So maybe I will vote... for Obama

I have, for a while now, maintained my steadfast refusal to vote because I think it is an exercise in futility. I have, along with George Carlin, held that if the people voting are selfish and self centered then it is a cinch that those who hold office will be only the ones who will pander to the selfish and self centered. Such people are unworthy to hold office in and thus I had decided to not vote anymore. But I have changed my mind.

The reason why is Rick Perry.

Now anyone who knows me knows that I have a special disliking for the esteemed governor of Texas; a disliking I feel that is well founded and sensible, but it is his decision to run for president which has brought me out of my slough of indifference. It is not that I think I have to vote against him, since it is now apparent that he has no chance to actually gain the nomination, it is rather the reason why he failed to gain the nomination. You see things were going just swimmingly for Governor Good-hair until it came out that he was opposed to the immigration laws in Arizona and Georgia and (gasp) felt that children who grew up in Texas and knew no home other than Texas and thought of themselves as Americans should be allowed to go to college in Texas even if they are brown and spoke Spanish before they learned English. When this came to light he promptly fell from leading the polls to a distant third and his chance of securing the nomination seems to be a distant memory.

The reason why? The TEA party.

The TEA party is running things on the elephant side of the aisle and the shibboleth among that group is immigration law. Make no mistake, I do not mean the common sense sort of measures which hopefully would stem the flow of drugs into our country as well as requiring that those who seek employment here be legal to do so. No. I am talking about the immigration laws in Georgia and Arizona which give the police the right to consider a criminal anyone who might be here illegally. Far apart from acting to deny education, healthcare and tax paying jobs to these people and thus securing for the companies who employ them a slave labor force (which I do think is the corporate impetus behind the bill) I find most reprehensible the allowance in the law which criminalizes all non-anglo people and makes them subject to whim of the police.

And make no mistake, criminalizing non-anglos is the result of these laws. After all if a policeman in San Francisco was searching for illegals there is a greater than zero chance that he would be looking for Asian or Latino people, but he almost certainly would not be searching for Anglos. The same is true in New York, but in Georgia and Arizona, the searching will be almost exclusively for Latinos.

"So what is the problem?" says the TEA Partier, "Aren't the people who are in this country illegally committing a crime?"

Well the answer of course is yes, but the thing is that these laws do not target crime, they target a people group. Since the enforcement of these laws will be centered on skin color rather than deeds the laws are inherently racist. Such laws are evil things and must be resisted by any and all thinking people. After all to target a people group with a law in such a fashion as to criminalize them all is exactly the sort of tactics the Nazis used. Don't blush and say I am over the line here; read your history and see for yourself. This is precisely the sort of thing the Nazis did before they started rounding up the Jews for the ghetto and then later for the camps.

We must be above this.

Another similarity between 1930's Germany and America today is that the dominant religious groups in these states are allowing themselves to be seen hand in hand with candidates who espouse this view. The people who should be complaining loudest about these tactics are placidly going arm in arm with these candidates for the sake of defeating Obama and presumably Roe V. Wade, and that is really the excuse for the church's coddling of the racists; abortion.

But let us have some truth about abortion.

I was born in 1973. Abortion was legal before Roe, but was federalized by Roe in 1972. In my life the presidents who have overseen Roe have been Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan (twice), Bush I, Clinton (twice), Bush II (twice) and Obama. That means of the eleven different possible men to hold the office in my life, it has been held by a Republican seven times. Seven times has a Republican had the bully pulpit to speak loudly against abortion, appoint judges and, in a real sense if not necessarily a Constitutional one, direct the legislative course of the country, and yet abortion remains legal. Furthermore both houses of Congress were controlled by Republicans for twelve years and six of those were with a Republican president in office, and yet abortion remains legal.

"Well Democrats have stood in the way of reform" says the TEA Partier.

Maybe, but I can't help but notice that every time a Republican wants to cut taxes or drop bombs on someone he is able to find the political will to make it happen. And strangely, this same political will has never been mustered in the cause to overturn Roe. Perhaps the reason why is that the political will to overturn Roe does not actually exist, and instead the continuation of the wedge issue is what matters and those who profit from the anger don't actually give a damn about abortion at all.

And therefore I think a person who cares about this country and really thinks that its moral compass will determine its fate far more than its foreign or monetary policies has to ask themselves where the threat to freedom lies. Is it found in those who have a misguided idea about the best way to care for our poor and dispossessed or is it found in those who desire to criminalize people based on their skin color? A people group, incidentally, who would be extremely unlikely to maintain the power structure in states like Georgia and Arizona where a large Latino population endangers the Republican hold on those states. A people group who would be unlikely, if they were empowered by the vote, to maintain the status quo for the Anglos in those states. It seems to me that the TEA party, rather than examining its own policies, have instead decided to legislate away this threat by the marginalizing of this group to insure that they never become a political threat.

Such a ploy is wicked and must be stood against.

For this reason I have changed my mind. I will vote after all. I hope you will too.

Who the TEA partiers Really Are

So I heard this morning that Rick Perry has fallen back in the presidential race because he felt that it was wrong to not allow children who 1.grew up in Texas 2.speak only English 3.identify themselves as Americans and 4.desire to go to college here to attend simply because their parents crossed the border illegally when they were very small. An event btw which many of them have no memory of at all. SO... Governor Rick (in perhaps his one moment of clarity) figured that these kids might as well be Americans and if they qualify for school and aid to go then why not let them good. Well that's all fine and good unless you are a TEA partier and the unspoken plank of your presidential candidate is "BRUTALIZE THE MOTHER!@#$%^& BROWN PEOPLE" which is why Rick, having been asked about his support of this at a debate, is now trailing Mitt Romney. Gosh I'm glad we have people like the TEA partiers out there protecting our liberty. Just thinking.

The Difference Between the First Amendment and Free Speech

The First Amendment Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. There are some folks upset that Hank Williams got fired from ESPN for saying this... (Obama playing golf with Boehner (republican speaker of the house) would... "be like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu. They're the enemy!" A host asked: "Who's the enemy?" Williams then went on to say: "Are you kiddin? Obama! Biden! The three stooges!" Apart from the general stupidity of this statement (I would have gone with Ahmadinejad to at least be current) as well as proof positive of what a truly silly sporting event politics has become (DAH DAH that's I don't vote anymore) there is now this foot stomping outrage that ESPN has somehow violated the First Amendment by firing him for this. The problem is that the amendment never once mentions ESPN or any private corporation for that matter. I work for a large communications company which has us sign a paper warning us that if we disparage the company on Facebook for example we can be fired. What Hank Williams did was say something so incredibly stupid that his employer decided they could not have him or his bad singing be part of their product anymore so they fired him. In so doing they neither violated the First Amendment or his right to free speech. The reason why is simple. Go to work tomorrow and call your boss !@#$)(*&^%$$%^&*(*&^%$# and find out in short order just how far your free speech rights extend. Furthermore walk into a crowded movie theatre and scream "fire" and find out whether or not the State can punish you for certain kinds of speech. The thing I find most striking is that because there are a large number of people who agree with what Hank said there are now folks complaining he has been done wrong without actually bothering to look at what he did. And since the other team wants to defend their star quarterback (sorry president) they will call for his blood even if they only have the foggiest notion of who he is and third hand knowledge of what he said. But since we now play politics instead of govern ourselves that is to be expected. After all if anything is permissible so long as it happens to agree with my opinion then to be surprised by this is dumber than comparing Obama to Hitler and calling him the enemy.