The State of Hate in Arizona

by Pa Rock
Social Observer

Remember William Kostric, the moron who showed up at President Obama’s town hall meeting in New Hampshire this week packing a pistol? He carried a sign with a thinly veiled death threat that read: “It is time to water the tree of liberty.” Kostric wondered aloud to Chris Matthews on Hardball why more good Americans, like him, weren’t showing up armed at these events?

My first thought regarding this evolutionary throwback was that he would fit right into the cultural landscape of Arizona. Imagine my lack of surprise when I learned later that he had recently relocated to New Hampshire from Scottsdale, Arizona!

To say that Arizona has its fair share of dangerous and demented nut jobs would be gross understatement. The state is rife with hate – and damned proud of it!

This week Dr. Heidi Beirich, a representative of the Southern Poverty Law Center, spoke in Phoenix and gave a public presentation on the increase of hate group activity in Arizona. She listed the three primary reasons for the rise of extremist activity in the state as being the election of a black President, the weak economy, and the nativist uproar over illegal immigration from Mexico. Arizona, due primarily to its long border with Mexico, seems to go especially berserk whenever it appears that anyone with brown skin is being treated fairly or humanely.

Dr. Beirich had particularly pointed remarks concerning Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, and state senator Russell Pearce, both of whom she sees as pandering toward members of these groups and thus empowering them with a sense of legitimacy.

The Southern Poverty Law Center recognizes nineteen distinct hate groups currently operating in Arizona. Three are classified as Racist Skinhead organizations: the Western Hammerskins (statewide), Vinlanders Social Club (Mesa), and Volksfront (Phoenix). The term "Skinheads" refers to young thugs with shaved heads and plenty of tattoos who get off on drugs and violence. The group had its origins in Great Britain fifty years ago. It later split into two distinct factions - the racists and the anti-racists - and both varieties crossed the Atlantic Ocean where they were able to infest America. And lucky Arizona - we got the "racist" version of these vermin!

Ten of the hate groups are Neo-Nazi: the White Knights of America (statewide), White Revolution (statewide), National Socialist Movement – NSM (Apache Junction), American Thule Society (Black Canyon City), National Socialist Movement (Cochise County), Aryan Nations (Goodyear – an All-American City!), American National Socialist Workers Party (Phoenix), Aryan Nations (Phoenix), and National Socialist Movement – NSM (Phoenix). The Neo-Nazis profess a love of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and they are stridently vocal in their hatred of Jews. (Didn't we fight a big war against this type of scum?)

The remaining hate groups with Arizona chapters include: the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (General Hate – Colorado City), Remnant Outreach Ministries (Christian Identity – Cottonwood), Arizona White Pride (White Nationalist – Maricopa County), Nation of Islam (Black Separatist – Phoenix), American Border Patrol (Anti-Immigrant – Sierra Vista), and the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK – Tempe).

Other reported hate groups in Arizona include the National Organization for European American Rights, World Church of the Creator (Florence and Tucson), Hammerskin Nation (Glendale and Mesa), and the National Alliance (Phoenix).

Arizona is truly blessed to have this many organized ways to hate. What could be sadder than a racist, moronic, gun-toting Neanderthal without a support group? New Hampshire must be a deep pit of putrefying prejudice to lure William Kostric away from this scorpion and rattlesnake-riddled, fascist nirvana!

Let us prey.

One final note: The President of the United States and Mrs. Obama - and their little girls - will be in Arizona this Sunday and Monday. So far his town hall meetings on health care have been polite and productive. That ain't gonna happen here. Tread with care, Mr. President. These bastards are seriously scary.

Somebody is Going to Die

by Pa Rock
Political Observer

William Kostric showed up packing heat outside of the Obama town hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, yesterday. He was carrying a sign that read, "It's time to water the tree of liberty." That sign was a response to a quote by Thomas Jefferson that the know-nothings like to belch - "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." (Of course Jefferson, a slave owner, was obviously not talking about everyone's liberty.)

So Mr. Kostric shows up at an event featuring the President of the United States, and he is carrying a visible weapon - something that is legal in New Hampshire - and he has a sign calling for watering the tree of liberty, something that is accomplished through a blood offering - and he doesn't go to jail. Chris Matthews asks him later on Hardball, "Why did you bring a god-damned gun to the event?" and his response is that the proper question would be why aren't more people coming to these events armed?

Why, indeed?

Representative Steve Cohen (D, TN) had an armed teabagger baboon walk into a town hall meeting that he was hosting two days ago in Memphis. The man was promptly escorted off of the premises.

Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D, AZ) had an angry individual get so flustered at one of her town halls a couple of days ago at a Safeway in Douglas, Arizona, that the genius forgot and left his gun in the room when he exited.

The health care industry has ginned up these events and bussed in loads of "spontaneous" and "ordinary" citizens with printed instructions on how to disrupt the meetings. They don't come to listen, or learn, or ask intelligent questions - they come to make noise, and disrupt, and keep listening and learning from taking place.

Some unions have belatedly and begrudgingly started to send counter-protesters to drown out the lobbyist rabble, so the circus is growing exponentially. Yesterday a caller phoned the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and left the following message:

"I suggest you tell your people to calm down, act like American citizens, and stop trying to repress people's First Amendment rights. That, or you all are going to come up against the Second Amendment."

I guess the difference between disturbing the peace and exercising First Amendment rights depends on which side of the room you are standing on. I guess the difference between armed intimidation and the exercise of Second Amendment rights depends on which end of the gun that you are facing.

Somebody is going to die. Maybe several innocent people will be trapped between the righteously incensed shooter and his target, and lots of blood will be spilled. That's what will happen, and it will happen very, very soon. The shooter has been primed with bullshit stories of grandmothers being euthanized, death panels, and forced abortions and sex-change operations. His gun has been cleaned and oiled, and he has plenty of ammo.

But it isn't the death of individuals that we must fear, it is the death of democracy itself. When the lives of citizens are put at risk for participating in the democratic process, that very process is also put at risk. Government by intimidation is nothing more than a rancid dictatorship. We aren't North Korea - we are the United States of America - a place where everyone has the right to speak (not scream incoherently to keep others from speaking) and to listen. I am certain that Mr. Jefferson would agree that we need to calm down and return to civil discourse - before we damage our country beyond repair.

Bachmann in Overdrive

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

To be sure, there is no shortage of nuts in the United States Congress. But one Congressional nut in particular is so much goofier than her colleagues that she deserves special recognition.

Michelle Bachmann, a Republican from Minnesota, is serving her second term in Congress. With any luck at all it will be her last.

Congressman Bachmann, a Christian fundamentalist who rose to political heights by terrorizing local school boards and promoting the teaching of creationism in private and public schools, is either dumber than a stump, too dense to be embarrassed by her strange pronouncements, or she has no shame - or, more likely, a combination of all three.

She made a splash in the national news last year when she told Chris Matthews on Hardball that certain politicians, including Presidential candidate Obama, did not appear to be good Americans. That Palinesque remark helped her opponent to raise a pile of money at the last moment, and almost cost her the election.

A few weeks ago Ms. Bachmann displayed her ignorance of history when she compared the current economic mess to the Great Depression of the 1930's. She talked about how the "roaring 20's" were great years presided over by Republicans (Coolidge and Hoover), and the economy went into the crapper in the 1930's due to Franklin Roosevelt and his support for the Hoot-Smalley (sic) Tariff.

It was actually the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, named after the two Republicans who drafted it, and it came into effect under the Hoover administration. Herbert Hoover was President of the United States when the economy tanked. It was the Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt, who was able to roll up his sleeves and get to work fixing things. He proposed a strong economic program that included a national jobs effort (WPA), retirement insurance for older Americans (Social Security), and insurance for money kept in public banks (FDIC).

Nice try, Michelle.

Then a few days ago she started rattling nonsense about swine flu, saying that the last time there was an outbreak was in the 1970's when Jimmy Carter, also a Democrat, was President. She thought, for some strange reason, that the virus was related to the U.S. Presidency and the particular party that happened to be in power. That's silly enough on its face, but to make it worse, she was wrong about who was President during the last swine flu outbreak. It was Gerald Ford, a Republican!

Michelle, I suggest that you call your good friend and fundraiser, George Bush, and ask him how to use the Google.

Now, Congressman Bachmann, has gone on the record saying that the upcoming census is too invasive, and that her family will only provide the number of people in the family - nothing more. She said that by law that's all that has to be provided.

Wrong. The fine for not answering all census questions is $5,000.

Michelle, if you are going to break the law anyway and answer only the questions of which you approve, why not double down and not even fill out your census form at all? In fact, if enough of your constituents would do the same - your seat could be eliminated and reassigned to someplace like California or Vermont where where the voters would be much more likely to select someone with at least a hint of a brain.

But if your seat is not eliminated and you file for a third term, you can count on me to send in a campaign contribution - to your opponent! To do less would be clearly unpatriotic.