OccupySTL to Protest Lowes

From an email:

[Join OccupySTL] this Sunday, January 22nd in Solidarity with the boycott of Lowes by the Council for American-Islamic Relations(CAIR: http://www.cair.com/) and Occupy Saint Louis (OSL: http://www.occupystl.org/) to protest Lowes bowing to pressure from southern hate-groups to divest millions of ad-dollars from the TLC program All-American Muslim, which was the first major offering on network television of a positive portrayal of the everyday lives of average American Muslims in Detroit....

Occupy Saint Louis Outreach is requesting that all recipients stand in Solidarity with our picket outside the Kirkwood Lowes, to join our mobilization and forward this message to further allies in the struggle against bigotry, xenophobia, and discrimination and ignorance so we all can show that the political forces of the 1% and the politics of division and hate will not be allowed to single out any-one population in our community. We implore you to spread the word and invite you to join us on the picket lines this Sunday, January 22nd.

You can read their full statement on Lowes here.

Loesch Cheers Soldiers Who Urinated On Corpses, Says She Would "Drop Trou" And Do It Herself

The public image of the United States has been damaged after video surfaced showing U.S. soldiers urinating on dead bodies in Afghanistan. Military officials have all condemned the actions.

From CNN:

"I have seen the footage, and I find the behavior depicted in it utterly deplorable," U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in a statement. "I condemn it in the strongest possible terms."

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos said in a statement the behavior is "wholly inconsistent with the high standards of conduct and warrior ethos that we have demonstrated throughout our history."

Lt. Gen. Adrian Bradshaw, deputy commander of ISAF, called the actions on the video "disgusting."

"Any acts which treat the dead, enemy or friendly, with disrespect are utterly unacceptable and do not represent the standards we expect of coalition forces," Bradshaw said in a video statement. He said he was speaking on behalf of Allen, who is out of the country.

"It is difficult to say what long-term impacts this might have, and I would hesitate to get into speculation, but obviously any sort of footage, any sort of activity of this kind that is grossly against all the moral values that the coalition forces are standing for are very much working against our cause and against everything that we are standing for and that we are here for," said Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, a NATO ISAF spokesman.

CNN "political analyst" Dana Loesch, on the other hand, apparently doesn't care if these actions were directly working against the mission of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan; instead, she cheered for it in order to fuel the unhinged Muslim hatred that has become a staple of modern day right-wing media. On her show, she gave the marines in question "one million cool points" and said that she would "drop trou" and "do it too." She ended by saying: "Do I have a problem with that as a citizen of the United States? No, I don't."



h/t @nicolegennette for noticing.

Surprise! Gateway Pundit Was Completely Wrong On Attempted Smear of Rep. Ellison

First Jim "Gateway Pundit" Hoft made fun of Representative Keith Ellison's heartfelt testimony about a Muslim first responder killed during 9-11. Then he called Ellison a liar. His evidence? One of his knuckle-dragging right-wing buddies wasn't able to find anything about the story on the google. Unfortunately for Hoft, other people who actually know how to do basic research looked into the story, and found out that he got it compltely wrong.

From TPM:

But it turns out there were multiple reports in newspapers and on television supporting the fact that there were rumors about Hamdani. In a Sept. 21, 2001 interview with CBS, Hamdani's mother said they were "having troubles coping with it because we can't go outside without having people give us looks and have this feeling that, 'Hey, you're to blame for this.' It's, like, we're being targeted for something we didn't even do."

As Shaffer points out, a Oct. 12, 2001 New York Post story titled "Missing -- or Hiding? Mystery of NYPD Cadet from Pakistan" (which no longer exists online) reports that "investigators for the FBI and NYPD have since questioned the family about which Internet chat rooms he visited and if he was political." (His mother called that article "slander" in an interview on Democracy Now following the hearing yesterday.)

Then the New York Daily News reported on April 6, 2002, that the "story of a Pakistani-born Muslim man living in Queens who was unexpectedly missing after Sept. 11 quickly took on sinister implications."

The New York Times reported on March 9, 2003, that "ugly rumors circulated: he was a Muslim and worked in a lab; he might have been connected to a terrorist group. Months later the truth came out.

Don't expect an apology from Hoft, though. He likes to keep his readers stupid, uninformed, and perpetually angry. Otherwise, how else could they stand to read his garbage?

Hoft and Loesch Mock Story of Muslim First Responder Killed in 9/11 Attacks

This week, House Republicans have been holding a witch hunt despicable hearings trying to demonize American Muslims.

Earlier today, Rep. Keith Ellison pushed back against these shameful hearings. Ellison told the story of NY paramedic Mohammed Salman Hamdani, who was killed in the attacks of 9/11. It's heartrending testimony and brings into sharp focus the disgusting nature of the right-wing attempts to paint all (or almost all) Muslims as "terrorists:'



Jonathon Capehart of the Washington Post wrote the following about the video:

You're emotionally dead if after watching the video you feel nothing, not even a pang of empathy, for Ellison.

Sadly, Dana Loesch and Jim Hoft of the St. Louis tea party are worse than "emotionally dead," because they didn't just feel nothing. They attacked and mocked Ellison for telling the story.

Here's what Hoft had to say about Ellison's testimony:

Apparently we’re not supposed to speak about the 16,921 Deadly Islamist Attacks since 9-11. Ever. If you do or if you try to link Islam to the thousands of murderous acts by radical Islamists… Then you’re an Islamaphobe

And Loesch featured Ellison's comments as part of her "Today in Stupidity" segment.

From what I've seen, there's no ambiguity about Loesch and Hoft's position on Islam. They are blatant Islamaphobes, and are quite upfront about thinking that Islam is evil.

Gina Loudon On Birther Website: Middle Eastern Men *Want* to be Profiled

Gina Loudon used to blog on the disgraced Andrew Breitbart web sites. She apparently hasn't been lately (perhaps because of her feud with Dana Loesch?), and somehow managed to move down in the world of blogging credibility by now regularly blogging at World Net Daily, which is quite literally the online hub of birther conspiracy theories about President Obama. In her latest post, she claims that patriotic Middle Eastern men want to be profiled in order to spare petite white women like her from having to be inconvenienced for five minutes. In her words:

I am no threat and should never have been detained as a white, petite woman traveling with a child. Many patriotic, liberty-loving Middle Easterners I know would be happy to cooperate with profiling if it meant that generally speaking, the groping of those who simply don’t fit the profile came to an end.

Nice.

Tea Party Attendee: "Wish Me Luck and No Muslims"

A member of the Dallas tea party flying in to St. Louis for the 9/12 rally had this to say today:


At his blog, which unfortunately is not satire (though the use of "Angry White Dude" is apparently used ironically), he explains what he means in more detail:

I know political correctness tells me I have to love and respect any and every culture, no matter how bassackwards it is compared to American culture. But I can’t. It just isn’t common sense to watch what passes for culture in the Islamic world and have any respect for it.

I must say I’m disappointed in the preacher in Florida for backing down from burning the Koran.

He continues:

Savage Islam cannot be calmed down. Nor reasoned with. It can only be destroyed. Pretending Islam is anything different than what it is will only end with the unnecessary deaths of many, many Americans.

And finally:

I believe America is the greatest country in the history of the world. I believe Islam has no place in America. I do not consider it a religion. It is a cult of violence and death.

Wish me luck and no Muslims on my flight tomorrow morning!

Apparently this guy thinks that any Muslims on his plane would automatically be plotting to crash it. Sounds like a classic conservative bed-wetter who doesn't understand that you can't make generalizations about 1,600,000,000 people based on the actions of a small group.

And lest you think Angry White Dude is alone in his anti-Islam bigotry, a brief search revealed several other 9/12 attendees expressing similar sentiment. AmerycanSaint is going to the rally:

And here's what he had to say:


And then St. Louis has its own home-grown bigotry:



Every one of these idiots is implying that all of Islam is evil. I have no idea how anyone could grow up in a population center like St. Louis or Dallas and be so completely ignorant about the fact that decent, hard-working, peaceful Muslims are integrated throughout American society. They have to be locking themselves in a basement 24 hours a day with a radio that only plays 97.1. And even that wouldn't work perfectly, since I heard Dave Glover on the radio making some reasonable comments as he guest hosted Glenn Beck's show. Honestly, I don't understand how people can be that clueless.

Anyway, if the tea party wants their claims to be "open-minded" and "tolerant" to be taken seriously, they need to condemn these types of comments at their rally.