Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Fight the power ...

When street artists become social commentators, they fight for all of us.

Friday, June 18, 2010

The Rich Man and Lazarus

h/t to Crooks and Liars for this...

I am stunned. Absolutely stunned.
I know Rush is a political hack who like to use inflamatory language to divide...

Listen to this. Rush, in his own words, expressing his concern for hungry children in our country.

I don't know about you, but listening to this made me sick. To suggest to hungry kids, "just go home and open the fridge." How cruel. Because those kids know, as do their parents, that there isn't anything there.

And when Rush tells his audience, parents won't let their kids starve... Not if they have means Rush. I could be wrong here... didn't Rush support raising the minimum wage? NOPE.

I know Rush make a lot of money. And I suppose one can get to the point where we just don't believe people could be hungry while we're so fat and stupid.

The reality is, across the nation, poverty is up, demand on food banks is up, donations to food banks are down. And sadly, hunger, in our country is up.

In 2008, 49.1 million Americans lived in food insecure households, 32.4 million adults and 16.7 million children.

Here, you can go take a hunger quiz. Let's see if you know more than Rush.

(btw - the title was taken from here)

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Your daily "Wait! - What?"

German student attacks Hell's Angels with puppy

(Reuters) - A German student created a major traffic jam in Bavaria after making a rude gesture at a group of Hell's Angels motorcycle gang members, hurling a puppy at them and then escaping on a stolen bulldozer.

German police said on Monday that after making his getaway from the Hell's Angels club, the 26-year-old dumped the bulldozer, causing a 5 km (3 miles) traffic jam near the southern town of Allershausen, local police said. He then fled to his home nearby where he was apprehended by the police.
"What motivated him to throw a puppy at the Hell's Angels is currently unclear," said a spokesman for local police, adding that the student had lately been suffering from depression.
The puppy was now in safe hands, the spokesman added.
(Reporting by Max Chrambach, editing by Paul Casciato)

(Source: NOT the Onion)

Oh so many things here...

Why use a puppy as a weapon?  And how?
And if you did... why would you get it back?


And the puppy v. Hell's Angels wasn't enough... escape on a bulldozer?
And got away?  On a bulldozer?

And what are Hell's Angles doing in Germany?.... 

My head is spinning.
(Note to self... don't give a puppy to depressed friends to cheer them up.)

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Holy Double Standards Batman!

I happened to be perusing the Federation for American Immigration Reform's website when I came across this:

"America uses the term “illegal alien” to describe someone in our country in violation of our immigration laws not to demean someone, but rather because it is the correct, and legally recognized, term." (source)

OK, perhaps it's not simply a term used to make people think hardworking immigrants are really sneaky criminals intent on harming you.  (Though they do have sections on their website that will tell you just how those illegal aliens will harm you.)

The fear mongering gets a bit overwhelming...

But this story jumped up on CNN today: Arizona bill would deny citizenship to children of illegal immigrants and it got me wondering how FAIR talks about this issue.

Lo and behold... they have a section called: Anchor Babies: Part of the Immigration-Related American Lexicon where they write: "The term 'anchor baby' may be unfamiliar to most Americans but it succinctly describes a troubling aspect of American immigration." (source)

Hey FAIR - I've got news for you... The legally recognized term for someone born in the United States is: U.S. Citizen.

Am I shocked that they would claim the 'legal term' when it scares the bejesus out of people, but ignore the 'legal term' when it suits their purpose?  No, but let's call hypocrisy when we see it.

Remember - FAIR isn't!

Friday, June 11, 2010

We have nothing to fear... well, except maybe fear.

Roger Ebert wrote a great post on the mural controversy down in AZ...   
(Photo courtesy of AP Photo/The Daily Courier, Matt Hinshaw)

The back story is that basically this mural (right) got painted on the side of a school.  It was a nice mural... the theme was "Go Green" and the goal was to promote "environmentally friendly transportation".  Four kids from the school were used as models for the figures depicted on the building.
 
Then, some City Councilman, a real winner of a human being named Steve Blair, complained that the brown looking kids in the mural didn't represent the community. Did I mention that four kids from the school were used as models for the figures depicted on the building? Yep. I did. But it's important enough to mention twice.

He had some things to say... like:

"I'm not a racist by any stretch of the imagination, but whenever people start talking about diversity, it's a word I  can't stand." Daily Courier 
                                                      
"I will tell you depicting a black guy in the middle of that mural, based upon who's President of the United States today ..." Daily Courier

"To depict the biggest picture on the building as a Black person, I would have to ask the question: Why?" AZCentral.com

"Personally, I think it's pathetic," he says. "You have changed the ambience of that building to excite some kind of diversity power struggle that doesn't exist in Prescott, Arizona. And I'm ashamed of that." - AZCentral.com

This councilman wasn't just a councilman, he had a day job as a DJ at KYCA (he's been fired over this...).  During his time on air he riled people up.  Did it work?

Well, the kids and the artists, painting it together, got to know if it worked...  "We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars" Wall said. "We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of (epithet for Blacks) and (epithet for Hispanics)." (From the AZ Central story quoted above in the first line)

So, as I mentioned, Roger Ebert wrote a great piece... but it wasn't on the controversy per say. He wrote:

How would I feel if I were a brown student at Miller Valley Elementary School in Prescott, Arizona? A mural was created to depict some of the actual students in the school.

Let's say I was one of the lucky ones. The mural took shape, and as my face became recognizable, I took some kidding from my classmates and a smile from a pretty girl I liked. My parents even came over one day to have a look and take some photos to e-mail to the family. The mural was shown on TV, and everybody could see that it was me.

Then a City Councilman named Steve Blair went on his local radio talk show and made some comments about the mural. I didn't hear him, but I can guess what he said. My dad says it's open season on brown people in this state. Anyway, for two months white people drove past in their cars and screamed angry words out the window before hurrying away. And the artists got back up on their scaffold and started making my face whiter.

We went over to my grandparent's house, and my grandmother cried and told me, "I prayed that was ending in my lifetime." Then there was more news: The City Councilman was fired from his radio show, the Superintendent of Schools climbed up on the scaffold with a bullhorn and apologized for the bad decision, and I guess the artists went back up and started making my skin darker again, but I didn't go to see, because I never wanted to go near that bullshit mural again.

(Take the time to read his whole post here...)

What Roger is writing about isn't the mural or the controversy itself, but the people driving by in the cars yelling stuff...

What I cannot imagine is what it would be like to be one of those people driving past in their cars day after day and screaming hateful things out of the window. How do you get to that place in your life? Were you raised as a racist, or become one on your own? ...  But what about the people in those cars? ... They don't think of the feelings of the kids on the mural. They don't like those kids in the school. It's not as if they have reasons. They simply hate. Why would they do that? What have they shut down inside? Why do they resent the rights of others? Our rights must come first before our fears. And our rights are their rights, whoever "they" are. 

(I really encourage you to read is whole piece.... it's great.)

So who are they? I suspect they are the same sort of people as these:

These fine folks just took part in a rally to support the AZ law SB 1070 (which I wrote about here).

What strikes me is their fear.
What I don't understand is, well... their fear.

Yes, there is crazy mixed in there as well, and crazy and fear can be deadly.   I recently spoke with a family member who tends to the right politically. I asked him if all the language about government take over, and socialists, and blatant racial undertones bothered him.  He said "No, it's all just talk."

Later I'll post something on language being more than "just talk."

In the meantime, I encourage you to try to do both, put yourself in the shoes of the kids at that elementary school and imagine what it is like to have very angry grown-ups yelling very ugly stuff at you.  And then try to put yourself in the shoes of the very angry adults.


Now - which side are you on?


(As an aside: I have to wonder how many of them are Christian?  And by that I mean, people who believe that we are all brothers and sisters...I'm sure there is a caveat in the bible for not having to love people who aren't like you... isn't there?)

Friday, June 4, 2010

A truly diabolical conspiracy

I invented a time machine. One that allowed me to go all the way back to May 25th.  So what did I do?  I found evidence of a conspiracy. A truly diabolical conspiracy.  The kind hatched in a secret lair hidden in an ice cap.

Shhh... come close so nobody hears *looking around nervously,* my source over at Zero Energy Construction came forward with all the details.  This is too hot to handle, so I'm sharing it right away.  Remember, you didn't hear it from me....



Dear Tea Party Friends,

I have a confession to make, a confession that may shock and alarm you. I am a liberal Democrat, and at the last strategy session/homosexual blood orgy, I became aware of a dastardly plot being perpetrated by my fellow socialists. As many of you in the Tea Party have correctly guessed, the census is a trap. Let me repeat that for the search engines: the 2010 census is a trap. Porn, porn, porn.

Whatever you do, do not fill out and return the census survey. Yes, it’s only 10 questions, and it only takes 10 minutes, but that’s not counting the years you will spend in forced labor camps once Nancy Pelosi rounds up everyone who bought Going Rogue and puts them to work in the medical marijuana fields. Think of your children, who will be confiscated by liberal shock troops (black liberal shock troops) and used to feed the giant underground blast furnaces that President Obama has installed beneath the White House to power his…

Okay, I’m still working on that part.

Some people, even a few in your own party, will try to tell you that the census is just a benign headcount that collects demographic information about the country. Some may even say that the census is an important way to make sure you are fully represented in Congress, and that if you don’t fill it out, your party might lose seats when the congressional district lines are redrawn.

It is very important that you hit these people with sticks.

The 2010 census is an unprecedented conspiracy of epic proportions, way worse than the 2000 Census or the 1990 Census. It’s a complicated plot, with layers upon layers of deception and misdirection, but let me see if I can explain it as simply as possible. The census process is composed of three steps:

Distributing the census survey to every home in America.
Encouraging all Americans to complete and mail back the survey.
Race war.
This is the truth they don’t want you to know. Whether you’re a Republican, a Tea Partier, an NRA member, a Texan, or you just plain hate the Jews, it is very important that you do not, under any circumstances, complete the 2010 census.

Army of bat robots. That’s what the underground blast furnaces power. The ones Obama is going to feed your children to. For real.

I’m just asking questions here, people!

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Don't drunk dial...



Wanna learn more about Freedom Works? Click here.

H/T for the video to Cause for Concern followed by a thank you for telling me all about the follow widgit.