Marg Baker got applause for this:

Speaking at a rally sponsored by Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project, GOP state house candidate in Florida, Marg Baker, endorsed building concentration camps for undocumented immigrants.

“They put them in the camps, and they shipped them back. We can do that.”

We Dems get howls from the righties when we dare accuse them of Hitleresque policies, posters, comments, references, you name it. Sometimes both sides do go over the top with accusations, and (over)use of the name “Hitler” is often all too casual and inappropriate.

But when a candidate, or anyone for that matter, throws around the idea of building concentration camps, that’s going way, way too far.

Once again, the GOP– the party that wraps itself in the American flag the way Former Half-Gov Shooty McGunHappy wraps herself in wolf pelts– crosses the line.  Memo to Marg: “Camps” are UN-American. Got that?

Hypocrisy is too weak a word. Despicable is too gentle a description. Seething is too mild an adjective to describe the way I feel.

Here’s how she describes her platform:

>  >  >  > Issues: <  <  <  < 


Laws based on the constitutions

Pro Life

Ban Earmarks

Support Florida Sovereignty–
HM19 state rights, HB21 state gun rights,
HJR 37 State health care

Illegal aliens: ‘0’ TOLERANCE!!!

Reverse legislation on Bullet Train

Reduce Property Tax

One Day Vote

Update: I just noticed… (not capitalized) “constitutions”?  With an “s”? We have more than one?

By GottaLaff

Earlier, I posted about Massey Energy refusing to allow time off for miners who wanted to attend their loved ones’ funerals.

They’re denying it.

Massey spokesman Troy Andes:

“We know of no instances when miners were denied a request to attend a funeral.”

They know of no instances. Maybe someone simply forgot to tell them. Or they did this:

The Washington Independent also reminds us that even if this wasn’t a Massey policy, it might have been enforced by subsidiaries who actually run the mines and have their own rules.

By GottaLaff

A sign outside a West Virginia vigil for coal miners who lost their lives in the Upper Big Branch explosion on April 5 (EPA/ZUMApress.com)

If Massey’s CEO, Don Blankenship, had been confronted by strong unions, things might have been different. Lives might have been saved, and this despicable turn of events might have been avoided.

Via the Washington Independent:

Massey Energy, the Virginia-based coal giant that runs the Upper Big Branch Mine, has denied time off for miners to attend their friends’ funerals; has rejected makeshift memorials outside the mine site; and, in at least one case, required a worker to go on shift even though the fate of a relative — one of the victims of the April 5 disaster — remained unknown at the time, according to some family members and other sources familiar with those episodes. In short, the company might be taking heat for putting profits and efficiency above its workers, but it doesn’t appear to have changed its tune in the wake of the worst mining tragedy in 40 years.

Remember the scene in Miracle on 34th Street, when Kris Kringle is talking to Alfred, the Macy janitor and Alfred laments…

That’s all that matters to Massey: profit. Profit over lives. The very people who make him money are expendable. But dollars aren’t.

“They told my husband, ‘You’ve got a job to do and you’re gonna do it,’” said the wife of one Massey miner, referring to the funerals he’s missed this month for friends who died in the blast. “What else are we gonna do?”

What else, indeed.

The culture of fear is everywhere. It’s in politics, it’s at gun rallies, at Tea Bagger protests, white supremacist gatherings, and now it’s directed at those who lost loved ones:

“I guarantee it: Massey’s already told these guys, ‘Hey, don’t say nothin’. You’re not talking to no reporters. You’re not saying nothin’ about our safety record — or you won’t have a job,’” said Chuck Nelson, a former Massey miner who’s since become an environmental activist with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. “That’s the way they operate.”

That’s the way they operate. There isn’t a heart anywhere in Blankenship’s body. He and Cheney should start a club.

Massey wouldn’t even let a mourner hang a wreath at the entrance to the mine. Nice people skills, Don. Bully much?

“When we were all union, if there was something that came up, it wasn’t no problem at all to shut that mine down until everything was fixed.” said Nelson, who worked for nearly 20 years in union mines before Massey took over. “Non-union [workers], they ain’t got that right.”

Massey ain’t got nothin’ right.

H/t: hapkidogal

By GottaLaff

You’re all well aware of the serious automobile crash that Harry Reid’s wife and daughter recently experienced. Mrs. Reid has suffered very serious, longterm injuries. I can’t imagine the pain she must be in.

Alan Colmes just pointed me to a post about it… a nasty, disgusting post. Dan Riehl needs to be exposed for the heartless sicko that he is:

If Democrats want so badly to abort babies [...] why are we bothering with someone who has a broken neck and back at 69? It sounds to me like she’s pretty well used up and has probably been living off the taxpayers for plenty of years [...]

I don’t see that she’s worth it at this point, frankly. I can’t recall her ever doing anything for me.

And it is, after all, all about Danny Boy, who seems pretty “used up” himself.

Yes, it’s all about him: The car accident. The frantic worry about Reid’s family. The horror and physical suffering. Wow, how could that insensitive Landra Reid allowed herself to end up hospitalized after all Riehl has done for her?

Come on, Harry – do your civic duty. [...] Pull the plug and get back to work. And don’t bill us for a full day today, either. [...] Air freight her home, you can bury her during recess on your own time and dime. Or are you going to bill us for that, too?

I’d love the media to get hold of this story and put this guy out of business, allowing him to join the ranks of the unemployed.

That way he could very well find himself without medical coverage. Wouldn’t that be ironic?

Then let’s see how he’d feel about the pain of living in the Riehl world.

UPDATE: Celtic Diva has more.

By GottaLaff

The other day, I posted about Blackwater cutting a deal with Iraqis, a deal that didn’t go over too well with many of them. They’re not too fond of their family members and friends being murdered by mercenaries, followed by hearing that their lives were worth a few lousy bucks, that poor wittle Blackwater was about to become penniless, and finally, being told to just go away.

In fact, now we discover that they were forced into a deal:

Several victims of a 2007 shooting involving American private security guards employed by the firm formerly known as Blackwater alleged Sunday that they were coerced into reaching settlements, and they demanded that the Iraqi government intervene to have the agreements nullified.

The Iraqis said they were pressured by their own attorneys into accepting what they now believe are inadequate settlements because they were told the company was about to file for bankruptcy, that its chairman was going to be arrested and that the U.S. government was about to confiscate all of the firm’s assets. This would be their last chance to get any compensation, the victims said they were told.

When criminal charges against the guards were dismissed by a U.S. federal judge on Dec. 31, the Iraqis concluded that they had been duped and that Blackwater, now called Xe, was not in the kind of legal and financial trouble they had been led to believe. [...]

The settlements were reached last fall in meetings at Baghdad’s Rasheed Hotel, where the claimants say they were required to sign a paper, written in English, and make videotaped testimony in Arabic, relinquishing all future claims against the company.

Short version: We get to kill your loved ones indiscriminately, shove a few dollars at you, lie to you, and tell you to shut up and get lost.

Xe worst.

By GottaLaff

Typical of the Tea Baggers. Remember this?

Whaddya know. The Big Brave Illiterate TeaBagger went all limp on himself and dicked around with his own sign on his own website (photo at link).

Take a look at his lame attempt at a whitewash. Cowardice: One more pathetic trait of the party that wants to take over America.

H/t: Markos

By GottaLaff

It’s nice to know Blackwater values life so highly. And here I thought a human being’s life was worth only a couple of hundred dollars. What was I thinking?

The security firm formerly known as Blackwater has reached a settlement in seven civil lawsuits filed against it by families of Iraqis killed during what the suits called “senseless slaughter” by company guards. [...]

In Baghdad on Thursday, a shooting victim who has not settled said he still wanted the guards prosecuted in criminal court.

“Iraqi blood is not that cheap,” said Mehdi Abu Zaman, 45, who said he lost his sight after being shot. “The civil suit is not enough. There is no justification for this. If they gave me all the money in the world, my vision will not come back.”

Another wounded man, Sami Hawas Hamoud Abu Iz, told the Associated Press that the company had offered $100,000 to each family of a person who died and $30,000 to those wounded. He said plaintiffs’ lawyers told victims they might not receive anything if they did not agree to a settlement.

Brown lives are on special, apparently. As for wounded brown people? They’re worth less than a Ford Taurus.

That Xe, er, Blackwater, er, Xe… they just ooze generosity and love of their fellow man:

The civil suits alleged that Blackwater “fostered a culture of lawlessness amongst its employees, encouraging them to act in the company’s financial interests at the expense of innocent human life.“

The suits alleged that some of the “shooters,” as the plaintiffs said the guards were known, were “chemically influenced by steroids and other judgment-altering substances.”

The suits accused Prince of making “a series of verbal and written statements that evidenced his support of the wanton killing of those of the Islamic faith.”

Their consistent high regard for human life is illustrated here, too, via Jeremy Scahill.

Go here for more.

By GottaLaff

I wanted to “spit up”, and wished Maddy had.

Yes, John Shadegg actually used an innocent infant as a prop, spoke baby talk, and provided us with nothing more than what was most likely in Maddy’s diaper at the time. And for this, he got applause.

The collective (im)maturity of the Rushpublic side of the aisle doesn’t come close to measuring up to Maddy’s level of sophistication.

How utterly humiliating.

Afterthought: Did the Rushpublics start up a new recession era business… Loaner babies?

By GottaLaff

Meet Erick Erickson

We’ve all heard of Dumb and Dumber. Meet Sick and Sicker:

[Erick] Erickson, who runs the influential Web site RedState.com, drew fire on Wednesday from Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, after Erickson expressed glee over the outcome of New York’s hotly contested 23rd Congressional District race. With help from Sarah Palin and Dick Armey, Erickson had led the online charge to drive the GOP favorite, Dede Scozzafava, from the race, believing her to be too moderate. Erickson’s preferred candidate went on to lose to a Democrat—handing the GOP its first loss in this Adirondacks-based district in more than 100 years. Erickson nonetheless declared victory, saying he’d done “exactly what we set out to do—crush the establishment-based GOP candidate.”

Hear that establishment-based GOP? I love the smell of Rushpublic civil war in the morning.

Now let’s see what kind of guy good ol’ Erick McErickErick is:

[A]t times his red-meat rhetoric has gotten him into trouble on the local and national stage. After he wrote on Twitter that retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter was “the only goatf—ing child molester to ever serve on the Supreme Court,” he told the local Macon Telegraph that he regretted the remark, although he “felt good at the time saying it.”

Erickson said he knows he sometimes crossed the line, “but at the same time you do want to excite and inspire on your own side.”

Thriving on uncivil instant gratification is so mature.

And how reassuring for our country to know that “his side” is excited and inspired by filth.

Imagine if a Democrat had said those words about Scalia.

And then imagine if after we did, we said this:

[...] “I know I’m right,” he said. “I’m talking to my own side, rallying the troops to take action. I want to make things happen. I want to blow things up and get things done.”

Erick is a sad example of the miserable, hateful bunch is trying to breathe life into a dying party. How ironic that he, and those like him, will succeed at nothing more than killing it.