Words Fail Me category archive

Charles Tyson, elected South Harrison Township’s first black mayor in 2006, said yesterday that he had been worn down by racism in the Gloucester County farm community and would resign as deputy mayor effective today.

Growing up in the town of 2,700 people, he never felt the sting of intolerance, said Tyson, 67, whose term of office was to expire in December 2010.

Soon after news spread that he would be the Democratic candidate for mayor, his tires were slashed, his campaign signs were defaced, and he was subjected to threatening phone calls and e-mails laced with racial epithets.

I must have driven through Harrison Township several dozen times over the years; it’s about 45 minutes east of here. It’s so small I didn’t notice it.

The man got hate phone calls from all over the country for being black and mayor of Nowhere, New Jersey. One caller, a Virginian, is in jail pending trial.

They drove him to resign the mayoralty, but he stayed on as deputy mayor. Now they have driven him out of office entirely.

Just because he’s Not White.

And, in San Jose, it doesn’t seem to be an “isolated incident.”

The Booman has the details.

In Delaware, a bogus Amber alert is circulating via text messages.

“I don’t know how to answer that that’s not a trap.”
–Beck the Feckless

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Afraid to stand behind his own statements. Feckless defined (emphasis added):

adjective 1. ineffective; incompetent; futile: feckless attempts to repair the plumbing.
2. having no sense of responsibility; indifferent; lazy.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

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They used to have more money than sense.

Then they spent it on a court case.

Saxby Chambliss warns Obama, “Don’t be uppity.“

Because they are Masters of the Universe.

Who could make this stuff up?

Desperation is more like it.

In a maneuver that signals both the pluck and ingenuity of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and California’s desperate finances, officials have been frantically preparing this week for a two-day sell-off of items drawn from every corner of the state’s pack-rat bureaucracy.

Heh.

The former president of Lehman Brothers has filed a legal claim seeking $233m (£145m) in remuneration from liquidators of the bankrupt Wall Street bank, whose collapse 11 months ago wrought havoc in global financial markets.

Dick Polman:

A respected survey firm, Public Policy Polling, has unearthed a statistic that gives us yet another dimension on the ignorance that pervades our nation. The pollsters have been probing the “birther” phenomenon, the refusal of so many Americans to believe that Barack Obama was born on American soil. They solved part of the mystery the other day. Get ready for this one:

Ten percent of Americans don’t know that Hawaii is a state.

Just the part about not taking care of the sick and the helpless.

But it was (Congressperson Michelle–ed.) Bachmann’s (R-Loonybin–ed.) fervent call to utilize prayer and fasting to beat back health-care reform efforts that was the true highlight of the call.

“That’s really where this battle will be won — on our knees in prayer and fasting,” she told the listeners. “Remember: faith without works is dead. So we’re asking you to do all of it: pray, fast, believe, trust the Lord, but also act.”

Somebody better tell the rest of the country.

In his latest, Todd recounts flying back to Hawaii, where he settled after retiring from the Navy, and being asked by a fellow American visiting Hawaii for the first time,

By the way, what kind of money do they use there in Hawaii?

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From ThinkProgress, quoting poll results:

One poll question indicative of how difficult it is to gain public understanding on a complicated issue asked if respondents thought the government should ‘stay out of Medicare,’ something inherently impossible. 39% said yes.

What Mencken said.

Now excuse me while I run screaming into the night.

Via Susie.

The end of the personal life.

I’m not the only one who thinks the new K-Mart “Rock Stare” commercial plumbs new depths of bad taste.

I felt icky watching it. And I have a very high ick threshold.

I can’t say it will keep me away from Kmart. Kmart has kept me away from Kmart for a long time already.

Video below the fold. I didn’t feel comfortable having it on the front page

On the other side of the Big Pond:

The Labour party has appointed a “Twitter tsar” with the responsibility of encouraging MPs to use new media.

Kerry McCarthy, MP for Bristol East, has been made the party’s new media campaigns spokeswoman ahead of an election next year that she says will be the first “new media election”. A recent study for a newspaper voted McCarthy the most “influential MP” on Twitter – with more than 1,600 followers.

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Civilized discourse:

My co-worker, Mike Ditto, went to Congressman Ed Perlmutter’s Town Hall meeting on Saturday to listen to him talk to constituents about health insurance reform. While he was there, his car was badly vandalized.

The side mirrors were smashed off. Big dent on his hood. And scratches and dents on every door and nearly every other panel of his car. All because he had an SEIU Healthcare Rally flier in his car.

The family goes back to well before the Revolutionary War; the original landgrant for the family farm, which her father drank away after the Civil War, was signed by one of the Kings George.

She lived through some really tough times and lots of changes in her 98 years.

She is fortunately not around to see her state become a sideshow:

These people are nuts.

And so are the people who buy their snake oil.

Frankly, I think that’s a good thing. It reveals wingnuttery for the bigotted, hate-filled fantastickal thinking that it is.

One more time, if Mr. Obama were pink like me, this wouldn’t be happening.

Via John Cole.