Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

T R E 4 5 O N

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Infrastructure week. at last.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

I really should read my own blog.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Let’s finish the job.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

This really is a full service blog.

You are here: Home / O Pioneers!

O Pioneers!

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This is scary but not surprising:

Rachel Maddow uncovers the people behind Arizona’s new immigration law: neo-Nazis, white supremacists, nativists, and eugenicists. Lovely.

The main guy taking credit for the new law is Kris Kobach — a Birther who’s running for Kansas secretary of state. But his Birtherism is the least offensive thing about Kobach.

His campaign Website brags, “Kobach wins one in Arizona.” He’s also an attorney for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, the legal arm of an immigration group called FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

[….]

For nine of the first years of FAIR’s existence, the group reportedly received more than $1 million in funding from something called the Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund describes itself as based “in the Darwinian-Galtonian evolutionary tradition and eugenics movement.” For the last 70 years, the Pioneer Fund has funded controversial research about race and intelligence, essentially aimed at proving the racial superiority of white people. The group’s original mandate was to promote the genes of those “deemed to be descended predominantly from white persons who settled in the original 13 states prior to the adoption of the Constitution.

Crazy eugenics type stuff is surprisingly mainstream. Bobo has quoted Steve Sailer on occasion and William Saletan of Slate based a series of articles on some white supremacist propaganda that he mistook for science.

I suspect that as we near a future where white, non-Latino Americans no longer are a majority, we will see more and more of this. The idea of racial superiority is seductive — it’s hard for me to see so-called conservative intellectuals resisting it, especially when demographics start to hinder conservative political aims.

Reader Interactions

118Comments

  3. 3.

    MikeJ

    William Saletan of Slate based a series of articles on some white supremacist propaganda that he mistook for science.

    Don’t forget Sully and The Bell Curve.

  4. 4.

    Kiril

    Actually, I bet in the future, anyone who basically looks whitish and acts a certain way will be considered white, no matter their heritage. Zack from Saved By the Bell, for instance, is half-Indonesian, so he’s mixed race, but as far as anyone is concerned (except maybe him and his family) he’s white.

  5. 5.

    licensed to kill time

    Mirror mirror on the wall
    Who’s the FAIRest of them all?

    Snow White People, that’s who!

  7. 7.

    Mark S.

    Don’t leave out the Derb!

    I said that I was flattered to be invited to speak at such a prestigious institution, and that, having two teenage children, I am always glad to get out of the house for a few hours; but that racial disparities in education and employment have their origin in biological differences between the human races. Those differences are facts in the natural world, like the orbits of the planets. They can’t be legislated out of existence; nor can they be “eliminated” by social or political action.

  8. 8.

    Zifnab

    The idea of racial superiority is seductive—it’s hard for me to see so-called conservative intellectuals resisting it, especially when demographics start to hinder conservative political aims.

    Racial superiority is only seductive to the ignorant and alone. Anyone that’s taken a college course with 40 or more people, anyone that’s worked in a moderately large office, anyone that’s got a social life, knows how ridiculous the idea is.

    You have to be truly cloistered – both geographically and intellectually – to assume there is any significant intellectual difference between two different people based solely on who has the deeper tan. And as for physical superiority – turn on a god damn football game. Preconceptions – destroyed.

    It’s a medieval concept for medieval people.

  9. 9.

    Mike

    Here is Katie Halper on how to make the Arizona law more effective:

    http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/04/27/arizona_immigration_law_is_great_lets_make_it_even/
    Arizona Immigration Law is Great! Let’s Make it Even Greater!
    By Katie Halper – April 27, 2010, 4:39PM
    “Friday, Governor Jan Brewer (R-AZ) signed an immigration bill which requires law enforcement to demand immigration papers from anyone who they have a “reasonable suspicion” is in the country illegally. Asking someone to carry around papers is cruel and unusual. How are people expected to not forget or misplace them? A much more humane and efficient policy would be requiring people to wear arm bands stating their immigration status. There could be different symbols for different statuses. For example, a star could symbolize U.S. born, a triangle could symbolize naturalized citizen. Of course this is no guarantee either, as arm labels can fall off or get lost too. So if need be, we can consider some kind of permanent branding. Perhaps a numbers system that indicates a person’s origins and allows us to keep track of them? “

  13. 13.

    Jay Arcey

    But didn’t Jonah Goldberg prove eugenics was a Progressive concept? I’m confused . . .

  15. 15.

    Mike

    Greg Palast has a slightly different take:

    http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/greg-palast-arizona-immigration-issue-rea-0

    “….What moved GOP Governor Jan Brewer to sign the Soviet-style show-me-your-papers law is the exploding number of legal Hispanics, US citizens all, who are daring to vote — and daring to vote Democratic by more than two-to-one. Unless this demographic locomotive is halted, Arizona Republicans know their party will soon be electoral toast. Or, if you like, tortillas….”

    Worth a read

  17. 17.

    meh

    There is also a long and winding money trail between the Eugenics right/Neo Nazis/et al and the Evangelical right. The Evangelicals, specifically guys out of New Mexico, Detroit, and Colorado Springs have been funneling money into institutes like FAIR for years looking for them to produce “scientific evidence” (see, also – sentences with big words that makes whites look betterz) of genetic superiority. This is racial separatist stuff, plain and simple. SPLC, through Hatewatch has been tagging these dicks for a while now.

  18. 18.

    Bud

    As I white guy myself, I love the way some other white people strut around acting superior because of western history and culture. While I revere that history and would not want to live under any other system, I’m smart enough to realize that the ability to push buttons on a remote does not make me superior. It’s not as if any of these yahoos could actually invent and build a remote, or a longbow for that matter. The fact that a member of their race did does not make them superior (and in the case of the remote, it was probably an asian who invented it, but I’m not certain – not that it matters anyway.)

    The beautiful irony is that white supremecists are probably the worst examples of the white race imaginable.

  20. 20.

    Bill Section 147

    Race and God are such broad terms. We all think what we think when we say either one but while everyone else hears something different they usually assume we mean the same thing that they hear.

    The guy pounding his fist and shouting about “them” doesn’t register as “me” for a lot of people.

    I know I am not descended from Real America before the abomination known as the Constitution. I bet the Majority of “white” Arizonans are not the “us” that the Pioneer Fund is calling “us” either.

    Makes me proud to be “them.”

  22. 22.

    twiffer

    racism is typically based on skin color. skin color pretty much only determines how long it takes you to get a sunburn (some other stuff too, but we’ll gloss over it for now).

    bitterness at having to use SPF 30+ sunscreen is no basis for any sort of claims of superiority; certainly not a basis for legislature.

    i will never understand these people.

  23. 23.

    El Cid

    By the way, the anti-immigration racist group FAIR is not the same as the liberal media watchdog group FAIR linked to in this comment as a reference.

  24. 24.

    Calouste

    @beltane:

    Well, Jeb’s kids are going to be pulled over under this law. Rubio has come out against it as well, not unsuprisingly, although that is going to out some emphasis on the fact that he is not as white as the teabagger wave he is riding to the GOP nomination would like.

  25. 25.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    it’s hard for me to see so-called conservative intellectuals resisting it, especially when demographics start to hinder conservative political aims.

    They could barely put up with white Clinton, and now Obama has done drove them round the bend. Conservative political aims have always been nothing much more than attaining and keeping power and control, once you peel away the talking points. That goes to the personal level all the way up to governing this nation and is also tied directly to accumulating monetary wealth to keep the wheels to power greased, in service of gaining (and stealing) more personal and tribal wealth. A Krebs cycle for producing Oligarchs. IYW.

    The details of those aims take second seat and losing that power and control, or the prospect of not getting it at least some of the time will make them crazier by the day, and somebody, or something, will feel the brunt of the rage from their disempowerment. And none so easy as the obvious, or skin color, with a degree of cultural “different”.

  26. 26.

    JGabriel

    DougJ:

    Crazy eugenics type stuff is surprisingly mainstream.

    B-b-but, Jonah Goldberg told me only liberals are into eugenics. He wrote a book about it and everything!

    .

  29. 29.

    meh

    @JGabriel:

    John Tanton
    Date of Birth: 1934
    Location: Petoskey, Mich.
    Ideology: Anti-Immigrant

    John Tanton is the racist architect of the modern anti-immigrant movement. He created a network of organizations – the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and NumbersUSA – that have profoundly shaped the immigration debate in the United States. A retired Michigan ophthalmologist, Tanton has white nationalist beliefs and has written that to maintain American culture, “a European-American majority” is required. As of 2010, Tanton served on FAIR’s board of directors.

    In His Own Words
    “I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.” – Dec. 10, 1993, letter to the late Garrett Hardin, a controversial ecology professor.

    “I have no doubt that individual minority persons can assimilate to the culture necessary to run an advanced society but if through mass migration, the culture of the homeland is transplanted from Latin America to California, then my guess is we will see the same degree of success with governmental and social institutions that we have seen in Latin America.” – Jan. 26, 1996, letter to Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA (and then an employee of Tanton’s foundation U.S. Inc.).

    “Do we leave it to individuals to decide that they are the intelligent ones who should have more kids? And more troublesome, what about the less intelligent, who logically should have less? Who is going to break the bad news [to less intelligent individuals], and how will it be implemented?” – Sept. 18, 1996, letter to now-deceased California multimillionaire and eugenicist Robert K. Graham.

    “I write to encourage keeping track of those on our same side of the issue, but who are nonetheless our competitors for dollars and members.” – April 20, 1998, correspondence asking several FAIR employees to ensure they receive mailings from American Renaissance, a racist, pseudo-scientific magazine focusing on race, intelligence and eugenics. (The underlining was in Tanton’s original letter).

    http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/john-tanton

    —

    As a side note, I’ve worked with a group that does informal research on these guys (and I am using a broad brush to describe the militia/eugenics/white power/american taliban/etc) and you would be fucking shocked to see how many times these guys intersect with “mainstream” conservative politicians.

  31. 31.

    JGabriel

    @beltane:

    How long until the teabaggers turn on him?

    The teabaggers have already turned on the Bushes:

    Remember, George is a liberal who crashed the economy and bailed out the bankers. And Jeb married one of those people – you know, one of those brown Catholic latinas who think they’re wise.

    So Jeb only came out against the bill because he’s a brown-lady lover.

    (/teabagger “logic”)

    .

  32. 32.

    Cat Lady

    I hate this law and everything it engenders, but am loving that the ignorant sumbitches feel compelled to drop the masks and put their cards white face up on the table. Sunlight, disinfectant, and all that. In the meantime my fear is that like in all situations where there are unintended consequences, someone who never asked for it will end up paying for the sins of the fucktards.

  33. 33.

    ciotog

    The group’s original mandate was to promote the genes of those “deemed to be descended predominantly from white persons who settled in the original 13 states prior to the adoption of the Constitution.

    Wow, that’s pretty strict. That would exclude most German-Americans and Scandinavian-Americans. When you’re more willing to parse the Northern Europeans than Hitler was, that’s saying something.

  34. 34.

    Brachiator

    The group’s original mandate was to promote the genes of those “deemed to be descended predominantly from white persons who settled in the original 13 states prior to the adoption of the Constitution.

    Wouldn’t this exclude Swedes, Irish, Italians, and Poles, among many others?

    This is some deeply drug addled goofy BS.

    And “descended predominately….” Wow. Just wow. A whitey “one drop” rule. Consider the people who might not be up to snuff, racially: Keanu Reeves ( Reeves’s mother is English, and his father is an American of Hawaiian, Chinese, Portuguese and English descent); Dean Cain (Cain is of mainly Scottish descent, with a quarter Breton, French Canadian, Irish and Japanese); or Steve Jobs (Jobs’ biological parents [were] Joanne Simpson and Abdulfattah Jandali—a Syrian Muslim).

  36. 36.

    Joe Lisboa

    As someone with childhood roots in Petoskey, Michigan can I be the first to call this Tanton guy the douchebag he is? Okay, if not the first then I’ll gladly wait in line to do so.

  37. 37.

    Gregory

    @Jay C:

    “Galtonian” from this guy: Sir Francis Galton – Victorian polymath/genius and coiner of the term “eugenics”.

    Ah, I thought it was some kind of weird Ayn Rand reference. When in fact it’s even weirder.

  39. 39.

    The Main Gauche of Mild Reason

    Arizona SB 1070: the GOP killing act of 2010. Seriously, did they not learn the lesson from Pete Wilson’s anti-immigrant crap of the 90s? They managed to turn CA from a swing state to a solid Democratic state based on just that one issue.

  40. 40.

    JGabriel

    Greg Palast via Mike:

    What moved GOP Governor Jan Brewer to sign the Soviet-style show-me-your-papers law is the exploding number of legal Hispanics, US citizens all, who are daring to vote—and daring to vote Democratic by more than two-to-one.

    So Brewer signs a bill guaranteed to piss off the Hispanic population and push the vast majority into the Democratic column?

    It’s almost enough to make me say, “Thanks, Jan!”

    If it weren’t for all the xenophobia, harassment, and violence it’s sure to engender, that is.

    .

  41. 41.

    Cerberus

    Know what this shit just reminded me of? Reading up on the history of South Africa and the bat-shit crazy stuff the white supremacists did there both when the Brits tried to put the halt on the worst excesses and again near the end when outside pressure was getting unsustainable. Well, that and Jim Crow South.

    Basically, white people have the worst history in the world dealing with situations where they were top-dawg and now political trends and demographics start looking bad for them. Whenever it looks like the political system is opening up and the “darkies” may have a little too much political power, the white power movements start ramping up terrorism campaigns like this or the Night Riders to try and scare away the inevitable future and try and force a nice system where they might lack the numbers and power they used to enjoy, but can still dominate.

    For the white supremacists, the writing has been on the wall for awhile on the changing demographics in America and the election of Obama was like a bar yelling “Last Call”. They feel they might not have many more election cycles as the big cheez, so they’re trying to burn as much shit down as they can on the way out and are seeing what sneaky shit and terrorism campaigns they can whip up to prevent the inevitable for a little longer.

    Power never gives without a fight, sadly.

    I hate that I arbitrarily share a skin color with these fuckers.

  42. 42.

    Bill Section 147

    @Mike: When you are at war you fight to the death. A long time ago the inner circle of Republican thinking outlined groups that support Democrats.

    That is the hit list decision tree. Support Democratic Party? If Yes, then death.

    The war on public education is really the war against the Democratic Party supporting Teachers Union. It has never been about anything else. Sure they play along to get broader support on other side issues like prayer in school. But it is at its heart an attack on Democratic Party supporting institutions.

    Christianity. Abortion. Women’s Rights. Gay Rights. Equal Rights. None of those things matter philosophically to the current Republican Party. They have weaponized everything.

    For that group it is about winning. It isn’t racism (though they count many racists among them). It isn’t about ideas or truth. It is all, “Go Team!”

  44. 44.

    meh

    @Allan:

    winner winner chicken dinner – let’s show him what he’s won…

    Jason “J.T.” Ready, 34
    Mesa, Ariz.

    A member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps as well as the founder of the prominent, Arizona-based nativist extremist organization Americans First, Jason “J.T.” Ready advocates deadly force to stop Mexicans from crossing the U.S. border illegally. “I firmly believe in having a minefield across the border,” he says in a widely distributed video. “This is 100% effective.”

    The past president of the Mesa Community College Republican Club and current Maricopa County Republican precinct committeeman, Ready is deeply involved in mainstream conservative politics. He’s also an outright neo-Nazi. Ready spoke at a rally put on by the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement in Omaha, Neb., last September (where he was billed as an “Arizona Republican activist”) and appeared at the neo-Nazi National Vanguard’s “Winterfest” gathering in Phoenix last December. He regularly posts to white nationalist online forums, including NewSaxon, where last December he offered this charming observation on the root causes of illegal immigration: “The truth is that negroids screw monkeys and rape babies in afreaka [sic]. Then stupid white man who licks kosher jew rear lets negroids in. … Stop Negroid immigration and integration now!!! Nature will take care of the rest.” – Jason “J.T.” Ready

    In 2006, Ready ran for Mesa City Council. He made headlines that March when he fired a pistol at a Latino man armed with a BB gun. Later, his campaign derailed when, shortly after Ready volunteered to act as master of ceremonies at the Mesa Veteran’s Day parade, it came to light that Ready had been court-martialed and drummed out of the Marines.

  45. 45.

    glynor

    Interestingly, that “white supremacist propaganda” that William Saletan of Slate mistook for science? It was written by J. Philippe Rushton. Who is J. Philippe Rushton? Well, since 2002 he has been the head of the Pioneer Fund.

    In 2000, the Pioneer Fund actually awarded fully 73% of its grants to the Charles Darwin Research Institute which is run by whom? J. Philippe Rushton, of course.

    The Fund gave the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) a total of $1.3 million between 1985 and 1994, and only stopped due to negative publicity linking the Pioneer Fund money to ads purchased by FAIR as part of the California Prop 187 campaign.

  47. 47.

    Jay C

    @Bud:

    Actually, the remote control was invented by a couple of white guys: Eugene Polley and Robert Adler; working for Zenith in the mid-’50s. Adler was Jewish, though (and Austrian-born refugee from the Nazis), so maybe semi-qualifies as “sort-of-white”.

  48. 48.

    freelancer

    via Wonkette:

    Iowa Congressional Candidate, Pat Bertroche:

    I think we should catch ’em, we should document ’em, make sure we know where they are and where they are going,’ said Pat Bertroche, an Urbandale physician. ‘I actually support microchipping them. I can micro-chip my dog so I can find it. Why can’t I microchip an illegal?’

    Why not just make all Hispanics sew little yellow sombreros on their clothes?

    But healthcare is a slippery slope to fascism.

    [headdesk]

  49. 49.

    slag

    @JGabriel:

    The teabaggers have already turned on the Bushes

    Not according to this dude:

    The level of favorability among tea partiers for George W. Bush is extraordinarily high—far more than in the population as a whole. Fifty-seven percent of tea party supporters rate Bush favorably, and only 27% rate him unfavorably (for the sample as a whole the corresponding percentages are reversed 27% favorable, 58% unfavorable.

    John Cole is correct. The teabaggers are Republicans. Crazy right wing Republicans. But that’s what makes them Real Americans, so it’s ok. Just like it is for Bobo, Steve Sailer, et al. They’re just representing all those common folk who hang out at the Applebee’s salad bar.

  50. 50.

    Alex

    Can I just make a plea, that it’s kind of off-putting to hear people say “White people” this and “white people” that, especially after trashing Derb and Murray for doing the same thing with other races. White or black or brown, it’s all just pigmentation. There’s no inherent social or psychological meaning to it beyond what people invent, and sometimes it seems like people here don’t realize that.

  51. 51.

    Elie

    @General Egali Tarian Stuck:

    “That goes to the personal level all the way up to governing this nation and is also tied directly to accumulating monetary wealth to keep the wheels to power greased, in service of gaining (and stealing) more personal and tribal wealth. A Krebs cycle for producing Oligarchs”

    Now that is a truth penetrating all the way to one’s mitochondria, lol!

  52. 52.

    Warren Terra

    How is it possible that the racist anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform and the solidly left-wing Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting share an acronym? You’d think trademark law would have fixed this long ago, much as happened for the WWF.

    In any case, keep in mind that fair.org is the latter, the lefties. I don’t agree with them about everything (they like Alexander Cockburn, for heaven’s sake), but their basic media criticism is great and whatever their sins they’re neither anti-immigrant nor racists.

  53. 53.

    JGabriel

    @Cerberus:

    Basically, white people have the worst history in the world dealing with situations where they were top-dawg …

    Honestly, we’re not alone. Historically, Japanese and Hindu nationalists – and, to be fair, some Islamic fundamentalists, like the Taliban – pretty much play that particular game at our level too.

    .

  54. 54.

    thomas Levenson

    Slightly OT, but the link to FAIR given in the post led to this gem of malicious understatement:

    Brooks is well-known for lightly documented demographic analysis

    Indeed he is, and that’s the nicest way anyone has said it in my hearing.

    Heh.

  56. 56.

    Mart

    I am a Son of the American Revolution (I got documents) and I will sell my pure white seed to the Pioneer Fund for breeding purposes. The fee is $25,000/load. (I would charge more but I am pretty old and the quality may be suspect.)

  57. 57.

    Allan

    @Alex: A great place to begin your journey is with Tim Wise’s White Like Me, available through Amazon and wherever better books are sold.

  58. 58.

    Midnight Marauder

    @Alex:

    Can I just make a plea, that it’s kind of off-putting to hear people say “White people” this and “white people” that, especially after trashing Derb and Murray for doing the same thing with other races. White or black or brown, it’s all just pigmentation. There’s no inherent social or psychological meaning to it beyond what people invent, and sometimes it seems like people here don’t realize that.

    Really, this plea seems better suited to the large scores of white people who are actually pushing through such legislation. Unless I am mistaken, of course, and this is all really just a plot by the Caesar Chavez Freedom Brigade for reasons that escape me. But I think most people here understand that not all white people are ignorant, reactionary bigots.

    Just this group of charming lads and lasses.

  61. 61.

    Cerberus

    @JGabriel:

    I guess that just goes back then to the “power doesn’t let go without a fight” bit then.

    It just seems sometimes like White people manage to get that extra little shiv in long after the numbers look bad for them. The germans parading an ideal that the vast majority of the country didn’t fit, the Boers in South Africa holding total control despite being vastly outnumbered, and Southeastern USA managing to use anything and everything to suppress black votes from the minute blacks were “technically” allowed to vote.

    But yeah, hardly a crime contained by one racial makeup and oppressive minorities have certainly oppressed racial minority majorities in other countries where there were no “white” people.

    So yeah, “power doesn’t let go without a fight”.

  62. 62.

    Bud

    @ Jay C

    Thanks for the information. Hearing that a Jewish guy helped invent the remote control should send a few of these jerk-offs over the edge!

  63. 63.

    SGEW

    I can’t believe that B.O.B. hasn’t shown up on this thread. Was he banned again or something and I missed it?

  64. 64.

    Mark S.

    Are the morons at Reason figuring out that the teabaggers aren’t a bunch of libertarians?

    But it’s increasingly looking like the right’s favored big government policies are a fairly important part of the agenda of a fairly large portion of the Tea Party crowd. Advocating for more police power, more foreign policy imperialism, and more power for the federal government to detain, torture, and abrogate basic civil liberties sort of misses the entire message of the original Tea Party.

    Their stupidity is really breathtaking.

    via

  65. 65.

    Albatrossity

    You might be interested in this website, which documents the zany antics of Kris Kobach. He’s a wingnut’s wingnut, irritating even Kansas Republicans with his insistence on a “loyalty oath” while he was the state party chairman.

  66. 66.

    The Moar You Know

    Basically, white people have the worst history in the world dealing with situations where they were top-dawg and now political trends and demographics start looking bad for them.

    @Cerberus: It ain’t just white people that have that problem. It’s any alpha group that’s getting forcibly demoted from the top spot. Read up on the history of Haiti as a classic, horrifying example. Or Algeria. Or Rwanda. Or modern Ireland. Or….well, I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.

    We all like being in the driver’s seat. We all hate getting pushed out of it. Proof that there really aren’t that many differences between the races after all, amirite?

  67. 67.

    licensed to kill time

    @SGEW:

    Yes, he was. BOB showed up on one of the Confederate History Month threads with his variation of arbeit macht frei and got banished. I don’t know if it is permanent or not, but it’s been a while now.

  68. 68.

    Dee Loralei

    @JGabriel: If it’s about legal immigrants being able to vote, doyou think that citizens having the right/obligation to force police to check papers please will be wild at the polls on election day? Will it intimidate Hispanics from going to the polls, or will it make them go to the polls with all their papers in order and for none of them to miss the vote?

    I’m not saying that well. I know Rachel made a good point that the publics part of the law was so the right-winger law firms can make steady income off suing municipalities. But is Pallast also right that it is about Nov?

  69. 69.

    Alex

    @Mark S.:

    A feather. You can knock me over with one.

    And was there ever an “original tea party”? Similar to turtles, I can only ever remember it being racist cranks all the way down.

  70. 70.

    Third Eye Open

    Angry Canadians, who knew?: “what exactly are the great historical accomplishments of “your” race that make you proud to be white? Capitalism? Slavery? Genocide? Sitcoms? Guns? War? Pollution? Addiction? NAFTA? Thigh-Master? This is your fucking white-history, my “friend”. So why don’t we start making a history worth being proud of and start fighting the real fucking enemy”

  71. 71.

    JGabriel

    @Cerberus: Don’t get me wrong. There are definitely embarrassing, evil, things that only white people would do: like go to the moon, and, once we got there, play golf.*

    But, yeah, the “not letting go of power” trick is pretty widespread among cultures.

    (*h/t Lester Bangs)

    .

  72. 72.

    bemused

    @freelancer:
    Sheesh, it gets confusing. All types of wingnuts have been freaking out thinking the gov’t is going to microchip them & now this nutjob wants to microchip people. Of course, he doesn’t mean white people but still, how are the microchipphobes going to process this? I suppose it would make perfect sense to them as long as they weren’t the ones who got the microchips.

  73. 73.

    JGabriel

    @Dee Loralei:

    Will it intimidate Hispanics from going to the polls, or will it make them go to the polls with all their papers in order and for none of them to miss the vote?

    I wouldn’t think so. The people who can vote are all citizens. They may (and, until this law is overturned, probably should) bring birth certificates, passports, extra ID, to the polls with them, just in case.

    But they’re citizens. If I were citizen of Hispanic heritage in AZ, this law wouldn’t intimidate me into not voting; it would goad me.

    .

  74. 74.

    JGabriel

    Iowa Congressional Candidate, Pat Bertrochevia via freelancer:

    ‘I actually support microchipping them. I can micro-chip my dog so I can find it. Why can’t I microchip an illegal?’

    Canadians beware!

    .

  75. 75.

    Da Bomb

    Steve Sailer is filled with the stinkest of crap. I had no idea who that idiot was until I stumbled upon his site and he was going off about how White men don’t find black women attractive. Then he went on to talk about how black women look like men and are subhuman.

    Somebody jumped on the site and made an ass out of Sailer. But that doesn’t stop his hate speak.

    He is a first class asshole and there is a special place in hell for him.

  76. 76.

    WereBear

    I believe what I learned from Guns, Germs, and Steel: European domination is a function of their comparatively advanced technology, which was the fruits of their geographic location, not any particular “attribute” of their genetic heritage.

    Pale people are pale because they need to make vitamin D at northern latitudes. Maybe a short growing season, sailing abilities to get fish (vitamin D again!) and the large body to hold in the heat in the snow all combined to create some kind of rowdy raiding mentality, but once again, it was created by environmental pressures, not the other way around.

    Implying that the melanin-challenged have some sort of corner on rapacious behavior is, itself, a racist statement.

  77. 77.

    Randy P

    Wait… they weren’t states prior to ratifying the Constitution, were they? So does anyone qualify as a “white person who settled in the original 13 states prior to the adoption of the Constitution?”

  78. 78.

    slag

    @JGabriel: This is true.

    I just wish they would get called on their bullshit more often when they spout off about pretending to care about the deficit and government spending and yet still, by and large, love the guy who took us from a surplus to a deficit in under 8 years. It’s the single issue they consistently claim to coalesce around, and yet their supposed concern appears to be mostly fabrication. In every respect.

    It’s also just a coincidence that an above average percentage of teabaggers believe that Obama wasn’t born in America. It pisses me off that such a large and vocal portion of this country is composed of deranged, paranoid people, and yet, I’m supposed to care about what they have to say. Whatever they’re saying is demonstrably not what they’re meaning. So, frankly, I can’t bring myself to care about what they’re saying. These people need a new therapist, not a new president.

  80. 80.

    LuciaMia

    Kansas Republicans with his insistence on a “loyalty oath” while he was the state party chairman.

    I just don’t get this. The same idiots who are screaming about ‘Freedom!!’ will then turn around and demand some kind of ‘oath’ that’s the norm in a totalitarian state.

    Guess they have their own individual, creative definition of ‘freedom.’
    And I guarantee, it doesn’t include you.

  81. 81.

    Jay

    @LuciaMia:

    Guess they have their own individual, creative definition of ‘freedom.’

    Yes, and it all depends on who the “individual” is….

  82. 82.

    Kryptik

    @Mark S.:

    Holy sweet christ, the gall.

    Though I’m iffy…did he actually say that in front of the student association, or just…mailed it to them? Because I’m not sure the kind of gall it would take to actually stand up to a group of students like that and flat out tell them ‘You’re biologically inferior because of your race, and that makes you inherently dumber than us, that’s why there’s disparity’.

  83. 83.

    Brachiator

    @gbear:

    Some of the Scandinavians in northern MN would put up one hell of a fight over that. The 13 colonies were late-arrivers as far as they’re concerned.

    Ah, but Minnesota wasn’t one of the original states (well, maybe if you count that special episode of A Prairie Home Companion), but I take your point.

    Wait… they weren’t states prior to ratifying the Constitution, were they? So does anyone qualify as a “white person who settled in the original 13 states prior to the adoption of the Constitution?”

    Good catch. These goobers mix up “colonies” and “states.” Either way they seem to be in step with those tea baggers who want to re-invent an America which corrects the errors of the Founders in even potentially allowing for “undesirables.”

    Just pathetic.

  84. 84.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    I blame this all on Obama for not authorizing the release of his long form birth certificate. If he had just done it January 2009 none of this would have happened. We would have single payer health care, the economy would be booming, the wingers and Teabaggers would have been satisfied, the bankster would all be in the Federal pen, and the entire world would now be at peace. Damn! See how easy all this shit really is, man.

  85. 85.

    burnspbesq

    @beltane:

    Jeb Bush has come out against this law. How long until the teabaggers turn on him?

    What time is it? 6:20 Eastern? Give it until 7:00.

  86. 86.

    Mark S.

    @Kryptik:

    This is what he claims to have said at the symposium or whatever the hell it was.

    Our species separated into two parts 50, 60, or 70 thousand years ago, depending on which paleoanthropologist you ask. One part remained in Africa, the ancestral homeland. The other crossed into Southwest Asia, then split, and re-split, and re-split, until there were human populations living in near-total reproductive isolation from each other in all parts of the world. This went on for hundreds of generations, causing the divergences we see today. Different physical types, as well as differences in behavior, intelligence, and personality, are exactly what one would expect to observe when scrutinizing these divergent populations.

    That’s not how I understand the science of it.

  87. 87.

    JGabriel

    @gbear:

    Some of the Scandinavians in northern MN would put up one hell of a fight over that. The 13 colonies were late-arrivers as far as they’re concerned.

    Some of the Hispanic population in AZ could no doubt say much the same thing. There has been a Hispanic population in AZ since before the US formed. Wikipedia:

    Society of Jesus Father Kino developed a chain of missions and taught the Indians Christianity in Pimería Alta (now southern Arizona and northern Sonora) in the 1690s and early 1700s. Spain founded presidios (fortified towns) at Tubac in 1752 and Tucson in 1775. When Mexico achieved its independence from Spain in 1821, what is now Arizona became part of the Mexican Territory Nueva California, also known as Alta California.

    .

  88. 88.

    liberty60(Veteran, Great War of Yankee Aggression)

    @The Moar You Know:
    Which is why I am cool to the use of the word racist; not that it is technically innacurate, its just that the word has, in American usage, a very narrow, very specific meaning.

    Specifically, a Southern, usually potbellied man who could be played by Strother Martin.

    Which is why so many people get huffy and indignant when you use the term racist- why, I’m no Klansman they’ll exclaim.

    But racism is tribalism, and whether it is practiced by the Boers/Afrikkaners, or the Serbs/ Croats, or the Hutus/ Tutsis, or the Indonesians and Chinese, or the Han and the Mandarin, it all comes down to the same equation- “You can’t trust those folks! They’re gonna take our jobs and steal our wimmin!”

  89. 89.

    Citizen_X

    @LuciaMia: The same idiots who are screaming about ‘Freedom!!’

    Or the same idiots who are screaming about ‘police states’…

    Or the same idiots who are screaming about ‘government-implanted microchips’…

    Be sure of it: whenever a wingnut spouts one of his paranoid fantasies, you are seeing a demonstration of p-r-o-j-e-c-t-i-o-n.

  90. 90.

    MoeLarryAndJesus

    Bobo’s not the only NYT columnist with his nose up Steve Sailer’s ass. Douthat had Sailer on his blogroll for most of his tenure with the Atlantic. For some reason Sailer’s listing disappeared without explanation not long before Douthat got his NYT gig. Imagine that.

    Of course Ross has had his racist moments, too – like when he referred to a black woman in post-Katrina New Orleans as a “welfare duchess” because she lived in subsidized housing but had a TV Ross thought was too large. He’s a white supremacist prick just like the rest.

  91. 91.

    gbear

    “what exactly are the great historical accomplishments of “your” race that make you proud to be white?”

    The invention of PopTarts.

  92. 92.

    Midnight Marauder

    @The Grand Panjandrum:

    I blame this all on Obama for not authorizing the release of his long form birth certificate. If he had just done it January 2009 none of this would have happened. We would have single payer health care, the economy would be booming, the wingers and Teabaggers would have been satisfied, the bankster would all be in the Federal pen, and the entire world would now be at peace. Damn! See how easy all this shit really is, man.

    You are kidding, of course. But as I posted in another thread today, the Arizona Hispanic Republicans actually made that claim in their response to the passage of Arizona SB 1070:

    That said, and even though we are taking a stance against Jan Brewer and Russell Pearce’s law, we are ultimately holding President Obama accountable. Obama promised Hispanics that he would pass immigration reform within 90 days of his Presidency. Had Obama carried out his promises to Hispanics last year, the Hispanic community would not be experiencing the crisis we are experiencing right now. There has been recent criticism over our Senator John McCain because John McCain probably feels he cannot win the primary elections due to his previous stances on championing immigration reform and the consistent untrue attacks by Hayworth. It is understandable on why McCain believes he is in the fight of his life. For the record, Senator McCain has taken action in the past while Obama has not. McCain’s valuable experience contributed to Americans winning the Iraq war. The problem is this: There are more Latinos registered as Democrats in the State of Arizona that cannot vote for McCain in the primary elections and McCain wants to win. How can these hypocritical democrat leaders lay blame to the McCain when at the very least McCain has action to back his words? Why aren’t Democrat leaders holding Obama’s feet to the fire? Hispanics are more aligned with Republican values because of our social conservative values and our belief in the Creator; and if Hispanics want to make a real change to help change the face of our Party to bring it back to the Party of Abraham Lincoln, then I call upon all Latinos (Democrat and Independent) to register themselves as Republicans in order to bring it back to those roots.

    All italics mine.

    And hilarious.

  93. 93.

    JK

    Doug,

    “O Pioneers” might make for a catchy title of a blog posting, but I’ve never read anything suggesting that Willa Cather was a racist.

  94. 94.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Albatrossity: Oooh, good stuff.

    Kobach is a dick, but he’s an opportunistic dick. I seriously question how much of that crap he actually believes. As for the question as to what motivates him? Narcissism.

  96. 96.

    JK

    @The Grand Panjandrum:

    I blame this on Obama because he chose Janet Napolitano to be Homeland Security Secretary. Jan “Shit for Brains” Brewer became governor of Arizona as part of the line of succession as determined by the Arizona constitution, replacing Napolitano.

  97. 97.

    Dennis G.

    Not surprisingly they are listed by the SPLC as a hate group:

    At the center of the Tanton web is the nonprofit Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the most important organization fueling the backlash against immigration. Founded by Tanton in 1979, FAIR has long been marked by anti-Latino and anti-Catholic attitudes. It has mixed this bigotry with a fondness for eugenics, the idea of breeding better humans discredited by its Nazi associations. It has accepted $1.2 million from an infamous, racist eugenics foundation. It has employed officials in key positions who are also members of white supremacist groups. Recently, it has promoted racist conspiracy theories about Mexico’s secret designs on the American Southwest and an alternative theory alleging secret plans to merge the United States, Mexico and Canada. Just last February, a senior FAIR official sought “advice” from the leaders of a racist Belgian political party

  98. 98.

    WereBear

    Once again, we see the Wingnut answer to everything is to make it illegal.

    In this case, they decided something already illegal wasn’t illegal enough.

  99. 99.

    kommrade reproductive vigor

    OK, the number of reasons for anyone who isn’t str8, white and male to vote Republican is dropping so far into the negatives Hawking is going to have to invent a new form of math to express it.

    The group’s original mandate was to promote the genes of those “deemed to be descended predominantly from white persons who settled in the original 13 states prior to the adoption of the Constitution.

    Well they put some thought into it which shows they’re at least aware that with slightly less specific wording they’d have to support my mongrelized genes over those of my Aryan-type SO’s.

    Not that I’d want those people putting their grubby hands on my genes…

    I hate this law and everything it engenders, but am loving that the ignorant sumbitches feel compelled to drop the masks and put their cards white face up on the table don the white hoods.

    Fxd.

  100. 100.

    Brachiator

    @Mark S.:

    That’s not how I understand the science of it.

    This is a great example of the use and abuse of science, conservative style. Two of the biggest pieces of BS are when this asshat says,

    there were human populations living in near-total reproductive isolation from each other in all parts of the world..

    and

    Different physical types, as well as differences in behavior, intelligence, and personality, are exactly what one would expect to observe

    There was always a lot of back and forth mixing going on, and humans have never been isolated long enough to diverge into separate species.

    Hell, lions and tigers are separate species, but their behavior is still very similar. On the other hand, despite all the variations in the physical appearance and demeanor of dogs, they are still the same species and easily inter-breed.

    It really amazes me how these morans can’t get evolution, or even basic elementary school level science right, and yet insist on bloviating on the significance of human differences.

  102. 102.

    Brachiator

    @JK:

    “O Pioneers” might make for a catchy title of a blog posting, but I’ve never read anything suggesting that Willa Cather was a racist.

    Isn’t DougJ doing a riff on the Pioneer Fund?
    It’s a pun worthy of Rocky and Bullwinkle.

  103. 103.

    Elie

    I agree with many of the commenters addressing the loss of power by some white people but I also believe that this will never go back to their world as they knew it.

    They are feeling under enormous pressure because of the missmatch between the reality of a diverse nation and their view of themselves as “in charge”. They are being smoked out and will be under increasing scrutiny. No more gentle euphemisms disguising their bigotry. They are out and having put it all out there, you sense the lack of other alternatives for them. They are weak rather than strong — cowards needing to frisk strangers and threaten the sense of decent rights of citizens. While they cannot be ignored, the train has passed their station already, moving faster and faster. All they can do is scream and throw rocks as it retreats…Though its Arizona, every American should feel embarrassed. Like having your brother arrested for burning down someone’s house — yeah, you didnt do it, but its a stain on the family anyway.

    My guess is that this will be walked back some kind of way, pretty quickly.

  104. 104.

    Cacti

    I’m not making this up:

    Kris Kobach is a special legal advisor to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (Joe Arpaio) for Constitutional Issues.

    So, if you’re a resident of Maricopa County, your taxes go to pay this fucker’s $300/hr fee.

  105. 105.

    Brachiator

    @Elie:

    My guess is that this will be walked back some kind of way, pretty quickly.

    To the contrary, these boneheads are going to take it to the limit.

    At every point where the GOP could have said enough, they deny where the worst of the tea baggers and wingnuts are going, and fan the flames even higher.

    Hell, I don’t think the GOP even knows how to stop it, even if they wanted to.

  106. 106.

    Linda Featheringill

    The group’s original mandate was to promote the genes of those “deemed to be descended predominantly from white persons who settled in the original 13 states prior to the adoption of the Constitution.”

    So if some of my ancestors were in the Jamestown group [1608 or so], what exactly is Mr. Kobach offering to do for me?

  108. 108.

    El Cid

    @Linda Featheringill: If some of the starving first English colonists who had to dig up and eat corpses to survive had children, does this make them super-ultra pure descendants by the principle of digestive inheritance?

  109. 109.

    Linda Featheringill

    Steve Sailer is filled with the stinkest of crap. I had no idea who that idiot was until I stumbled upon his site and he was going off about how White men don’t find black women attractive.

    That means she said “No.”

  110. 110.

    Elie

    @Brachiator:

    Not “walked back” by the Republicans or people responsible for its passage, but pushed back (better term) by the surrounding community of this country and its people and institutions..

    Who knows, you may be right and nothing will happen. I am believing differently though. We will see

  112. 112.

    Larv

    @Brachiator:

    Yeah, the fact that the Derb feels free to opine on a topic like that, to an audience like that, despite having an understanding of the subject essentially that of a stoned sophomore who just took his first anthro class, is just mind-boggling. For one thing, he doesn’t seem to get that evolution is generally in response to selective pressures. So we’d only expect human populations to differ markedly in intelligence if there were significant differences in the selective pressures favoring intelligence in their respective environments. Is intelligence really more adaptive for a proto-European than an African? Maybe, but I’d like to see his work.

    And this is if we grant his dubious claim that early human populations were essentially genetically isolated. At the geographical extremes, maybe. But I’m pretty sure the core regions of the human range (and that includes most of Europe) have had significant gene flow throughout human history.

  113. 113.

    Elie

    @Larv:

    But I’m pretty sure the core regions of the human range (and that includes most of Europe) have had significant gene flow throughout human history.

    This is buttressed by the fact that many people and populations who have lived along the old “silk road” in the middle and near east through central Europe and Northern Africa have a hell of a time getting matches for transplants as their “tissue types” are extremely complex and difficult to match due to their “mixing’ with the riff raff over the years. Hell, from way back when I was involved with clinical research, 30% of so called black HlA antigens are “white”…

    We are so oversimplifying the human experience when we speak of “race” and ethnicity (whatever THAT means biologically and genetically).

  116. 116.

    Brachiator

    @Larv:

    And this is if we grant his dubious claim that early human populations were essentially genetically isolated. At the geographical extremes, maybe. But I’m pretty sure the core regions of the human range (and that includes most of Europe) have had significant gene flow throughout human history.

    But we don’t have to grant his claim at all. The plain fact is that human populations have never been genetically isolated long enough in any locale for the isolation to make any significant difference.

    I also like to point out that in many cultures, the most intellectually or artistically gifted individual has been a person with some degree of African ancestry. In France, for example, we have Alexander Dumas. In Russia, we have Alexander Pushkin, who pretty much created native Russian literature. In Brazil, there is Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis:

    often known as Machado de Assis,… was a Brazilian novelist, poet, playwright, short story writer and liberal monarchist. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer of Brazilian literature

    And in America, there is Prince (I joke a bit here because of Prince’s resemblance to some portraits of Pushkin).

    By the way, you can do this same trick of “who’s great” with other ethnic combinations. But the essetial point is that there is really no such thing as ethnic purity, nor does ethnic purity get you any guarantee of whatever it is that racist clowns think that they are looking for.

    Steve Sailer is filled with the stinkest of crap. I had no idea who that idiot was until I stumbled upon his site and he was going off about how White men don’t find black women attractive.

    Methinks Sailer doth protest too much.

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