Why I am sick of the right, and why I probably will not be voting this year

Why? Because I am sick of the right and all the noise and bluster coming out of the right this year. It is not that I agree at all with President Obama’s policies, but I am so sick of the now that I see no reason I should bother to support — or even give the illusion of support — by voting for a Republican.

Why am I sick of the right? Well, consider the following:

The three antis

The following three items have essentially come to make up 95% of the noise coming out of the right this year, with all the noise being demagogic and disgusting:

Anti-immigration

Illustrated perfectly by the recent law enacted by the state of Arizona and the lies propagated by its supporters:

Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona has stated their police have found many decapitated bodies in the Arizona desert, with the implication that it is a result of illegal immigrants.
Fact: Multiple medical examiners in Arizona have stated there have been no reports of immigration-related decapitated bodies.

Crime is at record levels on the U.S. side of the United States-Mexican border.
Fact: Crime in most places on the border is at a four-year low.

Citizens on the border don’t feel safe.
Fact: According to a recent poll, 87% of border residents said that they felt safe.

And then add in stuff like claims that  so-called “anchor babies” are part of some massive Islamic terrorist plot, politicians calling for illegal immigrant interment camps, and a proposal by a Florida GOP gubernatorial hopeful that any non-citizen carry papers or be thrown in jail.

It’s nice to see that the party that calls Obama a “communist”, a “socialist”, and a “Marxist”, is trying to turn the United States into the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany.

Anti-Muslim bigotry

While the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” has been in the news a lot, there is a much larger problem.

On the “Ground Zero mosque”, which is two blocks away from Ground Zero, Republicans have yet again shown themselves to be this country’s biggest enemy of private-property rights (something that I have known to be true locally for years). Republicans railed against the Kelo decision, but now you have a GOP gubernatorial candidate in New York promising to use eminent domain to seize the property that the proposed mosque is to be built on.

But anti-Muslim protests have expanded into Connecticut, Tennessee, California, and Wisconsin. And now we have the head of the American Family Association saying that no mosques should be allowed to be built anywhere in the country and the GOP Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee referring to Islam as a “cult”.

The Republican Party, including its leaders like Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, want to shred the Constitution, along with its protections of freedom of religion and private property.

Anti-gay bigotry

If you have followed the response to the Prop. 8, you know what I’m talking about: Prop. 8 proponents talking about how gay marriage is going to destroy the country (people have seriously said that).

So, let me get this straight: This country has survived for over 200 years, through its revolutionary war, a civil war, two World Wars, a 40+ year Cold War, miscellaneous wars, conflicts, and interventions, and letting a couple thousand gay couples marry is going to the destroy the country? Uh, yeah, right. Anyone else not buying that?

In addition, you have the proponents of Prop. 8, and opponents of the federal court ruling, that are intentionally misrepresenting the case. They keep claiming that the court ruling will compel churches to do ceremonies for gay couples. And I, for one, do not believe that these people are so stupid they cannot understand the difference between a court ruling saying a state government cannot discriminate against someone versus the a ruling saying a church cannot. They are categorically misrepresenting the decision by Judge Walker in California to fearmonger and demagogue. Or, you can draw the conclusion that they think the church is the state and vice versa. Pick your poison.

And these are the same people that want to recriminalize sodomy, think that “Hitler used gay soldiers because they ‘basically had no limits and the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict on whomever Hitler sent them after'”, and God only knows what else.

But these folks actually believe it. How scary is that? And Republicans constantly claim to be the party of limited government (ad nauseam), but they think they should have the power to throw gays — or any other group that has the slightest difference in their ‘moral’ outlook — in jail. You are either for limited government or not, you cannot call yourself an advocate for limited government on the fiscal side, and then propose using the government to persecute people who do not follow your exact opinion on ‘social’ issues, but have committed no crime.

The rhetoric

In part, this is an extension of some of the stuff mentioned before. You cannot go five minutes without someone calling Obama a “Marxist”, “socialist”, “Nazi”, etc. Throw in the rhetoric about immigrants, Muslims, and gays, and you have a trifecta of demagoguery that makes me want to vomit when I hear it. And why should I support people who engage in and use this rhetoric and act as though they are speaking for me?

The anti-intellectualism

How else do I describe people who believe anything that gets posted on the internet or forwarded to them an e-mail? These people believe that the federal court ruling on Arizona’s immigration law was unconstitutional because some idiot on the internet doesn’t know the difference between a court having original jurisdiction and exclusive jurisdiction.

And then there’s the tea-party websites that are believe anything e-mail to them and too lazy to do a Google Search to see if something is true or could be easily refuted with five minutes of looking.

The crazies

And then there’s the crazies out there that have become one with the Republican Party. This past Tuesday illustrated this perfectly: Nathan Deal, a Birther who has made comments about “ghetto grandmothers”, was nominated as the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Georgia. In Colorado, Dan Maes, who thinks that bicycling is a United Nations plot to take over local governments in the United States, was nominated as the Republican gubernatorial nominee.

And then there is Sharron Angle (Republican nominee for Senate in Nevada), who by all indications, may be a Christian Fundamentalist.

And you can throw in the other hard-right social-cons into this group too. And I’m talking about the people who literally believe that the United Nations is coming to take their kids, who will give them to gay couples that will molest them. And that’s not an exaggeration, there are people in the Republican Party that believe that.

Locally

And then we turn to the local candidate for me, Congressman Rob Wittman. I supported Wittman during the primary, in part because he was running against that nut Catherine Crabill.

But, now, I see no reason to bother to vote for him this November. Wittman talked constantly during the primary season about how he was all for cutting the size of government and reducing government inefficiency.

But, like every other “fiscal” conservative or Republican out there, while they talk about reducing the size of government, when it comes to cutting something that is inside their district, or may affect their district, all their talk goes out the window. I’m speaking of Wittman’s various and repeated comments about SecDef Robert Gates’s plans to disband the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia.

Supposedly, Wittman’s a huge fan of reducing the size, scope, and extraneous redundancy in government, right? But, like every other politician out there, he doesn’t have the fortitude to actually follow through and do it.

Catherine Crabill: Calls blogger “wicked”, refers to his parents as “Ahab and Jezebel”, and calls for demons to be cast out of them.

Special guest post by your favorite hate-blogger’s mother, Kay Watson:

On Election Day, my son, Timothy and I were doing volunteer work for Congressman Rob Wittman, handing out literature at the Port Royal Precinct in Caroline County. At about 4:25 PM, an SUV pulled up and I got up from my chair, picked up some pamphlets, and started walking over to the car to ask if the occupants wanted any information on Congressman Wittman. I saw it was Catherine Crabill getting out of the passenger side of the car so I turned around and went back behind my table in the tent. Ms. Crabill had already been rude to my husband and me last Friday at the Westmoreland Republican meeting (she called us character assassins) and I did not want a confrontation with her. Timothy was also behind the table talking to his brother on the phone. Mrs. Crabill walked about 50 or 60 feet to our table and started harassing me. She called Timothy wicked and my family wicked and then she said that Congressman Wittman was doing so well because of Timothy’s lies and my families’ lies about her. (Timothy and his brother, Garrett, have blogged about Ms. Crabill on their blogs and have never lied about her. They just wrote about and made fun of her ridiculous statements. And no one has said anything about her family, excluding her husband hiding in the woods waiting for the National Guard which was a direct quote from a magazine article. Before I commented last Saturday on Virginia Virtucon, I have never written anything about her and neither has my husband.) She also called me Jezebel twice (once Timothy got on the following tape). And she implied that I was stalking her by saying she should get a restraining order against me. I have been to four public meetings where she was in attendance. She just happened to come to my voting precinct after Timothy tweeted about being there. The tape starts after she has said that she should arrange to have the demons cast out of Timothy and then she said my family should have the demons cast out and I respond, “You should have the demons cast out of you!” I did not realize Timothy was taping the last part of the conversation but I am so glad he did. This is the real Catherine Crabill. I cannot diagnose anyone’s illness; but in my professional nursing opinion, I do recommend that she make an appointment with a psychiatrist.

Here’s the audio:

[audio: https://www.imsurroundedbyidiots.com/Crabill_2010_06_08.mp3]

Note: In the original, which is available upon request, there’s a 70 second period of dead air and me speaking on my cell-phone before she comes up with a comeback as noted in the transcript below:

K. Watson: Someone should cast the demons out of you… You’re — uh — one thing, you are really a rude one.

C. Crabill: Me rude?

K. Watson: Yes, ma’am.

C. Crabill: I’d love – I’d love to examine your family, the way your son has explained mine, and put it out there for the whole world to see.

K. Watson:  I haven’t run for any office and made the statements that you’ve made, Ms. Crabill.

C. Crabill: Oh. I — I —

K. Watson: Think about it.

C. Crabill: I’m sure —

K. Watson: There are a lot — there are more things that could have been put out there and weren’t.

C. Crabill [sarcastically]: Oh, well, thank you so much, I feel so [inaudible].

C. Crabill: I have said nothing but the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

K. Watson: No, that’s what my husband told you the other —

T. Watson [on cell-phone]: Quiet down.

K. Watson: — day when you called us “character assassins”.

C. Crabill: You are character assassins.

K. Watson: No, It doesn’t have anything to do with character; I think it has to do with poor judgment.

C. Crabill [interjecting]: I — I have — I have never experienced, such a — you are the Ahab and Jezebel of my experience with your wicked son.

K. Watson: You might want to consider getting some help, you really might.

C. Crabill: Oh, I know that you would think that way. I would say the same for you. In fact, I might have to get a restraining order against you.

K. Watson: No, you can’t get a restraining order against us in a public building, in a public meeting, only if we come to your home, which we have no desire to do.

C. Crabill: Thank you for that, I’m so reassured.

[Unintelligible]

G. Watson [over cell-phone]: Call the Caroline Sheriff’s Department on ’em.

C. Crabill [low]: You might want to break out your little recorder, get this all on tape. You’re missing an opportunity here.

I miss no opportunity Cathy. Carpe diem. Continued from the transcript:

[70 seconds later]

C. Crabill [low]: It’s interesting that you know so much about restraining orders, I guess you’ve had some filed against you.

T. Watson: No, we know something about the law, it’s not very —you know— hard. Kinda like treason being defined in the Constitution.

The 70 seconds it took for Crabill to think of a comeback, as well as her coming up with nothing to my retort reminded me of this video, featuring George Costanza as Catherine Crabill (I would embed the video but embedding is disabled):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLjxp_86dKs

Cross-posted at On The Right and Virginia Virtucon.

Catherine Crabill: Execute half a dozen Congressmen for treason as an example to the rest.

At this point, does this really surprise anyone?

I’m sure that Delegate Albert Pollard enjoyed posting that screenshot, especially after being personally insulted by her for nine straight months.

I bet Crabill will be alleging a pan-Episcopalian conspiracy in a few minutes…

Cross-posted at On The Right and Virginia Virtucon.

Catherine Crabill: Birther who “loves conspiracies” and wonders if Obama will impose “martial law” after his “bloodless coup”.

This was recorded at the Westmoreland County Republican Committee meeting on June 4th in Montross:

[audio:https://www.imsurroundedbyidiots.com/Crabill_2010_06_04_Condensed.mp3]

(That was a condensed version of her speech, if you wish to listen to the whole thing it can be downloaded here.)

Some thoughts:

Over a million dollars in attorney fees? It cost that much to write up a motion to dismiss against a frivolous lawsuit? I guess it’s too hard for her to cite a legitimate news source for something like that.

And how exactly is a lone Congressman supposed to initiate an investigation? That usually requires a majority of the House, or at least a majority on a committee, which the Republicans both lack.

And since when did Congress have power to issue an indictment? I sure enough don’t see that in the United States Constitution. I know she’s one of those citizen grand jury nuts (the grand jury is the fourth branch of government according to them), but sheesh.

And can you say “persecution complex”?

Cross-posted at On The Right and Virginia Virtucon.

Catherine Crabill refuses to oppose bank bailouts.

And she’s running for Congress why now? She accuses Representative Rob Wittman of not being conservative enough but he actually bothered to oppose TARP and voted against it twice.

When asked by the Prince William County Family Alliance if she would “[a]uthorize regulatory agencies to provide relief to banks in exchange for bank stock”, she checked the “Undecided” box and wrote the following as a comment: “Don’t know enough about this (the ramifications).”

Uh-huh, she doesn’t know enough about this. TARP was almost two years ago, and she still hasn’t bothered to learn anything about it?

Why exactly is she even running for Congress? She yells constantly that she’s the most conservative candidate running, but she doesn’t even bother to state clearly and succinctly that she opposes bailing out banks.

Again, why is she running? Other than the fact that she thinks that Obama is a Communist Muslim who was born in another country and the fact that she hates him. Or is it because she hates Wittman because he refused to endorse her candidacy after it was revealed that she thinks the United States government was responsible for the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City?

In all, it comes down to the the fact that she hates someone, and hatred doesn’t get people very far in politics usually (thankfully).

Cross-posted at On The Right.

Lies, damn lies, and even more damn lies from the Catherine Crabill camp.

I simply have to marvel at the stuff coming out of the Catherine Crabill campaign. At the 99th District Tea Party’s website (get your own link), they ask the question: “Is Rep. Rob Whitman [sic] Conservative Enough ?”

One of the inane points the author uses is that Wittman has refused to debate Crabill despite being offered “several opportunities”.

For the record, I’ve been told that an invitation was extended to Catherine Crabill by e-mail to participate in the 2010 Rappahannock Bloggers Forum. She never bothered to respond to the invitation. Wittman, on the other hand is in, as Democratic Party challenger Krystal Ball.

Then she requested time to speak before the Spotsylvania County Republican Committee meeting. While not a debate per se, the Chairman agreed to give her time to speak and to answer questions presented by the committee at their last meeting on Thursday (May 27th). The Chairman also extended an invitation to Representative Wittman to speak as well. While Wittman couldn’t attend because he was busy on The Hill, he did sent a representative in his stead.

What did Catherine Crabill do? She didn’t bother to show for the meeting last Thursday. This was after she contacted the Chairman and requested time.

Of course, this is not the first time that Catherine Crabill has blatantly lied about Wittman’s positions. First, she accused Wittman of supporting TARP (he voted against that twice). Then she “Oops”, and said that he actually supported Obama’s “Stimulus”. Turns out it was the stimulus proposed by George W. Bush, which was mostly tax cuts. Oops again. And now this.

And, as a final note, the lovely folks responsible for that blog can’t even spell the name of a sitting United States Congressman correctly. If you’re going to attack a Congressman on a blog — much less the Congressman that represents the district you’re in — you might want to learn how to spell his name. It’s Rob Wittman, not Whitman.

Christ, these folks are worse than The Free Lance–Star.

Cross-posted at On The Right and Virginia Virtucon.

Catherine Crabill: Constitutional scholar.

No, not really. I have previously posted on her inability to read the very short Article III of the United States Constitution, now it looks she’s missed a whole amendment:

Additionally, we must repeal the income tax. It is unconstitutional and it’s abuse of power has become legendary. A flat tax would set every American free from the tedium of filing complicated tax returns and be true to our Declaration of Independence which declares that all men are created equal and should be treated as such. No one should be punished through confiscatory taxation for success while, conversely, rewarding sloth.

The income tax is unconstitutional you say? What about that pesky 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

You know, I’ve heard stories about crazies that believe the “Titles of Nobility Amendment” was actually ratified, but I’ve never heard anyone say the 16th Amendment was never ratified. I guess there’s a first time for everything.

Cross-posted at On The Right and Virginia Virtucon.

And the award for the worst website for a political candidate in 2010 goes to…Krystal Ball!

Geez, her ‘new’ site is just awful.

First: It’s using WordPress. Now, I have no problem with someone using WordPress for a professional website, the problem here is the version of WordPress she’s using is five versions old. Do I really need to explain the problem of using outdated software on a website? Does she want someone to hack her website?

Second: The basic design. The most important question most people will be asking when hearing she’s running is “Who Is Krystal Ball?”. The problem? That question is answered at the bottom of the homepage of her website with white text on a gray background that’s barely readable.

Third: The images. Instead of using text on her “about” page, or her issues pages, she’s uses images. First, when the text is part of the image, that means that it’s not being indexed by Google or any search engine. The search engines can’t read the text from the images.

Second, these images are huge! Instead of using JPEG compression, she’s using PNGs. PNGs are great for something that’s just plain text, but these images combine both images in the background, as well as text, which make them huge.  For example, the two images that make up her “about” page are a total of 783.12KB. According to one website, it would take someone on a 56K dial-up connection 254.14 seconds to download the whole page.

Is Krystal Ball so ignorant of the district she’s running in that she doesn’t know a large portion of it still has to rely on dial-up internet? And what exactly is she playing these ‘consultants’, like Lowell Feld at Blue Virginia, for?

Krystal Ball’s individual in-district contributions down to 4.92%.

It was 5.15% at the end of September, now it’s down to a mere 4.92%.

4.92% of this candidate’s money from individuals, a misery $15,150, has come from within the district.

If you don’t count the money that’s she gotten from her husband, only 3.36% of her money, $10,350, is from within the district.

Meanwhile, an imbecile like Lowell Feld at Blue Virginia talks about how Krystal Ball is a ‘true progressive that can win!1!’.

Cross-posted at On The Right and Virginia Virtucon.