Country of the credulous?

Glenn Beck again invokes not-so-subtle racism directed at the President.We've caught Beck at the antebellum game of southern aristocrats. Beck urges his audience to study history. He's apparently confident that most will instead stick with People magazine and the National Enquirer.

Beck runs a clip of the President's recent address to the AFL-CIO. The President thanks union members for their work keeping special interests in check. Beck then throws a tantrum, marches up to the video screen, points to "AFL-CIO" in the backdrop and screams...

The AFL-CIO is a "special interest"? It's very important to note that Beck is using "special interest" in a pejorative context. He impugns current and retired AFL-CIO members as participants in special interest privilege.

The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations is the largest federation of labor unions in the United States. It consists of 56 national and international unions, which represent more than 11 million workers, or roughly 8% of the U.S. workforce. The AFL-CIO also represents a wide swath of occupations, including: nurses; airline pilots, federal government workers; transit workers; postal workers; construction trades; fire fighters; miners; utility workers; merchant marine; police; longshoremen; and, others.

Bearing in mind that Beck's audience skews to an older, whiter, more blue-collar demographic, his slam of the AFL-CIO is more surprising than his racist rant at an 11 year old girl. Perhaps it's not as shocking as his history of on-air abuse, including cruelty towards a woman who had recently miscarried, but given that the Alliance for Retired Americans is an AFL-CIO affiliate claiming 3 million members, Beck's outburst potentially enraged far more than the 11 million people who are currently active union members.

How can Beck get away with an attack on his own audience? The video clip is mercifully short. The next thing he says reveals a game older than nullification:

"Planet of the Apes" is a not-so-veiled reference to the President's skin color. It also invokes 19th century hate speech, when blacks were commonly referred to as apes or monkeys. Beck used the AFL-CIO slam to set-up his real message, a racial taunt designed to resonate with his core audience.

Beck knows his audience will understand "Planet of the Apes". He's counting on them not to comprehend his cynical reuse of the slave master's manipulation of public opinion.

Antebellum aristocracy feared two things: (1) loss of slavery; (2) empowerment of the white underclass. Slavery, and only slavery, was the primary cause of Civil War. The slave-holding class effectively disenfranchised poor whites and owned a hugely disproportionate share of southern wealth, since slaves as an asset class exceeded the combined worth of all railroads and manufacturing businesses in America. Poor whites were kept in line by: (1) obsequence to aristocracy (inherited from their English Borderlands forebears); (2) a sense of racial superiority imparted to them by slave-owners.

Beck is repeating the cornerstone of the Great Southern Lie. TheRaven wonders, once again, if Beck hasn't gone too far. Unions have served to promote racial equality. Some of the individual unions and occupations slammed by Beck are well-integrated (police; postal workers) or known for disproportionately large minority representation (Federal government). Beck says that Obama's praise of the AFL-CIO makes him think that he woke up on the Plant of the Apes. If Beck isn't brought to heel by millions of outraged AFL-CIO members, the alternative conclusion is that we're living in a country of the credulous.

Not qualified to lead

A certified radiologic technologist is an important healthcare occupation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports 212,490 CRTs employed nationwide in 2009. Median earnings in 2009 were $43,539 with the 75pct point on the occupation's national pay scale averaging $53,137. You may have met a few CRTs; they are employed mostly by hospitals and imaging centers. Preparatory education programs have trended towards bachelor's degrees in recent years but many CRTs have Associates degrees or non-degree certification, such as the Governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer.

This makes Ms. Brewer the only Governor who lacks a college degree. CRT (and similar) training programs develop valuable technical skills (and Ms. Brewer may have been the best CRT in the history of medical imaging) but the critical thinking skills needed for effective political leadership are born only in rigorous degree programs offered by accredited institutions.

Ms. Brewer recently signed into law anti-immigration legislation that humiliated intelligent Arizonans and embarrassed the United States. She broadly fits the white-hate demographic - 62 years old, lacking higher education attainment. Is it any wonder that she was so easily manipulated by right-wing extremists to legalize racial profiling? The law was authored by Russell Pearce, a former sheriff's deputy with links to hate groups.

Pearce's checkered past includes an accusation of domestic violence and later dismissal from a state government post. Pearce attributed half of Arizona's homicides to illegal immigrants to prod public fear into support of his execrable law. Since law enforcement crime statistics do not include perpetrator immigration status, it's obvious the Pearce was lying through his teeth. Pearce's hatred of brown people extends to babies. Given his druthers, the criminalization of babies will scare most undocumented expectant mothers away from prenatal care. By voting in a bill written by Pearce, Arizona's political leadership has embraced baby cruelty as state policy. Needless to say, Pearce is also uneducated. Is it any wonder he pals around with Nazis like JT Ready?

Pearce claimed ignorance of Ready's Nazism after above photo was made public. Ready's unabashed racial invective has drawn attention from the Southern Poverty Law Center. According to the SPLC, Ready marched with neo-Nazi's in 2007 (above). This led Republican leaders to demand his ouster as Maricopa County GOP precinct committeeman. Ready's own final solution to immigration called for land mines along the border. Considering that Pearce has 35 years experience in law enforcement, his feigned ignorance of Ready's Neo-Nazism is ridiculous.

The SPLC reports that Ready has also maintained racist views in an online profile:

"Sporting his trademark star-spangled necktie, Jason "J.T." Ready is familiar to Phoenix, Ariz., residents, law enforcement officers and journalists as a City Council gadfly and oft-quoted member of the anti-immigration Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.

Online, though, Ready is better known to the nearly 2,000 registered users of New Saxon, a newly popular white-supremacist social networking website, as "Viking Son." His self-created New Saxon profile displays photographs of Ready wearing a kilt, donning a bulletproof vest, and scouring the desert for "illegals" through a pair of binoculars. Ready lists his "turn-ons" as "a woman who loves our Race, Kultur, Heritage, History and Future," identifies the racist fantasy novel The Turner Diaries as his favorite book, and describes himself as a big fan of neo-Nazi teen pop duo Prussian Blue."

The SPLC provides additional background on Ready in profiles of 20 racist/extremists. Ready's includes this motto: "The Purity of the Aryan Race is the most precious resource Nature has to offer All of Humankind." The New Saxon website is an active tool of the National Socialist Movement (NSM). It's intentions remain undisguised.

The Columbia, Missouri Police Department prepared an insightful briefing on NSM before a "protest rally" at the University of Missouri. This excerpted page explains why NSM adherents make frequent reference to "88".

This post has only scratched the surface of a hate network beneath Arizona's new law. Ms. Brewer may or may not be an overt racist but her lack of education has enabled willful ignorance of legislative ties to groups that worship Hitler. Arizona's immigration law is founded on un-American principles. Her actions make it plainly obvious that Ms. Brewer is not qualified to lead.

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UPDATE Aug, 5, 2010: Utah gets a clue. Click here for an insightful analysis by The Economist.

Revisiting the AK-47

Two police officers make a routine traffic stop. They're both experienced officers. Moments later, they're both dead, murdered by an anti-government lunatic named Jerry Kane. This picture of the murdered officers was taken during an large drug bust that occurred before their tragic end.

Click image to see full-size

Jerry Kane was driving a white minivan registered to the House of Prayer, a "church" associated with white racist/extremists (TheRaven detests use of "supremacist" to describe pond scum). You can find an audio clip of Jerry interviewed on an Internet call-in show here. This clip is highly recommended, because it reveals much about Kane's state of mind. The first 8 minutes are devoted to Kane raging about two days of incarceration after he failed to produce required documentation for a routine traffic stop. His language is textbook extremism. A comic-book interpretation of law, no understanding of due process and consistent characterization of government, courts and law enforcement as "evil". He refers to the traffic stop as a "nazi checkpoint". The show moves on to Kane's stock and trade - purported advice to beleaguered homeowners.

The House of Prayer is located at 143 West Main Street, New Vienna, OH, in one of the store-fronts along the left-side of this picture. (Doesn't look much like Kabul, does it?)

Click image to see full-size

The murdered police officers are Sgt. Brandon Paudert (top picture, left) and Officer Bill Evans (right). They were 39 and 38 years old, respectively. The shootout occurred in West Memphis, Arkansas, on route 40. Kane and his son escaped but were cornered 90 minutes later in a nearby Walmart parking lot. They were both killed in a second shoot-out, in which two more officers were injured, one critically. An "unknown wildlife officer with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission", who was part of the manhunt, is credited for possibly saving the lives of both injured officers, here.

A New York Times article states that Kane has "a long police record" and notes that an expert on financial scams who has testified before Congress believes that Kane was perpetrating financial scams. The two-hour call-in show (which TheRaven listened to in entirety) supports this claim. An official of the Southern Poverty Law Center indicates that Kane's debt-avoidance scams are commonly used by racist/extremists to fund their operations. He also notes recent, sudden growth in the number of known racist/extremist groups. Kane's website can be found here and a series of his lectures begins here.

How could Jerry Kane, a white racist/extremist financial scammer with "a long police record", accompanied by a 16-year old boy, murder two experienced police officers during a routine traffic stop? Compared with the officer's side-arms, he had vastly superior fire-power. Jerry Kane had one or more AK-47's.

Why are semi-automatic rifles like the AK-47 more lethal than police-issue side arms?

There are two primary reasons:

1) The standard AK-47 magazine holds 30 cartridges vs. 15-17 for typical police side-arms (roughly twice as many)

2) Rifle cartridges pack orders-of-magnitude more explosive force than pistol cartridges. How this extra explosive force translates into destructive power is explained further on.

This picture of shows various types of pistol ammunition and one rifle cartridge (right side).

Click image to see full-size

The most common pistol ammo is 9 millimeter (9mm) and one of the most powerful is .357 Magnum. Both designations refer to the weapon's bore, i..e, ".357" means the bore is about one-third of an inch across. Note the size difference between the 9mm and .357 cartridges. Now compare both to the .223 round on the right. The .223 is similar to ammunition used by the AK-47, which is shown further on.

The projectile hurled by the cartridge's explosive charge is the actual "bullet". Bullets are measured by weight, in grains. The 9mm bullet above is a relatively light, 115 grain target round. The destructive power of a firearm is a function of the weight and velocity of its bullets. Bullet velocity is measured in feet-per-second (fps). Note the weights (GR) and velocities (f.p.s.) in this illustration of pistol ammunition.

 

 Click image to see full-size

Pistol bullets generally range from 115 up to 200 grains (for .45 caliber) and average roughly 150 grains. A standard-issue 9mm hollow-point is exactly 147 grains. Pistol bullets generally travel at 900-1,200 feet-per-second. The next illustration provides comparable bullet weight & velocity information for several types of AK-47 ammunition. The illustration was obtained from a web site devoted to the AK-47.

Click image to see full-size

Note that AK-47 bullet weights are comparable to typical pistol ammunition but bullet velocity (2,365-2,800 fps) is more than twice the average for pistols. Similar weight bullets with more than 2x velocity translates to 4x the destructive power, measured by bullet kinetic energy, as shown in this table (obtained here):

Click image to see full-size

The call-in interview with Kane is two hours long. With the exception of one female caller, who reveals her education through vocabulary, it's a tour through the less-advantaged mindset that accords credibility to people like Jerry Kane. His grade-school metaphors, occasional biblical invocations and banal exhortations do not add up to genuine financial advice.

Kane repackages well-worn racist/extremist notions of anti-government resistance, for example, urging people to file police reports on recorders of deeds for "identity theft". He makes frequent reference to deeds of trust and power of attorney and refers to money as "FRN" (Federal Reserve Notes). His real message is that individuals win only if they "turn the tables" on their oppressors with false and outrageous claims. He urges several callers to bill banks for their personal time (in one case, a child welfare agency) and divines sinister purpose in double-entry bookkeeping. (TheRaven confesses surprise that racist/extremist rhetoric now encompasses double-entry bookkeeping). His argument for billing personal time is "...a lot of them (banks) will pay it if its just a tiny bit". Kane's limited use of language could only impress a high-school dropout.

The AK-47 web site has a top-10 list here. How can one weapon have a top-10 list? Because the AK-47 has been manufactured all over the world. American gun fanciers (the site sponsor is a Tucson gun shop) voted the Polish variant #1, with 1,029 votes, followed by models manufactured in Romania, Bulgaria, Russia and Hungary. It is both a bitter irony and a testament to the congenital ignorance of racist/extremists that they choose to express their notions of freedom with Soviet tools of oppression, which were made available to them through globalization and the triumph of democracy over Stalinism.

Two American police officers are dead because a textbook anti-government lunatic had access to greater firepower. Had he been armed only with a hand gun, odds are the tables would have been turned. There are lessons to be drawn from this tragedy:

1. Anti-gun advocates - all guns are not equal. Stop damning all guns and start picking your shots. Turn the tables on the gun nuts by advocating gun ownership under stringent new, national rules. Reveal the AK-47 as a symbol of anti-American hate and, if you want to help your country, learn some counter-intuitive PR skills.

2. New national rules - TheRaven outlined a seven point national program for legitimate gun ownership in an earlier post. Time to add the 8th requirement: no members of anti-government organizations should be allowed to keep or bear arms, based on the premise of the 2nd amendment.(They can vociferously exercise their 1st amendment rights, we'll keep the guns).

3. Not-for-profits associated with hate groups should be investigated - using a church as cover for racist/extremist activities begs for investigation pursuant to tax-status revocation, back-tax assessment and associated property forfeiture. If RICO plays here, let RICO run.

4. Upgrade police weaponry - New York City police officers carrying assault rifles have became a fairly common sight after 9/11. Highway patrol officers are, on a day-to-day basis, in greater danger. Let officers carry advanced weapons on traffic stops, especially in dangerous areas.

TheRaven salutes Sgt. Brandon Paudert and Officer Bill Evans.

Risible Class II

Following up on our first Risible Class post, it's time for the Tea Party signage edition. What makes the Tea Party crowd such contemptible fools? Could it be their spelling?

This mom sure set an example on the importance of learning English.

Yup, people in Canada, Denmark & Sweden are revolting against state oppression!

Note to 'baggers: not only are some educated people armed, they have better taste in handguns.

Did she plan on sitting when she wrote the sign?

Obviously, an expert.

Why are racists stupid?