They
say you can take the measure of a man by who his enemies are. It is at
least as accurate to say you can judge them by their supporters. And
Trump’s supporters represent an embarrassment of riches of America’s
misinformed and ignorant. For Republicans it’s “us vs. them” but it’s a
lot more complex than that.
These are people who decry the radicalization of Muslims but here in
America, we’re pointing a finger at the wrong people. Trump, for
example,
has been very good for business at white supremacist site Stormfront.
The people we
should be pointing a finger at include Coulter, and – predictably – Bachmann, are praising
Trump’s stance on Muslim immigrants. Coulter was the most exuberant and
over the top,
calling Trump’s statement her “best birthday gift ever!”
So Muslims are no more worthy, in Trump’s eyes, of American citizenship than Mexicans? What Coulter is so ecstatic about is, in
Stephen Colbert’s words, Trump’s willingness “to offend every group in America except white people.”
Colbert mocked the impossibility of Trump’s proposed plan, but
Coulter has (she thinks) an answer to this: the same people who said
banning Muslim immigrants is impossible are “the same people who said
the exact same thing about building a wall” (which, for the record, has
yet to be built and is therefore not a worthy cornerstone upon which to
build an argument). But Coulter is a McCarthy fan and bluster will
always mean more than facts.
Bachmann was, surprisingly, lower key if betraying just as great a level of radicalization as Coulter:
“Trump is right. Obama’s insane open-door immigration policies are getting innocent Americans killed.”
Not the wide availability of assault weapons or the Republican cabal’s refusal to
ban sales of such weapons to terrorists. She went on to claim,
“No one has a right to enter the United States. Until we can set
up a working, fail-safe vetting system, Trump’s idea is the only one
that ensures the innocence, safety and security of all Americans,
Muslims included.”
Oh, so we’re protecting Muslims from themselves. That’s nice.
In general, Republicans went ga-ga for Trump’s fascist pronouncement,
not just the base but the shrieking heads as well, including Gaffney, Starnes, Brody, and the un-American anti-Family Asshats’ Fischer (who doesn’t think much of Jews either), if only to trumpet via Twitter that he went there first:
Fellow AFA puke inducer Sandy “Gays Make Amtrak Crash” Rios
said Trump’s plan is a “great idea.” So what if it’s unworkable!
“If that’s deeply bigoted, I guess I sign up because I
think that’s a great idea myself. I’m not sure how we’ll do it but I
think it’s common sense. That’s my position on it and I’m not ashamed to
say that.”
Imagine racist bigots not feeling shame. I know that’s a new one.
Wingnut hack West called Trump’s plan “perfect,” and as Right Wing Watch
observed, Breitbart’s Nolte “offered a more unusual defense” with this tweet:
Left/Media pretend to care about religious liberty for Muslims.
'Christians' will be forced to buy rubbers & participate in gay marriages.
If you are familiar with Nolte’s Twitter screed, this won’t surprise
you. It also won’t explain it. But then, Nolte “gets that a lot.”
Graham, that lesser son of a religio-wingnut huckster,
also says
Trump is right, but here again misinformation and ignorance rear their
ugly head, as Graham basis his argument on a false premise:
“For some time I have been saying that Muslim immigration into
the United States should be stopped until we can properly vet them or
until the war with Islam is over.”
Of course, we are not at war with Islam. Even the shrub was quick to point that out, and
repeated the point
over and over. Yet for Graham, “Politicians in Washington seem to be
totally disconnected with reality.” While that is probably true in a
great many cases, it does not mean that Graham himself is any better
connected with reality.
Heidi Beirich, Director of SPLC’s Intelligence Project, spoke, in a
statement on
December 8, of “a well-funded effort to vilify Muslims in the United
States” and of the “mainstreaming of hate and extremism.” Bachmann is
wrong. It is not Muslim immigrants who are a threat to Muslims, but as
Beirich said, demonizing rhetoric. That rhetoric comes from people who
call themselves 'christians'.
None of this will have any effect on Trump or his fellow racists.
Obviously, to be great again, America must, like Germany in the 1930s,
be for only one group, and that one group is increasingly identified as
“white 'christian' Republicans.” The last two are sort of synonymous at
this point, with Reince Priebus of the RNC having already identified
the Republican cabal as a religion, while the white thing goes without
saying, as big a no-brainer as those who preach it’s gospel.
At Stormfront, a forum member who’s signature is “nothing surprises me anymore” posts that Buzzfeed Bans Pro-Trump Opinions from Site – Breitbart
“The Jew machine is operating on full-blast,” he says by way of
conclusion. Anti-Islam? Don’t forget Anti-Semite. These are the rank and
file of the Trump cult. This is the end result of radicalization
here in America.
We look at various causes of radicalization and in looking at these
right wing figures we see not only the reason for the radicalization of
the Republican cabal, but the causes of Trump’s radicalization. Trump is
abetting the process through his own rhetoric, and so it continues. the shrub said we are at war against evil, not Islam, and he was,
for once, correct, and many of those evil people are right here, at
home.
The war on terror is not a simple matter of “us” versus “them”
(radicalized Muslims) when so many of “us” are radicalized 'christians'.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau just made a powerful statement to the
refugees coming into his country – and shamed American wingnuts in
the process.
Nearly
10,000 years ago, roosters and hens were creatures to be feared. Wild
junglefowl prowled the bamboo forests of Southeast Asia, and the birds
were anything but chicken. They fought pythons, attacked wildcats and
nested in canopies high above the ground. Then, around 5000 BCE, bored
humans started nabbing the birds and brought them to villages for
entertainment. The aves weren’t for eating, but instead for
cockfighting and fortune-telling. (Cambodia’s Khmer people still use
chickens as oracles today.) Over time, selective breeding fattened the
birds and made them complacent, while a gene mutation caused them to
start laying eggs all year long.
Have
you ever milked a horse? Your ancestors did. When horses were first
being domesticated in the Eurasian Steppe 6,000 years ago, they were
treated more like cattle—as a source of meat and milk. In Mongolia,
fermented mare’s milk—called airag or kumis—is still a delicacy.
All
it took to woo the Euroasian wild boar was the promise of leftovers.
About 9,000 years ago in Iraq, villagers realized swine could be lured
and then corralled by the scent of garbage. This proved much easier
than hunting them in the wild. The four-legged trash cans cleaned up
the community and provided meat in return. Not every culture was so
enamored of bacon, though. In parts of India and China, domestic pigs
were given the less glamorous job of cleaning up under latrines.
Ten
thousand years ago, people in what is now Iran stopped hunting the
bezoar ibex and started breeding it. Just like that, goats became the
Swiss Army Knife of domestic animals. They were a regular source of
meat and milk, their dung made excellent fuel, their sinews were handy
for sewing, their hide was later stretched into parchment, and their
bones were fitted into tools. Notably, the bezoar was also domesticated
for its mystical qualities: the hard mass found in its stomach was
supposedly an antidote for toxins (In Farsi, “bezoar” means “protect
from poison.”) The ibex still exists, distinguishable from a regular
goat by its super-long horns.
Humans
kept sheep for nearly three millennia before anyone had the brilliant
idea to use their wool. Nearly 11,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, they
were bred from three different subspecies of the ramlike mouflon, but
were only used for milk and mutton. Today, thanks to centuries of
selective breeding, domestic sheep don’t shed annually like their wild
cousins did. If they’re not sheared by a human, their fleece will grow
forever. In fact, a New Zealand sheep named Shrek avoided shearing for six years by hiding in caves. When the walking marshmallow was finally trimmed, he produced enough wool to make 20 suits!
A 19-year-old man from Coachella, California, was arrested on Sunday on
suspicion of trying to carjack a Fed Ex truck while the delivery driver
was unloading a package from the back of the vehicle.
The engine of an Air China passenger aircraft caught fire at Fuzhou
Changle airport in southeast China on Thursday morning, but firefighters
sprayed foam onto another aircraft waiting nearby. 
The right-hand engine of a Boeing 737, Air China Flight CA1822 to
Beijing, suddenly caught fire at 8am when taxiing on the runway as it
was about to take off, the nation’s flagship carrier said.
The captain of the following Fuzhou Airlines FU6577 noticed the fire
first and informed the Air China captain. The Air China aircraft closed
down the engine and then called firefighters.
All the passengers with the Fuzhou Airlines flight, that was scheduled
to fly to Jinan in east Shandong Province, had to get off the plane
since the aircraft was covered with foam and had to be washed to pass a
safety inspection before it could fly again.
Flight CA1822 later took off.
“It turned out to be a normal situation as aircraft engines spark
sometimes and it would not be a threat to flying safety,” Air China
said.
Police in Sweden have said that a beaver is believed to be responsible for a fire which gutted a family's home.
The house burned to the ground after a blaze in Heby municipality near Uppsala, north of Stockholm, on Monday.
The animal, thought to have his hideout in a nearby river, is understood
to still be at large.
“The beavers themselves would probably not claim they destroy society
functions. But they often fell trees that fall on electricity wires. If I
may offer a theory, without having any insight into the case, I think
it's a tree that has fallen and caused sparks,” beaver expert Lars Plahn
at the county council's environmental department said.
![Statement by the uncle of Darren Kyle Zafft following his arrest. [Twitter]](http://www.rawstory.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/ZafftUncletweet2-478x257.jpg)
![Firefighters respond to a fire officials at the Islamic Society of Palm Springs said was set intentionally on Dec. 11, 2015. [KESQ-TV]](http://www.rawstory.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Fire-at-Coachella-mosque-121115-KESQ-TV-478x257.jpg)
