BS Moment of Silence Part 2: Arizona Legislature off the rails and the most hateful Christians in America

 I want to start this post by introducing you to the equivalent of radical Islam living right here in the United States.  The world appropriately looks down on Al Qaeda and radical clerics because they take a beautiful peaceful religion and turn it into a brutal, hateful mechanism of pain.  I have heard people who denigrate Muslims paint the entire religion of Islam with a broad brush due to the actions of this minority.  I wonder if those same folks paint Christianity the same way when they hear about the actions of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas.  These are the people who proclaim in the name of the lord to hate homosexuals and to show their hate, they picket the funerals of homosexuals or any funeral or event they can somehow link to homosexuality.   Here is a link to the Wikipedia site about the group:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church

This group is nuts but also in my opinion wholly insincere, what this group is really about is getting attention for this group.  They regularly picket that bastion of homosexual lifestyle, Kansas City Chiefs home games, the NFL is a lot of things positive and negative but a big gay pride festival it is not.  This group claims to have an annual travel budget of $200,000 and that money must come from donations and I say shame on anyone contributing to this hate group.

So the Westboro Baptist Church has announced it will protest at the funeral of the nine-year old girl who was shot in Tucson earlier this week that targeted Congresswoman Giffords.  In watching CNN today the network appropriately reached out to the church to get a statement from them, it is fair to hear both sides of the story.  In full character the church responded with a hateful rant including accusations about everyone including the little girl.  I think the Westboro Baptist Church is a collection of the most hateful Christians in America and if there is a Christian God, I’m quite sure he has a one-way ticket to Hell punched for these cretins. 

As someone with a Libertarian bent, and a strong believer in the freedom the constitution guarantees, I will wait and see what the Supreme Court says this spring about whether or not this type of speech can be banned.  It worries me on some level to ban any speech that does not cause direct physical injury, the cliché screaming fire in a crowded theater.  The infliction of emotional harm is a much stickier issue and the one that the Supreme Court is facing and it will be interesting to see what they say.  Regardless, you are scum if you picket the funeral of a nine-year old girl for any reason!

Happily, the people of Arizona are fighting back against the nut jobs like people have done on many other occasions.  People have conducted anti-protests against the Westboro church ever since the Matthew Shepard funeral in Wyoming in 1998.  The way they do this is to wear giant angel wings and use these to block the view of the protestors by the mourners.  The image below comes from the Portland Independent Media Center at:

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/10/326599.shtml

Counter-protest Angels

Finally today I have a huge problem with what the nuts of the Arizona legislature are doing now.  They are rushing to pass a bill today to keep the protestors at some set distance away from any funeral.  They are waiving rules and are setting records in getting this law done and signed in one day.  Let’s be clear, their intent is to be commended, as I’ve said picketing a little girl’s funeral is despicable.  However, this church has been picketing military funerals for years and so once again today I ask the question why is congress so special?  Does the Arizona legislature only care about the mourning of families if they get killed standing nearby a congresswoman but not if they were killed in the line of duty in the military?  Or is it that they only care about their citizens when the media is watching?  I think the government of Arizona has shown in the last two years that it is completely off the rails.

Are we selling out Hispanic Americans in Arizona for Campaign Contributions?

Last year, two men showed up in Benson, Ariz., a small desert town 60 miles from the Mexico border, offering a deal.  This is the first line of a story from National Public Radio that I heard last week.  The story that followed completely pissed me off, it didn’t surprise me in any way but just added to my growing negative opinion of our government.  Apparently, prison corporations working through their lobbyists, and a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and even the name sounds sinister.  Legislative exchange, so legislation in exchange for what, well money of course, in the form of business dealings sure but money none-the-less.  So effectively, prison corporations in conjunction with ALEC met together in a hotel room in Washington, DC and came up with the verbiage for the Arizona Immigration Law that would put lots of illegal immigrants in prison for a very profitable government per diem for the illegals incarcerated.   Which works out for the Corrections Corporation of America since they foresee a significant portion of their future revenues coming from immigration enforcement and customs.

So the law was passed in Arizona and who cares where it was written, I mean it was objectively passed by the legal representatives of the state, right?  It was a popular bill once introduced, 36 co-sponsors immediately jumped on the bill, unheard of in the Arizona Legislature.  Then the bill went to the governor who I am sure carefully considered the bill and then objectively decided to sign it.  Well, maybe not so objectively, all 36 sponsors had received campaign contributions from the prison lobby and two of Governor Jan Brewer’s top aides are both former prison lobbyists.

So in essence, a bill that has been reviled around the nation, that puts a presumption of guilt on any Hispanic looking individual in the state of Arizona, is vindicated for being motivated by racism.  Worse than that, it is motivated by greed and the obsession of being re-elected to the point of selling your honor.  Now I think we all understand there is a racist element to the bill as well, so Hispanic American’s in Arizona are getting screwed due to racism and greed.  What the hell is happening to this country?  The link to the NPR story is below:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130833741

Why conservatives will win!

Once in a martial arts class a fellow student asked my instructor what type of fighter was the most dangerous.  He talked through the obvious skill advantages of karate, kung fu and even classical boxers but in the end he arrived at the conclusion that a street fighter was the most dangerous, simply because he was the most unpredictable.  As a kid who grew up in a tough neighborhood and spent a decent amount of time on the street, I can tell you that the toughest guy was not the biggest guy, it was the crazy guy.  Lots of times this was a skinny little guy but what made him so tough was that he was willing to do anything, for a minor infraction he’d hit you in the head with a brick.  This my friends is why the conservatives will win, because they are the crazy little skinny guy you met on the street.  They believe what they believe and will act disproportionately to the offense they have deemed committed. 

What will they win?  They’ll win power and influence in this country, the ability to control the flow and course of the discussion of information which will allow them to influence the majority of Americans.  The reason they’ll have this influence is because the majority of Americans take what they hear on TV, cable or some half-assed blog to be gospel.  They don’t question why or how a conclusion is reached just that they heard it from a source they’ve deemed credible.   Once they have given that credibility to a source they believe it completely which is why idiots like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh can gain traction saying the most outrageously stupid things, but don’t worry Sarah Palin can see Russia and Jan Brewer, Governor of Arizona can pick out an illegal alien just by looking at one!

So I have suggested the conservative right is the skinny crazy kid on the block and to substantiate this I have to prove that first they are crazy, and then that they are willing to go over the edge to make their point.  On to the first issue, how nutty are they?  In a recent Harris Interactive online poll, 24% of the respondents who identified themselves as Republicans believe that President Barack Obama is the Antichrist.  Ok, do I really need to go any further on the nutty front!  Additionally, as pointed out by Steve Mirsky in Scientific American, 22% of Republicans in the survey think that President Obama wants the terrorists to win, so that means 2% presumably think he is the Antichrist yet somehow he still wants the terrorists to lose, maybe it’s bad guy envy?  Ok, so we can be fairly confident the conservative right is nuts.

Now, on to the second point do they act disproportionately to the circumstances?  Personally, I would consider the deaths of 8 abortion doctors and multiple clinic bombings over the last couple of decades to qualify as an over reaction to legalized abortion.  This does not even get into discussing how the same people who feared the Teletubbies would turn their children gay, are ok with their children and everyone else’s children seeing horrid giant posters of aborted fetuses that they display for the general public.  A serious and disproportionate over reaction to disagreeing with a law.  It would be the equivalent of anti-logging activists on the left assassinating loggers.

Finally, I think the right in general to be just as hypocritical as the left and politicians in general, when Ronald Reagan or any Bush was in office the slogan was, “America love it or leave it.”  But now with Barack Obama in office you can suddenly hate America and hang out, my how things have changed, or have they?

To Jan Brewer, Governor of Arizona, kiss my shiny white Irish A@#!

Hello Governor Brewer let’s get something straight, you signed a bill that makes it a misdemeanor to be an illegal immigrant in Arizona so that local and state authorities can deal with the immigration issues your state is facing.  I understand the difficulties that southern Arizona in particular faces in regard to illegal immigration. You’ve taken a lot of static for that decision and your most recent response, a ripoff Kermit the Frog puppet singing reading is fun, is not only ridiculous but hypocritical.  Particularly in light of the fact that you say this action will not inspire racial profiling, of course you must be talking about the amended bill you signed removing the racial profiling language, so I wonder, Governor Brewer, did YOU read the first version of the bill you signed? Remember, reading is fun!

 If you go to this link: http://immigration.change.org/blog/view/frog_puppet_thinks_reading_and_arizona_sb_1070_is_fun you can see the stupid singing frog video and read a quick little snippet by Alex DiBranco where she quotes Arizona State Rep. Russell Pearce, the sponsor of SB 1070 who goes ahead and admits racial profiling was exactly what he had in mind: “Ninety percent of the illegal aliens in Arizona come from south of the border, so it [appearance] certainly may be a factor.”  At least he’s honest, Governor Brewer doesn’t have the same integrity.

I’m sick and tired of politicians on the right, so-called ”conservatives”, using bullshit reasons to be sexist, racist assholes.  I’m not racist, I’m just against illegal immigration they say, taking a break from telling their beaner and wet back jokes to face a camera.   Rush Limbaugh isn’t sexist as he refers to this or that woman as the news chick, or government chick, he’s just joking around, I mean hey. the term femonazi is a term of endearment, please.  Conservatives don’t understand how students wearing US Flag shirts to school on Cinco de Mayo could possibly be construed as anything other than patriotic.  Surely they are not trying to incite Mexican-American students.

Cut the shit, all of you, just stop, THIS IS AMERICA!  You want to be a patriot, aspire to the actual ideals this country was founded on, a nation where those who cannot find freedom or prosperity in their homeland can come and find it here.  That plaque on the statue of liberty is not just for decoration, nor was it ever intended to be conditional.  In this country we take the poor and the displaced as long as we are able, that’s patriotic.  My great-grandfather immigrated to this country from Ireland, you may have heard of a little something called the potato famine, if not, look it up!  When the Irish came to the US they were spit upon, maligned, beaten, killed and discriminated against.  But my people had an edge, we looked a hell of a lot like the people who were already here.  Mexicans and Latinos immigrating here legally or illegally have a much bigger hill to climb based on nothing more than the color of their skin.  These people are just as hard-working as my ancestors were, they come here and they work here to make a better life for their children, just like my great-grandfather and so many other Irish men and women did.  So Governor Brewer on behalf of myself and all of my Irish ancestors, kiss my shiny, white, Irish ass and get off the Mexican’s back!