GOP candidate speaks at Hitler bday party

The photo is priceless.

Not sure why this asshat Republican congressional candidate thinks that this is good for his candidacy or career, but it sure is one way to get some notoriety.

From the Times Northwest of Indiana:

Tony Zirkle, who is seeking the Republican nomination in Indiana's 2nd District, stood in front of a painting of Hitler, next to people wearing swastika armbands and with a swastika flag in the background for the speech to the American National Socialist Workers Party in Chicago on Sunday.

"I'll speak before any group that invites me," Zirkle said Monday. "I've spoken on an African-American radio station in Atlanta."

Sure, because that's FAIR AND BALANCED, right?

Even his local GOP county chair is distancing himself:

Porter County Republican chairman Chuck Williams on Tuesday denounced Zirkle's appearance at the gathering.

"He certainly doesn't hold the view of the of the Republican Party," Williams said. "I don't know why you would stand up in front of a picture of Adolf Hitler when millions of Americans fought against that kind of oppression."

Zirkle compared his speech to other politicians appearing at Bob Jones University.

Ugh, talk about foot in mouth syndrome! What's hilarious is that he's compared Bob Jones University to a Nazi gathering. Everytime McCain appears at Bob Jones university, Democrats should repeat that comparison.

The event was not the first time Zirkle has raised controversy on race issues. In March, Zirkle raised the idea of segregating races in separate states. Zirkle said Tuesday he's not advocating segregation, but said desegregation has been a failure.

Zirkle received 30 percent of the vote in the 2006 primary, losing to incumbent Chris Chocola, who was defeated in the general election. Zirkle said Tuesday that winning the election is not his primary goal.

I can't believe this guy got a third of the primary vote, but apparently that's Indiana for ya, and Obama is trying to win the state in the Democratic primary and the general election. That's the backdrop. I just can't believe that someone would go and speak to the modern day Nazis. But I suppose it is better that the do it in public than privately hold meetings and pass legislation that would harm communities of color. Death by a thousand cuts and all.

Trent Lott took flak for what he said at Strom Thurmond's birthday party: "When Strom Thurmond ran for president [of the dixiecrat party], we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either."

Thurmond had run on a segregationist agenda, and Lott had voted against things like the Voting Rights Act, the continuation of the Civil Rights Act, and against making Martin Luther King's birthday a holiday.

We don't need more politicians like Lott, and I'm glad he left the Senate. I wish more elected officials and candidates would make their opinions known sooner so that they never make it into office or get kicked out, if they hold similarly offensive views.

Bigoted Bush nominee and possible Borg Queen to replace sex addict

Item one: Bush nominates Henrietta Holsman Fore, a crazy bigot, who used to head the US Mint, to be in charge of dispensing the United States' foreign aid. . .except she hates those furriners. Plus the guy who she is replacing is Randall Tobias, most notable for having been outed as a client of the DC madam, Deborah Jane Palfrey. The esteemable wonkette:

Holsman-Fore used to own a factory in Los Angeles, where she complained about her low-paid Negro Workers who kept going “back to the street to earn more money” selling crack.

Meet our Bush nominee of the day, after the jump.

At least they were industrious! The Latinos were just lazy, she said, while Asians were crafty and would somehow become managers.

Okay, that’s about right for a Bush appointee in charge of American financial aid to the people of Africa, Latin America and Asia. But what about white people, and their relations with robots?

According to the New York Times, she found “white workers resentful of having to work with machines.” We have to give her points for this one, because it’s a racial stereotype we have never heard before. Maybe that explains why we hate these fucking computers so much?

Well, at least she has crazy notions about everyone. Equal opportunity batty. And hey, she looks like the standard issue Stepford wife, so maybe she's really just resentful that her employees were biased against her mad borg skillz and didn't want to work with her. SHE WILL ASSIMILATE YOU!

But let's deconstruct these frequent stereotypes for what they are worth, cos she sure scores a triple home run, a veritable trifecta of hate. Here's what she goes through:

1) Black people are criminals. Would rather go to jail for selling drugs than make an honest day's living. (Or maybe they just couldn't stand working for her.) Cannot assimilate because they operate in their own type of economy.

2) Latinos are lazy. They would rather eat/drink/sleep/mambo than work. Not worth assimilating.

3) Asians are little syncophantic worker borgs, well primed to heed her every command, especially compared to those lazy Mexicans and drugged up blacks. (This probably explains how she picked Edward Moy to replace her. He's the perfect model minority.)

4) White people fear machines. Are luddites, so technologically unsophisticated that they run from the mere sight or touch of a computer. Afraid of assimilation.

So there's Henrietta's view of the racial universe. Of course, her theory of everything doesn't account for the Bill Gates/Steve Jobs phenom, why I shy away from anything more complex than a TI-82, or how my friend Ramon became a CEO but I guess we're not assimilated yet.
guess she can pay her local African American drug dealer to get us all hooked on whatever she's smoking.

bridging gaps in understanding

AAAAAAARGGGHHH, I had a four part post that went the way of the dodo when I had too many windows open and Firefox crashed, and even when I hit restore session, the "recover post" link on the new blogger didn't do jack for me. What use is the new Blogger I ask?!?!

So now I have to do a really abbreviated walk-through of what I was thinking because I already wasted 2 hours of time that should have been spent working/sleeping.

Item one: congrats to Beau Sia, slam poet extraordinaire, who finally got Rosie O'Donnell to apologize (not in the trite "I'm sorry if you're offended" way but in a genuine fashion (hat tip Mike2Cents.) I know that I didn't think Rosie's outburst was very funny or a big deal, but I'm glad that others pressed the point and turned it into a teachable moment, a means of educating through discomfort.

Item two: I've been following the Anna Mae He story. My heart broke when I heard that as a result of all this conflict, she no longer considers herself Chinese, but Mexican:

The attorneys representing the Hes were also upset by comments made in a national newspaper by Anna Mae saying she was Mexican not Chinese.

"Our hope is that the Bakers will do everything they can, to make this transition easy for Anna Mae and not have her say things that don't really serve this transition process," they said.

It reminded me a lot of the young girl in the "A Girl Like Me" video which replicated the psychology study that the Supreme Court referenced in Brown v. Board of Ed which ended segregation (officially if not practically.) The interviewer gives a young African American girl 2 dolls, one white and one black. She asks the girl to point to the good doll, and the girl points to the white one. Then she asks "which is the bad, evil doll?" The girl gestures to the black doll. Then the interviewer asks, "give me the one that looks most like you?" and the girl's eyes, hands stray to the white doll, but then she hesitates and pushes the black doll across the table. The pain in her round eyes is as deep as the racial divides that still exist.

The Bakers even put out photos of Anna Mae, in a desperate attempt to win public support, even after the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in favor of her biological parents. I hope that they can come together to help ease the transition because this is one confused girl and she's going to grow up really angry if this isn't handled properly.

Item Three: Kenneth Eng's op-ed in Asianweek called "Why I Hate Blacks" which was taken down by the site (you can find a copy of it within the link.) I haven't been reading the papers as much recently because I have been slammed with a double whammy of work and travel, but I had read Eng's increasingly deranged writings and dismissed them as the work of a science fiction writer, which is to say "not based in reality." However, this one included jawdropping statements like this:
Contrary to media depictions, I would argue that blacks
are weak-willed. They are the only race that has been
enslaved for 300 years. It’s unbelievable that it took them
that long to fight back.
On the other hand, we slaughtered the Russians in the
Japanese-Russo War.

I don't even know where to begin with this one. Eng needs to apologize and Asianweek needs to stop running his "thought" pieces. I read Asianweek because of strong writer like Emil Guillermo, Phil Tajitsu Nash, and Maeley Tom. I enjoy it because it is a weekly publication that I can go to for national and Bay Area APIA news. But I will stop reading and publicizing it if Asianweek does not amend its ways.