Friday, May 30, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
This is the "Gun Rights" Movement
Mike Huckabee, Racism, Chain Gangs, a Joke About Assassinating Barack Obama and the NRA:
Submitted by mark karlin on Tue, 05/20/2008 - 7:34am. EditorBlog BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG
by Mark Karlin
Editor and Publisher
May 20, 2008
Here is the abhorrent "joke" Mike Huckabee made at this weekend's annual NRA convention (in Kentucky) about assassinating Barack Obama after hearing a loud noise: "That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he's getting ready to speak...Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor."
Of course, the "likeable right winger" just sloughed it off and made a non-apology-apology the next day. It's the kind of "I'm not admitting that I said anything wrong but if you were offended, I'm sorry for that" non-admission of culpability that the GOP excels at. And then Huckabee, on Sunday, had the chutzpah to announce that he wanted to run with John McCain.
In 2000, then NRA "Celebrity in Chief" Charlton Heston went around the Midwest and at a stop in Grand Rapids, if we remember, he made reference to lynching Al Gore -- who was, of course, then running for president -- because he supported mild gun control measures.
The relationship between guns, race and the largely white male membership of the NRA is not incidental. It is at the heart of the passion that fuels the virtually insane gun lobby opposition to laws that would even help police solve crimes. Anyone who thinks that this issue is about "reason" or "Second Amendment Rights" has forgotten that this nation fought a Civil War that resulted in the end of slavery and citizenship rights being granted to blacks in the South. That is still a deep psychic scar for many white males, and marked the beginning of the perceived descent in their power.
The '60s brought another major assault on the "absolute rule" of the white male, as they were assaulted with the twin movements of equality of power by minorities and women. And let's not forget that women couldn't vote until the early part of the last century.
Guns became the psychic lightning rod, the last Alamo, of the white male's feeling of being besieged by the likes of a democracy that wouldn't allow automatic entitlement for being born white and a man. Only an "effete, elitist pussy" gives up power without a gunfight, and the members of the NRA aren't having any of it. Under the establishment of a real democracy of equal rights, they will die with their guns in their hands. Otherwise they will psychically collapse into their worst fears: having their virility taken away, because "the enemies within" have already recut their American apple pie and started dividing it evenly. (That's if you exclude the wealthiest and American corporations running off with the biggest pieces before the dividing even gets started.)
A BuzzFlash reader wrote us this interpretation of Huckabee's "quip":
When Mike Huckabee joked that a loud sound at the NRA convention was Obama jumping at the sound of a gun, he wasn’t making a mindless gaffe, he was expressing nostalgia. Huckabee knew that the following day, he would force his way into consideration as Vice President, and understood that as a result, he’d be in the limelight again. Huckabee is not stupid, and when he raised the specter of a black man running from a white man’s gun, he understood his audience, their frustrations, their feelings about themselves.
These men remember a happier time, those bygone days when people in this country knew their place, and if some uppity "nigra" forgot it, well, a shot or two fired into the air would make him remember very quickly. If a person of color decided to press one claim or another, the result would be very similar to the scene that Mike Huckabee "joked" about. Stand on the front porch, produce the firearm, and shoot it: Get off my property, get out of my business, stay away from my daughter. It was a lovely and simple way to solve a conflict, and back then, the government knew better than to prevent a man from defending what was rightfully his. What’s rightfully his?
Well, a man’s land, his family, and his right to own slaves. Less than 200 years ago, one-third of the South’s population was in chains, and with such ratios, guns were necessary. Guns were necessary in case the Chained Ones got uppity, in case they forgot who they were. In case one of them ran for President.
Oh yes, you could almost hear the hound dogs braying and the sheriffs and townspeople cursing about the "niggas" in the appalling downwind following Huckabee's comment.
As to those who say Mike is such a likeable guy, we say there were a lot of smiling sheriffs we've seen alongside photos of lynched "Negroes." Huckabee's "joke" shot out directly from the subconscious and into the collective psyche of the NRA audience, mostly aging white males.
Everybody knows that gun control has nothing to do with stopping people from hunting, but the NRA always hides behind that or "Second Amendment Rights." But this is not about either of those; it's about an emotional last stand for the white male whose power has been under siege because a lot of Americans -- such as us -- believe in the promise of justice, equal opportunity, and voting rights.
No, the battle over America's gun culture will never be resolved with "reason." Because the opposition to treating guns as a consumer product -- which they are -- is all about emotion.
Mike Huckabee encapsulated the heart of that roaring, easily ignitable ember in his "homey" assassination "joke."
He put the image of the "good 'ol days when blacks knew their place -- and women too" in the heads of most of his audience right out there in NRA prime time, at their national convention.
He unleashed the dogs on Barack Obama, the uppity black man who would be president -- and when black males got uppity in the old South, you shot or lynched them.
Are we making too much in deconstructing Huckabee's NRA "comic aside"?
No, we haven't even begun to emphasize how much it revealed about the psychic Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and yearning for the good old days of "White Man Rules" -- and how the gun is now the Alamo for the "bitter" (oh, yes, "bitter and angry" -- just go to any local gun control hearing, trust us) white male who feels disenfranchised of his entitlement and under assault by minorities, women and foreigners.
Huckabee's few words (that should have disqualified him as a candidate for public office and stints as a television "pundit," let alone the vice presidential nomination) revealed so much.
Most of the NRA guys don't even live in big cities where gun control is an issue. Their hot branded fears and yearnings relate to a deep psychological wound.
They know that the promise of democracy has been realized. They know that they can't reverse history, but the gun helps them dream of the days of yore, when the white man sat at the top of the pyramid and governed by decree. When women and blacks didn't have the right to vote or seek positions of power based on merit.
There's a lot riding on guns in the psychological needs of the NRA members.
Mike Huckabee just hitched a ride on their anger and feeling of displacement.
That's why the NRA has played such a key role in the GOP culture wars -- and why the Bush Administration has given them everything that they have asked for.
Friday, May 16, 2008
All the President's Nazis
All the President's Nazis (real and imagined): An Open Letter to Bush
Your speech on the Knesset floor today was not only a disgrace; it was nothing short of treachery. Worse still, your exploitation of the Holocaust in a country carved out of the wounds of that very crime, in order to strike a low blow at American citizens whose politics differs from your own is unforgivable and unpardonable. Let me remind you, Mr. Bush, of your words today:
"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said at Israel's 60th anniversary celebration in Jerusalem.
"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to Israel's parliament, the Knesset. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
Well Mr. Bush, the only thing this comment lacked was a mirror and some historical facts. You want to discuss the crimes of Nazis against my family and millions of other families in Europe during World War II? Let me revive a favorite phrase of yours: Bring. It. On!
The All-American Nazi
WASHINGTON -- President Bush's grandfather was a director of a bank seized by the federal government because of its ties to a German industrialist who helped bankroll Adolf Hitler's rise to power, government documents show.
Prescott Bush was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corp. (search), a New York investment bank owned by a bank controlled by the Thyssen family, according to recently declassified National Archives documents reviewed by The Associated Press.Fritz Thyssen was an early financial supporter of Hitler, whose Nazi party Thyssen believed was preferable to communism.
--snip--
Both Harrimans and Bush were partners in the New York investment firm of Brown Brothers, Harriman and Co., which handled the financial transactions of the bank as well as other financial dealings with several other companies linked to Bank voor Handel that were confiscated by the U.S. government during World War II.
Union Banking was seized by the government in October 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act.
Oh, but there is much more too:
The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war, Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of "state sovereignty".
I cannot think of one Democrat who can boast this kind of lineage. Can you? No, I don't think so. But you can lie brazenly and attack a sitting US Senator on foreign soil by comparing him to Nazi sympathizers? Let us continue down memory lane to help those who applaud you understand just what it is they are celebrating.
The All American Traitor
You family did not stop with supporting fascists and Nazis abroad, did they Mr. Bush? Surely you must know of your grandfather's role in the treasonous plot of 1933 to overthrow democracy in America? Let me remind you.
Grandpa Bush - that is to say, your grandfather - wanted fascism imported into the United States, or as you now call this type of transformation, "exporting democracy." Prescott went so far as to subsidize a coup attempt in order to achieve his dream of a fascist America (see BBC report below):
Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen. The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush's Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression. Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American
In other words, not only was your grandfather a self-professed fascist, he was a Nazi sympathizer and a war profiteer who should have stood trial at the Hague instead of buying his way into the US Senate. He was also a traitor, twice over.
Now clearly the crimes of Prescott Bush are not your fault, Mr. George W. Bush. Let us therefore judge your actions and words on their own merit.
Iraq is your Poland
Your reminiscence today about the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany should have been seen as your own condemnation of your own abhorrent actions against Iraq. The morbid irony of what you said will likely never register with your or your speechwriter. To truly grasp the grotesqueness of what you said requires that you have both a conscience and some understanding of history. We know you possess neither.
I will therefore make your history lesson brief, but to the point. The unprovoked attack on Poland by Germany was a war crime just as your attack against Iraq - based on lies - is a war crime. This is not my opinion. This is not a political attack. This is a fact. Consider the words of the esteemed former chief prosecutor in the Nuremburg trials, Benjamin Ferencz, regarding your war of aggression against Iraq:
"...Prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."
Moreover, your reckless verbiage and partisan pandering using something as tragic and criminal as Germany's war of aggression against Poland is an insult to all victims of those atrocities.
My grandfather's sister and parents were having supper in their Warsaw home when a German bomb erased them from this planet. Your evoking the German atrocities against Poland in order to play dirty politics against Democrats is as offensive to me as if you had pinned a swastika onto your lapel.
Even your own words appear to be penned by Hitler's ghost all the while you imply that Democrats are Nazis and/or terrorists - something you have done over and over. Your lies and Hitler's lies even have the same purpose.
When you, Mr. Bush, said "see in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda," were you aware of Adolph Hitler's eerily similar statement? Hitler said "If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed."
Yet if words alone were your only weapon and words strung together into lies your only crime, you might be seen as simply the loathsome, unethical dilettante and despot that you are. Unfortunately, your crimes are many and so similar to those of the Nazi regime that at times one wonders if you are not yourself reenacting that very history you used today as an insult against a political opponent.
Your very own concentration camps
You ordered the creation of secret camps all over the world and on US territory where you also authorized the torture of countless men, women and children is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, international law, and domestic law. In other words, you authorized war crimes.
We don't know the number of people you have had disappeared, tortured, and possibly murdered. Although we have some idea of what these numbers may be, I doubt the full truth of it all will ever be known.
In 2005, I had a CENTCOM document leaked to me illustrating that since the start of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, more than 70,000 men, women, and children have been detained at one of your various camps Mr. Bush. We don't know what happened to them, if they were tortured, raped, or murdered. What we do know is that less than 2% of those 70,000 had any sort of charge brought against them in a court of law. None of those alleged crimes, by the way, were acts of terrorism. We don't know if that 70,000 figure was the actual and full count of detainees in US custody around the world in 2005. But it is safe to say that in the last 3 years since this document was published, the number of detainees has likely grown.
What we also now know, in great horror, is that at least one of your camps had a crematorium in it, which some of the US soldiers stationed there suspected was used for burning bodies:
"We had some kind of incinerator at the end of our building," Specialist Megan Ambuhl said. "It was this huge circular thing. We just didn't know what was incinerated in there. It could have been people, for all we knew--bodies." Sergeant Davis was not in doubt. "It had bones in it," he said, and he called it the crematorium. "But hey, you're at war," he said. "Suck it up or drive on."
What we also now know is that Dick Cheney and senior members of your administration carried out a plan of torture and abuse that violated international and domestic law with regard to human rights, down to the type of torture tactics that would be used against prisoners in our custody. This plan, we now know, was approved by you.
Has the mirror cracked yet from this much fact or are you still peering into the political sphere hoping to ascribe your own crimes to others? It won't work. It never has and it certainly won't work now. We know far too much about you and yours.
I could continue listing the litany of your crimes, both against the United States and against foreign nations. I won't. We know what you are and what you have done. Having roughly 1,000,000 dead Iraqis under your belt should have shamed you into the parasitic hole you came out of, attaching yourself to the blood of this nation and sucking it dry. Instead, you parade around, the globe-trotting horror show and anti-Semite that you are.
Yes, you are an anti-Semite
Would you say no, you are not an anti-Semite? Consider your own words when you thought no one was keeping score:
"You know what I'm gonna tell those Jews when I get to Israel, don't you Herman?" a then Governor George W. Bush allegedly asked a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman.
When the journalist, Ken Herman, replied that he did not know, Bush reportedly delivered the punch line: "I'm telling 'em they're all going to hell."
Only an anti-Semite would think this type of humor is acceptable. Did you tell the Jews of Israel they were going to hell? No, instead, you told them that American Democrats are Nazi sympathizers and in an act of sheer indecency, the right wing Likud party orchestrated the greatest applause you ever got. For shame!
What this blind adoration finally proves to me is that the right-wing regime that has overtaken Israel cares nothing for its people, its heritage, and the tragic history that they now honor by applauding a man whose family-fortune was built on the bodies of their loved ones. Like their Republican (and Lieberman) counterparts in the United States, Likud does not represent its people, rather, it represents its owners. Likud has traded Israel, its Jews, their heritage and history for the same golden calf purchased and sold by the far-right wing in the United States.
I am ashamed of you Mr. Bush. I am ashamed of those who applauded your political porn played out against the hallowed backdrop of the Holocaust. I am ashamed of those reporters with you, who between them could not muster the moral courage to call you out on your ugly rhetoric and ask you about your own family Nazi ties. You are, sir, the most abhorrent human being of my lifetime. I dare say, in the lifetime of this nation.
“What good fortune for those in power that people do not think.” – Adolph Hitler
Monday, May 5, 2008
5 year old shoots 4 year old
Watch Video: Parents, If You’ve Got Children At Home, Get Rid Of the Guns: Five-Year-Old Accidentally Shoots And Kills Four-Year-Old Sister
This tragedy is yet one more example as to why we need to re-think gun ownership, especially for parents who keep weapons at home where there are children. As we have said before, having both a gun and a child at home is a deadly combination.
In the wake of a tragedy like this one, there are important questions that should be asked: Why hasn't the gun industry instituted basic safety features to keep children from accessing and firing handguns? The gun industry could, if it so desired -- or mandated through legislation -- create a host of common sense features that would reduce the lethality of guns. For example, minimum trigger-pull standards would help prevent very young children from being able to pull a gun's trigger.
And secondly, why are parents leaving loaded handguns in the home where children can gain access to them? Did the gun dealer and/or gun manufacture appropriately warn the parents that by owning a firearm, they have put their children and themselves at greater risk of violence, either through an unintentional shooting or a suicide?
It is likely that the parents purchased a gun for protection, but instead, they ended up inviting tragedy into their home. There is plenty of blame to go around in a tragedy such as this. But leave no doubt, that the gun industry is also partially to blame for their incessant stone-walling of common sense safety measures.
Posted May 15, 2008 | 07:48 PM (EST)
Larisa Alexandrovna