I had been thinking of writing a post about the efficacy of rocket firing.  What Jeff recently wrote hits the nail on the head (emphasis mine):

Apologists include not only those who defend Israeli violence, but those who defend whatever diminutive forces are still launching rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel.  This has nothing to with the right of an occupied people to resist – such rocket attacks are not resistance.  The rocket attacks from Gaza have no logical basis.  Engaging in war, engaging in violence, should at the least have a rational basis in the expectation that it will improve one’s situation.  However, it is abundantly clear (and has been for some time) that not only are such attacks not improving the plight of Gazans, but with a grand total of 5 fatalities, while providing a pretext for Israel to respond, are almost completely ineffective while increasingly contributing to the decimation of the civilian population of Gaza.  One might even suggest that those behind the rocket attacks are in collusion with Israeli military planners, so ineffective are such tactics.

Why do they fire rockets?  Why engage in such counterproductive actions?  Its incredibly suspicious.  Its as if, whoever is firing the rockets, wants Israel to escalate.

The rub is that if the Israelis are behind it, the rocket firing is both expected and lauded by Hamas (so it would blend in).  If Hamas is behind it, then how high a civilian cost are they willing to pay to slowly de-legitimize Israel’s statehood?  It would take hiding in civilian homes when firing rockets to a whole new level of vile.  Perhaps Hamas is simply pulling a Bush and hoping a little warfare and a common enemy will bolster their support.

My gut instinct is that what Hamas should be doing is staging massive acts of civil disobedience.  They should be engaging in actions that leave the world with no recourse but to offer support.  Because make no mistake.  With the invasion and the rockets and bombings aside, the Palestinian people are oppressed.  They are oppressed by the Israelis, and by the surrounding nations who are in various degrees complicit in the state of isolation and poverty the Palestinians are boxed into.

By the same token, one might ask of Israel what it stands to gain by invading?  Its costing them their legitimacy:

The original Zionist concept of a collaborative, diverse haven for an oppressed class of people has mutated into an ultra-militaristic state which has violently oppressed the people whose land was taken for that purpose.  No state has an inherent right to exist (did the Soviet Union?  Do countries whose borders have been drawn by occupying forces?), and for many well outside of the Middle East, Israel is losing any legitimacy it may have possessed.

Jeff is absolutely right.  And all the invasion will accomplish (as he notes further down in a post I recommend reading in its entirety) is inciting more reciprocal violence.  Israel should, rather than resorting to violence, shame and deligitimize Hamas for the attacks.  As it stands now, any such efforts would be so concentrated in their hypocrisy they might prove fatal upon observation by rational people.

What do you think?  What should the Palestinians be doing, right now?  What should the Israelis be doing, right now?  What should the US and the UN do?

Giving Warren even more mainstream cred is not just a cost-free nod to evangelicals. It’s a boost for someone who actively opposes Obama’s agenda and who is eager to influence secular affairs.

That mainstream cred may be cost-free to the evangelicals, but it comes at a deadly cost to the LGBT community…

(Mikko Allane, emphasis mine):

The problem, as many commentators have noted, is that we’re not disagreeing about abstract ideas — we’re disagreeing about civil and human rights.

I would argue that we’re disagreeing about most basic human right of all — the right to live a life free of violence.

Because words are where violence begins. And in America, violence against gays, lesbians, and transgendered people most often begins in hateful and intolerant words spoken in right-wing churches like Rick Warren’s Saddleback. Warren has compared gay and lesbian people to pedophiles and perpetrators of incest (you can watch the CNN video of his remarks here). His words may often be cloaked more politely, but in his intolerance, Warren is really no different than James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Fred Phelps, or other peddlers of anti-gay hate.

And the seeds of that hate are growing faster than ever.

This year, the FBI reported a 1% decline in hate crimes in the United States. At the same time, they revealed a 6% increase in hate crimes against gay, lesbian, and transgendered people. In the past few months alone, shocking murders have been reported across the country from Oxnard, CA to Brooklyn, NY, and most recently, San Francisco.

That’s a powerful statistic.  Hate crime on average has gone down while hate crimes against the LGBT community have gone up.  Crimes including gang rape (Vanessa, Feministing):

Last Saturday in San Francisco, a lesbian was beaten and repeatedly raped by four men, while the perpetrators “made comments indicating they knew her sexual orientation.” They then left the 28-year old naked outside of an abandoned apartment building, who was helped by someone living nearby.

Its impossible to imagine Obama inviting the leader of a white supremacist group attempting to gain mainstream appeal.  I can understand what Obama is going for by inviting an evangelical to the inauguration.  The problem is that the cost outweights the benefits.  He’s helping a wolf get his sheep costume on in the hope that they can work on common problems like fighting hoof and mouth disease and too much logging in the woods.  To do this he’s ignoring the sheep who go missing.

Violence against gay/bi/trans people continues to burn and Obama is helping the man with the gasoline.

An Obama aide tells ABC News that Secret Service headquarters “would be notified of anything that mentioned” Obama. But adds that “it never rose to any sort of serious level,” which explains why Obama’s personal detail was not notified.

Rather than explaining why the candidate’s detail was not notified, it raises questions about how seriously the government is pursuing these plots. Despite the FBI’s push to charge the Colorado Three, Troy Eid (a Rove Apppointee) dismissed the charges. This makes me wonder:

Is this administration — and particularly this Justice Department, as deeply compromised as it has become by the Bush White House’s crass politicization — capable of ensuring that true threats against Democratic figures like Obama are taken seriously and dealt with appropriately?

These men were found with firearms, and further investigation may lead to more charges. The Attorney General for Tennessee is Democrat Robert E. Cooper Jr, appointed in 2006. His office can be contacted here by phone.  It can’t hurt to encourage his office to take this threat with appropriate gravitas.

The ATF says it has broken up a plot to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and shoot or decapitate 102 black people in a Tennessee murder spree.

In court records unsealed Monday, agents said they disrupted plans to rob a gun store and target an unnamed but predominantly African-American high school by two neo-Nazi skinheads.

No more details are available currently.  Lot’s of questions remain:

Are there any links between the neo-nazi’s and existing hate groups?  How many assasination plots are currently under investigation?  Would Sarah Palin consider these skinheads terrorists?

If in point of fact that comment was directed at Ayers (tell me again whether McCain and Palin’s more ignorant supporters hold any difference between Ayers, Obama, liberals in general, or Democrats), it doesn’t explain this second remark (Times Tribune via Justice League):

There were no incendiary outbursts from the crowd about Mr. Obama during Mrs. Palin’s speech, as there have been during other recent McCain-Palin rallies.

However, someone did shout out, “Kill him!” during Republican congressional candidate Chris Hackett’s remarks before Mrs. Palin took the stage.

The outburst came during a round of booing from the crowd after Mr. Hackett said Mr. Obama should come to Pennsylvania and learn what the state’s values are.

The right is in full spin control mode on this.  Nothing upsets the right wing like being justifiably accused of terrorism (Orcinus).  John Leo writes:

A Huffington Post piece by one Jeffrey Feldman asked, “Is Palin Trying to Incite Violence against Obama?” ‘Two subheads in this piece were worse: “McCain Camps Talk ‘Character Assassination,’Supporters shout for real assassination” and “McCain Campaign Amplifies Violent Rhetoric. GOP Crowd Threaten Obama’s life.” Nothing like this happened. No crowd threatened Obama, or called for his assassination. Millbank’s article, the only primary source for “ugliness” at Palin’s speech did not report this, probably because these incendiary events occurred only in the minds of some liberal writers, not in the real world.

He uses the tried and true right wing method of tactical right wing bullshit: projection.  Thus far we have the Scranton threat, the Ayers-aimed threat, and the plot to assasinate Obama.  In the right wing world “Documented by the press” constitutes the imaginary.  Facts and Rationality fly out the window in the effort to make a point, which the Weekly Standard is only too happy to demonstrate with its attempt at balance:

The only nastiness I heard during the day was an outburst, apparently provoked by Obama supporters who wandered into the crowd outside just as I had to leave. I was too far away to hear the exact exchange, so I couldn’t write it up—although clearly such limitations don’t limit the MSMers who repeat the “kill him” myth—but others were closer and able to report on the friendly, tolerant rhetoric of the Left, whose members were calling McCain a “murderer.”

Obviously one can point out that in addition to calling Obama a murderer, the right has aggressively and falsely called him a baby killer.  But I don’t understand how calling a man a murderer, presumably for his role as a warmonger, is in any way equivalent to calling for a man’s assasination.

Its bullshit like this that feeds the fire of the violent right wing and seeks to muffle media coverage.

The question reporters ought to be asking to the campaign is why haven’t McCain and Palin made forceful statements against both the explicit violence and its implicit sources?  The Republicans should answer for relying on veiled nativist attacks and exploitation of eliminationist sentiment.

While there has been much focus on both candidate’s pledges to fight foreign terrorism, right-wing domestic terrorism has remained off the campaign radar.  This is deeply problematic given the anticipated likelihood of an increase in anti-liberal, anti-gay, anti-women and anti-minority violence come November 5th.

The source of that violence comes from the level of legitimacy we afford the ignorant and hateful dehuminization of target groups.  The Republican party has straight up embraced the crazier elements in their ranks for fear of losing their last vital reserves of faithful supporters.  Faithful being an apt word to describe the sheer lack of knowledge or reason informing their tenous grasp of reality.

The following video comes by way of Majikthise and Dana Blankenhorn:

I think its safe to say this is not a group of voters the Obama campaign will win over.  It is however a group of people who should not be left to their insane notion that their ideas are even valid.  Leaving these views alone to fester leads to closed door decisions like the one to install a nativist on the Prince William County, Virginia Board of County Supervisors (Hatewatch).

The outpouring of hate is not hard to understand given the games the McCain campaign is playing (The Guardian):

The Republicans have played on those fears and prejudices extremely well over the past week or so, but with the escalating hatred and disturbing language that has been espoused by some of their supporters at recent Republican rallies it seems that even McCain – forced this weekend to backtrack and start telling people what a “decent, family man” Obama is – now realizes that they may have gone a step too far.

At the most recent rallies, Republican supporters have cried out “kill him!”, “bomb Obama!” and “terrorist” in reference to Obama. Shouts of “treason” and other racial epithets have also been hurled.

I don’t think there is any solid indication McCain’s campaign realizes they’ve gone to far.  I think they’ve simply locked up a section of the vote at the cost of future political stability, a price they are all too willing to pay.  So much so their slogan “Country First” takes on a whole new meaning.

What we need to do is smash the lies and reason-like-substitutes being pushed around as firmly as we can.  This level of willful ignorance and anger will only be exacerbated by a Democratic win.