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[MA]
Post-Election Church Arson Investigated As Hate Crime
The Republican
/November 5, 2008
The torching of a black church a few hours after Barack Obama was elected president is considered a probable hate crime by federal investigators.
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on November 6th, 2008 at 11:54 am
This makes me Sick just Sick to my Stomach! I love New England and one thing I pride New England upon is that it is the Most Tolerant and Culturally Diverse section of this Great Country. This kind of thing doesn’t happen here does it? Don’t get me wrong this should Never happen Anywhere. I thought it was 2008. Not 1808!
on November 6th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Gee, what a surprise. Way too many Obama supporters were threathing riots in the streets if their god lost the election so to me this is tame even if it is an anti-Obama burn.
I don’t recall there being Republicans hanging at voting places in this country with clubs threatening voters on the 4th as occurred in Philly by Black Panters dudes.
Payback can be quite rough, folks. Welcome to America. I am sure it will get much worse before it gets better. And that’s an optimistic view of things.
on November 6th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Mc, you don’t remember the small riot in Florida sometime in 1999 then. Something about a dastardly recount.
The Black Pather smear was debunked, like anything else the wingnuts have been in a tizzy about in this campaign.
Operation Leper could use you to help cleanse the GOP of any suspected “traitors to the Anointed Palin.” Come 2010 I know you and yours can make them into that lean mean fightin machine so dear to your imagination. That the population is deeply tired of your parties hate politics, is irrelivent. You’ve experienced many victories with it, its like a drug that your sure one more hit of will see your enemies in shambles at your feet.
Yes its going to be rough, shrub is leaving an incredible mess behind him. I’m sure your parts of the national conversation will be able to tell us exactly how, possibly to the exact democrat, of who is responsible, and where his entrailes should be spread.
Ank you, good bless you, and god night.
on November 6th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Hey, Ed, you really got to stop calling things “smears.” It looks really silly at this point. It’s like: if it is coming out of the mouth of Obamasiah, it must be true — and if it’s not approved by his guardians, it’s a lie. You really need to broaden your view of the world a bit. I made it a point in this campaign to avoid the websites of Clinton, Obama and McCain simply because they only tell you what they want you to know.
Yeah, there’s a lot of garbage being fed to us by everyone but it is up to each of us to scavange through the trash coming out of politicians mouths and begin to think as individuals. By the way, you cannot debunk an on-camera interview simply because you do not want to believe something. Or “yes you can” but that does not make a person very bright.
on November 6th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Dear ManchurianCrazy Person,
Republicans should be cowering in shame after their performance of the past 30 years and especially the past eight.
Losers burning down a church is an immature action of the inarticulate. Spoiled children who didn’t get their way.
An upside of this election is that a village in Texas gets its idiot back. Your veiled threat of more violence to come shows that your village evidently still has its idiot.
on November 6th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Having an Obama sign in our front yard in Oklahoma City has gotten us a small boulder hurled at the side of the house, a stack of firewood leaned in a campfire fashion against the corner of our house, and finally, a keying down the side of our car! When I was in kindergarden we were taught to respect other people’s point of view…but I live in red state Oklahoma and I think that if we weren’t in the midle of the country, these people would probably secede! It’s like, the people here think that the whole county has made a mistake and only “Okies” think correctly. Hubris is one thing—but crime against property and threat against person are more serious. I will not be intimidated by hate politics, and I am delighted to see that America has spoken and maybe we are starting to finally outgrow are juvenille racicst past.
on November 6th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Mc I’ve been reading and posting on Media Matters for quite a while. Believe me I’m very familiar with neocon smears. I read them and coment on them daily. I’m also current on voter suppression, caging, and those wonderful electronic voting machines.
You want reality, I’ve seen the documents and newspaper clippings regarding Obama’s brith. I’ve seen people go right by this evidence and complain that if only Obama’s show his brith certificate he’d be ok. There are three sites newly created the calling for Obama’s impeachment. Maybe a thousand posts between them so far. These are the people your with. I’d call you all reality challenged.
A question to you, which side of the conservative struggle are you on? The theocrats (Palin), or the money(Romney).
on November 6th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Manchurian C said:
I don’t recall there being Republicans hanging at voting places in this country with clubs threatening voters on the 4th as occurred in Philly by Black Panters dudes.
There probably were. They just don’t get publicized as much. Anyway, did anyone see any of the Palin rallies? They looked like the “angry villagers” scene from Frankenstein! I think some of them had torches! Check this site to see how many white supremicist/hate groups there are in the country – District of Columbia has 34!
Republicans look the other way when it comes to violence of this sort. Christofascist churches certainly do.
on November 6th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
@ManchurianC,
These are dramatic charges. Can you provide some links to news coverage of these threats? Such comments can provide a basis for susceptible people to engage in counter-violence of their own, pre-emptive violence, or just harden their demonization of the other party. Without substantiation, these are just dangerous rumors.
In searching for the Black Panther news I found an account: 2 guys threatened voters, cops came, end of story. Bad, criminal, but not some kind of major movement. And, based on our observation of the Obama campaign all through this long time, the candidate and his staff would have condemned such actions (and may have done so, if asked, I don’t know). If 2 skinheads showed up at a polling place and tried to intimidate some group of voters, would we assume it was condoned by McCain or the Republican Party? I hope not.
When I googled the threats of riots I found one article
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p.....bama-loses
where blogger used a comment by James Carville and led it off with a “riot” headline that did not represent what Carville said. Carville said he thought the election was going to go to Obama, based on polls, then added:
“But you stop and contemplate this country if Obama goes in and he has a consistent five point lead and loses the election, it would be very, very, very dramatic out there.” No mention of riot.
Another article
http://tpmelectioncentral.talk.....report.php
cites an AP article with the headline “Obama warns of ‘quiet riot’ among blacks” but Obama’s actual words were as follows:
“Many of the folks in this room know just where they were when the riot in Los Angeles started and tragedy struck the corner of Florence and Normandy. And most of the ministers here know that those riots didn’t erupt over night; there had been a “quiet riot” building up in Los Angeles and across this country for years.
If you had gone to any street corner in Chicago or Baton Rouge or Hampton — you would have found the same young men and women without hope, without miracles, and without a sense of destiny other than life on the edge — the edge of the law, the edge of the economy, the edge of family structures and communities.
Those “quiet riots” that take place every day are born from the same place as the fires and the destruction and the police decked out in riot gear and the deaths. They happen when a sense of disconnect settles in and hope dissipates. Despair takes hold and young people all across this country look at the way the world is and believe that things are never going to get any better. You tell yourself, my school will always be second rate. You tell yourself, there will never be a good job waiting for me to excel at. You tell yourself, I will never be able to afford a place that I can be proud of and call my home. That despair quietly simmers and makes it impossible to build strong communities and neighborhoods. And then one afternoon a jury says, “Not guilty” — or a hurricane hits New Orleans — and that despair is revealed for the world to see.”
The blogger who quoted Obama’s speech goes on to say,
“Obama is actually making a subtle and interesting point. He’s not saying that “quiet riots” are actual riots or that the quiet riots inevitably produce the actual ones. By contrast, he’s saying that “quiet riots” aren’t riots — they are things that devastate communities, such as crime, joblessness, localized violence, and inner-city despair. He’s saying that we shouldn’t need high-profile events like Katrina or the Los Angeles riots to alert us to the “quiet riots” that have been going on in the background for years and years.
Nor is Obama saying, as the AP claims, that the quiet riot currently “threatens to erupt” into new riots comparable to the ones in Los Angeles. That idea simply isn’t in the speech. The AP just dreamed it up. As a result, Obama suddenly sounds like he’s trafficking in the sort of rhetoric that conservatives love to get outraged about: That we’d best minister to inner city problems lest we have another big riot on our hands. Obama just didn’t say this at all.
Shameful, profoundly incompetent garbage. Just awful.” (end of Obama speech quote)
Please, everyone, our country has more than enough problems without putting a vicious meaning onto innocuous words. And I think it is irresponsible to write words that seem to accept a bombing of a church as not so bad, because the other side had (allegedly) threatened worse things. It’s easy to hold yourself aloof and be condemnatory, with or without facts to back you up, but at this point the election is over and the best American tradition is to come together and work together for the mutual good, not try to stir up anger and thereby undercut positive action that benefits us all as a nation.
President Bush’s approval ratings, and the results of “Do you think the country is on the right track?” polls, indicate that most Americans think our country is not doing well and not on the right track. We had an election, it was nowhere near as close as the last two, and now it’s time for positive action. Help shape the actions that are taken by making your thoughts known but don’t try to paralyze us with rumors and divisiveness. Don’t be Nero, fiddling while Rome burns: you’ll have to live in the charred ruins just like the rest of us.
on November 6th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Im a Democrat Ed, have been for over 40 years. I have lived nearly 2/3rds of my life under Republican rule and I have not suffered because of it. Any problems or trials in my life have had to do with my own doing or lessons that have come my way to gain wisdom from. It is not about my political leadership.
This link is only one of a 5-part reason list of reasons why Obama lost me as a Democrat. http://wewillnotbesilenced2008.com/video/index.htm.
I cannot support a candidate that plays these nasty games. There is no way on earth I will ever support anyone that does it — Democrat or Republican — but this was a fundamental flaw of who this man is and what, at least in a very large part, he inspires. These incidents are in the thousands all over this nation, not just a few.
G.W.Bush has been a disaster by my view but I knew he would be 10 years ago so it’s no surprise to me that it is ending this way. The right-wing nuts ushered him in just like the left-wing nuts have done with Obama. I find Obama to be way to radical in his thinking … based upon his past, not his lofty rhetoric of this campaign. I don’t trust him because so far he is a very large pile of words. If he proves me wrong, I will be delighted; I am not one to wish bad things on our nation but the burden of proof is on Obama to be something other than a lovely speech.
on November 7th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Dear ManchurianC
You Fascist bastard. Certainly the ethical and Christian thing to do is to reply to a threat by burning churches. That’ll show them what a wonderful person I am. That payback, now there’s the decent thing to do.
I can certainly understand why you were so happy under the Fascist state the Right Wing and Republicans and Christian right have established. I’m sure you are very afraid of Obama and the agenda he advocates (whether any of it gets done is another thing). Small minded people are usually frightened by things they don’t understand.
Booo
Very Sincerely
K. Dawson ( Socialist prick)
on November 7th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Mc, any feeling for the figures on the other side? How many suppressed, caged, and one I forgot, flushing?
There is no comparison. Caging alone was in six figures in 04. If you’ve got comparible figures and even tenuous proof, there are federal attorneys standing by for your phone call.
on November 8th, 2008 at 11:58 am
I supported the SPLC for years and it is Obama and Co. that brought that support to a hault. It is obvious that there’s a lot of hate in this place, I am sorry to say, and I cannot support that. I simply send funds to places that are less biased in the extreme.
As for being a “fascist bastard”, I can only smile because it shows how easy it is to be insanely bombastic toward someone you know nothing about. I understand where such comments come from so I do hope you get a grip on your fears. I have given more of my income percentage to charity over the years than the Obama’s have so try to keep things in perspective. I have never in my life been wealthy, and have lived virtually paycheck to paycheck from my youth. I am also disabled. I am helping two families right now and I don’t have piles of money but you do what you can; one family is not even related to me. I am not proud of this out of any ego sense since I do it out of thoughtful duty to those in need that cross my path, but it says something about what is going on inside of me and it also shows that when someone calls me a fascist bastard I can only feel sorry for them.
And as for the Republicans behaving badly in 2004 or ever, yes, there are way too many dispicable people on this planet, shame on them, but I have every right to criticize my own Democratic Party for doing that which we all abhor from the opposition. If you level the playing-field down into the muck, that is hardly commendable.
I do not condone burning churches ever — or even burning someones dog house — but when I see my own political party acting like their enemies it makes me sick to my stomach and I will never sit silently about such matters.
Now, I will not agrue with anyone here since it makes no sense to do so, but before you start calling people fascist bastards you really need to look inside of yourself and find something a bit more profound than bombast. It might help you feel better about your own life.
Take care.
on November 8th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
So, ManchurianC instead of talking the talk here, why don’t you send some of your charitable funds to the people who just lost their church? That seems a worthy cause in my book.
In fact all of you here that are busy bickering with each other over things that you will never see eye to eye on might stop and use some of that energy to do something positive in your community. Sponsor a group for teenagers or the elderly. Volunteer at a centre. Try making a positive impact instead of trying to beat your point home to the others here who are just arguing for the sake of arguing. Unlike the responses you get here, doing something in your community will actually make you feel good and will probably lower your blood pressure in the process…
on November 9th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Some of the things ManchurianC is saying is mind-boggling. First, the nut states he’s been a “Democrat for 40 years” yet, he then goes on to cite how he’s so happy living under extreme Republican Rule. And then he implies how SPLC is so hateful. Hateful towards whom? White Supremacists? Sorry but they are the enemies of Freedom and Democracy as well as the Government regarding the Rule of Law. Are we suppose to ignore them?
Sorry but I’m following up on that. The old man doesn’t make sense. Rather he doesn’t lay any explaination of what “Obama and Co.” has anything to do with instigating “hate” or somehow he is responsiible for it.
As for MachurianC`s severe paranoid illusions about the president-elect, I just hope he/she will do some soul searching or pray to his “God” or “Guns” that Obama will do what’s right for every American.
As a Non-Black, Non-White voter myself. I firmly believed that if McCain were to lead, that would be the end of days, the end of times. Especially the infighting so was so obvious between his parties and his VP partners campaign advisors. There was no sense of unity. I saw nothing but a castrophe waiting to happen. And as a Christian I believe God has chosen Obama to help restore this country.