Conservatism as an excuse to be a prick: example no. 8,306,372

Raw Story: A restaurant outside of Oklahoma City is facing criticism after its outspoken owner made a series of inflammatory comments after one of his former customers, who is disabled, complained that he’d been banned from the establishment.

Matt Gard claims that the owner of Gary’s Chicaros restaurant, Gary James, banned him from the restaurant because of his wheelchair. James, however, says otherwise: “He created an issue. You only have one time here. You create an issue, you’re out forever.”

Gard claims that’s just “a weak excuse,” and that James’s real problem with him is that he’s on disability.

James doesn’t deny that he thinks some people shouldn’t patronize his restaurant. “Well if you work, you own a business, pay your taxes, you’re more than welcome here,” he told KFOR. “If you’re on welfare, stay at home and spend my money, there. I don’t deal with these people walking down the street with no jobs on welfare.”

Gard also claims that James has routinely turned away customers for decades. “He doesn’t like certain people of race, color, ethnicity,” Gard said of James.

James told KFOR that he’s owned Gary’s Chicaros for 44 years, so he “think[s] I can spot a freak or a f*ggot.”

There’s more and you should read it if you can stomach it, otherwise you get the idea. Why this clown hasn’t had the pants sued off him under the Citizens with Disabilities Act or any segregationist era laws is beyond me. The man’s a dinosaur.

"The restaurant’s official t-shirt makes it clear that a ‘f*ggot’ isn’t welcome in James’s establishment," the report goes on. "It features that word, the N-word, and threatens violence against Muslims, Democrats, and members of many minority groups."

"Appalling, bigoted, discriminatory behavior is regularly displayed at this establishment," says one Yelp reviewer. “The owner, Gary James, refuses to serve wheelchair bound persons, black people, Hispanics, mixed race couples, gay people, people who wear hats, people who ask for Budweiser, liberals, men with longish hair, people wearing clothes he doesn’t approve of, people with facial piercings, on and on, ad nauseum.  If you pass first inspection, don’t think you’ve got it made - if he doesn’t approve of an overheard conversation, if he decides you are too effeminate, if your politics don’t agree with his, if you don’t like the way your steak is cooked, if you cheer for the wrong team, etc etc, Mr. James will charge you more for your meal.”

Bonus fun: the food sucks. The reviewer complains of a “mediocre steak” and says the menu is short on side dishes. “At Chicaro’s the only things you get with your meat are hate, indigestion and stale cigarette smoke,” the reviewer concludes.

Of course, this is just another example of a conservative using conservatism as an excuse to be a dick. There are people who trollishly thrive on negative reactions and use hate to trigger them. The American right is sadly full of these clowns. What’s more disturbing is the fact that he’s been in business for 44 years. If he’s been this bigoted all that time, then what the fuck is wrong with Enid, Oklahoma? This is KKK level stuff. If the food is as bad as they say, then it’s hard to fathom why people would frequent the place other than to support this sort of bigotry (I refer back to the t-shirts as evidence — that alone should drive people who aren’t actual Nazis away in droves).

Apparently, we’ve discovered a whole community of assholes who either hate like neo-Nazis or think it’s funny to watch people react to neo-Nazis. Either way, fuck this town.

One conservative’s response to shocking and bloody war crimes: ‘Yay!’

The latest news out of Egypt confirms mass murder by the military coup government there.

New York Times: The Egyptian government acknowledged that its security forces had killed 36 Islamists in its custody on Sunday, as the country’s military leaders and Islamists vowed to keep up their fight over Egypt’s future.

The deaths were the fourth mass killing of civilians since the military took control on July 3, but the first time so many had died while in government custody.

While the murders of 36 prisoners hardly amounts to a genocide, the motives in those killings is definitely genocidal. There is no pretense to legal executions here, this is killing people who have become a problem. In a just world, the Egyptian military personnel responsible for this would be dragged in front of a court in the Hague for war crimes.

So what is the reaction of Stephen Green at Vodkapundit?

Is this terrible? Yes. Are innocents being killed? Almost certainly. Am I weeping? Not this time.

Being an Islamist, a jihadi, being a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, means being ready and able to kill innocents in the name of Islam. This is what they do. So once Mubarak was gone and the lid was off, something like this violence was bound to happen. The question is whether the military will be violent enough to put down this revolt quickly. Otherwise the place really will devolve into a combination of the worst parts of Syria and Somalia.

The complete lack of anything even resembling logic is notable here. Green admits that innocents are being killed, but also says good riddance — because they were supposedly ready to kill innocents. I don’t expect much at all from the rightwing blogosphere, but keeping your cognitive dissonance in check long enough to write two short paragraphs really shouldn’t be much of a challenge.

And just because you’re protesting in support of Morsi doesn’t mean you’re a violent jihadist. The right gets the Muslim Brotherhood wrong as a matter of propaganda — MB disavowed violence and embraced democracy years ago. The equation of them with terrorists is more a matter of wingnut’s anti-Muslim bigotry than anything else. And the idea that Egypt is headed toward becoming the next Somalia is so astonishingly ignorant that I won’t even waste my time with it.

But how worthless is Green when he looks at a bloody war crime and basically says, “Yeah, they deserve it.” To look at a report that says the prisoners had “been shot and tear-gassed through the windows of a locked prison van” and conclude that those people aren’t worth worrying about?

This is why I dislike conservatives. There are far too many de facto Nazis among them and those who aren’t these pro-“kill everyone I disagree with” dicks are far too tolerant of said genocidal dicks.

Tennessee Republicans realize bill doesn’t suck quite bad enough

Steve Benen:

[Religious bigotry is on display] in Tennessee, where a plan to transfer taxpayer money to religious academies is running into trouble as GOP lawmakers slowly realize that all religions will be eligible for public funds (via Adam Peck).

“This is an issue we must address,” state Sen. Jim Tracy (R-Shelbyville) said. “I don’t know whether we can simply amend the bill in such a way that will fix the issue at this point.”

State Sen. Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro) and Tracy each expressed their concerns Friday over Senate Bill 0196, commonly called the “School Voucher Bill” and sponsored by fellow Sen. Mark Norris (R-Collierville), which would give parents of children attending failing public schools a voucher with which to enroll in a private school.

If Bill Ketron’s name sounds familiar, he’s the guy who complained about a mop sink he thought might be used in Muslim worship.

No, they can’t “simply amend the bill in such a way” as to exclude Muslim schools. Nor Jewish or Wiccan or atheist or Satanic schools, for that matter. The Supreme Court will put up with a lot from rightwing Christian fanatics, but I can guarantee that wouldn’t fly.

But imagine how completely removed from logic these people must be. Here they are, complaining that taxpayer money may go to a religion they don’t support or belong to, while trying to “fix” a bill designed to take taxpayer money and give it to religions those taxpayers may not support or belong to. And they seem to have no idea what would be the problem with that. It simply never occurs to them that they’re trying to do the very thing to others that they find so worrisome now.

Tracy and Ketron have almost literally been blinded by their own hatred. The people of Tennessee don’t need to be saved from Muslims, they need to be saved from American Taliban like their own Republican legislators.

Meet the right’s newest heroes…

…a porn director and a meth cook.

The chumpishness of American conservatives is without limit. I have no doubt that these were a couple of con men looking to cash in on the fad of Islamophobia — and the nuts on the right still haven’t figured that out.

Conservatives need to choose their allies much more wisely

If there’s one thing that’s true of modern conservativism — and the wingnut blogosphere in particular — it’s that it’s dominated by reactionaries. The reactionary is sort of a nihilist, with no real core principles of their own. Instead, they rely on a sort of parasitic reasoning to guide their beliefs — that their political opponent is always wrong.

By extension, this means that the enemies of their enemies are always right. And nowhere do we see this more clearly demonstrated than in the case of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula who, under the name “Sam Bacile,” posted a YouTube video that is — at least in part — blamed for widespread middle eastern violence and the deaths of Americans. For the Islamophobic right, Nakoula is damned close to a hero and the attention he’s getting from them begins to look a little like martyr worship — the right, obsessed with seeking any opportunity to play the victim card, do love their martyrs.

And who is the latest Hero of the Right?

Telegraph:

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, has convictions for possessing drugs used to make methamphetamine and bank fraud, a declaration of bankruptcy, demands for unpaid tax bills, and a byzantine network of at least 17 aliases including “Kritbag Difrat” and “PJ Tobacco.”

Nakoula, a balding, married father of three and an Egyptian Coptic Christian, who once owned a petrol station, is believed to have worked on the script for “Innocence of Muslims” in a California jail cell.

Production began weeks after he was released from a halfway house in June last year.

He is currently on probation after serving a year of a 21-month sentence for fraud, which involved obtaining credit cards in the names of other people.

He was also banned from using the internet, computers and email without the approval of a probation officer for five years.

All of this is a matter of record and none of it is open for debate: Nakoula is a known con artist, jailbird, and meth cook. He is also the guy the right have chosen to ally themselves with. Those smoldering ruins, those dead Americans? Who cares? What’s important is that a small group of extremists make Islam look bad and Nakoula’s the guy that made it all happen.

And that makes Kritbag Difrat a fucking hero.

News Roundup for 11/28/11

The only kind of Muslims anti-Muslim nuts like

-Headline of the Day-
"Religious Right Groups Launch Fight Against TLC Reality Show."

You know what the Florida Family Association thinks is terrible? Muslims! They hate them like the dickens. So when The Learning Channel announced they'd be airing a reality TV show called All-American Muslim, FFA freaked out.

See, it turned out that people on the show didn't reflect FFA's stereotypes at all. No one attacks old ladies while yelling "Oodle-oodle-oodle!" There's no Death to America stuff, no one tries to force sharia law on anyone. They don't stone their daughters in the backyard. It's just terrible. It's like they're trying to show that all the things anti-Muslim people believe is crazy horseshit -- which means it's secret terr'ist propaganda!

"The Learning Channel's new show All-American Muslim is propaganda clearly designed to counter legitimate and present-day concerns about many Muslims who are advancing Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia law," says FFA. "The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish."

Maybe that's because the family in the show doesn't know any people like that -- which would make sense, right? I mean, just because I'm a white guy doesn't mean I have white power types coming over to my house. Seems to me this is the same sort of deal.

Anyway, FFA aren't the only crazies up in arms about the show. Anti-Muslim activist Robert Spencer -- who's just awful, BTW -- suggested what he considers a more accurate idea for a reality show. TLC should go find some guy who starts off OK and then ends up "participating in jihad activity" -- because it's totally cool to let some guy plan and carry out terrorism for a TV show, as long as that makes Muslims look bad.

So, for the record, the anti-Muslim nutjobs have now gone completely around the bend -- Muslims who are terrorists are good, while Muslims who aren't terrorists are bad.

There really is no word to adequately describe the clownishness. (Right Wing Watch)


-Thanksgiving leftovers with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, one of the cool things about taking a week off of blogging is that you get an extra cartoon from Mark Fiore the week you come back. Yay!

Today, Uncle Mark (who's a famous Howitzer Prize-winning cartoonist) will shows us all how to draw turkeys!


Click for animation

Wow, and I thought I was sick of turkey before... (MarkFiore.com)


-Bonus HotD-
"Union Leader Declined To Endorse Romney Because He ‘Represents The One Percent.’"

So instead, the New Hampshire paper endorsed Newt Gingrich.

Seems like kind of a lateral move to me. (ThinkProgress)