So ESPN.com has members section where you can post your thoughts about stories. As anyone who has read my other posts knows, I think that Joe Paterno's criminality has been washed away by his death is disgusting. So I went onto the ESPN.com website and said this,
At best he was a doddering old man who allowed children to be abused because he was so befuddled with age he didn't know how to stop it.
At worst he hushed it up to prevent his recruiting from being hurt so he could continue to field a football team.
And for this comment...
I received a 24hour ban from ESPN.com.
Now really I don't care; it's their website they can do whatever they want with it. I just find it interesting that a news agency would ban people who speak out against the acceptable dialogue of the day. The story about "JoePa" went from being, "This guy should probably be in jail," to "This guy walked on water and once saved the Virgin Mary and a puppy from drowning," all by accident of death.
Well folks death changes nothing. Just like whatever Ray Lewis did 12 years ago is not washed away because those two guys aren't any less dead, so those kids that JoePa's lifelong friend raped aren't any less raped because this guy just happened to pull a timely kicking of the bucket.
So to the complainers about my post on ESPN.com I have this to say, "What if it was you?" Because you know what, lets forget the "What if it was your kid" bit because no one cares. We flip through hours of TV commercials watching children starve to death in Africa and Central America unfazed and unmoved. Hell, we had a whole movement of occupiers grab their iphones and ipads and blow by homeless people who needed help in order to bitch that their portfolio had lost value. So let's not pretend we actually care about the children and stop all the blathering as such.
We couldn't give one damn less about the children so save your handwringing.
So my question is what if it was you taking from Sandusky knowing JoePa knew about it? How would you feel about all the accolades being heaped on him now? Come on, tell the truth.
So to the offended remember,
some people are begging to be offended, dying to be offended, I am offended that they are offended, so of course I am going to offend them.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
Joe Pa
I am up to here with eulogies for Joe Paterno. I never cease to be amazed by the fantastic power that death has to erradicate the criminal behavior of the dead. All weekend long Joe paterno has called classy, a man who shaped lives of men, a man who stood out among others as a paragon of vitrue fairplay and a will to to do things the right way.
Here's the truth.
At best...
Joe Paterno was a doddering old man who upon hearing that his lifelong friend was raping little boys in the shower chose to do nothing because he was so senile and befuddled that he didn't know what to do.
At worst...
Joe Paterno was a man who knowingly allowed his friend to rape little boys because he feared it would hurt his ability to recruit football players to help him win so he kept it quiet.
Either way, no matter what he was, he is none of the things he has been lauded to to be. And even though I know it is a wrong and terrible emotion, I am sorry he died before the stink of shame could fully settle and he could fade away into the nothing of obsolescence which is the least his crimes deserved.
And to the Penn State people holding candlelight vigils and somehow blaming the victims after the fact for his death...
it doesn't bear printing here.
Here's the truth.
At best...
Joe Paterno was a doddering old man who upon hearing that his lifelong friend was raping little boys in the shower chose to do nothing because he was so senile and befuddled that he didn't know what to do.
At worst...
Joe Paterno was a man who knowingly allowed his friend to rape little boys because he feared it would hurt his ability to recruit football players to help him win so he kept it quiet.
Either way, no matter what he was, he is none of the things he has been lauded to to be. And even though I know it is a wrong and terrible emotion, I am sorry he died before the stink of shame could fully settle and he could fade away into the nothing of obsolescence which is the least his crimes deserved.
And to the Penn State people holding candlelight vigils and somehow blaming the victims after the fact for his death...
it doesn't bear printing here.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Obama will win re-election
So at Christmas dinner I heard a young fella say, "Well at least Obama won't get re-elected," and I laughed and said, "Sorry to disappoint you but I think he will."
I do not think this is true because I am voting for him. I do not think this is true because the republicans are putting up a bunch of roadkill, stiffs, scary old guys, dudes wearing foil hats and guys almost smart enough to be a lamp.
I think this because a sitting president is already 78.8% re-elected. I mean we already voted the guy in once and barring a total collapse of... well everything, he is going to be reelected.
In the history fo the USA there have been 44 presidents and 15 were not re-elected. Of those W H Harrison, Taylor, Garfield, Harding and Kennedy died in their first term leaving nine. Out of those nine; one, Grover Cleveland, was president during what was probably the worst depression in the history fo the country and so was defeated by republican Benjamin Harrison who did so poorly in handling the crisis that he then was defeated by the same Grover Cleveland who became the only man to not be re-elected twice.
This does not include Andrew Johnson who, having inherited the office after Lincoln's death, was never elected but was impeached and did not seek re-election. Joining him in holding the office but not having been elected to it is Gerald Ford who pardoned Nixon... enough said.
So out of the remaining nine we have John Adams who was so paranoid he oversaw the passage of the alien and sedition acts while having Thomas Jefferson (who was a democrat and in the other party) constantly undermining him because Adams refused to enter the French Revolution. This led to Adams being so wildly unpopular and universally hated that he lost the election in a landslide and retired from political life.
John Quincy Adams' presidency was racked with scandal and he was defeated by Andrew Jackson and a populist swell whose policies caused the collapse that sank...
Martin Van Buren who was president three months when the collapse of 1837 happened because of unscrupulous credit practices which caused the economy to collapse. Incidentally the Great GREAT Depression of the late 19th century happened for the same reason as did (in large measure) the Great Depression in the 1930's
Gee 4 times in 175 years and we still haven't figured out this is a bad idea.... but I digress.
Taft lost to Wilson because Teddy Roosevelt started a third party.
Herbert Hoover... well Great Depression anyone?
Jimmy Carter was president at a time when the economy was so bad that inflation was up and the economy was shrinking. That actually shouldn't be able to happen as expanding economies drive inflation and shrinking economies, well... shrink it. And we boycotted the olympics. Iran hostage crisis. And Reagan ran... again.
Perfect storm.
Aside from that is George Herbert Walker Bush. This guy failed to win a war, the economy was crap, Dan Quayle was his VP, "No new taxes!", he only won because the Democrats put up Dukakis who couldn't have beat Hoover (and Hoover was dead), and still he lost his bid for re-election because Perot started a third party (basically) and carried 19% of the vote and many swing states including Ohio, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Iowa Clinton won by fewer than 5% with Perot taking 18-20% of the vote.
In other words, without Perot... wait for it... Clinton may not have beaten George H W Bush. Clinton for pity's sake.
And why? Cuz Bush was the guy already there and people fear change.
44 presidents and five died, one is sitting, two chose not to run again, two lost because of splits in their own party and Cleveland did get re-elected... eventually. Meaning out of the 33 remaining 26 got re-elected good or bad. That's a .788 winning percentage and that means that guy already there almost always wins.
Don't believe me?
We re-elected W.
I do not think this is true because I am voting for him. I do not think this is true because the republicans are putting up a bunch of roadkill, stiffs, scary old guys, dudes wearing foil hats and guys almost smart enough to be a lamp.
I think this because a sitting president is already 78.8% re-elected. I mean we already voted the guy in once and barring a total collapse of... well everything, he is going to be reelected.
In the history fo the USA there have been 44 presidents and 15 were not re-elected. Of those W H Harrison, Taylor, Garfield, Harding and Kennedy died in their first term leaving nine. Out of those nine; one, Grover Cleveland, was president during what was probably the worst depression in the history fo the country and so was defeated by republican Benjamin Harrison who did so poorly in handling the crisis that he then was defeated by the same Grover Cleveland who became the only man to not be re-elected twice.
This does not include Andrew Johnson who, having inherited the office after Lincoln's death, was never elected but was impeached and did not seek re-election. Joining him in holding the office but not having been elected to it is Gerald Ford who pardoned Nixon... enough said.
So out of the remaining nine we have John Adams who was so paranoid he oversaw the passage of the alien and sedition acts while having Thomas Jefferson (who was a democrat and in the other party) constantly undermining him because Adams refused to enter the French Revolution. This led to Adams being so wildly unpopular and universally hated that he lost the election in a landslide and retired from political life.
John Quincy Adams' presidency was racked with scandal and he was defeated by Andrew Jackson and a populist swell whose policies caused the collapse that sank...
Martin Van Buren who was president three months when the collapse of 1837 happened because of unscrupulous credit practices which caused the economy to collapse. Incidentally the Great GREAT Depression of the late 19th century happened for the same reason as did (in large measure) the Great Depression in the 1930's
Gee 4 times in 175 years and we still haven't figured out this is a bad idea.... but I digress.
Taft lost to Wilson because Teddy Roosevelt started a third party.
Herbert Hoover... well Great Depression anyone?
Jimmy Carter was president at a time when the economy was so bad that inflation was up and the economy was shrinking. That actually shouldn't be able to happen as expanding economies drive inflation and shrinking economies, well... shrink it. And we boycotted the olympics. Iran hostage crisis. And Reagan ran... again.
Perfect storm.
Aside from that is George Herbert Walker Bush. This guy failed to win a war, the economy was crap, Dan Quayle was his VP, "No new taxes!", he only won because the Democrats put up Dukakis who couldn't have beat Hoover (and Hoover was dead), and still he lost his bid for re-election because Perot started a third party (basically) and carried 19% of the vote and many swing states including Ohio, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Iowa Clinton won by fewer than 5% with Perot taking 18-20% of the vote.
In other words, without Perot... wait for it... Clinton may not have beaten George H W Bush. Clinton for pity's sake.
And why? Cuz Bush was the guy already there and people fear change.
44 presidents and five died, one is sitting, two chose not to run again, two lost because of splits in their own party and Cleveland did get re-elected... eventually. Meaning out of the 33 remaining 26 got re-elected good or bad. That's a .788 winning percentage and that means that guy already there almost always wins.
Don't believe me?
We re-elected W.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Christmas Eve 1:30 AM 2011
I was listening to wife sleep and the dog snore and thinking all these things at a thousand miles an hour and figured if I could just bore myself to death then I could sleep too. So I got up to write it all down.
Enjoy.
In 2007 I was diagnosed with a Chiari 1 malformation. What that means is that the part of my skull where the base of my brain and my brain stem and spinal chord all come together is constricted because by cerebellum is too low in the back of my head. This creates pressure in the area resulting, most commonly, in migraine headaches. I had my first migraine when I was fourteen years old.
For those of you who have never had a migraine this is not the same thing as having a headache. A migraine is when your head declares war on your life. It makes the little things like light, sound, motion, etc intolerable at best and nauseating at worst. The best thing is that when vomiting occurs it makes the migraine worse thus making vomiting more likely... you get the point.
The reason why I found out I had this condition was because I had torn up my right shoulder and by the grace of God the MRI just happened to barely glimpse the malformation thus alerting my doctors to my condition. It was decided shoulder surgery was the more pressing need and so that was performed, most admirably, by a lovely doctor who looked like Cameron from Ferris Bueller's Day Off whose name I cannot remember anymore.
I was scheduled to have the surgery for the Chiari 1 the following winter and was ten days out from my surgical consult on Feb 1 2008 when I was run over in the parking lot at work. Of course being laid up in bed put off the surgery and while I was in the hospital I got a migraine and the nurse gave me tylenol and phenegran for it which cleared it up quite nicely. My surgeon decided that if my headaches, which were still the worst of my symptoms, could be handled with medication then surgery was unnecessary. I figured if a guy who stands to make a not inconsiderable amount of money on me tells me to not do it, then that advice is worth taking.
So for two plus years this was how I dealt with it. I missed more work than I should because I would get bad migraines which would lay me up for a few days at a time. I took sick time some times because of them but I managed to scrape by and be a reasonably productive person. Our family sacrificed vacations etc because I invariably used up that time being ill but my wife, saint that she is, did not complain inordinately, at least not to me. So we pressed on.
Until this year. When even the pain pills stopped working. Understand I don't take codeine or vicodin because I am allergic to them so I have to take non-narcotic pain pills which are little more than really strong tylenol, but they did the trick when needed. This year however they stopped working. My doctor and I began to discuss surgery again and tried to make contact with the surgeon I had before only to be put off again and again before finally being told that he is only a spine specialist now and so would not be able to help me. We switched to another doctor and targeted trying to have the surgery at the turn of the year.
Then in October I slid off the edge with my health.
The first thing I noticed is that I was tired all of the time. No matter how much i slept or how early I went to bed, foreswearing coffee and five hour energy etc I was tired all of the time. Then my migraines got worse. Not only had they been bad all year, but I reached the point where my head hurt all the time no mater what I did. I had a low level headache or migraine at all times and consequently I had even more trouble sleeping because laying down on my hurting head made it hurt worse which made my exhaustion even more pronounced. Then I started forgetting stuff, and I mean really simple things like things at my job that I have known for years I would forget how to do and would sit for a half hour and try to remember how to do. Then I started falling. For no reason I would be walking along and suddenly I would just be on the ground. Now my hands shake, my vision is messed up and my equilibrium is so shot I feel like I'm drunk every time I walk across the room.
The result of this is that I have missed, besides the last three months of my life, a lot, A LOT of time at work and am currently on disability because my doctor doesn't think I am safe to drive a truck and my boss can't give me light duty. Of course my company is not in the habit of paying people to sit on disability while they wait for surgery so who knows if any of this time off will be approved. I sure don't know. My surgery is scheduled for the first week of January and I spend my time mostly hoping for no more setbacks.
And do you know what the worst part is? My sister.
My sister destroyed her back in a work accident when she was nineteen years old. She is now forty-three and is permanently disabled after struggling with this for twenty-three years. She just became disabled in the last year and is now in school so she can get off the government dole. I remember when I walked a little prouder and talked a lot louder how I used to think, "Oh yeah your back hurts... Bitch we got rent to pay!" And now the shoe is on the other foot.
The problem is that you can be sick with anything in this country as long as other people can see it, or have heard of it enough to know it is serious. No one dares call a person with MS or Cancer or HIV lazy because they just can't do the front yard today. But if you are sick with pain... People get headaches and they get backaches but they don't understand that it is possible for pain to take the world away. They don't understand that your body will steal your life and force you to surrender so much ground that you can't even make it to the front door anymore.
I didn't used to, but I do now. I watch my kids play in the yard and I worry terribly about my family's future as I wait for the surgery I hope fixes my illness; wondering what will happen if it doesn't, and I would like to tell you that this has given me new appreciation for Christmas and what it means.
But that's not true.
I am not any more thankful for the love God has shown me than I was before, I couldn't be. And I am not thankful for this trial, I couldn't be. I have no idea what the future holds I just know I'm too tired to hold onto it so I pray.
And I complain a little and write an "O poor me" bit, but I'm done now.
I am very sad and very scared and I feel very alone because there is nothing I can do and consoling words won't fix this. So if you have read this and are the praying sort then please do. And if you know someone who is sick with pain, try to believe them.
I am out of things to say.
God Bless
Merry Christmas
Enjoy.
In 2007 I was diagnosed with a Chiari 1 malformation. What that means is that the part of my skull where the base of my brain and my brain stem and spinal chord all come together is constricted because by cerebellum is too low in the back of my head. This creates pressure in the area resulting, most commonly, in migraine headaches. I had my first migraine when I was fourteen years old.
For those of you who have never had a migraine this is not the same thing as having a headache. A migraine is when your head declares war on your life. It makes the little things like light, sound, motion, etc intolerable at best and nauseating at worst. The best thing is that when vomiting occurs it makes the migraine worse thus making vomiting more likely... you get the point.
The reason why I found out I had this condition was because I had torn up my right shoulder and by the grace of God the MRI just happened to barely glimpse the malformation thus alerting my doctors to my condition. It was decided shoulder surgery was the more pressing need and so that was performed, most admirably, by a lovely doctor who looked like Cameron from Ferris Bueller's Day Off whose name I cannot remember anymore.
I was scheduled to have the surgery for the Chiari 1 the following winter and was ten days out from my surgical consult on Feb 1 2008 when I was run over in the parking lot at work. Of course being laid up in bed put off the surgery and while I was in the hospital I got a migraine and the nurse gave me tylenol and phenegran for it which cleared it up quite nicely. My surgeon decided that if my headaches, which were still the worst of my symptoms, could be handled with medication then surgery was unnecessary. I figured if a guy who stands to make a not inconsiderable amount of money on me tells me to not do it, then that advice is worth taking.
So for two plus years this was how I dealt with it. I missed more work than I should because I would get bad migraines which would lay me up for a few days at a time. I took sick time some times because of them but I managed to scrape by and be a reasonably productive person. Our family sacrificed vacations etc because I invariably used up that time being ill but my wife, saint that she is, did not complain inordinately, at least not to me. So we pressed on.
Until this year. When even the pain pills stopped working. Understand I don't take codeine or vicodin because I am allergic to them so I have to take non-narcotic pain pills which are little more than really strong tylenol, but they did the trick when needed. This year however they stopped working. My doctor and I began to discuss surgery again and tried to make contact with the surgeon I had before only to be put off again and again before finally being told that he is only a spine specialist now and so would not be able to help me. We switched to another doctor and targeted trying to have the surgery at the turn of the year.
Then in October I slid off the edge with my health.
The first thing I noticed is that I was tired all of the time. No matter how much i slept or how early I went to bed, foreswearing coffee and five hour energy etc I was tired all of the time. Then my migraines got worse. Not only had they been bad all year, but I reached the point where my head hurt all the time no mater what I did. I had a low level headache or migraine at all times and consequently I had even more trouble sleeping because laying down on my hurting head made it hurt worse which made my exhaustion even more pronounced. Then I started forgetting stuff, and I mean really simple things like things at my job that I have known for years I would forget how to do and would sit for a half hour and try to remember how to do. Then I started falling. For no reason I would be walking along and suddenly I would just be on the ground. Now my hands shake, my vision is messed up and my equilibrium is so shot I feel like I'm drunk every time I walk across the room.
The result of this is that I have missed, besides the last three months of my life, a lot, A LOT of time at work and am currently on disability because my doctor doesn't think I am safe to drive a truck and my boss can't give me light duty. Of course my company is not in the habit of paying people to sit on disability while they wait for surgery so who knows if any of this time off will be approved. I sure don't know. My surgery is scheduled for the first week of January and I spend my time mostly hoping for no more setbacks.
And do you know what the worst part is? My sister.
My sister destroyed her back in a work accident when she was nineteen years old. She is now forty-three and is permanently disabled after struggling with this for twenty-three years. She just became disabled in the last year and is now in school so she can get off the government dole. I remember when I walked a little prouder and talked a lot louder how I used to think, "Oh yeah your back hurts... Bitch we got rent to pay!" And now the shoe is on the other foot.
The problem is that you can be sick with anything in this country as long as other people can see it, or have heard of it enough to know it is serious. No one dares call a person with MS or Cancer or HIV lazy because they just can't do the front yard today. But if you are sick with pain... People get headaches and they get backaches but they don't understand that it is possible for pain to take the world away. They don't understand that your body will steal your life and force you to surrender so much ground that you can't even make it to the front door anymore.
I didn't used to, but I do now. I watch my kids play in the yard and I worry terribly about my family's future as I wait for the surgery I hope fixes my illness; wondering what will happen if it doesn't, and I would like to tell you that this has given me new appreciation for Christmas and what it means.
But that's not true.
I am not any more thankful for the love God has shown me than I was before, I couldn't be. And I am not thankful for this trial, I couldn't be. I have no idea what the future holds I just know I'm too tired to hold onto it so I pray.
And I complain a little and write an "O poor me" bit, but I'm done now.
I am very sad and very scared and I feel very alone because there is nothing I can do and consoling words won't fix this. So if you have read this and are the praying sort then please do. And if you know someone who is sick with pain, try to believe them.
I am out of things to say.
God Bless
Merry Christmas
Monday, December 19, 2011
Funny Church Signs
I like it when well meaning people say silly things while trying to mean well.
Nothing says holiness and peace quite like this does.
Cuz man have you seen the cost of gas these days.
This one is funny because I found it on a Calvinist website.
I am sure the Almighty appreciates being compared to a soft drink. By the way does God go well with bourbon?
Ever hugged a cactus?
I think this one speaks for itself
When are the martians gonna beam you guys up? This is the THIRD one of these I have seen.
eeeeyeah...
I am not joining this Church
I can't decide what is more insulting...
A) God's love is best expressed with fridge magnets
B) God just might be too poor to buy a fridge.
Merry Christmas
Nothing says holiness and peace quite like this does.
Cuz man have you seen the cost of gas these days.
This one is funny because I found it on a Calvinist website.
I am sure the Almighty appreciates being compared to a soft drink. By the way does God go well with bourbon?
Ever hugged a cactus?
I think this one speaks for itself
When are the martians gonna beam you guys up? This is the THIRD one of these I have seen.
eeeeyeah...
I am not joining this Church
I can't decide what is more insulting...
A) God's love is best expressed with fridge magnets
B) God just might be too poor to buy a fridge.
Merry Christmas
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
What Karma Isn't
Karma noun often capitalized : the force generated by a person's actions held in Hinduism and Buddhism to perpetuate transmigration and in its ethical consequences to determine the nature of the person's next existence
I hear lots of people say things like "Karma's a bitch" when people who do bad things then have some calamity befall them. There is this sort of persistent blending that equates the Bible teaching anything done will paid back seven fold, the old saw of "What goes around comes around, and Karma as though Karma has a place is the Christian vocabulary.
The problem is that Karma (according to the Hindus and Buddhists) is the force which transmigrates the soul. In other it doesn't kick in until after reincarnation.
Or reintarnation if you are coming back as a red neck.
>pause for writer's laughter<
I know this is not original to me but its a funny joke.
So when the person who flips over an innocuous comment, say... oh i don't know, wrecks his car on the way home. It does not mean that Karma has gotten even with him. It means that something he did in his past life is now catching up with him.
Freaking only guarantees he will come back as a deer tick in is next life.
Or ya know an actor.
So anyway I just wanted to drop you all a quick little note to improve religious vocabulary and I hoped this helps.
Have a nice day.
But remember if you do it is because you were a good butterfly in your last life.
C'mon cow....
I hear lots of people say things like "Karma's a bitch" when people who do bad things then have some calamity befall them. There is this sort of persistent blending that equates the Bible teaching anything done will paid back seven fold, the old saw of "What goes around comes around, and Karma as though Karma has a place is the Christian vocabulary.
The problem is that Karma (according to the Hindus and Buddhists) is the force which transmigrates the soul. In other it doesn't kick in until after reincarnation.
Or reintarnation if you are coming back as a red neck.
>pause for writer's laughter<
I know this is not original to me but its a funny joke.
So when the person who flips over an innocuous comment, say... oh i don't know, wrecks his car on the way home. It does not mean that Karma has gotten even with him. It means that something he did in his past life is now catching up with him.
Freaking only guarantees he will come back as a deer tick in is next life.
Or ya know an actor.
So anyway I just wanted to drop you all a quick little note to improve religious vocabulary and I hoped this helps.
Have a nice day.
But remember if you do it is because you were a good butterfly in your last life.
C'mon cow....
Saturday, October 15, 2011
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.
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.
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