Who Popped All My Balloons?

Tags

African Americans, basketball, Bryan Fischer, Butler, class, economy, elections, judges, racism, right-wing crazies, UConn, Wisconsin

It was a yawner, a dud, it was Much Ado About Nothing. Close your eyes, and miss nothing. You might have confused it for a high school state championship game.

About the best you can say, is that UConn played good defense. Butler? Where they even there?

Two jokes I came across. One is a WordPress blog post entitled:

“They should have shown Hawaii-5-0. There was better shooting.”

or this one:

‘If you compared Butler’s shooting percentage against the sobriety meter, you could have legally driven.”

After all the great games leading up to the final, this just didn’t deliver. UConn “won” mostly because they were there, occasionally putting the ball into the hoop. It won’t be one people “talk about” in future decades.

Wonder what’s happening in hockey? Are my Redwings doing anything?

♦

It comes as no surprise that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Vanity Fair puts it in some perspective with a nice piece. Our lopsided rich/middle/working/poor scale is akin to that of Russia and Iran, while Western Europe is much healthier. Yeah, lets keep gutting programs for the poor, and keep reducing taxes on the rich. That’s the ticket.

♦

Today is a biggie in Wisconsin. They are voting on judges. Self-defined conservative David Prosser is trying to keep his seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, where he can “maintain the conservative” control and be a “complement to Governor Walker and the GOP controlled legislature”. Prosser called the Chief Judge a “bitch” and explains why that was not really his fault to Fox, you know, the place all the GOP comes to pitch their “fairness.” A left-leaning assistant attorney general is running against him. Apparently as of now, the numbers voting are extremely high. We are keeping our fingers and toes crossed.

♦

It always seems to me that the Uber Right hate just about everyone. Everyone that is except whites and the right kind of Christians. Super hater, Bryan Fischer is at it again. Now he wants the entire welfare system ended. In him pea brain, the increase in poverty is because we have welfare. And get this, it just encourages those people to “rut like rabbits.” Yeah, he actually said that. Read the full remarks at Right Wing Watch.

♦

Here’s an interesting question. If you  could  “be” someone else for a day or so, who are some folks you’d like to see from the inside out? Angry Black Lady Chronicles has some interesting choices. For me, Cleopatra, Hypatia, Mary Magdalene, Katherine Hepburn, Socrates, Einstein come to mind.

♦

I’ve said it a dozen times here at least. The extremist right-wing Christians are no different from radical Islam. Both want to force their religious views on everyone else. Br. Dan at Dating God, makes precisely this argument about Terry Jones, the moron who burned a Qur’an and undid a whole lot of progress in Afghanistan in one moment of madness. When hate is your mantra, you simply have turned your back on God.

♦

Chauncey DeVega poses a very interesting question about black pride and white prejudice. In a new world where Fox and tea parties turn racism on its head accusing blacks of being racist and portraying whites as the new black, how do we judge these terms. What do they mean? Are they different for blacks and whites? It has been the contention of most African-Americans I know, and something deeply instilled in my from years of working for African-Americans, that only white people can be racist. As DeVega says, blacks can be mean and awful in every prejudiced way, but never racist. Read and see what you think.

Carry on!

Related Articles

• Honorary Co-Chairman Of David Prosser’s Campaign Resigns (dekerivers.wordpress.com)
• Sarah Palin endorses hard-right Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate David Prosser (americablog.com)

Well It’s Still Relevant!

Tags

ADL, Constitution, courts, evolution, gay rights, Ground Zero, Iowa, Islamic Center, judges, moral choice, morality, Muslims, Newt Gingrich, Obama, psychology, religious freedom, separation of powers

I confess this news is a tad old, but only in some cases a few days. I’ve had other issues I wanted to attend to, and frankly I’ve been preoccupied.

We are not getting DSL. We live in some kind of hell zone which cannot be reached. Truthfully, I expected it, and only let in the tiniest glimmer of hope that I too could watch UTube and play some of the more fun games on the net.

So, I am unbloodied by this one, having some days/weeks ago realized that life must be accepted as is, rather than as I would have it be.

I haven’t been to church in a month now, have pretty much separated from all but one responsibility there and don’t forecast much change. I cannot make appointments for anything, half of them have to be cancelled “due to weather.” THAT is reality, quite simply.

So, here’s a few things you might be interested in today:

A good deal is going on about the Islamic Center in NYC. President Obama suggested the obvious–Muslims stand in no different place than any other religious group, and have the right to build wherever local ordinances permit. He is accused by some of walking back the next day, but he really did not. He quite purposefully did not give any personal opinion, as indeed he should not. Separation of church and state demands that, much as the right wing foolery would ignore the Constitution, once again for political reasons.

I was proud of the fact that Fareed Zakaria returned his award from the Anti-Defamation League after they came out in opposition to the Islamic Center.

Of course the buffoons who make these stupid arguments against the Center only aid recruitment by the Islamic fundamentalist movement, no doubt al qaeda cheers at Newt and Sarah and couldn’t be happier.

Speaking of Newt, his rhetoric is such bull. He arrogantly claims he will not be “preached” to by Muslims about tolerance when Saudi Arabia has no synagogues or churches allowed. So I guess Newt concedes that America is no bastion of freedom, but actually has no standards above that of the lowest common denominator. Some admission Newt, you political opportunist!

Jerrold Nadler, (D-NY) answers the silly Peter King (R-NY) and makes the clear point that religious freedom means exactly what it says and that Congress and the Executive branch have no place in this debate. This post is especially good, and worth your while to read in full.

Meanwhile Newt (slippery) Gingrich will be joining the 911 rally against the Center. Joining him are those wonders of slime, John Bolton (so wretched he couldn’t get confirmed at UN ambassador) and that worst of all truth assaulters: Andrew Breitbart who tried to destroy Shirley Sherrod. All these slimy people should get along nicely. They will also be hosting Geert Wilders, Dutch Parliamentarian (even that enlighted country apparently has its asshats!), who calls Islam “the ideology of a retarded culture.” Billy Kristol and Charles Krauthammer have condemned him in the past, and even Beck calls him a fascist. So you see, Newt is really nothing but a salamander, and that no doubt does disservice to that poor creature.

After a shower, we can go on.

Some of the best stuff seems to arise from the Boston Globe. This one is particularly interesting. Religionists would argue (some at least) that morality comes from God. Atheists claim that it most certainly does not. We come to it by reasoning. But there is another choice and you’ll have to read the article to see. How disgusting is it? There is my compass! 

Just a snippet:

By telling a story in which morality grows out of the vagaries of human evolution, the new moral psychologists threaten the claim of universality on which most moral systems depend — the idea that certain things are simply right, others simply wrong. If the evolutionary story about the moral emotions is correct, then human beings, by being a less social species or even having a significantly different prehistoric diet, might have ended up today with an entirely different set of religions and ethical codes. Or we might never have evolved the concept of morals at all.

One of the things that is rubbing me the wrong way these days revolves around Prop 8 and the response from the rabid right. They, who argue all the time about “activist” judges, seem to be going it one further. Now it’s not limited to activism so much as a challenge that judges have the right to over-turn the “public” will.

There is a movement afoot to send SCOTUS a petition stating the “public” will, according to a minority. And true to form good old Newt (slippery) Gingrich and Tim( hey I wanna be relevant) Pawlenty, are urging Iowa voters to vote out the Justices in our fair state who found refusal to issue marriage licenses to gays and lesbians unconstitutional under our state’s constitution.

Apparently it’s business as usual. Trash the constitution when it doesn’t suit your agenda. There are THREE  arms of government Mr.’s Ginghole and Pawpuppy PRECISELY to insulate decision making from the fury of the MOB.  Their job is PRECISELY to stack up the law of the populace AGAINST the CONSTITUTION and declare it square or not.

I can but pray that some middle majority can see through these pretenses. What the ragged-maturity of children riff raff of the far right will fall for, let’s hope sensible people can still reason through.