Tagged: racism

Posted: December 17, 2011 at 9:37 am

Racism, Sexism, and Just Plain Dumb

“We’re NOT Racists”

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s latest Intelligence Report focuses on the recent uptick in extremist activity in Kalispell and the Flathead. In the article “A Gathering of Eagles: Extremists Look to Montana” the SPLC details the activities of the various far-right movements and their leaders, including Chuck Baldwin, who is running for Lt. Governor here. The good quick summary of the Baldwin’s son Timothy Baldwin takes issue with the report on the TEA Party blog PolyMontana, calling it’s reporting a “sinister” conspiracy. Apparently, this blog is a “group” that is somehow involved.

Look here where this SPLC-like group in Montana describes my formation of the institution as, “Right Wing Re-education Camp Opening in the Flathead.” Like SPLC, that “Montana group” did not attempt to contact me about my education program. Their journalism appears as un-credible as SPLC’s, if that’s possible.

He also says he is not a racist and that:

“Some of my closest friends are of African descent. The same can be said of Chuck Baldwin.”

Blame the Messenger

Kudos are due to friend of women Pete Talbot for calling out the idiocy in the comments following the Missoulian’s article on the “3 UM football players allegedly involved in sexual assault on campus.” Comments like the one that attacked the reporter for daring to report on the matter ”on game day” demonstrate why sexual assaults often go unreported.

Interesting how the article or slander or crap or hearsay or what ever was written by a woman…..is that why it was released on game day with no facts or proof?”

Throw Away

More evidence has come to light this week that the GOP has thrown away a major statewide office. It seems they couldn’t even find a candidate for attorney general that knows the disclosure guidelines for campaign materials. Pasted below are screenshots from a recent web ad Republican state legislator Jim Shockely (R-Bitterrooter) ran in the Billings Gazette. The ads, which are missing the legally required party affiliation, can be viewed in their original context on the Gazette website here and here.

He also lacks visible party affiliation on his campaign website (screenshot), so the omission does not appear accidental. Nor does the campaign appear to be active. According to the campaign calendar he just left for Alabama for two weeks.

I’ve written before that the GOP has strangely conceded the AG’s race, as evidenced by the fact that their guy doesn’t even know which way is up. His major contribution to Montana policy in my opinion is getting caught drinking a red beer in his car.

Posted: June 17, 2011 at 7:27 am

Natelson’s Nixing

It was reported this week that Rob Natelson was denied the title of “emeritus” by U of M faculty members. Natelson is known as “the top legal expert” for the TEA Party – a group which is known for espousing legal theory and beliefs that do not measure up to academic standards.

Take what Time Magazine today calls the classic example of the GOP’s march into the fringe: nullification – an extremist (and dubious) theory still being doggedly touted by TEA Party poster boy Rep. Derek Skees (R-~~Whitefish~~ Kalispell):

“Montana that has emerged  as the epicenter of the nullification movement and the purest laboratory for  the Tea Party’s model of governance.”

As Time reports, the concept of nullification has a shady history based in racial politics:

“It was invoked by South Carolina lawmakers seething over tariff laws in the antebellum South, and again during the civil-rights era, when states opposed to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954 used the idea of interposition, nullification’s kissing cousin, as a mechanism to resist integration.”

While Natelson, like Skees, is a defender of nullification, it is a movement with a history that no academic institution would want to align itself with. Indeed, the crocodile tears from the TEA Party complaining that Natelson was rejected because the U of M is a leftist institution are off base. Just last year, Carroll College cancelled a “TEA Party Town Hall” appearance by Natelson, and no one could call Carroll College a liberal institution.

Natelson is also the one known candidate to receive a political contribution from the KKK organizer who is running for Congress in Montana. Natelson received a contribution from Mr. Abarr of $100 when Natelson ran for Governor.

Posted: March 18, 2011 at 10:19 pm

Conference Organizers Should Disclose Names

The Flathead Beacon is reporting on the arrest of an Alaska man for plotting to kill judges and police officers.

This story has an important Montana angle. Shaeffer Cox was “warmly received” at the Liberty Convention (read: Wingnut Convention) last May in Missoula, where numerous Montana Republicans were in attendance and where a long list of hate-filled speakers took the podium including known anti semites, militia figures and white-supremacist types. The Beacon has posted videos of Cox’s remarks from Missoula,a sequence of which are also on YouTube.

Among the 200 attendees at the event, held at UM, were candidates and elected legislators. We have a right to know who they were.

I visited the it the Ravalli Bell website at www.ravalli-bell.com (which is the website for Celebrating Conservatives, the group that organized the conference) and found this racist mission statement:

“It is characteristic of the conservative temperament to value established identities, to praise habit and to respect prejudice, not because it is irrational, but because such things anchor the darting impulses of human beings in solidities of custom which we do not often begin to value until we are already losing them.”

I don’t know what a “solidity” is, but these guys are saying prejudice is normal, natural and should be encouraged and nurtured. They also tout

a 1996 study on the relationship between racism and conservatism [that] found that the correlation was stronger among more educated individuals, though specifically anti-Black racism did not increase.

Posted: February 11, 2011 at 7:17 am

“Race-based hate flames”

Montana TEA Party Republican Derek Skees, R-~~Whitefish~~ Kalispell penned a defense of his votes and comments against a popular vote-by-mail bill in the Whitefish Pilot this week. He ends the column with the shocking claim that racism and hate are actually perpetuated by people in “certain minorities.”

Here’s Derek Skees in his own words:

I have spent 12 years in the South and have seen racism in all its ugliness.

In light of my exposure, I must contend that when a few people in certain minorities view the world with the filter of race, difference and haves versus have-nots permeating their every perception, they see it in everything anyone else does. It is tragic and dangerous to assert it where it does not reside, and will only work to continue to fan the race-based hate flames that so many of us are trying to quell.

Posted: February 6, 2011 at 10:21 am

UPDATED:The Message of the Montana GOP’s Big Night

Anyone else find it odd that the party that hosts a dinner named after President Lincoln would be sponsoring so many “nullification” bills?

This party basically believes that when it comes to federal law, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to follow it. So what’s the deal?

As former Republican Secretary of State Bob Brown wrote recently on this topic:

“A system in which state laws have supremacy over national laws is a confederation, not a union…”

The statement makes the Montana GOP’s focus all start to make sense, as this is exactly what the Civil War was about. Even new GOP-TEA Legislator Derek Skees says the Civil War was about “states’ rights.” We don’t like what they have to say, we are no longer a part of it.

Like it had for the southerners during the civil war, “states’ rights” has as clear, more sinister meaning to the right wing base. Since nobody takes the Klan seriously above ground anymore, as it is so repulsive, all the racism of a certain wing of the GOP has all gone underground, and is trotted out through code words.

The Montana GOP dinner’s other namesake, Reagan, GOP “hero,” used to go down in the south during the 1980 primary and rile up the states about states’ rights, which he knew was pure racial code:

He was tapping out the code. It was understood that when politicians started chirping about “states’ rights” to white people in places like Neshoba County they were saying that when it comes down to you and the blacks, we’re with you.

And Reagan meant it. He was opposed to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was the same year that Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney were slaughtered. As president, he actually tried to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He opposed a national holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He tried to get rid of the federal ban on tax exemptions for private schools that practiced racial discrimination. And in 1988, he vetoed a bill to expand the reach of federal civil rights legislation.

Any of this sound familiar to those of you following the actions of Republicans in the Montana legislature? States’ rights, racial stuff, birtherism, restricting voting rights, and even votes against the King Holiday.

Plus anyone who has been around Denny Rehberg after he’s had a few drinks knows what he has to say about people who aren’t of his ilk. Anyone who has been in the state long enough has heard the stories.

Last night, Rehberg had no desire to talk about his record, a shockingly lame list of “accomplishments.” Out of four bills he passed, three were the naming of two post offices and a federal building. Not exactly the material of an inspiring message.

So he brings out the queen “states’ rights” tea-bagger, Michele Bachmann, to send a different message for him. And that message is coming through, loud and clear.

UPDATE: Guess what topic Rehberg has selected for his address to the Montana Legislature? “States’ rights,” of course.

Posted: July 29, 2010 at 10:44 pm

The worst newspaper in Montana, if not the west

The Dillonite Daily, Montana's worst newspaper? Back in the day in Dillon, Montana, a group of misfits grown bored with scratching their initials into rocks and trees were sitting around behind the potato cellar and came up with an idea. This wasn’t just any idea, it was an idea that would serve as a detriment to the lives thousands of people for years to come. This bold club of 40-watters decided to start a local newspaper. Having been scornful and afraid of intelligent people all their lives, the citizens decided that they would publish stories so awful that no intelligent life form would ever want to read them. (That is, unless they were forced to because it was the only paper in town and therefore the only way to get their window-cleaning coupons and determine what was playing at the local cinema.)

Anyway, this would be their revenge on society. So they began copying and pasting and printing stories about the happenings in the community, but with their own petty attempts to be funny at the expense of others, omissions, and typographical and grammatical errors. (Check the car wash “article” in the link below.) This led to much confusion about what was really going on in the community. It made the people who didn’t mind retaining a brain cell or two look bad, but there was nothing to be done.

Fast forward to the modern era. The paper is still printing, but it is even more worthless now. What kind of “daily” paper has a website so outdated that it only posts updates of the current edition once every three or four months? What kind of paper looks this crappy? What kind of newspaper prints a hodgepodge of the most racist elements from Pat Buchanan scribblings from over the years and tries to pass it off as a coherent article? (Would love to link to this but it will probably be a few months before it appears on the web. Check back in November. Here’s a low quality cell phone pic for now. And here are a couple of samples of the Buchanan crazy that the “article” includes in the amalgamation.)

I ask you Dillonite Daily, what did the citizens of Dillon do to deserve such drivel to be continued to be foisted upon them in the coffee shop? You’ve had your revenge. It’s time to end this.

UPDATE: A reader kindly sent another link to the Daily Dillonite, this link does not have every edition, but it does have more recent awfulness for our perusal.