It's hard to know, at this point, more of which has been spilled in the Gulf of Mexico since April 2o: Oil or ink. An impartial observer would have to say the former. The quantity of reporting has not left us wanting so much as the quality.
BP security guards have routinely turned away the press from public beaches. This is a first-rate affront to the Fourth Estate, which doesn't seem to mind, as it was trained so meticulously by the Bush adminstration. It is disappointing to see that the sons of the South have become so lax in repelling agents of a foreign country from our soil.
Southern spigotry is still alive and well, though, with all manner of regional Republicans trying desperately to blame BP's mess on President Obama. One lawmaker, Joe Barton of Texas, even had the gall to apologize to BP for the indignities they have endured by being asked to pay for their mistakes.
Through it all, the arrogance of BP has been personified by CEO Tony Hayward. First he said he wanted his life back. Then he said that Americans were inherently fraudulent and would try to weasel unwarranted money from the oil giant. His latest whereabouts: Sailing on a yacht in a race 'round the Isle of Wight, sponsored by the good people at J.P. Morgan.
So it becomes clear, what the proper response should be by the United States as it responds as best it can to the worst disaster to face us as a nation, worse even than 9/11. We must sack England.
These bloody snarky bastards have had it coming for a long time. Never mind that they "sexed up" the war in Iraq; they've been rather nasty to us ever since the Revolution. Look at the War of 1812. And whose side did they take in the Civil War? Only in World Wars I and II did they make nice, and that's because they were on the brink of defeat.
World War II would have been the optimal time to bring the Mother Country into the Union fold. They were beaten up. We were strategically placed. Churchill was too drunk to notice. Nobody would have cared. That doesn't mean it can't be done today.
A quick review of global defense spending tells us that any conflict would be brief, to be sure, but it would more likely be a bloodless coup. It's like our filibuster.
Whenever the Republicans don't want something to pass in the Senate (pick any example), they merely threaten to filibuster said legislation. They don't actually have to filibuster. Just the thought of Mitch McConnell speaking without end is enough to make the Democrats cave.
In the event that the British actually wanted to engage us in battle, well, it would be mercifully quick. It's not like they have any friends left in the world. Who would intervene? Ireland and Scotland? Those would be our forward operating bases. Germany? Please.
France would let us launch the big invasion from their side of the Channel. Only Australia would pose a problem, and they've already demonstrated their loyalty is for sale.
We'd be able to buy plenty of it, too, with all that royal plunder. How much is the House of Windsor worth these days, anyway? That would be the pound-sterling silver lining in all of this. Our economy needs the cash (especially at today's exchange rate).
Annexing the United Kingdom might just be the shot in the arm that America needs right now. We could easily absorb the real estate inventory. Our culinary institutes and schools of dentistry would thrive. And it would give us a much-needed island upon which to deposit our nuclear waste as we cruise out of the fossil-fuels era.
This is the Bush Doctrine. The people of England would no doubt herald us as liberators as we drove our tanks the wrong way down their streets. We could blast it from the bullhorns to our new citizens: Sam's your Uncle. We have killed your queen and you are free.
History would treat us kindly. Diplomats the world over would greet us with warm smiles on their faces. The tragedy in the Gulf would remain unresolved, but the military-industrial complex would be pleased. Everybody wins... Or at least everybody that matters.
pH 6.22.1o
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
BIg Oil Wins
Experiment: Go to your local auto parts store and pick up a case of motor oil. It could be Quaker State, Pennzoil, Valvoline, it really doesn't matter which brand. Actually, make it two cases. Take all of this motor oil down to the beach. It could be the ocean, the Great Lakes, the nearest river or local watering hole - it makes no difference.
Pull out a bottle of oil, unscrew the cap, and dump the oil all over the ground, right at the shoreline. Now do it again. And again. Until all of the oil is gone. Now wait for the authorities to arrive and see what happens.
There will be fines, oh, yes. There might even be jail time; if not that, then certainly community service. Littering and polluting, it turns out, are fairly serious crimes in communities all across America. Unless you're a corporation.
British Petroleum, a foreign company, has destroyed the Gulf of Mexico. Let's not be gentle about this anymore. We're fucked. The environment is fucked. The seafood industry is fucked. The charter fishermen are fucked. The sea turtles and dolphins and brown pelicans, they're all fucked, too.
"Corporate America" isn't just a catchy slogan anymore. It's a reality that tops all horror movies. The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are actually people, you see, extremely wealthy people to whom the laws of the land do not necessarily apply.
For instance, BP was ordered by the EPA to stop using the dispersant known as Corexit 95oo, which has an unpleasant toxicity to it that will certainly be deadly to marine life, perhaps to a greater extent even than the crude will. BP replied with a memorandum that read, essentially, "No, thanks".
When a major network sent a news crew out to report on the extent of the damage being done to the Gulf Coast, they were turned away by the Coast Guard, who explained that they were protecting the interests of BP. All of the cleanup data is being vetted, as well, through the watchful abacus of the giant energy company.
The ripple effects have been enough to elicit short barks of laughter through the tears. Blowhard conservatives, stuck for so long in their anti-big-government gear, are now blaming the feds for not managing BP's mess. Anyone else would get dizzy from such a thing, but not them. By now they are immune to their own hypocrisy, as if they had never chanted Drill, baby, drill.
Now it's the government's turn to drill. In the ultimate act of lip service, Attorney General Eric Holder has announced criminal probes into the explosion that caused the disaster, as if there were still a crime scene thereabouts to investigate. Still, even the threat of such an inquiry caused energy stocks to tumble.
The fact is, though, that our government is beholden to corporations. No other donors can cough up the kind of money needed to buy the television ads (from broadcasting corporations) that get politicians elected. You and I do not have lobbyists with briefcases stuffed full of cash to give to our representatives. Corporations do, and have been given the green light to bribe freely.
It is a guarantee, therefore, that oil gouting from the ocean floor will seem insignificant compared to the damage that will be done by corporations down the road. There is nothing to stop them. There is noone to hold them accountable. Ask the people of Prince William Sound. Big Oil doesn't care about wildlife or people or ecosystems or anything except their profit margins. Nobody disputes this.
Certain things, in the face of this atrocity, would seem to make sense. Nationalizing the oil industry makes sense. Putting BP into receivership makes sense. Breaking up the petroleum industry into separate categories (gas stations, refineries and drilling outfits) makes sense. None of it will happen.
Short of turning loose the Unabomber, there is no way for the American people to attain any measure of justice against our corporate masters. Slavery was abolished a century and a half ago, on the eve of the Industrial Revolution, and old John Brown lies a-mouldering in his grave. They might as well have wrapped his corpse in the American flag.
pH 6.o2.1o
Pull out a bottle of oil, unscrew the cap, and dump the oil all over the ground, right at the shoreline. Now do it again. And again. Until all of the oil is gone. Now wait for the authorities to arrive and see what happens.
There will be fines, oh, yes. There might even be jail time; if not that, then certainly community service. Littering and polluting, it turns out, are fairly serious crimes in communities all across America. Unless you're a corporation.
British Petroleum, a foreign company, has destroyed the Gulf of Mexico. Let's not be gentle about this anymore. We're fucked. The environment is fucked. The seafood industry is fucked. The charter fishermen are fucked. The sea turtles and dolphins and brown pelicans, they're all fucked, too.
"Corporate America" isn't just a catchy slogan anymore. It's a reality that tops all horror movies. The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are actually people, you see, extremely wealthy people to whom the laws of the land do not necessarily apply.
For instance, BP was ordered by the EPA to stop using the dispersant known as Corexit 95oo, which has an unpleasant toxicity to it that will certainly be deadly to marine life, perhaps to a greater extent even than the crude will. BP replied with a memorandum that read, essentially, "No, thanks".
When a major network sent a news crew out to report on the extent of the damage being done to the Gulf Coast, they were turned away by the Coast Guard, who explained that they were protecting the interests of BP. All of the cleanup data is being vetted, as well, through the watchful abacus of the giant energy company.
The ripple effects have been enough to elicit short barks of laughter through the tears. Blowhard conservatives, stuck for so long in their anti-big-government gear, are now blaming the feds for not managing BP's mess. Anyone else would get dizzy from such a thing, but not them. By now they are immune to their own hypocrisy, as if they had never chanted Drill, baby, drill.
Now it's the government's turn to drill. In the ultimate act of lip service, Attorney General Eric Holder has announced criminal probes into the explosion that caused the disaster, as if there were still a crime scene thereabouts to investigate. Still, even the threat of such an inquiry caused energy stocks to tumble.
The fact is, though, that our government is beholden to corporations. No other donors can cough up the kind of money needed to buy the television ads (from broadcasting corporations) that get politicians elected. You and I do not have lobbyists with briefcases stuffed full of cash to give to our representatives. Corporations do, and have been given the green light to bribe freely.
It is a guarantee, therefore, that oil gouting from the ocean floor will seem insignificant compared to the damage that will be done by corporations down the road. There is nothing to stop them. There is noone to hold them accountable. Ask the people of Prince William Sound. Big Oil doesn't care about wildlife or people or ecosystems or anything except their profit margins. Nobody disputes this.
Certain things, in the face of this atrocity, would seem to make sense. Nationalizing the oil industry makes sense. Putting BP into receivership makes sense. Breaking up the petroleum industry into separate categories (gas stations, refineries and drilling outfits) makes sense. None of it will happen.
Short of turning loose the Unabomber, there is no way for the American people to attain any measure of justice against our corporate masters. Slavery was abolished a century and a half ago, on the eve of the Industrial Revolution, and old John Brown lies a-mouldering in his grave. They might as well have wrapped his corpse in the American flag.
pH 6.o2.1o
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Little Crow Peep
Frustration has given way to disgust in Arizona's great immigration debate. Basis for argument aside, any criticism is met (by conservatives mostly) with the same 18-letter response. It's like dealing with sheep. They all flock in the same direction. They all bleat the same thing.
"Ha-a-ve you read the bi-i-ll?"
Oh, I've read it. On paper, meaning without regard to the behavior and motives of each rugged individual out there, one cannot definitively say that SB 1o7o is a racist bill. No. It is, however, a stupid bill.
I understand its proponents when they say that illegal immigration has cost Americans their jobs, even though so many more have been lost to corporate outsourcing. Seldom is that concern followed logically, or we'd see more business licenses revoked, a thing rarer than a bighorn in these parts.
As with the war on drugs, conservatives have it backward on this issue, focusing on demand (people who want work) instead of going after supply (employers who willingly hire them). The new law mandates - sans funding - that any city, county or otherwise politically incorporated entity question the citizenship of anyone upon reaching the point of "reasonable suspicion" during any "lawful stop" or arrest.
Ask any cop how far he or she has to follow you before finding a reason to lawfully stop you. The one I asked said half a mile. As for what comprises "reasonable suspicion", we may as well ask former Bush administration attorney Kris Kobach of Missouri, who wrote the bill for the Republicans in the Arizona legislature (we know this because it was not written in crayon).
An accent. Fluency in English (or lack thereof). Certain clothing. The number of people in a vehicle. Stuff like that. Never the color of their skin, no. Or their national origin. Why would a cop need to consider one's national origin when determining one's status as a citizen? All of this takes place "when practicable", according to Kobach's legalese.
"Practicable", by the way, has two definitions. One is capable of being used or done. The other refers to a theater prop that is a workable part of a stage set. Alas, SB 1o7o doesn't specify.
These are not the only problematic vagaries in the bill - not hardly. The section allowing citizens to sue any agency they believe to be running afoul of the new law is meritless on its face. In order to sue anyone, one has to have legal standing. One has to prove one has been damaged. Judges will rightly consider this to be a waste their time, and worse.
The provision that denies any sort of plea bargain for an illegal immigrant is an outright assault on the judicial branch. It does provide a 20-30 day jail sentence for a misdemeanor offense of being here illegally (read: Three hots and a cot on the taxpayers' dime). It's ridiculous to the point that Esquire Kobach should be called before the Bar and made to answer for himself.
Even if this joke of a law somehow passes Constitutional muster, it creates layers of legal nightmares across the state, twisting the knife already buried deep into our economic aorta. The burdens that SB 1o7o places on the Attorney General's office should also be filed in the basket of really bad ideas. Like it says on the money, e pluribus unum - one out of many.
SB 1o7o makes it a misdemeanor for an illegal immigrant to apply for a job. It makes a criminal out of ordinary citizens for soliciting work from a non-citizen. How were you to know that worker's legal status? Doesn't say. Employers, however, will only be prosecuted (snort) when they "knowingly" hire an illegal immigrant.
If you get caught transporting illegal aliens, your vehicle will be impounded. It does not say anything about impounding your animal. To borrow a few peas from J.D. Hayworth's brain, one can just as easily smuggle immigrants in on horseback... Maybe that's just another corporate loophole.
(And why not? There are vast expanses of language throughout the bill that threaten to do what has never been done in Arizona before. The only thing left out by the lawyers were the actual words "wink" and "nod" in parantheses.)
SB 1o7o is filled, however, with lines that boggle the minds of even junior varsity legal scholars. Section 2, Title 11, Chapter 7, Article 8 explains that an officer may transport an illegal alien to la Migra, "notwithstanding any other law" (rape, murder, what have you). It does not allow us to sue said officer if we come become victims of a crime (rape, murder, what have you) while he or she is wasting his or her time doing that.
Section 6 begins with the words, "Arrest by officer without warrant". This is why those textbooks out of Texas don't put the words "Thomas" and "Jefferson" next to each other.
So, we can ask, is it fair to label Arizona's new law Jim Crow? Perhaps not. Still, it doesn't reflect well on us when the state pulls the wool over our eyes, fleecing us all with sheer stupidity. We should all be sheepish when asked, "Ha-a-ve you read the bi-i-ll?"
As for the poor folks who just want a better life than what they left behind in their home countries, well, they're on the lam now.
pH 5.26.1o
"Ha-a-ve you read the bi-i-ll?"
Oh, I've read it. On paper, meaning without regard to the behavior and motives of each rugged individual out there, one cannot definitively say that SB 1o7o is a racist bill. No. It is, however, a stupid bill.
I understand its proponents when they say that illegal immigration has cost Americans their jobs, even though so many more have been lost to corporate outsourcing. Seldom is that concern followed logically, or we'd see more business licenses revoked, a thing rarer than a bighorn in these parts.
As with the war on drugs, conservatives have it backward on this issue, focusing on demand (people who want work) instead of going after supply (employers who willingly hire them). The new law mandates - sans funding - that any city, county or otherwise politically incorporated entity question the citizenship of anyone upon reaching the point of "reasonable suspicion" during any "lawful stop" or arrest.
Ask any cop how far he or she has to follow you before finding a reason to lawfully stop you. The one I asked said half a mile. As for what comprises "reasonable suspicion", we may as well ask former Bush administration attorney Kris Kobach of Missouri, who wrote the bill for the Republicans in the Arizona legislature (we know this because it was not written in crayon).
An accent. Fluency in English (or lack thereof). Certain clothing. The number of people in a vehicle. Stuff like that. Never the color of their skin, no. Or their national origin. Why would a cop need to consider one's national origin when determining one's status as a citizen? All of this takes place "when practicable", according to Kobach's legalese.
"Practicable", by the way, has two definitions. One is capable of being used or done. The other refers to a theater prop that is a workable part of a stage set. Alas, SB 1o7o doesn't specify.
These are not the only problematic vagaries in the bill - not hardly. The section allowing citizens to sue any agency they believe to be running afoul of the new law is meritless on its face. In order to sue anyone, one has to have legal standing. One has to prove one has been damaged. Judges will rightly consider this to be a waste their time, and worse.
The provision that denies any sort of plea bargain for an illegal immigrant is an outright assault on the judicial branch. It does provide a 20-30 day jail sentence for a misdemeanor offense of being here illegally (read: Three hots and a cot on the taxpayers' dime). It's ridiculous to the point that Esquire Kobach should be called before the Bar and made to answer for himself.
Even if this joke of a law somehow passes Constitutional muster, it creates layers of legal nightmares across the state, twisting the knife already buried deep into our economic aorta. The burdens that SB 1o7o places on the Attorney General's office should also be filed in the basket of really bad ideas. Like it says on the money, e pluribus unum - one out of many.
SB 1o7o makes it a misdemeanor for an illegal immigrant to apply for a job. It makes a criminal out of ordinary citizens for soliciting work from a non-citizen. How were you to know that worker's legal status? Doesn't say. Employers, however, will only be prosecuted (snort) when they "knowingly" hire an illegal immigrant.
If you get caught transporting illegal aliens, your vehicle will be impounded. It does not say anything about impounding your animal. To borrow a few peas from J.D. Hayworth's brain, one can just as easily smuggle immigrants in on horseback... Maybe that's just another corporate loophole.
(And why not? There are vast expanses of language throughout the bill that threaten to do what has never been done in Arizona before. The only thing left out by the lawyers were the actual words "wink" and "nod" in parantheses.)
SB 1o7o is filled, however, with lines that boggle the minds of even junior varsity legal scholars. Section 2, Title 11, Chapter 7, Article 8 explains that an officer may transport an illegal alien to la Migra, "notwithstanding any other law" (rape, murder, what have you). It does not allow us to sue said officer if we come become victims of a crime (rape, murder, what have you) while he or she is wasting his or her time doing that.
Section 6 begins with the words, "Arrest by officer without warrant". This is why those textbooks out of Texas don't put the words "Thomas" and "Jefferson" next to each other.
So, we can ask, is it fair to label Arizona's new law Jim Crow? Perhaps not. Still, it doesn't reflect well on us when the state pulls the wool over our eyes, fleecing us all with sheer stupidity. We should all be sheepish when asked, "Ha-a-ve you read the bi-i-ll?"
As for the poor folks who just want a better life than what they left behind in their home countries, well, they're on the lam now.
pH 5.26.1o
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Drunk Legislating
It is an astonishing act to shoot oneself in the foot. It is another thing entirely to shoot oneself in the foot while standing in a rowboat. That has been the net effect thus far of Arizona's infamous Senate Bill 1o7o, which was signed into law by Republican Governor Jan Brewer, and has been the talk of the nation ever since.
It has been commonly referred to as the "Papers, Please" law, drawing overblown comparisons to Nazi Germany. Some have likened it to apartheid. Others label it ethnic cleansing. Whatever the analogy, this is not the stuff that travel agents' dreams are made of.
Indeed, the hole blown in our economy has been considerable. Hotels and convention centers are bracing for the worst. Los Angeles and San Francisco have both slapped boycotts on the state, costing Arizona tens of millions of dollars.
Even the GOP has decided to hold the Republican National Convention elsewhere; the event is believed to have the same regional impact as the Super Bowl. They must be worried about the Hispanic vote, and they should be: Statewide, 67 percent of Hispanics oppose the law.
Here in the 'Zona, the people and the press are suffering from denial. They consider criticism, boycotts and relocations to be meddlesome. They wish the money good riddance. Perhaps we could annex Blythe from California and change the spelling - not that many of us would notice.
So who comes riding in to save the day for Governor Brewer? Who else but Sarah Palin and her goodies-grubbing entourage. What advice could she possibly have given to our beleaguered Governor? Quit?
Whatever else she said, Palin expressed the need for Americans to say, "We are all Arizonans now." She also called the Grand Canyon State "ground zero" on the illegal immigration issue. Might as well be... We're already ranked at zero in that danged education category. We're dead last in annual personal-income growth.
Moreover, it would indeed be a shock for all Americans to suddenly be turned into Arizonans. First of all, we'd all have to carry concealed weapons. We'd have to ride motorcycles without helmets. We'd have to be able to tolerate (and function in) 120 degree heat.
We would all have to be able to "hold it" for long distances, as our rest areas on the highways have been closed. We'd all have to be content to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in the real estate market. And we'd all have to vote for Sarah Palin with the expectation that she might actually be able to win.
On top of all that, we'd also have to excommunicate ourselves from California. Not only are we on bad relations (which can only get worse with the Suns-Lakers series on the horizon), it is also understood that the California Highway Patrol will be pulling over all vehicles bearing Arizona license plates in order to conduct mandatory sobriety tests.
It's not profiling. It's called "reasonable suspicion".
pH 5.16.1o
It has been commonly referred to as the "Papers, Please" law, drawing overblown comparisons to Nazi Germany. Some have likened it to apartheid. Others label it ethnic cleansing. Whatever the analogy, this is not the stuff that travel agents' dreams are made of.
Indeed, the hole blown in our economy has been considerable. Hotels and convention centers are bracing for the worst. Los Angeles and San Francisco have both slapped boycotts on the state, costing Arizona tens of millions of dollars.
Even the GOP has decided to hold the Republican National Convention elsewhere; the event is believed to have the same regional impact as the Super Bowl. They must be worried about the Hispanic vote, and they should be: Statewide, 67 percent of Hispanics oppose the law.
Here in the 'Zona, the people and the press are suffering from denial. They consider criticism, boycotts and relocations to be meddlesome. They wish the money good riddance. Perhaps we could annex Blythe from California and change the spelling - not that many of us would notice.
So who comes riding in to save the day for Governor Brewer? Who else but Sarah Palin and her goodies-grubbing entourage. What advice could she possibly have given to our beleaguered Governor? Quit?
Whatever else she said, Palin expressed the need for Americans to say, "We are all Arizonans now." She also called the Grand Canyon State "ground zero" on the illegal immigration issue. Might as well be... We're already ranked at zero in that danged education category. We're dead last in annual personal-income growth.
Moreover, it would indeed be a shock for all Americans to suddenly be turned into Arizonans. First of all, we'd all have to carry concealed weapons. We'd have to ride motorcycles without helmets. We'd have to be able to tolerate (and function in) 120 degree heat.
We would all have to be able to "hold it" for long distances, as our rest areas on the highways have been closed. We'd all have to be content to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in the real estate market. And we'd all have to vote for Sarah Palin with the expectation that she might actually be able to win.
On top of all that, we'd also have to excommunicate ourselves from California. Not only are we on bad relations (which can only get worse with the Suns-Lakers series on the horizon), it is also understood that the California Highway Patrol will be pulling over all vehicles bearing Arizona license plates in order to conduct mandatory sobriety tests.
It's not profiling. It's called "reasonable suspicion".
pH 5.16.1o
Monday, May 10, 2010
Divine Introspection
As the first gooey blobs of oil hit the Gulf Coast beaches this week, one cannot help but wonder, why does God have it in for those Red States? After all, there are Republican governors in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. The only other state to ever suffer from an oil spill of this magnitude was Alaska (not exactly a bastion of liberalism).
The real obstructionist ass-hats in the Senate and the House also hail from those Southern states, which are also prone to hurricanes. And floods. And tornadoes.
It's funny how hurricanes never seem to strike New England. How flooding happens in Tennessee and North Dakota (Red States) but not water-rich Minnesota or Ohio (Blue States). How tornadoes will bedevil Texas and Oklahoma (Red States) but not so much Iowa or Illinois (Blue States).
Despite the fact that California exists on a shaky fault line, it has relatively few earthquakes. Hawaii, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, only very rarely suffers from a tsunami. So how could Alaska have suffered both in 1964, when an earthquake felled its cities and caused a tsunami that swept every stick of furniture off of Kodiak Island? Red State, Blue State.
Even the industrial accidents seem to plague those states than lean more conservative. They have coal mines in Pennsylvania and Maryland, but the bad accidents seem to happen more often in places like West Virginia and Kentucky. Red States. Blue States.
You hear of school shootings in places like Arkansas, Montana and Colorado, but not so much in Vermont, Rhode Island or Oregon. (Granted, Obama won Colorado in 2oo8, but Colorado was Red at the time of the Columbine tragedy, which occurred in an affluent Denver suburb.)
Doesn't anyone ever wonder why the temperatures in Arizona routinely reach the 120-degree mark in the summer - yet in next-door New Mexico, they don't? To break it down, one has to ask, why does God hate Republicans? I'm not saying that's so... I wouldn't presume. I'm saying it appears that way.
I can hazard a guess as to why. It's due to the fact that conservatives tend to take God's name in vain. That Commandment, by the way, doesn't mean "don't swear". It means not to seek your own glory with God on the front of your shield. When has any Democrat done such a thing? Every time you turn around, some Republican or other is doing exactly that.
Prayer might help. It didn't during the Civil War, though, when the Blue States had to quell the rebellion of the Red States. God let Sherman burn his way through the South with impunity despite the pleas and prayers of every plantation owner who ever flew the Stars and Bars.
Why doesn't God like Republicans? I could expound upon that but it wouldn't further my point. If you really want to know, ask Him.
pH 5.1o.1o
The real obstructionist ass-hats in the Senate and the House also hail from those Southern states, which are also prone to hurricanes. And floods. And tornadoes.
It's funny how hurricanes never seem to strike New England. How flooding happens in Tennessee and North Dakota (Red States) but not water-rich Minnesota or Ohio (Blue States). How tornadoes will bedevil Texas and Oklahoma (Red States) but not so much Iowa or Illinois (Blue States).
Despite the fact that California exists on a shaky fault line, it has relatively few earthquakes. Hawaii, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, only very rarely suffers from a tsunami. So how could Alaska have suffered both in 1964, when an earthquake felled its cities and caused a tsunami that swept every stick of furniture off of Kodiak Island? Red State, Blue State.
Even the industrial accidents seem to plague those states than lean more conservative. They have coal mines in Pennsylvania and Maryland, but the bad accidents seem to happen more often in places like West Virginia and Kentucky. Red States. Blue States.
You hear of school shootings in places like Arkansas, Montana and Colorado, but not so much in Vermont, Rhode Island or Oregon. (Granted, Obama won Colorado in 2oo8, but Colorado was Red at the time of the Columbine tragedy, which occurred in an affluent Denver suburb.)
Doesn't anyone ever wonder why the temperatures in Arizona routinely reach the 120-degree mark in the summer - yet in next-door New Mexico, they don't? To break it down, one has to ask, why does God hate Republicans? I'm not saying that's so... I wouldn't presume. I'm saying it appears that way.
I can hazard a guess as to why. It's due to the fact that conservatives tend to take God's name in vain. That Commandment, by the way, doesn't mean "don't swear". It means not to seek your own glory with God on the front of your shield. When has any Democrat done such a thing? Every time you turn around, some Republican or other is doing exactly that.
Prayer might help. It didn't during the Civil War, though, when the Blue States had to quell the rebellion of the Red States. God let Sherman burn his way through the South with impunity despite the pleas and prayers of every plantation owner who ever flew the Stars and Bars.
Why doesn't God like Republicans? I could expound upon that but it wouldn't further my point. If you really want to know, ask Him.
pH 5.1o.1o
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
An Open Letter to Gov. Jan Brewer (R., AZ)
Dear Governor Brewer,
I know you've received a great deal of correspondence in regard to your position as our state's Racist in Chief. That must be taking up an awful lot of your time, but I hope you'll fit my letter into your busy schedule, because this isn't about that.
This is about the special election you wanted, the one wherein the citizens of Arizona get to decide whether or not to impose upon themselves a one-cent sales tax. With the threat of even more cuts to education and public safety held over our heads, it doesn't seem so much like a vote as participation (from the bad end of things) in an overt act of blackmail.
I'm actually one of those lucky people who gets to send in an early ballot. I just wanted you to know that I filled out that ballot today and will be sending it in tomorrow, a good two weeks ahead of schedule.
I voted 'no'. It's not just that, as a guy with no kids, I have no skin in the game. My decision was based more on principle than greed; I am, after all, not a Republican.
First of all, it's not as though Arizona is doing a very good job of educating our children, regardless of how much we spend (or don't spend). We're what, 49th overall? Thank God for Arkansas, I guess. I also believe we are over-policed, with multiple layers of law enforcement, each with bloated budgets and too much power.
The other thing is that I don't believe that you, or any of your conservative cronies in the state legislature, would really be so stupid as to cut education funding even deeper than y'all already have. It would be - even in a state with such a large retiree population - political suicide. If that would shorten y'all's reign of idiocy in Arizona, well, I'm all for that.
On the other hand, it almost seems as if you want to further slash scholastic appropriations, which would explain why you would foist this sales tax vote upon a public that is notoriously averse to taxation. But that would be giving y'all way too much credit.
I figure if the majority of voters agree with me, and I suspect they do, that you'll find that money elsewhere. Maybe it will come from property taxes, maybe it will come from an increase in corporate taxes, maybe you'll turn I-10 into a toll road. I don't really care how you do it, or if you do it at all.
Arizona already has one of the highest sales tax rates in the country. Now the City of Phoenix has implemented a 2 percent sales tax on food, I hardly think that now is the time for you Republicans to ride in on our backs to save education and public safety funding from the perilous position in which y'all have put them.
I hope this letter has, at least momentarily, taken your mind off the fact that the anti-immigrant bill you signed has made our beautiful state appear to be so terribly ugly on the national stage. And, ah, good luck in November.
Don't worry. It'll probably be okay. Thanks to generations of GOP efforts, most of us are just as dumb as you are.
pH 4.28.1o
I know you've received a great deal of correspondence in regard to your position as our state's Racist in Chief. That must be taking up an awful lot of your time, but I hope you'll fit my letter into your busy schedule, because this isn't about that.
This is about the special election you wanted, the one wherein the citizens of Arizona get to decide whether or not to impose upon themselves a one-cent sales tax. With the threat of even more cuts to education and public safety held over our heads, it doesn't seem so much like a vote as participation (from the bad end of things) in an overt act of blackmail.
I'm actually one of those lucky people who gets to send in an early ballot. I just wanted you to know that I filled out that ballot today and will be sending it in tomorrow, a good two weeks ahead of schedule.
I voted 'no'. It's not just that, as a guy with no kids, I have no skin in the game. My decision was based more on principle than greed; I am, after all, not a Republican.
First of all, it's not as though Arizona is doing a very good job of educating our children, regardless of how much we spend (or don't spend). We're what, 49th overall? Thank God for Arkansas, I guess. I also believe we are over-policed, with multiple layers of law enforcement, each with bloated budgets and too much power.
The other thing is that I don't believe that you, or any of your conservative cronies in the state legislature, would really be so stupid as to cut education funding even deeper than y'all already have. It would be - even in a state with such a large retiree population - political suicide. If that would shorten y'all's reign of idiocy in Arizona, well, I'm all for that.
On the other hand, it almost seems as if you want to further slash scholastic appropriations, which would explain why you would foist this sales tax vote upon a public that is notoriously averse to taxation. But that would be giving y'all way too much credit.
I figure if the majority of voters agree with me, and I suspect they do, that you'll find that money elsewhere. Maybe it will come from property taxes, maybe it will come from an increase in corporate taxes, maybe you'll turn I-10 into a toll road. I don't really care how you do it, or if you do it at all.
Arizona already has one of the highest sales tax rates in the country. Now the City of Phoenix has implemented a 2 percent sales tax on food, I hardly think that now is the time for you Republicans to ride in on our backs to save education and public safety funding from the perilous position in which y'all have put them.
I hope this letter has, at least momentarily, taken your mind off the fact that the anti-immigrant bill you signed has made our beautiful state appear to be so terribly ugly on the national stage. And, ah, good luck in November.
Don't worry. It'll probably be okay. Thanks to generations of GOP efforts, most of us are just as dumb as you are.
pH 4.28.1o
Friday, April 23, 2010
Notes from Hell
Here in Arizona we like to say we have "taken our country back", but we never finish that sentence. More to the point, we have taken our country back about 50 years, with a new immigration law that places all people of non-White ancestry under an unnecessary - and probably unconstitutional - microscope.
By the way, beyond Charles Keating, this is the only way we've ever made the national news. It takes a governor, such as Evan Mecham, dumb enough to utter words like "pickaninny". Or a Senator, like John McCain, nasty enough to vote against Martin Luther King Day. Or some gun-toting nut at a protest.
That's macro, though, a bird's eye view of Arizona as seen by the rest of the Union. If one looks at it from the inside, one will notice that we're actually much more of a basket case than we seem on the surface. For instance, we've closed many of our state parks and rest areas, hoping to shave a few hundred thousand dollars off our $2 billion state budget deficit.
Yes, this is the home of Congressman Trent Franks, who called President Obama "an enemy of humanity". It's also the state that recently passed a bill requiring the president to present his birth certificate (cuckoo, cuckoo) in order to be on the ballot in 2o12... There go those precious 11 electoral college votes.
The same good ol' boy who brought us this immigration bill, Russell Pearce, recently wrote up a bill that did away with the need for Arizonans to have a permit to carry concealed weapons. Governer Jan Brewer signed that one into law, too; this stroke of genius came on the heels of a cost-cutting meausure that released some 17,000 mental-health patients onto the streets.
Brewer had a tough choice to make with this immigration bill. Sign it and she loses the bulk of the Latino vote come November. Veto it and she gets buried in the primary and November never matters. She made a choice based on political survival and nothing more. And she's the least of our worries.
We have a less-than-civic-minded Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, who wants to supplant her as governor. We have an ethically challenged former County Attorney, Andrew Thomas, who dreams of being Attorney General. We have a mentally challenged former Representative, J.D. Hayworth, aspiring to replace McCain as our senator.
In Arizona, the idiots get promoted. How do you suppose Brewer made it this far in the first place?
There's plenty more, but just from the few things I've mentioned, most reasonable people will come to the conclusion that Arizona has the greatest level of dysfunction among all 50 states. Politically speaking, it may even be worse off than our two occupied countries, Iraq and Afghanistan.
One consistent thread runs through these horror stories: The Republican Party. All of this and so much more can be laid directly on that sorry doorstep. Is Arizona an accurate reflection of unbridled conservatism?
Yes. But it's not like the usual one you'd find in a mirror. It's more like a reflection of the desert sun itself. Look at it long enough and your eyes will burn right out of your head - not so much physics, in this case, as a defense mechanism of the soul.
pH 4.23.1o
By the way, beyond Charles Keating, this is the only way we've ever made the national news. It takes a governor, such as Evan Mecham, dumb enough to utter words like "pickaninny". Or a Senator, like John McCain, nasty enough to vote against Martin Luther King Day. Or some gun-toting nut at a protest.
That's macro, though, a bird's eye view of Arizona as seen by the rest of the Union. If one looks at it from the inside, one will notice that we're actually much more of a basket case than we seem on the surface. For instance, we've closed many of our state parks and rest areas, hoping to shave a few hundred thousand dollars off our $2 billion state budget deficit.
Yes, this is the home of Congressman Trent Franks, who called President Obama "an enemy of humanity". It's also the state that recently passed a bill requiring the president to present his birth certificate (cuckoo, cuckoo) in order to be on the ballot in 2o12... There go those precious 11 electoral college votes.
The same good ol' boy who brought us this immigration bill, Russell Pearce, recently wrote up a bill that did away with the need for Arizonans to have a permit to carry concealed weapons. Governer Jan Brewer signed that one into law, too; this stroke of genius came on the heels of a cost-cutting meausure that released some 17,000 mental-health patients onto the streets.
Brewer had a tough choice to make with this immigration bill. Sign it and she loses the bulk of the Latino vote come November. Veto it and she gets buried in the primary and November never matters. She made a choice based on political survival and nothing more. And she's the least of our worries.
We have a less-than-civic-minded Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, who wants to supplant her as governor. We have an ethically challenged former County Attorney, Andrew Thomas, who dreams of being Attorney General. We have a mentally challenged former Representative, J.D. Hayworth, aspiring to replace McCain as our senator.
In Arizona, the idiots get promoted. How do you suppose Brewer made it this far in the first place?
There's plenty more, but just from the few things I've mentioned, most reasonable people will come to the conclusion that Arizona has the greatest level of dysfunction among all 50 states. Politically speaking, it may even be worse off than our two occupied countries, Iraq and Afghanistan.
One consistent thread runs through these horror stories: The Republican Party. All of this and so much more can be laid directly on that sorry doorstep. Is Arizona an accurate reflection of unbridled conservatism?
Yes. But it's not like the usual one you'd find in a mirror. It's more like a reflection of the desert sun itself. Look at it long enough and your eyes will burn right out of your head - not so much physics, in this case, as a defense mechanism of the soul.
pH 4.23.1o
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