KicK! Making Politics Fun

How much Amercian hypocrisy can be fit into one paragraph?

Nine soldiers are dead as the result of a CH-47 Chinook being shot down in Afganistan recently. It is believed it was caused by Taliban insurgents with a standard RPG rocket launcher. Not long ago the United States refused to attend the Moscow Olympics because the Russians were fighting a war against the Taliban in Afganistan. Wow hey. It was said the 10 year war was the Soviet Union's Vietnam. The Russians pulled out after the United States made hand held surface to air missles available to Osama Bin Laden and his Al Queda/Taliban "freedom fighters", who were then able to shoot down Russian helicopters at will.

Down here in Dumbass our state legislature meets only every other year, and then only for a few months. This saves all Texans money which could be better spend on ammo. The present session is important as our education system is one of the worst in the land because Bubba doesn’t want to pay for it through either state income taxes or property taxes. Leaving... Well...  I don't know. Texas comes in 50th out of 50 in those who have high school diplomas. So the Texas Legislature met to fix the problem once and for all. Of course like every other session, they ended up accomplishing nothing regarding education, but happily after months of hard work and debate they did accomplish a few things of a more tantamount nature. 

They overruled Governor Perry’s Bill for mandatory inoculations of 12 year old girls so young Texas girls would have as much right to get ovarian cancer as girls anywhere else.

They are presently debating the finer points of making Bible Study a mandatory elective in high school.

They passed a bill so gun-owner's can shoot any intruder on their property even if the intruder turns out not to be armed. This is a good one, you don’t like someone? Lure them on to your property and shoot them in the back! Or shoot them in the face if you have a thing about thing about shooting people in the back.

They are in heavy debate to allow blind hunters to use laser sighted rifles so blind people can also enjoy blowing the crap out of unarmed animals. I am not sure if this applies to unarmed people on their property, but it probably does.

They are waiting the Governor’s signature on a new law that allows employees to keep their assault rifles and machine pistols out in their cars on company owned parking lots. This means that if a boss or coworker is annoying, they don’t have to drive all the way home to get their guns to shoot those so in need of shooting.

And of course the one that gained recent national attention, allowing guns in schools, courthouses, bars and churches. Well, needing guns in churches down here goes without saying, but bars? In closing I would like to quote our Texas Land Commissioner, Jerry Patterson who really nailed the main concern in this debate of bellying up to the bar for the shot contest with gun in hand:

"Firearms maybe aren't the best thing there, when you're drunk, your aim is not so good."

Sheehan gave a son, and more in return, she got death threats, called all manner of obscene names from the upright and "patriotic", and lost her husband to divorce. Prompted by the death of her son Casey, who died in Iraq on April 4, 2004, she met with the President, who evaded all mention of her son.  I presume it's easier to send people to war if you don't put faces and names with the numbers.  Failing that, she launched a campaign few could have missed.  Some agreed with her, others still continue to criticize her even after she has thrown in the towel. 

I wish she could feel that she'd made a difference, that she'd moved people to speak out, for the newly elected Democrats to change things, but it seems her protest ends with a sad and discouraged farewell.  I cannot say it better than she did.

"I have invested everything I have into trying to bring peace with justice to a country that wants neither. The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing...Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Replicans play politics with human lives.  It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and that Casey paid the price for that allegiance.  I failed my boy and that hurts the most." 

 Republicans only invoke Jesus of the Shinning City when it is convenient.

If you watched the Fox News presidential debate a few weeks ago you are aware that moderators Chris Wallace and Britt Hume poisoned the questions to get the candidates to advocate war, torture and the largest mass round up and deportation in history. Not to mention building the biggest, baddest, highest and longest wall in 2500 years. This of course is all central to conservative ideology, but the most over used questions were not about what Jesus would do, but what Ronald Reagan would do -- the same thing to Republicans. Fareed Zakaria in a recent piece in Newsweek pretty much nailed this issue, follows a few quotes from the Gipper himself lifted from that article. 

"It makes one wonder about the illegal-alien fuss. Are great numbers of our unemployed really victims of the illegal-alien invasion or are those illegal tourists actually doing work our own people won't do. One thing is certain in this hungry world: no regulation or law should be allowed if it results in crops rotting in the fields for lack of harvesters." Ronald Reagan as Governor of California 1977

In fact, it was Ronald Reagan, the now perceived God of Gop who pushed and signed the 1986 Immigration Bill which gave amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants.

"I've spoken of the shining city all my political life," he said, "but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. In my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and heart to get here." Ronald Reagan in his farewell address in 1989.

Even front runner Rudi Giuliani has recently changed his tune to become more acceptable to the fear and loathing that drives the conservative electorate.

"The anti-immigration issue that's now sweeping the country in my view is no different than the movements that swept the country in the past," he said. "You look back at the Chinese Exclusionary Act, or the Know-Nothing movement—these were movements that encouraged Americans to fear foreigners, to fear something that is different, and to stop immigration." Rudi Giuliani in 1996

Where does this yet another historic attack on ethnic minorities come from you ask? The real numbers show that there is no national issue regarding these workers causing unemployment, using more services than they subsidize, are responsible for more crime, or even the terrorist infiltration. Rather this all began with Conservative writer Tom Clancy’s 2003 novel, The Teeth of the Tiger, where a gang of Islamofacists swim the Rio Grande to go on murdering sprees across the malls of America. Rush Limbaugh and the rest of Hate Talk Radio crowd pushed his crap 24/7 for months and are still at it now years later. The bottom line is this is just another case of Conservatives basing their arguments upon fiction rather than reality. Or to be more magnanimous, Conservatives do not know that novels are fiction.

I reluctantly walked back into the bookstore that Friday afternoon, wishing I were anywhere else. It had been a hellish week, full of idiotic customers, inane corporate directives and backstabbing co-workers. I glanced at the man perusing the books on the bestseller table and for the first time in my life, my jaw literally dropped. I ran to the back of the store on feet crippled by bone spurs, to grab the only other person I was sure would recognize him. She assumed I was fucking with her as I dragged her to the table. We stood about twenty foot away and whispered back and forth loudly enough for our voices to be heard in submarines half a world away from our small Texas town.
“It’s him!” I hissed.
“It looks like him but why would he be here?” she hissed back.
“I read somewhere he owned property in this county. I didn’t want to believe it,” I replied, still sotto voce.
A regular customer and another employee walked up to us.
Our regular asked, “Why are y’all hissing?”
We pointed and explained. Both newcomers agreed it looked like him. The employees seemed to feel the best option under these strange circumstances would be to continue debating, but our regular believed in the direct approach. The man had moved away from the table and was walking past us. Our regular went up to him and asked the question everyone but me was dying to know. I knew it was him.
The man gave an unconvincing chuckle and said, “No, but I get that all the time.”
In triumph, our regular joined our huddle and announced, “It’s not him.”
“What else would he say?” asked my employee.
“He lies,” I muttered darkly.
The hissing argument continued with everyone else wavering. I knew I was right. I could tell by the way my skin crawled when he was standing two feet from me. A woman appeared and asked where the history section was, thereby taking me out of the huddle and giving me no chance to convince the skeptical. I turned the corner and there he was.
The woman was his wife and they followed me all the way back up the aisle. A voice in my head, which I can only hope was mine, was shrieking,
“He’s looking at my butt!”
I stopped at the huddle, which now consisted of three people trying not to look guilty. The man and his wife continued to the cash register where he paid for his book with a credit card and left the store. But not before my employee had sent the regular out to the parking lot to get his license plate number so she could run it through some computer program she had on her computer. There was no need for that as we all raced to the startled and confused woman at the register and demanded she pull out her credit card slips. My sense of vindication was dampened by my need for an immediate shower and some good drugs.
Karl Rove had been looking at my butt.

Just a few passing thoughts from a Vietnam Veteran the day after Memorial Day.

Most Americans don’t know the difference between Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day.

I am amazed at the patriotism of politicians who don’t have sons or daughters in Iraq and Iran. I wonder how they’d feel if they had a kid or husband over there.

Seeing George Bush at Arlington Cemetery gives me the creeps.

Does anyone understand the reason Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address?

I can’t figure out which holiday, Memorial Day or President’s Day, has the best mattress sale.

STURTEVANT - Two brothers serving time in prison together were charged Thursday with incest.  A prison guard found Brian and Jeremy Threlkeld, both of Kenosha, engaged in sexual activity in their prison cell at the Racine Correctional Institution on March 31, according to a criminal complaint. The brothers had shared a cell for about two months. In an interview with police, both Threlkelds said they had sex three to four times per week while sharing a cell. Both said the sex was consensual.  Both brothers are serving time in prison for the sexual assault of a child. Brian, 25, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2000. Jeremy, 21, was sentenced to 6 years in prison in 2004. If convicted of incest, each brother could be sentenced to an additional 18 1/2 years in prison.

Gov Mike Huckabee is trying to burst out to the pack of Republican candidates. He is one of the three who believes that God invented the world 6000 years ago and put down billions of older fossils and facts because God gave his only begotten son to confuse scientists.

On Huckabee’s big day on Fox News Sunday he dusted off old Dickass Armey’s flat tax plan; the elimination of all progressive taxation replaced with a regressive 30% federal sales tax on all things. He is right that it benefits the poor because they can only afford shine and crank which are both sold under the table and not taxed (perhaps I have been watching to much COPS). But his plan sure does give corporations and the wealthy the nicety of paying just about no taxes at all, which of course is what Jesus would do.

Speaking of Jesus, Mike is also the one who is most loved by God and the most adamant about denying women their reproductive rights. After about five minutes of comparing abortion to slavery, he arrived at the conclusion that all things morally wrong must be made illegal. That’s not so bad, it means he is for the end of capital punishment, preemptive wars, boxing and whacking kids around. Oops, I misspoke, he is for making only what he personally finds morally wrong illegal. So please disregard the above listing of moral institutions and replace them with adultery, sex education, rubbers, homosexuality, and of course what keeps so many men from going postal, the hummer.

I am going out a limb here to conclude that Cho, Klebold, Harris and that complete list of asocial male gunloons shooting up schools, workplaces and restaurants all had one thing in common, they were all Hummerless Humans. Which I also suspect is the case concerning Osama Bin Laden and that entire gang terrorists. Perchance have I, sitting here on my ass in Texas, fumbled upon the answer to eliminate humanities propensity to violence?