What Justice System?

Obviously there is not a single thing happening in the world today than the game of judicial ping-pong being played with Paris Hilton so I'm going to go with it. I don't care much about Paris one way or the other but her case does bring attention to a few points I think are relevant.

If the purpose of our judicial system is, as we usually claim, to protect the safety of the public, protect the rights of individuals, and last but not least...change the behaviour of the offender then I have to ask: WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOING????

One side screaming "free Paris" and the other side screaming for her blood. Both sides are idiots. Paris is a vacuous, narcissistic little bitch who has been raised by a vacuous, narcissistic bitch. We have a few million of those running around the country, this one just happens to be filthy rich and famous...courtesy of a vacuous and narcissistic public.

Making her stay off of our streets for 45 days certainly increases public safety so I don't have an issue with that regardless of where she spends that time. That covers the public safety aspect.

Protecting her rights doesn't seem to be an issue, there are dozens of people vying to protect every strand of well-bleached hair on her head.

Changing behavior is a bit more problematic though isn't it? Does anyone know a single person who became a better person via an extended incarceration? I don't and I worked in the system. Some got meaner, many got sneakier, a few who were lucky enough to get some help via rehabilitation services did improve their lives and their behavior. I had to conclude that "punishment" does not work, all it does is satisfy our need for retribution. Often it leads to even more tragedy for some innocent person down the road. I can't really lobby for harsher punishment for this idiot than I would for a penniless idiot when I don't believe it would be very productive in either case.

If we're serious about wanting this young woman to change her behaviour I'd suggest we stop screaming for either her release or her blood and sit down and write to the networks requesting no further coverage of her antics. While you're at it please consider adding Donald Trump, Rosie O'Donnell, and a few dozen others to your "do not cover" request. Quit feeding trolls.

If we're serious about improving our so called "justice system" then now is a great time to put our money where our mouths are and start looking at ways we can honestly bring some reason and justice to the system instead of just howling for revenge based upon how much we dislike a particular person.

9/11: The Ultimate Excuse for Whining

I should know better than to flip on the news at 4 in the morning before I've even had a cup of coffee.

First thing I see is one Mr. Ed Root, president of the Families of Flight 93 whining because a landowner doesn't want to give away 273 acres of his land to the National Park Service to build a memorial.

I'm truly sorry that innocent people died on that flight and I'm sorry for the pain that has caused their friends and families but I have to tell you: innocent people die every single day and we do not confiscate private property from people in order to build them shrines. Mr. Root you can count yourself darned lucky it's Mr. Svonavec's land you're after and not mine because if someone died on mine I'd probably allow the families to visit if they wished but I'd be highly unlikely to sell my land for a public memorial because I consider enshrining a piece of ground an idiotic and wasteful use of land. Mr. Svonavec is willing to sell at a reasonable price, for a purpose as silly as that I'd only sell at a ridiculous price if I were willing to sell at all.

Offer to build 273 homes for families who don't have a prayer of ever owning a square foot of their own as a tribute to your fallen and I'd sell it to you, dirt cheap. Don't ask me to kiss your butts for a shiny monument to feed our national obsession for maudlin sentimentality.

Root claims the families offered Svonavec more than $2,000 an acre for his 273 acres. The group argues that $1,000 to $2,000 an acre is fair market value for the properties in the area.

So far, 60 acres of the 1,300 planned for the memorial have been purchased.

Root said Svonavec rejected the offer, which would amount to more than $546,000, and said he wanted to deal directly with the National Park Service, which is in charge of building the permanent memorial.

"He's holding this project and the American people hostage," said Root, whose cousin, Lorraine Bay, was a flight attendant on Flight 93.

Svonavec said he has maintained from the beginning that he would only negotiate a sale with the park service. He said he is awaiting that offer.

No he is not "holding the American people hostage". You are trying to hold him hostage. It's his land, he can jolly well tell you to jump off a cliff if it suits him. Why on earth would he want to try and negotiate any sort of deal with a whiny windbag like you. You'd probably turn right around and look for some reason to sue him as soon as the deal was closed.

A donation box placed at the Flight 93 Temporary Memorial in Somerset County has revealed a major battle brewing over land that one victim's family member calls the "soul" of the permanent memorial planned to honor those aboard the flight.

Family members said the metal donation box, installed by property owner Mike Svonavec, degrades the memory of their 40 loved ones, who died when hijackers took over the plane on Sept. 11, 2001.

Before Sept. 11, 2001, Svonavec leased the land for surface mining. Since that time, mining operations ceased, and Svonavec claims he's had financial losses amounting to $200,000.

He said he decided to place the donation box at the site on Saturday because his company has been paying $10,000 a month for security since February, when $1 million in federal funding that paid for sheriff's deputies to monitor the crash site ended.

There you go, he's been paying $10,000 a month for security out of his own pocket. I'd just have everyone arrested for trespassing and have done with it. Count yourselves lucky it's him you're dealing with.

If building a billion dollar white elephant on 10,000 acres of land is the only way you can think of to honor your dead then I pity you. I wouldn't pay 1 cent to build anything in remembrance of an act committed by a handful of psychopaths. For certain I do not think you have the right to foist your wishes on a property owner unlucky enough to find himself in the center of all of this.

Grow up Mr. Root. Your relative dying in a terrible act did not suddenly entitle you to trample over the rights of other citizens and building a shrine will not bring them back nor will it do anything to improve the lives of those still living on this earth. For my money I'm more interested in improving life for those still among us than in building temples for the dead.

NY Times

Blah, Blah, Blah

Politics Plus and Blue Lyon both have decent breakdowns of the Democratic debate. I only have an unreasonable one because I found it neither particularly illuminating or inspiring.

There were some entertaining moments.

Just like CLS at Blue Lyon I did nearly bust a gut laughing when Clinton essentially told Blitzer to stop being an asstard. I had just been fantasizing about breaking a chair over his head.

Gravel is clearly headed for a career as a protest sign waver on a Pahrump streetcorner.

I knew Kucinich wanted to destroy the US economy but he was kind enough to explain how he planned to do it in more detail.

Richardson sucks at public speaking and it's killing him. He is not pretty and that is also killing him.

Edwards is pretty. He and the party "base" both still give me the willies.

Obama and Biden did a good job of looking less stupid than anyone else. Both of them were articulate, probably clean too.

Dodd said something or other. I forget.

Conclusions:

1. Looking more and more like I may have to pick a 2nd choice in the not-too-distant future and that is going to be a problem. Or maybe not, it would be either Obama or Clinton so I suppose I could just flip a coin. Economic ruin -vs- permanent bases in Iraq, decisions, decisions.

2. I don't like my party all that much, I just hate Republicans more.

3.The one thing the media did right: picked reasonably normal human beings without a
hardcore party agenda on either side to ask reasonably intelligent questions.

4. If Gravel and Kucinich had a child together it would be a species ending event.

5. Saying that we have the best political system in the world is about like saying we scored 5 points higher on the SAT than a guy with Down's syndrome. Don't get cocky.

God, Country and the War on Furriners

This would be funny if it was satire and not true.

From the Las Vegas Review Journal:

If Sen. Hillary Clinton had unveiled a plan to deport the millions of illegal immigrants living in the United States, Susan Woodall would have been even happier about having driven 90 minutes from Pahrump to Las Vegas to attend an appearance Wednesday by the Democratic presidential candidate.

Susan Jones-Davis, who drove her cousin Woodall to Las Vegas from Pahrump, appreciated Clinton's desire to end the war in Iraq.

One of her sons has already served in Iraq. Another is slated to go Monday.

They'd like to end the war but only if we can get rid of Mexicans at the same time. Our kids are dying but we mustn't lose focus of our mission which is to rid our world of little foreign born brown people.

Is it any wonder that the US has only granted refuge to 69 Iraqis in the last 7 months while thousands have been admitted to Syria, Jordan, Iran, the UK, Switzerland, Sweden and a host of other countries?

Good to know where Americans priorities are.

Hat tip: Las Vegas Gleaner

Is anyone else seeing the the irony here? The first person our brilliant government decides to lock up in quarantine is a personal injury attorney.

I'm still laughing my ass off.

So Anyway.....

You have this friend who you love very much. You'd do just about anything for this friend because, well shoot, you believe this friend has the potential to do great things because they are great and you just know they could be even greater.

Problem is, this friend is incredibly self-destructive. Forever making terrible choices for even worse reasons and then even lies about it. You're not even sure if your friend knows she's lying or if she's been doing it so long she actually believes her own lies.

After years of doing this your friend has jumped into a completely destructive relationship with a man she got some crazy notion she could "save" from himself. Naturally this hasn't worked out very well. After a brief honeymoon period he resumed his old ways and even added a few new tricks. He tells her how much he hates her every day, in word and in deed. Your friend is black and blue from the beatings and she's thrown away untold amounts of her money trying to save this man but he only grows angrier with her and more violent. She abuses him as well and uses her money and her promises trying to control and manipulate him and back and forth they go.

You still love your friend but finally you've come to realize that much as she cannot save the man she is involved with, you can't save her from her own bad choices. You'll always love her and you'll be there to help if she ever comes to her senses and puts an end to her situation but in the meantime you just can't agonize over her troubles anymore and you can't cry every time she is beaten again and for certain you are not going to continue driving yourself or her insane trying to force her to see reality because you understand that people have to be willing to save themselves or no amount of talking, arguing or trying to help will be of any use. Most of all you know that you have to take care of yourself or you won't be able to help anybody with anything at all. You hope your friend figures this out before it's too late for her.

It isn't apathy America, it's just that I can't stay excited about your situation when you won't do anything about it. Please call when you're ready to get your life together.

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Just Because I Feel Like It

I had an e-mail from someone and they said something that really struck me as funny, "It seems like if you don't rant about Iraq or the latest screw-up by Kos, the numbers drop." That isn't terribly important to me. If it was, I could write "hit pieces" all day and probably do at least a fair job of it, trust me on that.

I'm pretty much tired of ranting about Iraq, like I said, if America was serious about getting out we'd be out. Most of America isn't quite there yet and that doesn't surprise me much either, most of the country is usually running a mile or two behind me. We're going to get out but not before we muck around for another 6 months to a year. There isn't anything I can do to change that. Kos, well, if I visit there once a month that would be a lot for me. I don't care all that much if they do screw up but if someone wants a daily dose of outrage and titillation on demand I'd recommend them because even though I may have stored up a lifetime of outrage I'm not always inclined to produce it on cue. I'm not getting paid to do this and I wouldn't want to be, I do this because it's the first time in my life I have not been in a position where I have to "mind what I say" or worry about the consequences. I'll write it when I'm feeling it. Or I'll post a giant picture of my ass. Depends how I'm feeling.

Today I was feeling sick of the news so I turned it off and went outside. I spent most of the day doing absolutely nothing except make random half-hearted stabs at pulling weeds, watching the half billion birds we have living here and taking pictures of any random thing that caught my eye. Sorry if that's boring but I wasn't up to dealing with the body count tally for today.

This one is for RJ Adams. It's my baby chitalpa in bloom. Those are mountains behind it. Nevada is not flat.

Lamb's ears that have colonized in odd places. Random, careless gardening is my style.


My dearest companion. Yes, she probably does outweigh Paris Hilton.

A small toad I found hiding under my huechera.

Tonight's sunset as seen from my back yard.



That's it for me for tonight. No outrage, no bodycounts and I'll still be around tomorrow and the day after whether I have a "hitcount" or not. People can ignore me, they can never make me go away.

Osama is Bush's Mama

In case anyone was in doubt about who has been running the show here.



There are over 300 million of us. We have the most destructive war toys on the planet, just ask the Japanese. We have a huge chunk of the money in the world too. What are we so afraid of?

Where I Was in January: You Didn't Listen Then, You Probably Won't Listen Now

Rather than continue trying to explain myself in comments sections I'm just going to re-run an old post from January of this year. It holds just as true of my stance now as it did then.

Monday, January 08, 2007

Take a Lesson From Rosa

The last few days I've been reading a lot of complaints about the new democratic congress coming from some of the same people who have helped to elect them. For the record: I was one of the people who voted a straight democratic ticket, for all the good that did here in Nevada.

The complaints center around the perception that congress is not doing or going to do anything to bring our troops home. Never mind they've only been in office since last week, we want what we want and we want it NOW. Well alrighty then, my grandbaby likes things that way too. She'd like her mother home ASAP. She'd be especially thrilled to know her mother would have no chance of being redeployed either. Now that you mention it, so would I.

One particular post by Profmarcus at Yes, I Do Take it Personally has particularly gotten under my skin. Not because it makes me angry or I disagree but because I believe he's sincere, frustrated and as frightened about what has happened to our country as I am. We only differ on the point of who we hold accountable for our failure to act. I left this comment to his post:

Pushing some much needed and highly populist social issues is not a terrible idea. They need to build "political capital" with the center. You can't spend what you do not yet have. Reality: congress does not have the power to bring the troops home. They have the pulpit. Even if they were foolish enough to attempt to cut off funding and commit political suicide, the truth is there are 50 million ways Bush & Co. can get around them. In the meantime I'm keeping my ears tuned to any news that starts to come out re: findings from oversight committees. There is most likely where your ammo for impeachment will come from. And they will need a great deal of ammo AND the overwhelming goodwill of the voters to do it without handing the game back to the republicans.

I caught a bit of flak for that and that was fine. Better than fine, I fully expected to because they had no way of knowing where I was going with this.

To summarize a couple of points made by Brother Tim:

I differ with your opinion that it would be political suicide. Also, they HAVE the political capital, it was given to them on November 7. Doing nothing, and allowing this to go on, creating ever-increasing casualties, is political suicide.What is it gonna take to spur Congress into action?

I can accept that, he may indeed be correct. Being as pessimistic as I have become about the "will" of a people who have voted in the Emperor-Who-Has-No-Clothes not just once but twice, I may be underestimating the hearts and minds of my countrymen.

That leaves the question of what is it going to take. I have an answer for that. Us, we the people, our will, our actions. That's it in a nutshell.

Sorry but blocking the Emperor's driveway or getting ourselves kicked out of political venues will not do it, picketing is not going to do it and deliberately getting ourselves arrested for misdemeanors is not going to do it. It might get us publicity and give us our 15 minutes of fame, it will not end the war.

Rosa Parks understood this when she sat down on that bus. She also understood that the issue was not about her. She was one person and she was tired. She started a revolution because a whole lot of folks were tired too. Ms. Parks never tried to make it about her, she knew she would have gone nowhere with her stance if the people were not behind her. The people were behind her though.

So there's your answer people. If we really want to stop this thing, if we really want to bring our troops home and if we honestly and truly believe that it is the will of the American people to do this, then lets all sit down on this bus.

Call a nationwide strike, don't buy, sell, work or contribute to this economy in any non-essential way. For one day. Just one day. Give our new congress their mandate, tell them that no, we aren't going to slap you down come next election for stopping this bus, we give you our permission to stop this thing by any means necessary. In fact, we DEMAND that you do it.
If we cannot or will not do that then it's all talk and we have no will. We're just talking to the hand.

Rant du Jour: Why People Might Hate Us

I was optimistic about the new immigration bill. For about 5 minutes. After looking at it more closely it looks like a calculated move towards creating a permanent servant class in the US. Politics Plus has a good breakdown of it if you haven't already looked it over.

Sorry, several countries in the middle east have tried versions of that...the Saudi's with their guestworkers, the Lebanese with their never-to-be-assimilated refugees, etc.

This is not the fucking middle east and I do not need to keep underpaid workers with few if any rights, to clean my toilets. I know how to clean my own damned toilet. When I decide I'm too fancy to do that I'll pay $15 an hour to a willing worker with health insurance to do it, m'kay? And no, I am not willing to pay farm workers less than a living wage just so I can get cheaper salad greens. That's because I'm an American and this is America and REAL Americans don't play that way. If you're willing to consign any group of people to an artificially manufactured underclass please move to Saudi Arabia right now because even though we seldom manage to live up to our ideals we still have them and we're still trying to live up to them and what we do not need are asshats trying to take us backwards on this path.

Bill Richardson had much the same take on it (gee, big surprise there) which will likely make him quite unpopular in some quarters but hey, both of us are accustomed to being unpopular for some of our stances and it has not slowed either of us down one whit.

Mr. Richardson initially said he would support the immigration compromise announced earlier this week. But on Wednesday, he said that after reading it in detail, he had decided to oppose it, saying the measure placed too great a burden on immigrants — tearing apart families that wanted to settle in the United States, creating a permanent tier of second-class immigrant workers and financing a border fence that Mr. Richardson had long opposed.

“This is fundamentally flawed in its current form, and I would oppose it,” he said. “We need bipartisanship, but we also need legislation that is compassionate. I’m not sure that this is.”

He is the first major Democrat to call explicitly for defeat of the bill in its current form, a decision that he said would no doubt echo across the presidential playing field and in Washington. And his is a voice that carries particular weight: he grew up in Mexico, but went on to became a state governor who once declared a state of emergency in response to turmoil and violence on the border caused by illegal immigrants.

“I’m going to be speaking out on this issue, given that I’m a border governor and my heritage,” he said. “Maybe it won’t help me nationally — but I believe it is my responsibility to do that and not take a mushy position. I notice everyone else is taking murky positions.”

Naturally the pundits don't get it:

But Brian Sanderoff, the head of a New Mexico polling firm, said Mr. Richardson had handled the issue adroitly in New Mexico, presenting himself as both tough and compassionate. Mr. Sanderoff said that might serve Mr. Richardson well as he tried to navigate this more complicated national terrain.

“This is typical Bill Richardson,” he said. “Bill Richardson tends to take a middle of the road empathetic position with an act of toughness with it. That’s Bill. He’s hard to pigeonhole as being definitely anti-immigration or pro-immigration. He’s going to take a middle stance where he’ll seem to have positions on both sides of the fence.”

Well no Mr. Retardo. It isn't a fence-straddling issue. It's a case of both entrenched sides doing what they usually do, trying to define a broad issue into two simple, narrow camps. Richardson is smart enough to know there is a goddamn difference between drug runners and economic refugees. Aside from humanitarian considerations he's also smart enough to know that it's bad policy to start alienating any population living within ones borders...especially when their cousins live right next door. There's also a world of difference between rampant, unchecked immigration and our current immigration policies which effectively lock out nearly everyone trying to come here legally, especially people from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Oh, except Cuba because we hate Castro so much we're willing to give carte blanche to anyone just to spite him.

There's an idea, hey Mexico, overthrow your government and put a socialist in charge and we'll break out the welcome wagon.

I heard Michael Chertoff the other day talking about our approaches to terrorism and he said in the future we face a growing threat from "individual, independant terrorist cells" and stated the "we are studying the matter to try and figure out what radicalizes people". Doh, this one is not rocket science Mikey. How about doing shit like call their mother a "cockroach"? Would do it for me.

Figure that one out or shut up when some little boys grow up hating you and get together to kill a bunch of you because when they were 5 years old some assmonkey in Pennsylvania decided to deport their parents.

NY Times

Progressives Please Calm Down

Please. I mean it. We're about to cut our own throats here and that's exactly what the Cracker-Barrel party wants us to do. Stop playing right into their hands, calm down, take a deep breath and think this through logically.

The Iraq war bill as it was written was never going to pass. Not if we sent it back 50 thousand times. In the meantime funding was going to run out and whether or not it actually ended up affecting the "troops on the ground", the Republicans were going to play that to the hilt. And lo and behold, a huge percentage of America was going to buy it.

Democrats are in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" position here and it is our fault. Both the sign and don't sign camps need to get a little reality here. "WE" can't agree or even get a majority on one side or the other....how in the HELL do you expect the elected leadership to???

If Americans had been serious about getting us out of Iraq, guess what? We'd already be out of there. We'd have stood up and stood our ground and it would be a done deal. We did not do that. No, we didn't do it for a lot of reasons but one I believe is the most significant: we don't want to accept responsibility for our choices. We want someone else to make the decision so if and when there are negative outcomes we will have someone else to blame and boot out of office.

This is exactly the way we've been playing the game for, well, forever and this is exactly why we have elected leaders waffling all over the House floor. We did not stand up to Dubya when he decided to invade Iraq because we were scared. If we stood up and said no and omg, Saddam DID do something to us...it would be our fault too! Can't have that now can we? So we swallowed the bullshit and kept our mouths shut so if things went south we'd have someone to blame. That worked out really nicely too. We can all scream at der Chimper for the mess he's made but nearly everyone seems to have forgotten that OVER 70% of Americans WENT RIGHT ALONG WITH IT.

So now I hear the Democratic base threatening to bash in the brains of any Democrat who dares to sign the amended bill. Do you think they aren't calculating the odds of you turning on them the first time something goes awry? The Republicans must be jumping for joy.

The saddest part of it all is it doesn't really matter. We're leaving anyway, most likely right after the next election...assuming Bushie can find enough troops to keep the current action going until then. If we are serious about ending it now we should stop working at cross purposes by attacking each other and get serious about removing Bush from office.

Race, Politics and Hip-Hop With Bill Moyers

Moyers interviews Melissa Harris-Lacewell. The sanest and truest discussion of race and politics in America I've heard yet. Bonus clip of Rush Limbaugh acting like the assmonkey he really is.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05182007/watch2.html

I Am Not Moving to Florida

Nothing too surprising there, naturally I'm sitting in the middle of one of the hot zones but we're pretty much prepared for extreme heat here and we don't get hurricanes so it still beats living in Florida.

While predicting an extremely active hurricane season with one hand, NOAA officials are cutting back on funding for "hurricane hunter" flights with the other. According to Philip Kenul of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this is for the sake of "efficiency" and will not impact upon the mission. I guess it has nothing at all to do with NOAA's plans to spend somewhere between 1.5 and 4 million dollars to put on a "200th anniversary" celebration.

It isn't all bad news for Florida though...a few good hurricanes could do much to relieve the drought. No worries though, Florida Baptists have discovered a surefire method for controlling the weather, pray for rain. Let us know how that works out for you.

I have no idea what kind of shenanigans the military is up to out here but there have been helicopters flying all over the top of us for over an over an hour and our house just nearly got a buzz cut from a helicopter. Literally. Missed the power lines by no more than a few feet. So much for going to sleep early. Not a thing on the news so no idea what is going on.

Update: Apparently they were just using me for target practice, no worries. Air Force to fly training missions over Pahrump.

"Most training is conducted in rural locations with targets out in the open on the Nevada Test and Training Range, but in the current combat situation in both Iraq and Afghanistan, our troops on the ground need support in both urban and rural environments, said Maj. Sean Lowe, 17th Weapons School instructor. "Pahrump provides an ideal setting for urban close air support training."

Yeah, we're ideal...just a bunch of expendable rural folks.

I also have a few more days of this to look forward to. Maybe I'll give them a call because they were nowhere close to 500 feet off the ground.

May 22: We did not get swooped upon tonight. Either they got too many complaints, checked the readouts and chewed ass on some hotshot flyboys, or found another neighborhood to swoop down on. Everything around us stayed up in the air where it belonged.

Naked City

The real reason Lou Dobbs and Tom Tancredo are scared. I totally support what photographer Isaac Esquivel was trying to do here but I do hope he never tries this in Pahrump. Just would not be a photo perfect moment in history.

Best Wishes for Riverbend and a Note to Iraqis

"I always hear the Iraqi pro-war crowd interviewed on television from foreign capitals (they can only appear on television from the safety of foreign capitals because I defy anyone to be publicly pro-war in Iraq). They refuse to believe that their religiously inclined, sectarian political parties fueled this whole Sunni/Shia conflict. They refuse to acknowledge that this situation is a direct result of the war and occupation. They go on and on about Iraq's history and how Sunnis and Shia were always in conflict and I hate that. I hate that a handful of expats who haven't been to the country in decades pretend to know more about it than people actually living there."

I had missed the news that Riverbend and her family were leaving Iraq. I may have been the only one in the known universe that missed it but anyway, there it is. I wish them all the best of luck in the world and yes, I'm glad they have decided to go.

I don't know what political spin if any people in the middle east are hearing but the fact is we are leaving so unless one believes everything will be hearts and daisies as soon as the US troops are gone....LEAVE NOW. Do whatever you can and need to do to save yourselves and your families and do it quickly.

Quit worrying about who our next elected president is going to be, in this matter it will not matter. We'll be leaving regardless of who ends up running the show. Ok, worry if it's Giuliani because he'd enjoy pulling out our troops then sending some bombs over as a parting gift. Believe it or don't at your own risk. It just seems like it's only fair to tell you the truth so you can get a head start if you believe a run for the border is your best option.

Ok, I'm no one important, I have no inside information and I certainly have no power to affect any of the actions or outcomes of this situation but I do have eyes in my head and my hearing hasn't gone south yet. America has decided and hi-ho, hi-ho, it's home from Iraq we'll go and all the king's neo-cons and all the kings gen's cannot and will not put Iraq together again.

Spoken Like a True American Conservative

Speaking of our right wing and wormlike creatures, Reenee at Hasta Los Gatos Quieren Zapatos got this comment from one anonymous poster.

Seems you only like people of your own race, religion or political view. Shameful that Most of YOU are illegal and living in my country on phony social security numbers. Get a life you lesbian liberal loser.

Keep it up anonymous guy. You and your friends are the best recruiting tools the Democratic party has ever had. Emphasis on tools. In the meantime if you're short on cash, why not do your part to support the troops, I hear the army is offering extra large enlistment bonuses.

Race, Politics and Oops, Fox does It Again

All modern men are descended from wormlike creatures, but it shows more on some people.
-- Will Cuppy

Someone (actually several someones), somewhere far, far away on another blog commented on not seeing the connection between racial/ethnic identity and political affiliation.

Now had these someones been American I'd have probably not paid much attention because they'd have obviously been from our ultra-right wing and I do get tired of wasting my breath trying to teach pigs to sing. As it happened they were not Americans and were primarily from that population of folks in the middle east who have bought the right-wing spin that the Republican party cares about the people of Iraq and Democrats only want to cut and run.

I saw a bit on Fox's "1/2 Hour Comedy Show" a few days back that would have illustrated the point here beautifully. Sadly after endless time wasted searching the net, there is no clip of it available. They were poking fun at pregnant women in the workplace. I had no idea that was such a big issue in the country recently but apparently it is to at least some Fox viewers, enough for them to do a parody skit about it in any case.

In the skit the 2 news anchors interview a guest spokesperson for the "pregnant working mothers" movement (for the record and non-US readers, to the best of my knowledge there is no such organized or even dis-organized movement in the US). This "spokesperson" was, ta-da, a pregnant (read full-term, going to give birth any time) woman and the kicker: HISPANIC woman. Now if one does not live in this country you might not be familiar with the all too commonly heard "Mexican women are always pregnant and breeding like cockroaches" and sorry but you are not going to convince me this was not a deliberate choice to play to that particular attitude. They played it up to the hilt right up to having the lady's "water break" in the middle of the interview. There is the rightwing idea of humor. Pardon me for not laughing.

Yes, real live American people say things like that on a daily basis right here in good old US of A. They say a lot of similar and even worse things about just about every other racial or ethnic group on the planet too. You don't even have to try very hard to locate people who say these things. The bad news for Republicans is that almost always these people are members of the Republican party, Republican voters, and quite often define themselves as "Christians" and "conservatives".

Of course it does not mean all Republicans are racists any more than it means all Democrats are not racists but the preponderance of the evidence is in and racism is much more an accepted ideology on the right. A racist Democrat is an anomaly, something most of us find freakish and revolting. A racist Republican is so common it rarely draws comment.

Granted, the "official" Republican party line is that all are welcome and racism is unacceptable. then they trot out the handful of minority members they have for the media and say "see, we are diverse" but you can't really sell that line to the masses when you don't really walk the walk in real life. Especially not when most of your hardcore "base" are the same people still waxing nostalgic for segregation.

There was also a comment (on the far away blog, not on Fox) about how people "should not choose their political affiliation because of their race or choose to identify with a specific race". Nice ideal, I'd like to see everyone self-identify as members of the human race but see...it isn't really a choice when the society you live in identifies it for you and treats you accordingly. I could "choose" to call myself Chinese-American all day long or any other thing that suited my fancy but it would not change the way people around me identified me or the way they interracted with me based on that perception.

So there's my response to the connection. Believe it, don't believe it, get mad or get glad, it won't change a thing about what really exists and why yes, there is a connection.

Having a Profanity Filled Moment, If It Bothers You, LEAVE NOW

Bill O' just keeps getting loonier every day. Either that or he's just senile. Not too surprising he's having a hissy over the blogosphere reactions to the death of Jerry Falwell. According to Bill people ought to treat the subject with more "decency and respect". Says Mr. Bill: we should at least wait two weeks before commenting. Um, sure. Just like you did with the deaths of the woman and 9 children in the New York fire.

I guess well-known public figures are off limits but it's ok to say anything you want about innocent children. Bitch please, Falwell was a big boy and knew what he was doing. When you put yourself in the public eye to the degree Falwell did, you know you are going to take some heat. I think we all know you are pretty handy with dishing it out yourself to anyone who doesn't happen to agree with you so kindly shut the fuck up. You want to talk smack but oh how you whine when it touches one of your sacred monkeys. Suck it up. Besides, you know when someone that you detest dies you'll be dancing an Irish jig and singing hallelujah and praise Jesus. Oh wait...you've already done that before.

And while you're busy whining about how mean and spiteful the left-wing blogs are take a look at some of your kinfolk on the right. Moonbattery pissing and moaning about how utterly tasteless the San Francisco gay community was in marking the passing of Falwell. Guess they forgot about writing this: Death of a Moonbat. So much for your famed conservative respect for the deceased.

Note to wingnuts: you have to give a little respect to expect to get any. Now fuck off and die.