Why Does This Not Surprise Me?

Why Does This Not Surprise Me?

08.06.04 (12:41 pm)   [edit]
Stolen from the Yahoo news pages:

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - An unabashed racist will represent the Republican party in the November election for a congressional seat after a write-in candidate failed to derail his effort.

With 86 percent of the primary vote counted Thursday, write-in candidate Dennis Bertrand had just 1,554 votes compared to 7,671, or 83 percent, for James L. Hart, a believer in the discredited, phony science of eugenics.

In November, the GOP candidate will oppose Rep. John Tanner (news, bio, voting record), a Democrat who has represented the northwest Tennessee district for 15 years.

Hart, 60, vows if elected to work toward keeping "less favored races" from reproducing or immigrating to the United States. In campaign literature, Hart contends that "poverty genes" threaten to turn the United States into "one big Detroit."

"I didn't expect to win," Hart said. "I thought their network would beat my ideas." He has run for the 8th District seat before and drawn little attention. But people began to notice this time because he was the only Republican on the ballot.

Since the deadline for getting on the ballot had passed, Bertrand, also a Republican, began a write-in campaign, saying he wanted to protect the party's honor. "I think his beliefs are not beliefs of any party that I know of," Bertrand said Thursday night. "I knew it was going to be a really long shot, but in good conscience, I had to at least give it an attempt." Bertrand, a financial analyst and former military officer, was on active duty with the National Guard when the deadline to get on the primary ballot passed.

Hart said he will have lots of time to campaign for the general election since he was forced Wednesday to resign from his job as a real estate salesman because of the attention he drew during the primary. "They didn't say 'You're fired' in exactly those words, but it was pretty clear what they wanted," Hart said.

While campaigning, Hart sometimes wears a protective vest and carries a .40-caliber pistol, but he said he has run into no trouble. "When I knock on a door and say white children deserve the same rights as everybody else, the enthusiastic response is truly amazing," he said.

If a black person opens the door, he says he simply drops off campaign literature and leaves.


Observations:

1. I know *I* always feel safer when there's people running around campaigning for office who not only are idiots, but are carrying GUNS.

2. This is a great nation, and we should allow for as much diversity of opinion as possible, and should not hinder the right of even truly distasteful and ignorant people to run for pulbic office. After all, look at who's President. That said, I think we should institute a three strikes policy. Anyone who is plainly a frothing lunatic idiot asshole should recieve three strikes to the head with a large metal object. If he can get up and walk afterwards, we let him continue his campaign.

3. I didn't realize real estate companies not-really-fired people for any reason other than, say, shitting in a client's pool four seconds before the prospective buyers showed up. Interesting.

4. You'll note that the Republican Party, who in no way ever promotes the ideas of racism (Dennis Bertrand says so, after all. And stop that silly "Who the fuck is Dennis Bertrand?" shit, because hey, we know he's telling the truth.) are apparantly the only people who will take this guy. Yes, boys and girls, John Ashcroft couldn't beat a dead man in an election, and the Republicans love him. So James Hart has picked a mighty fine home.

5. I'm really shocked that people in Tennessee actually respond with such enthusiasm to the idea that "white children deserve the same rights as everybody else." It must be really tough to get white people behind an idea like that, especially since it's such an outrageous thought, one that's surely never been tried before in this country, or even, you know, kinda been the way we actually do things. After all, you can see that white children everywhere are living in ghettos and becoming crack addicts at age four, yet hordes of black children are sitting in Starbucks, reading Shakespeare, and being groomed to become CEOs and senators. If we don't stop this trend, white children might soon make up less than 90% of the children in this country, for fuck's sake, and that shit just ain't right.

6. I thought I knew a lot about The Last Days, having read the collected works of Hal Lindsay dozens of times (I keep a copy of each of his books by the toilet, just so I can have something inspirational to read while I'm dropping some holy fucking shit into the bowl) but I don't remember the Book Of Revelation talking about The Beast infecting the souls of men with "poverty genes", whatever the fuck THOSE are, and I could have sworn that the ultimate resting place of sinfulness was called Hell, and not Detroit. Now granted, I'm sure Satan tortures some of his prey with pollution and stolen handguns, but I really just can't believe that "one big Detroit" is QUITE as bad as this guys seems to think, because even if Fords do suck, at least you've got a fuckin' car.

7. I thought "less-favored races" meant shit like Formula One. I learn something new every day! Thank you, James Hart!

8. Some people are really fucking stupid.

Love, Dougie