Occasionally when I feel like abusing myself I turn the television on and watch cable "news."
Anyone see Carson Tucker's show last night where he verbally assaulted a spokesman from the Southern Poverty Law Center? The topic was their new report on the military problem with neo-Nazis. Tucker questioned the credibility of their research and accused their report of being neglectful of real issues like Islamic terrorists. Maybe Tucker doesn't mind angry home-grown terrorists roaming around but I certainly think it's a problem. Tucker is obviously not really looking at the data nor does he care. Furthermore, his furiousness made it appear as if he was being defensive of something. Guilty of something?
Tucker Carlson can defend hate groups all he wants; it's still a problem in America that we can no longer deny, and yes it's right there in our military too. There they go again excluding the military, like Republicans did when they launched an unnecessary war with no concern for the troops, and just like they did again when they cut troop's benefits. It's amazing how radical Republicans deny that there are bad apples in the military. No slaughtering of innocent people in Iraq, no sexual abuse in Abu Ghraib, no torture elsewhere, no hate groups in our military, no, not our innocent American military. Like I said though they're bad apples, a lot of them, but not all of them. But isn't it funny though how Republicans are so quick to pick out the bad apples when it comes to immigrants, blacks, Muslims and other non-Christians.
The above map is for Tucker and all of the Republicans who don't see hate crimes as a problem in the U.S. It lists the number of hate groups in each state and can be found for interactive use at: http://www.tolerance.org/maps/hate/index.html
There are some notable differences between last year's map of 2004 data and this year's new data on 2005. Some states went down in # of groups: Notably were OR, NY, VT, NJ, and PA.
Most went up though by at least one group. An over-whelming majority of red states increased their # of hate groups. South Carolina was last year's champion of hate, but this year it's CA that gets the award, with FL right behind it, both taking leaps in the hate department.
Overall, hate groups have increased in the U.S. and this isn't even taking into consideration gangs and mobs, which carry out hate crimes against one another. There's a lot of hate in America. And one thing is sure, it's increased dramatically under the sleeping Bush administration.
