Koch Bros Convention draws plenty of protesters

From LAT

The rich folks in Rancho Mirage were not amused by protesters that showed up to voice their distaste with the Koch Brothers Billionaire Caucus this weekend. To which I say: Too effin bad mutha fuckas! From Dave Dayden’s piece over at FDL:

Twenty-five protesters were arrested in Rancho Mirage, California today, at a protest in front of the Rancho Las Palmas resort, site of the “Billionaire’s Caucus,” an annual meeting put on by the Koch Brothers and other corporate entities and conservative movement operators.

Riverside Sheriff’s deputy Melissa Nieburger said that the sheriff’s department did have contacts with protest organizers, which included the California Courage Campaign, CREDO, MoveOn.org, 350.org, the California Nurses Association, United Domestic Workers of America and the main sponsor, the good-government group Common Cause, prior to the event, and that they were aware that some protesters would seek to be arrested for trespassing. She would not guarantee that all 25 who were arrested were part of that coordinated operation. The police, who wore riot gear, batons and helmets, did put the arrested into plastic handcuffs. Nieburger described them as “passive restraints.” They were being processed at press time, and Nieburger would not say whether they would be released or would spend the night at the jail in Indio.

William Rivers Pitt gets it.

Mitch, the rightwingers Bitch

Mr. Pitt has written an open letter to the extremists on the right at TruthOut.org. Bear in mind, he does not paint all Conservatives with his brush, only those that make their living lying, spinning and power-grabbing. I have had several email conversations over the years with Mr. Pitt, as he is quite accessible. I would like to share part of his open letter to the extremists and those culpable media types with you now:

The “mainstream” media is already working overtime playing up the “Disturbed loner” angle with all their might. There is no doubt, from the available evidence, of Mr. Loughner’s transformation into a disturbed individual. But here’s the funny part: all the crazy crap he spewed, about the gold standard (a favorite of Glenn Beck, the master of Fox “News” fearmongering…so he can sell his gold scam to suckers) and government mind control and everything else before going on his rampage, is straight out of the Right-Wing Insanity Handbook. His personal YouTube ramblings were a mishmash of right-wing anti-government nonsense…the kind that attracts sick minds like Loughner, the kind that only reinforces their paranoia, the kind that finally pushes them over the brink and into the frenzy of violence that took place on Saturday.  The kind that the likes of you have been happily spreading by the day.  

He did not act alone. You were right there with him. You helped.

I’m talking to you, “mainstream” media people, who created this atmosphere of desperate rage and total paranoia out of whole cloth because of your unstoppable adoration for spectacle, and ratings, and because the companies that own your sorry asses agree with the deranged cretins you helped make so famous and powerful. It was sickeningly amusing on Sunday to watch Wolf Blitzer bluster and bluff on CNN about how the media owns no responsibility for this disaster. It was like watching a ten-year-old try to explain how a lamp got broken while he was running through the living room, but no, it wasn’t him. It was, in reality, a pathetic display…but that is what you generally get whenever Wolf is on your screen.

“Mainstream” news personalities like David Gergen and John King bent over backwards warning people not to blame Sarah Palin and her ilk for this calamity.  It was a sick man who did this, they said. Bollocks to that.  I hate to break this to the “mainstream” media know-betters, but words matter.  When people like Palin spray the airwaves with calls to violence and incantations of imminent doom, people like Loughner are listening, and prepared to act. The “mainstream” media lets it fly without any questions or rebuttal, because it’s good for ratings, and here we are. Words matter. Play Russian Roulette long enough, and someone inevitably winds up dead.

Words matter. Words have consequences. Yet the extreme right and their friends in the corporate media feel no guilt when they issue their declarations of lies that they spin as truth. They know they are lying. It’s all politics all the time for them. It’s about winning at any cost for them, its about power and control.

What it’s not about is governing or putting forth ideas and programs that will help mainstreet americans crawl out of this recession that Wall Street’s greed created. That large portions of the corporate media readily goes along for the ride by reporting their bs as truth makes them part of the problem as well.

As Mr Pitt notes, this isn’t a new phenomena.  Since the time of Nixon, the extreme right has been polishing and honing their skills of obfuscation. One need only read the sickening but memorable quotes Mr. Pitt includes in his letter to see how long these extremists have been hawking their wares, like a grifter trying to suck in his next victim:

“I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus – living fossils – so we will never forget what these people stood for.”- Rush Limbaugh, Denver Post, 12-29-95

“Get rid of the guy. Impeach him, censure him, assassinate him.”- Rep. James Hansen (R-UT), talking about President Clinton

“We’re going to keep building the party until we’re hunting Democrats with dogs.”- Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), Mother Jones, 08-95

“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.”- Ann Coulter, New York Observer, 08-26-02

“We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors.”- Ann Coulter, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, 02-26-02

“Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past – I’m not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble – recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin’s penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an ‘enemy of the people.’ The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, ‘clan liability.’ In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished ‘to the ninth degree’: that is, everyone in the offender’s own generation would be killed and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed.”- John Derbyshire, National Review, 02-15-01

“Two things made this country great: White men & Christianity. The degree these two have diminished is in direct proportion to the corruption and fall of the nation. Every problem that has arisen (sic) can be directly traced back to our departure from God’s Law and the disenfranchisement of White men.”- State Rep. Don Davis (R-NC), emailed to every member of the North Carolina House and Senate, reported by the Fayetteville Observer, 08-22-01

May your God have mercy on all your twisted souls, because I can not show you any mercy, not now, not ever.

Rep Steve King wants to rewrite the 14th Amendment.

From Jurist:

US Rep. Steve King (R-IA) on Wednesday introduced legislation [HR 104 materials] designed to restrict the automatic grant of citizenship to children born on US soil. The bill, designated the “Birthright Citizenship Act of 2011,” seeks to deter illegal immigration by amending the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to limit citizenship only to those children with at least one parent that is a citizen, legal resident or an alien member of the US military. King stated that the bill is necessary to reduce the financial incentives for illegal immigration and curtail the ‘birth tourism’ industry. The American Civil Liberties Union described the measure as an attempt to undermine the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, which states that, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States.” The bill currently bears 26 co-sponsorships, though further action has not yet been scheduled.

As a Nutter U alum, King  is constantly mouthing off about immigrants, immigration and his personal favorite, all Muslims are probably terrorists. Steve King is now the vice chairman of the House Subcommittee on Immigration. Thankfully, the GOP refused to put King in charge of the subcommittee, fearing his diatribes would alienate Latinos and Hispanics.