This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: SPLC

  • Arrest in MLK Day bombing attempt

    Apparently, Spokane police have arrested a man in connection with that attempted bombing in Spokane on Martin Luther King, Jr Day. It was a backpack bomb placed near a parade route. The arrest was a 36-year-old “ex-soldier” named Kevin William Harpham. Of course the media jumps on the phone and calls Mark Potok;

    Potok said his organization’s records also indicate that Harpham was in the U.S. Army in 1996 and 1997, serving with the 37th Field Artillery Regiment at Fort Lewis.

    And, of course, the Left jumps to defend Potok’s and the Department of Homeland Security’s contention that veterans of the recent wars are likely to become terrorists. Except that Harpham was in the Army for a brief period well before the current wars began.

    All of you Redlegs out there raise your hands if you received training from the Army to make backpack bombs. Yeah, none of you. So this particular shitbag learned to make backpack bombs somewhere besides the Army.

    Somehow, Crooks and Liars thinks this vindicates Potok and the DHS. About as much as 88-year-old John von Brunn’s actions supported the “veteran-as-terrorist” fairy tale.

    So far, none of the veterans who’ve been accused of being terrorists have served in the current wars. So Potok and the DHS remain idiots.

  • SPLC wants your $$$ to protect Morris Dees

    TSO sent me this fund raising letter from the Southern Poverty Law Center panty waists;


    Scary right wingers are pounding at the door…send us money! Now! They’re disguised as children in witches masks and dressed in mummy bandages! Oh, scary.

    What are they going to do…stuff the cash in sandbags and build a bunker?

    In all, more than 30 people have been convicted of crimes in connection with plots to kill Morris or harm SPLC or its staff.

    If the plots to kill Morris were as serious as the threat they’re on about always, there are probably more than a few girl scouts locked up for threatening Mo with a box of Samoas.

    I love how they mention the Oklahoma bombing in the last line -raising that specter. Every time I see Mark Potok on TV he tells how SPLC predicted the OK Bombing just a few days before the attack.

    That’s easy…if I was running around like Chicken Little warning that there’s an attack coming every day, odds are that I’ll be right on the money someday.

    I just wonder who the old woman is in the picture there at the end.

  • Potok: None of what I say is true, but I’ll say it anyway

    In a CNN interview, Mark Potok tells CNN that even there’s no data to support his contention that violence against Islamic adherents is on the rise;

    Surprisingly, he gives President Bush credit for tamping down anti-Islamic incidents in the years following the 9-11 attacks. But then he believes in Big Government solutions. Without saying President Obama’s name (that would be racist in Potok’s world), Potok blames the current administration for the few attacks he calls “antecdotal evidence” of widespread hate crimes committed against Muslims.

    Yeah, one knifing by a liberal film student perpetrated on a cab driver is “evidence” of a rising hate crime incidents.

    Meanwhile, the Daily Caller quotes Potok while he tries to blame the Tea Party groups for this “surge” in hate crimes;

    “The ‘tea parties’ and similar groups that have sprung up in recent months cannot fairly be considered extremist groups, but they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism,” Mark Potok, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, wrote in a piece titled “Rage On The Right: The Year In Hate And Extremism” from the group’s Spring 2010 edition of its Intelligence Report.

    SPLC also sees a connection between the “paranoid” antigovernment ideas espoused by extremist militias, racist skinheads, and the ideas espoused by prominent Tea Partiers.

    So the imagined hate crime surge is fueled by imagined connection to the Tea Parties. That’s some diligent research and unshakable evidence you have there, Markie.

  • ADL Announces Opposition to Mosque Near Ground Zero

    This admittedly surprised me. The ADL isn’t exactly a red-blooded conservative and while they do criticize some of the opponents of the Mosque for “bigoted” speech, they do use some of the talking points that the conservative blogosphere has been using for awhile in regards to this mosque:

    In recommending that a different location be found for the Islamic Center, we are mindful that some legitimate questions have been raised about who is providing the funding to build it, and what connections, if any, its leaders might have with groups whose ideologies stand in contradiction to our shared values.  These questions deserve a response, and we hope those backing the project will be transparent and forthcoming.  But regardless of how they respond, the issue at stake is a broader one.

    Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam.  The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong.  But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right.  In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right.

    The ADL wouldn’t have waded into this unless they know some real scary people are behind this mosque. I wonder if this will change the narrative of how the MSM has been reporting this story or if the left-wing media will start lumping the

    By the way, if anyone has any video or a statement of Mark Potok or anybody else from the SPLC commenting on or defending the mosque, plus post the link in the comment section.

  • Paying lip service to Hate

    Mark Potok’s Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hate Watch is hot on the trail of that hateful group at Fox News this week with an article that charges “Another Long, Hot Black Nationalist Summer at Fox News“. Of course, twisting the story completely around, the story’s author, Alexander Zaitchik, exonerates two thugs outside a polling place in Philadelphia and points his finger at Fox News as the racists instead;

    On nearly 100 occasions since June 30, Fox News anchors and hosts have breathlessly discussed the marginal group and the “scandal” of the Justice Department’s dismissal of a voter intimidation case filed against two of its members who were videotaped standing outside a Philadelphia poll station on Election Day 2008.

    [Abigail Thernstrom, a conservative George W. Bush appointee on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission] told Politico. “This has to do with their fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the [Obama] administration.”

    And what better way to do that than play sensationalized loops of militant-looking black men with zero political power or connections to the White House?

    “Militant-looking black men with zero political power” but enough power to count them in the number of right wing hate groups on their “Hate Map” this year;

    Of course, if you follow the link on the hate Map to SPLC’s idea of black separatists, you’ll notice it’s not their fault;

    So basically, the SPLC will go along with counting the Black Panthers in their BIG NUMBER of right wing hate groups, but when it comes down to actually doing something about them, well, that’s an entirely different story. Fox News must pay.

  • Mark Potok violated my First Amendment Rights

    Well, he didn’t really (only the government can violate my rights), but if I did the same thing to him, he’d accuse me of it. Potok has commented on posts about him here over the years and I’ve let him have his say – usually because he heightens the hilarity with his Godless hyperbole. So the other day I was cruising through his “Hate Watch” (mostly looking for my name, because I hate a lot and I’m somewhat disappointed I haven’t been recognized yet).

    But anyway, I ran across this REALLY stupid article by Sonia Scherr, one of Potok’s main bomb throwers, entitled “Fox Uses Dubious Stats to Demonize Undocumented Immigrants“. I didn’t even read it – the irony of the SPLC charging anyone with using dubious statistics (like calling a PO Box in Romney, WV a hate group) was just too much to bear. So, I left a comment, politely worded, to that effect. I checked this morning and the comment is deleted.

    Now, in Hate Watch world, if I had deleted one of Potok’s comments, I’d be accused of burning him at the stake and any number of things which would make me out to be a right wing nut job. I won’t do that to Potok and his fragile ego, though.

  • Hutarees released

    There’s another reason for Mark Potok to be angry this morning – a judge released the Hutarees while they await trial;

    “The United States is correct that it need not wait until people are killed before it arrests conspirators,” US District Judge Victoria Roberts said in her ruling.

    “But, the defendants are also correct: Their right to engage in hate-filled, venomous speech, is a right that deserves First Amendment protection.”

    She said federal prosecutors failed to persuade her that the defendants must be jailed until trial, the Detroit Free News reports.

    Despite the media’s best attempt to frame these doofuses as dangerous criminal terrorists on par with al Qaeda just to give them boogiemen to shake infront of the camera, the fact remains that they are doofuses. I mean, look at them. They look like victims of a lifetime of wedgies and indian burns.

    We all watched their “training videos” – they didn’t have a clue between the nine of ’em. Not that they weren’t a danger – anyone who was not in their line of fire was in danger of being hit.

  • Hey, Hate Watch, wake up

    There’s an article on Mark Potok’s Hate Watch today that reports on the hate that staffer Larry Keller discovered on Facebook towards President Obama;

    “Dear Lord, this year you took my favorite actor, Patrick Swazie [sic],” the site’s creator wrote. “You took my favorite actress, Farah [sic] Fawcett. You took my favorite singer, Michael Jackson. I just wanted to let you know, my favorite president is Barack Obama. Amen.”

    Of course, the approval of the sentiment by more than a million Facebook members is proof of some sort of recent surge in hate directed at the President. But what Larry is forgetting (And TSO reminded me) is that was the same statement a labor official in New Jersey made against their new governor a few weeks ago.

    Dear Lord this year you have taken away my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze, my favorite actress, Farrah Fawcett, my favorite singer, Michael Jackson, and my favorite salesman Billy Mays. I just wanted to let you know that Chris Christie is my favorite governor.

    NJEA’s local Bergen County Education Association President Joe Coppola sent the message to 17,000 union members. So where is Hate Watch’s report on that “joke”?