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Trayvon was seventeen years old. He was a cheerful A and B student whose favorite subject was math. He also tended to be tardy a bit too often, and was serving a suspension from school for chronic tardiness (a punishment which truly makes no sense). He was cheerful, caring, and loved. He was someone's son, nephew, brother, and he was shot by a man who claimed he shot him in self-defense.

Trayvon's "weapons" were a can of iced tea and a bag of Skittles; the other guy had a gun. Yet, George Zimmerman, neighborhood watch captain, thought he looked suspicious and "up to no good." At one point he told 911 operators "these a-holes always get away." Here are the 911 recordings in their entirety from that day (note: some NSFW language):

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[Photo by Tim Correira, The Enterprise]

Breaking news out of Boston:

A man accused of a horrific rape and killing spree told investigators that he was "fighting extinction" of the white race and had stockpiled 200 rounds of ammunition to "kill 'nonwhite people' such as African Americans, Hispanics and Jewish people," according to a police report filed today in court.

After forcing his way into a home and raping a 22-year-old woman, the alleged assailant, Keith Luke, shot and killed the woman's younger sister, who tried to help her. Luke, 22, then allegedly turned his fury back on the rape victim, firing his gun through a white teddy bear that she clutched in terror, police said.

Down the street, Luke allegedly opened fire and killed a homeless man who happened by pushing a shopping cart. He told police after his arrest that he had planned to go to a synagogue near his home and, "kill as many Jews as possible during bingo night," according to the report. "Luke told us that he intended to shoot himself in the head when he was through."

Rabbi Joshua Cohen of Temple Beth Emunah, a Conservative synagogue in the neighborhood where Luke lives, said a Massachusetts state trooper and Brockton police officer told him this morning that Luke evidently had planned to continue his rampage at the temple. The synagogue has a bingo night Wednesday starting at 6:30 p.m.

Cohen said he has never heard of Luke and believes the man had randomly decided to target the synagogue. Investigators told Cohen that Luke was acting alone.

"Through hard work and a lot of luck, the police were able to apprehend him before he was able to inflict more damage and more death and destruction," Cohen said. "As much as we like to think we’ve moved forward in our society and culture, hate and racism still exist, and it’s really unfortunate."

On Wednesday, Luke allegedly fired at police as he was pursued in his van across Brockton, a chase that ended in a crash at East Ashland and North Quincy streets. Sitting in the back of the squad car, he muttered unintelligibly, according to the report, about "the Zionist occupation" and about how, "I was supposed to be executed today."

Following last summer's church shootings in Knoxville, as well as the various acts of violence and threats following Barack Obama's election, we may be seeing the beginnings of a dangerous trend here.

I have a book coming out in May titled The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right which is aimed at exploring the roots of these actions. It's looking like it will be timely indeed.

[H/t to Mark Potok.]

Don't get your hoop-skirt panties in a twist; the power behind "September 12 is Burn a Confederate Flag Day" is the wonderful satirist Jesus General.

Burn the Confederate Flag Day is a protest against the right's exploitation of racial prejudice for political gain. We urge you to burn the Confederate flag, a long-time symbol of racial hatred, on Sept 12, the date when the racially-divisive Tea Party holds its annual hate fest.

Those who object because the rebel flag is "part of their heritage?" So is Willie Horton. The hoop skirts and plantations are completely dependent on the slave trade and Jim Crow, and it's about time someone called conservatives on their nostalgia for racial inequity. Shame.

The organizers expect participants to obey local fire ordinances. Open thread below....

That irresistible line about the caveman, by the way, came from a reddit commenter. He was probably feeling celebratory over the fact that GEICO pulled all its advertising from Glenn Beck's hateful Fox TV show. And GEICO isn't the only company to have decided that advertising on the show of a vicious hate monger inciting violence and racial hatred is a bad marketing idea. Men's Wearhouse and Sargento are the latest companies to ask Fox to stop running their ads on TV. And today-- Blue America did the same.

Blue America is running a second wave of ads on Arkansas TV explaining Blanche Lincoln's duplicitous role in the health care debate. After looking at the logs of the first wave and noticing that some of our ads in Little Rock and Pine Bluff ran on Beck's show, we instructed the cable networks to not run any more ads on his programs in the towns we are advertising in this week-- the towns where Lincoln is doing her health care forums. Here's the note the Blue America media buyer sent to the Arkansas cable networks:

Blue America PAC has instructed me to tell you to not place any of their advertising within the Glenn Beck program on Fox News Channel for their upcoming flight.

There is a national boycott of his advertisers ongoing. as Mr. Beck has been promoting racism and violence on his program. We do not want to appear to support his efforts in any way, shape or form.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Jacqueline Propps

As for Men's Wearhouse, DailyKos published a letter yesterday from Matt Stringer, the vp of marketing/creative services:

Thank you for contacting Men’s Wearhouse and bringing to our attention your concerns with the Glenn Beck program on Fox News. While we support free speech and do not make advertising decisions based on our own personal ideologies, after reviewing his recent incendiary comments we have decided to remove our advertising from his program. We hope that this decision will allow you to continue to patronize Men’s Wearhouse. I would encourage you to please share our decision with anyone else who may have expressed a similar concern.

And Media Matters published a similar note from Pat Lombardo from the Sargento Consumer Affairs Department:

We deeply appreciate your reaching out to us and sharing your comments and concerns about Sargento ads appearing during The Glenn Beck Show. We sat down with the marketing department to talk about it and I learned that we buy time periods not specific programs. But in any event, they've made the decision to exclude that program from our future ad rotation. Simply stated, Sargento ads won't be airing during that show. Again, thanks for contacting us.

As Color Of Change, the online civil rights group that initiated the boycott, points out, these defections come on the heels of pull outs by LexisNexis-owned Lawyers.com, Procter & Gamble, Progressive Insurance and SC Johnson.

So what's wrong with Travelocity? Why do they insist on still underwriting the hatred, bigotry and violence? As a reader pointed out on my travel blog this morning, "perhaps someone could clue Travelocity into the fact that racists aren't the biggest travelers..."

CNN has a similar type of problem with their own in house racist sociopath, Lou Dobbs and, according to MediaBistro.com the network is moving away from using Hate Talk Radio commentators on the air from now on, although they still refuse to fire Dobbs (who also hosts a hate talk radio show).

TVNewser has learned, and a CNN spokesperson confirms, that in his morning editorial meeting today, CNN/U.S. president Jon Klein asked his show producers to avoid booking talk radio hosts. "Complex issues require world class reporting," Klein is quoted as saying, adding that talk radio hosts too often add to the noise, and that what they say is "all too predictable."

Yesterday I spent over 4 hours at a town hall meeting hosted by Rep. Adam Schiff in Alhambra. The disruptive clowns who had come to prevent a discussion were shouting slogans straight from the Astro-Turf outfits' talking points and their world views were clearly formed by Hate Talk Radio and Fox "News." These people are hysterically opposed to immigrants' babies getting health care and opposed to the government making it illegal for Insurance companies to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions. What they chant instead is "Tort Reform" and what they mutter is divisive and racist epithets most Americans thought went out of style with Lester Maddox, George Wallace and the cavemen.

UPDATE: Bad News For Teabaggers-- You're Being Played

The teabaggers like to take their thumbs out of their asses and jump up and down in front of the TV cameras claiming how real and genuine their grassroots protests are. I talked to so many of them with long lists of legitimate grievances-- one woman was suing her insurance company and very angry man with strange eyes is suing the gold company Glenn Beck shills for on radio that he claims cheated him-- but their grievances had nothing to do with what they disdainfully call "ObamaCare." How did they get from there to here? It wasn't via Pluto. According to a former Insurance Industry executive, Wendell Potter of CIGNA, the insurance companies are indeed the unseen hand behind the curtain manipulating the righteous-- or self-righteous-- indignation of the angry crowds getting their matching orders from hate-mongers like Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity ,etc.

"The industry is up to the same dirty tricks this year," Potter said at a Capitol news conference after meeting with House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), an avid supporter of the Democrats' plans for a healthcare overhaul.

"When you hear someone complaining about traveling down a 'slippery slope to socialism,' some insurance flack, like I used to be, wrote that," Potter added.

Potter said during his 20 years in the insurance business, the industry would funnel money to large public firms who would create front groups and find friendly voices in conservative media.

In particular, he cited front groups created to fight "Patients' Bill of Rights" legislation in the 1990s, as well as a campaign to discredit the Michael Moore film Sicko, which harshly criticized the industry.

Slaughter joined in the attack, saying "the notion that this is going to be something devilish comes from the people who would lose money on it."

Bob Herbert of the NY Times jumps into the Reagan argument between Krugman and Brooks:

Reagan was the first presidential candidate ever to appear at the fair, and he knew exactly what he was doing when he told that crowd, “I believe in states’ rights.”

Reagan apologists have every right to be ashamed of that appearance by their hero, but they have no right to change the meaning of it, which was unmistakable. Commentators have been trying of late to put this appearance by Reagan into a racially benign context.

That won’t wash. Reagan may have been blessed with a Hollywood smile and an avuncular delivery, but he was elbow deep in the same old race-baiting Southern strategy of Goldwater and Nix .

Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans — they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew.

He was tapping out the code. It was understood that when politicians started chirping about “states’ rights” to white people in places like Neshoba County they were saying that when it comes down to you and the blacks, we’re with you...read on