Needlenose

MC Rove inspired a new generation of wrong-wing rappers:

via HuffPo

I think I’m going to be sick now.

What’s the profile of a terrorist likely to strike in America’s heartland?  If you say a swarthy, middle-eastern guy in a turban, you’ve been watching too much Faux News!  How about:

“…a white male in his 50′s or 60′s with grey hair that is balding in the middle. He is about 6’1″ and about 220 pounds and was wearing a white shirt and dark pants.”

Man that sounds just like the profile of an American wrong-winger, and surprisingly like a stereotypical serial killer.

Joining in the ranks of Eric Rudolph, Timothy McVeigh and the Anthrax Letter guy, the suspect of today’s murder of an abortion doctor has been apprehended, identity still unreleased.

Don’t be fooled, folks – these pudgy, aging wrong-wing haters aren’t buying guns because they are afraid Obama and the Dems are going to enact gun control legislation, they are buying guns to terrorize the rest of us!

*Update* Evil has a name, Scott Roeder, and apparently he was pretty open about his extremist wrong-wing views and was: a member of the nasty ‘Freemen’ group, once convicted for making explosives, and  one of those guys who went to various anti-abortion events and said obliquely menacing things in a monotone.

*Update* Cristina Page clearly lays out the case for why this isn’t a random incident, but rather part of a pattern of wrong-wing terror:

During the Clinton era, between 1994-2000 there were 6 abortion providers and clinic staff murdered, and 17 attempted murders of abortion providers. There were 12 bombings or arsons during the Clinton years.

During the Bush administration, not only were there no murders, there were no attempted murders. There was one clinic bombing during the Bush years.

Stuart Taylor, Jr., stalwart defender of oppressed white males

Via Atrios and Adam Serwer at the American Prospect, Stuart Taylor, Jr., of the oh-so-overpriced-respected National Journal has decided to delve into Sonia Sotomayor’s undergraduate student days in hopes of derailing her Supreme Court nomination:

Princeton University was guilty of “an institutional pattern of discrimination” against Chicanos and Puerto Ricans, then-sophomore Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a letter published in the May 10, 1974 edition of the student newspaper, The Daily Princetonian. [. . .]

. . . Sotomayor’s parents had moved from Puerto Rico to New York in search of better opportunities. Those opportunities ultimately came to include her admission to the university that she so sharply attacked. [. . .]

. . . Some may see the fact that Princeton awarded Sotomayor a summa cum laude degree and the prestigious Pyne Prize when she graduated in 1976 as evidence of her unparalleled brilliance in overcoming a “total absence of regard, concern, and respect” for people such as her.

And some may see Sotomayor’s letter as evidence that she was predisposed to look for the worst, not the best, in the institution that had afforded her such opportunities.

Wow. Personally, I look forward to Mr. Taylor extending his investigation of Ms. Sotomayor’s past into her junior high school years. Really, why stop at a letter she wrote when she was 19? Surely she did something earlier in her teens that would disqualify her even more!

Also, although my windbag-to-English translation book isn’t handy at the moment, I wonder what “she was predisposed to look for the worst, not the best, in the institution that had afforded her such opportunities” really means to Taylor — perhaps something like, “We let you in — shut up and be grateful”?

Apparently, uppity women and minorities make Mr. Taylor uncomfortable by not knowing their place.

(P.S. In a comment on Taylor’s article, Michael Bérubé notes that current Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito was a “former member of Concerned Alumni of Princeton, the group that was formed as a reaction against the admission of women and minorities in the first place.” No doubt the kind of guy Taylor feels is more respectful of the great institution he attended.)

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

Spy Buddy offers the following advice to Guvanah Ahnold that would be a win for both he and Obama:

“California is being squeezed with its growing deficits which means the golden state will have to look to cutting budgets on its prized assets such as its extensive prison system-remember prisons are one of California’s biggest expenditures. So why not make the prison system a profit center?

Governator Arnold needs to have California step up and take the GitMo detainees but only if the Feds would bail out the state of its financial mess. California has every type of prison that is known on the planet since that is where the tax dollars have been going for 15 years. This will enable the President to find a home for the detainees and should be worth at least $35 billion, the cost to bail California out of its financial woes for the next 18 months. “

Shocking ‘new’ revelations that the additional Abu Ghraib pictures include horrific rapes and other abuse.  Horrifying, but not exactly news – Swopa commented on allegations of Abu Ghraib prison rape years ago.

US Rep Nathan Deal of Georgia is the Repug Asshole du jour (there are so many, it’s so hard to pick!) with his stated desire to repeal the 14th Amendment to deny automatic citizenship to folks born on US soil.

Hey I could get behind that!  Let’s make all those Johnny Rebels south of the Mason Dixon line swear a loyalty oath to the USA or lose their citizenship.  Or maybe we should just limit citizenship to folks with a 4-year University degree!

Seriously, it’s a pretty sorry state of the Union when a dumb jackass like Deal represents anybody.

Following the hand-jive of uber nationalist and former Israeli PM Sharon, current Israeli PM Whatayahoo just gave the finger to Obama and his foreign policy.

Seriously, unless there are some consequences to their actions (like, oh, cutting off the $2.4+ billion in aid we give them every year), why would Israel do anything else but flip us off and laugh at us in disdain?

*Update 5/29/09* I guess the Israeli wrong-wingers grew unaccustomed to push back on their slo-mo colonization program, but Whatayahoo is puzzled by Washington demands to back off their settlment expansion program.  Unlike Shrubya, Team Obama at least told Israel to get back with the program.  Still, dialoging has done nothing during my lifetime, so unless Washington follows up with some consequences, Whatayahoo will stay ‘puzzled.’

If there is one thing politicians should have learned from the Damnpeachment of Clinton, it’s that you’re better just admitting something and asking for forgiveness, rather than denying the obvious then continuously changing your story with ever finer parsing of words like “is.”

Nancy Pelosi, please step aside and let somebody more competent assume the Speaker of the House position – preferably somebody who wasn’t a Quisling Democrat during the reign of King George the Witless.

*Update 6/3/09* Turns out there is more to the story – maybe even some credence to Nancy’s claims that she was misled.  Turns out Dick Cheney led all these Congressional intelligence briefings, even those on torture techniques.  Forget the Truth Commission, it’s time for Congress to subpoena his ass and start grilling him…pronto!

It wasn’t long ago when the Dumbs were the minority in the Senate, and at the time they said theywouldn’t filibuster any vile  Repug legislation or nominee because they were afraid the mean Repug bullies would eliminate cloture rules.

Now that they are in the majority with a Dem President, they seem downright gleeful about joining their former bully oppressors to filibuster – check out the Dumbocrat Jackass du jour, Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, threatening to filibuster any ‘activist’ (read: Pro Choice) Supreme Court nominee.

Could you imagine how things would have gone over the last 8 years if the Dumbocrats either had some balls, understood party unity or weren’t just fucking Repugs in disguise?