts against immigration, the movement is following a trajectory that looks less like the glorious arc of Jefferson’s Republican Party than the suicidal path of Jefferson’s great rivals, the long-forgotten Federalists, who also refused to accept the inexorable changes of American demography.

The Federalists began as the faction that supported the new Constitution, . . . .   Culturally, however, they were identified with the ancient stock of New England and the mid-Atlantic . . .

The Federalists held together for the first few decades, but in 1803 the Louisiana Purchase — Jefferson’s great coup — drove a wedge between the party’s ideology and its demography. The national party was suddenly faced with a nation that looked very different from what it knew: in a stroke, a vast new territory would be opened for colonization, creating new economic and political interests, slavery among them. 

“The people of the East can not reconcile their habits, views and interests with those of the South and West,” declared Thomas Pickering, a leading Massachusetts Federalist.

Fearing that Irish, English and German newcomers would vote for the Jeffersonian Republicans, they [the Federalists] argued — unsuccessfully — for excluding immigrants from voting or holding office, and pushed to extend the period of naturalization from 5 to 14 years. Leading Federalists even plotted to “establish a separate government in New England,” 

Finally, in the fall of 1814, the Federalists convened the Hartford Convention to vote on whether to stay in or out of the Union. By then even the hotheads realized how little support they had, and the movement collapsed. And the Federalists, now scorned as an anti-national party, collapsed as well. 

Today’s Republicans are not likely to disappear completely, like the Federalists did. But Republican leaders like Mr. Rubio and Mr. Graham understand that a party that seeks to defy demography, relying on white resentment toward a rising tide of nonwhite newcomers, dooms itself to permanent minority status. 

The problem is that the Tea Party is not a party, and its members are quite prepared to ride their hobbyhorse into a dead end. And many Republicans, at least in the House, seem fully prepared to join them there, and may end up dragging the rest of the party with them. 

The example of those early days shows that American political parties once knew how to adapt to a changing reality. It is a lesson many seem to have forgotten. 

I doubt that the Tea Party/Christofascists will learn from history.  Why? First because they don't know accurate history.  Second, because they are too wrapped up in the own supposed exceptionalism and ignorance to see the handwriting on the wall. When I see a vehicle locally that has a Tea Party license plate - Virginia allows all kinds of plates to generate money - I cannot help but think, why not put a bumper sticker on ones car that reads "I'm a cretin."

 

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Immigration Groups to Target House of Representatives GOP

With Congress headed into summer recess and GOP House members headed back to districts where they will pander to the racists and white supremacists in the GOP base - most of whom, of course, profess to be godly Christian despite the fact that they are filled with hate towards others - pro-immigration reform groups are planning to target these GOP Congress members and perhaps convince them that doing the right thing should trump pandering to horrible people.  A piece in Politico looks at the planned effort.  Here are excerpts:

Outside groups plan to target more than 100 House Republicans over the August recess with an aggressive ground game aimed at persuading lawmakers to embrace immigration reform.

Their goal: prove that it’s not just Washington insiders who want a comprehensive immigration overhaul, but that conservative voters in their districts support it as well.

The unusually coordinated effort to win the recess includes a major grass-tops initiative by pro-reform groups like American Action Network, the Partnership for a New American Economy, Republicans for Immigration Reform and others to connect local business leaders, mayors, pastors and activists with GOP lawmakers on their home turf.

“During the previous debate when President [George W.] Bush pushed for immigration reform, there was no grass-roots effort and a loud minority that opposes reform controlled the dialogue. This time, proponents of reform are not going to be caught off-guard.” 

Unions and other immigration activist groups like the SEIU, AFSCME, the National Council of La Raza and others are going to lay out their immigration reform summer plan Wednesday on Capitol Hill that includes holding hundreds of events in districts across the country in an effort to target key lawmakers while members are at home during August.

Of course, the reform groups won’t have the battlefield to themselves.  Groups like NumbersUSA and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, who oppose the Senate’s immigration bill, have plans to gin up activists across the country to attend town halls and vocally oppose reform.

But reform advocates believe they’ve got the infrastructure in place to beat back those appeals.  Pro-reform outside groups have been coordinating in recent weeks in a nearly unprecedented way. Senior strategists from numerous groups are engaging in daily conference calls to ensure that they are targeting districts in a comprehensive way.

It will be an interesting spectacle to watch.

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GOP Voter Suppression Efforts Increasing in South

Perhaps realizing that their longs for a return of the Old South when blacks were chattel and obviously could not vote, Republicans in legislatures across the South are making frantic efforts to limit the ability of minorities and liberal leaning younger voters to vote.  Rather than facing the fact that what the are peddling is not wanted by more and more citizens, the GOP's last stand effort will be to limit voting to angry white Christofascists and Tea Party members.  It's disgusting to watch, but such is the nature of today's increasingly hideous GOP.  A column in Talking Points Memo looks at the phenomenon which is occurring here in Virginia.  Here are column excerpts:

In an era of declining white majorities in America, Southern Republicans in charge of state legislators are moving hard while they feel they still have the chance to clamp down on the right to vote and if at all possible restrict minority voting. Here’s the latest example. 

Republicans in the North Carolina state Senate introduced voter identification legislation Thursday that's even more restrictive than a version passed by the state House earlier this year, the Charlotte Observer reported.

The state Senate bill, which would take effect in the 2016 election, removed half of the forms of identification allowed under the state House's legislation, such as cards from the University of North Carolina system of colleges, state community colleges, local governments, private employers and law enforcement agencies. 

Under the proposal outlined by state Senate Republicans, seven types of government-issued identifications would be accepted, namely driver’s licenses, passports, non-driver IDs and military or veteran cards. The state's legislative session ends next week.

As is the norm and as occurred here in Virginia during the last session, the Republicans whine about voter fraud even thought there are almost no documents cases.  The seek to take away citizens' right to vote while fixing a problem that doesn't exist.  I ask again, when are GOP city and county committee meetings doing to start with white robes and hoods being passed out to all members (or will the members simply bring their own)?

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35 LGBT Groups Denounce Zimmerman Verdict

One of the ironies that drives me to distraction at times is the fact that far too many black pastors continue to allow themselves to be used as puppets and water carriers by white Christofascists organizations with either a history of racism or leadership lines that track back to vehement segregationists.   Here in Virginia, the white supremacists at the viciously anti-gay Family Foundation have black pastors jumping through their hoops like trained circus dogs when it comes to parroting anti-gay propaganda.  Meanwhile, the folks at The Family Foundation hate and despise blacks just as they hate gays.  Hopefully, black organizations and some of these dim witted pastors will take note that 35 LGBT organizations signed a joint letter calling for justice for Trayon Martin in the wake of the travesty of George Zimmerman's literally getting away with murder.  Here is the text of the letter via Towleroad:

Trayvon Deserves Justice

We cannot begin to imagine the continued pain and suffering endured by Trayvon Martin's family and friends. We stand in solidarity with them as they continue to fight for justice, civil rights and closure. And we thank everyone who has pushed and will continue to push for justice.

Trayvon Martin deserves justice and his civil rights. We support the organizations and community leaders who are urging the federal government to explore every option to ensure that justice is served for Trayvon and that his civil rights are honored and respected. But our work does not end there: we will honor Trayvon Martin by strengthening our commitment to end bias, hatred, profiling and violence across our communities.

We represent organizations with diverse lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender constituencies. Our community has been targets of bigotry, bias, profiling and violence. We have experienced the heart-breaking despair of young people targeted for who they are, who they are presumed to be, or who they love: Rashawn Brazell, Lawrence King, Ali Forney, Brandon Teena, Brandon White, Matthew Shepard, Marco McMillian, Angie Zapata, Sakia Gunn, Gwen Araujo and countless others.

Every person, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity, must be able to walk the streets without fear for their safety.

Justice delayed is justice denied and in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "a right delayed is a right denied." We honor Trayvon by seeking justice for all people.

Here is a list of the signatories to the letter:

All Out
American Civil Liberties Union
Believe Out Loud
BiNet USA
Bisexual Resource Center
Center for Black Equity
CenterLink: The Community of LGBT Centers
Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals
Equality Federation
Family Equality Council
Freedom to Work
Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network
Gay-Straight Alliance Network (GSA Network)
GetEQUAL
GMHC
GLAD
GLAAD
Harvey Milk Foundation
Human Rights Campaign
Immigration Equality
Lambda Legal
Movement Advancement Project
National Black Justice Coalition
National Center for Lesbian Rights
National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs
National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
National Minority AIDS Council
National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance
Out & Equal Workplace Advocates
PFLAG National
The Trevor Project
Trans Advocacy Network
Transgender Law Center
Trans People of Color Coalition

Blacks in general and black pastors in particular need to realize that gays are their natural allies - the "godly Christian" white folk hate them as much as they hate us.  They need to stop allowing themselves to to be duped by Bible verses into to assisting their enemies.  

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Immigration Reform: Today’s GOP vs. Tomorrow’s GOP

Admittedly, I write a lot about the Republican Party and its current frightening state - which in my view tracks directly back to the rise of the paranoid, ignorance embracing - clinically insane? - Christofascists in the party.  Part of me continues to hope that the GOP can regain sanity and eject the most ignorant and hate filled elements of the "godly Christian" crowd from the party.  How that can be accomplished is what remains troublesome.  The equivalent of napalm is needed, but one doesn't want to kill every element of the GOP, just the insane Christofascist and Tea Party elements that have ushered in individuals like Congressman Burgess, Sarah Palin and similar loons.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at how the debate over immigration reform is pitting the forces of reaction and bigotry (the Dark Side, if you will) against those who understand that change must occur.  Here are some article excerpts:

We are about to watch something unfold that is really fascinating and very rare in American politics. One of our two major parties—I’ll let you guess which one!—is on the cusp of having to weigh what is good for its congressional wing in the short term versus what is good for its aspirations to reclaim the presidency over the long term. I’m not sure this has any precedent, at least in the modern history of the republic: a party that, electorally, demographically, and culturally, has so insulated and isolated itself from the rest of the nation that what’s good for its legislators is bad for the party’s future—not to mention the rest of the country.

I’m writing of course about immigration and, of course, about the Republican Party. We are nearing, now, the push-comes-to-shove moment; we’re about to see whether this bill can pass. 

In the Senate, Republicans are skittish about border security (among other issues, but mainly border security). The Republicans who want stricter border-security measures and a say in how to create them have a point  .   .   .   .  it’s not really about border security—border security is the only leverage Republicans have to slow down the path to citizenship, which ultimately is the issue here for the right-wing base and always has been. The vast majority of individual GOP House members, and a smaller majority of the party’s senators, know that voting for immigration reform with said path is risky for them politically. At the very least, it’s something they’ll have to explain at angry town hall meetings. In the more serious cases, it will invite a primary challenge from the right.

And thus we have it: something that would obviously be good for their party in the long run, supporting reform so that they can start the process of appealing to Latino voters, is dangerous for it in the short run.

This is not some freak accident, but is the product of design—of the kinds of ideologically homogenous districts Republicans have drawn for themselves, and more broadly, the way a snow-white party has culturally divorced itself from the racially heterogeneous America the rest of live in and celebrate.

[N]o congressional party has ever operated out of a little ideological cocoon the way this one does. A president has to appeal to voters in the middle, but these people only have to appeal to voters who are exactly where they are and even further to their right. And they can win reelection pretty much forever on that basis.

If he [Boehner] doesn’t [allow a vote on immigration reform], his party will find itself in a raging battle with demographic destiny. And its only future path to the White House will lie in stoking white resentment to fever levels to produce the highest turnout possible, while dividing the country even further—but solidifying the cultural idea of “the party,” which is what really matters most to them.

The so-called GOP establishment created this Frankenstein monster it now faces.  I feel no sympathy whatsoever for these folks.  Some of us warned of the coming danger and were denigrated and mistreated.  Pandering to ignorance and bigotry is never a good long term solution.  Now the GOP is reaping what it sowed.

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Lindsey Graham Warns GOP: ‘It Doesn’t Matter Who We Run In 2016′ If Immigration Reform Fails

The insanity and swamp fever that pervades the Republican Party base continues unabated and despite warnings that the Party needs to change course, the focus remains on pandering to the aging male, white supremacist elements of the GOP.  And when these folks aren't the ones being coddled, then it's the spittle flecked Christofascists who do not even grasp that they are slowly killing their own denominations not to mention the Christian brand as a whole.  The latest Cassandra is the Palmetto Queen, Lindsey Graham who is lamenting the GOP's future if immigration reform fails and the GOP retreats further into the racist world of the "real Americans" crowd.  Think Progress looks at Graham's warnings.  Here are excerpts:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — one of the Republican co-sponsors of an immigration reform bill that would provide a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 11.1 million undocumented immigrations — told fellow Republicans that the GOP will fail to exist if reform does not become law.

“If we don’t pass immigration reform , if we don’t get it off the table in a reasonable, practical way, it doesn’t matter who you run in 2016,” Graham warned during on appearance Sunday on NBC’s Meet The Press. “We’re in a demographic death spiral as a party, and the only way we can get back in good graces with the Hispanic community, in my view, is pass comprehensive immigration reform. If you don’t do that, it really doesn’t matter who will run, in my view.”

[W]hile several GOP-sponsored autopsy reports have urged the party to adopt a more welcoming tone toward immigrants, conservatives are still comparing immigrants to bankrobbers, while voting to deport DREAM-eligible immigrants. 

During a separate appearance on ABC’s This Week, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who also helped draft the Senate’s immigration reform measure and may run for president in 2016, would not commit to voting for his own bill.

Yes, you read that right. Congressman Steve King (R-IA) compared undocumented immigrants to bank robbers.   King, notorious for railing against any immigration reform efforts, used the comparison to argue that deporting people is “not a particularly draconian punishment.”

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