Arizona Takes The Whole Month

Just when you think Arizona can't get any stranger, they up the ante.  Not content with racist legislation that will affect legal citizens of the US, their State Legislature has time to pass all sorts of nonsensical bills.

For instance, they passed a bill that states: “intentionally or knowingly creating a human-animal hybrid.” is now illegal.  Wow, were people doing that? If they were it certainly explains why the legislature has their heads up their asses.

Then they really let their freak flag fly.  They sent a bill to the Governor that prohibits ethnic studies programs.  Unless the ethnic group is Caucasian because that is the only correct version of history and the world had better get used to it.

The new bill would make it illegal for a school district to teach any courses that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals."

Attending military schools most of my life I soon realized that there were seven continents but only two of them were important.  Europe and North America.  And by North America they meant the land between Canada and Mexico.  Canada was a wasteland between us and the North Pole and Mexico killed American heroes at the Alamo.

As far as my history/geography classes went, China was where Marco Polo visited and brought back spices, spaghetti and gunpowder. Genghis Khan may have controlled most of the known world in the 13th century, but he was a barbarian whose contribution to history was summed up in one sentence.  He was a barbarian.

Japan was important because of Pearl Harbor, kamikaze pilots and Hiroshima.  Nagasaki was never mentioned.  Africa was where slaves came from and Egypt wasn't part of Africa, it was the home of Cleopatra and this guy named Livingston was found there. Southeast Asia was mentioned because of Vietnam but it had no history before then.  India was nonexistent except as the name of an ocean and Australia was where British criminals were sent.  New Zealand had sheep and Korea is where MASH was set.  Russia was full of bad guys and South America had some guy named Simon Bolivar.  The Panama canal was built in one sentence, whereas the Suez appeared magically.

Women were famous because of who they married or how they died, they most certainly didn't invent anything.  As a matter of fact, only Caucasian males invented things that were useful to society.  Native Americans were savages that scalped people for no reason and they couldn't hold their liquor so they had to be rounded up and sent to reservations for their own safety.  It's not like they were native born citizens or anything.

Fortunately I was addicted to reading and spent many hours in the 900 section at the library, otherwise I wouldn't have known anything except the pablum that was recited year after year as if it was Gospel.

By all means limit the information to give kids a well rounded background by claiming that ethnic studies foment rebellion, separatism and resentment of a particular race, which is code for Caucasian males.  Somebody has to buy those Texas schoolbooks.

In ten years the United States will be irrelevant as the rest of the world moves into the 21st century and we make our way back to the 19th.  No wonder our economy is tanking.

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I Used To Be An Isolationist, Then I Grew Up

So far Arizona's paranoia has nothing on the French, but I'm sure that will soon change.  The French police arrested a three year old boy as a suspected terrorist.  What the hell is wrong with people?  A three year old boy cannot be considered a terrorist unless he's flinging poo from his diaper.  And even then that assumption would be a little over the top.

We are all human (or are we dancers?) and if aliens came from outer space they wouldn't differentiate) between a Frenchman and a German, or an African and an Asian.  It would be highly doubtful that they would differentiate between a man and a woman, so why are people acting like the country that they are a citizen of is the be all and end all of existence and that only they are entitled to live there?

We may be human, but we have lost our humanity.

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You Can't Fix Stupid

But you can definitely point it out.  The Arizona "Papers, Please!" amendment is the case in point and George over at Skippy's place brings up a valid argument.

will hopi and navajo police officers be able to stop anyone they think is in arizona illegally?

Once again people prove that just because you can have children doesn't mean you are a good parent.  Hiring an evil clown to stalk your child as a birthday present doesn't seem to be in the child's best interests.  And I sincerely doubt that most kids enjoy being terrified, even if there is cake at the end of the week.  And why does the headline say pie while the article says cake?

Umm, duh!  Of course the standard of living is declining for most Americans.  What part of sandwich board guy finally getting a job after two years isn't a clue?  And for fifty percent less than his previous job.

A gay dog?  One would expect to find this story in The Onion, but you would be wrong.

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And The Winner Is...

Senator Tom (I sterilize under age women) Coburn of Oklahoma. Mr. Coburn uses the excuse that he's a doctor (Ob-Gyn) and a deacon when dealing with the blowback from Senator John Ensign's affair so he doesn't have to disclose what advice he gave the cheating senator.  That gets him the Chutzpah award.

The Stupid award is for holding up unemployment extensions for what he terms a "small group of people."  This week that amounts to 212,000 people and next week and the week after that will add many more.  His arrogance prevents him from understanding that the 212,000 only applies to the people receiving benefits and doesn't include spouses and children.

Meanwhile, in the real world that the rest of us live in, 1.2 million households in America have disappeared.

So it's likely that the full impact of the 8.4 million jobs lost and nearly three million homes foreclosed on since the recession began has taken an even bigger toll on the number of American households.

Those numbers probably aren't big enough for Mr. Coburn either. But funding two useless wars, tax cuts for rich people and corporations while enjoying automatic pay raises for Congress, that's okay.

Remember in the early nineties when it seemed like every exit off the freeway and many a four way stop had people with signs asking for help?  That went away under President Clinton but they're back again.  Except now they include children.

Maybe he meant small people?

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Glenn Beck=Stupid

So Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA is unpatriotic.  As one poster remarked, Glenn Beck has finally said something so stupid that even stupid people recognize its stupidity.  You would think he had learned something after trying to insinuate that Revolution by The Beatles was a progressive plot to institute Marxism, but you would be wrong.  I wonder if Beck has read the lyrics to John Mellencamp's Little Pink Houses.  On second thought, his head is still attached to his body so I guess not.  Beck needs a serious vacation time at one of those rehab facilities.  Not to fix his stupidity, he's too far gone for that, but to give the rest of us a break.

Because we certainly aren't getting one from our elected "Representatives".  No public option because Pelosi and company have given up.  Their corporate masters are too strong.

If there was any lingering doubt as to whether the public option would survive the final health care motion, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) ended it on Friday morning.

"We had it. We wanted it," Pelosi told reporters at a press briefing. "It's not in reconciliation... We're talking about something that is not going to be part of the legislation."

Why? Was it late for dinner?  More than a majority of the American people want the public option but they might as well be wishing for Santa Claus to be real.  Or for the Tooth Fairy to leave something under their pillow.

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Five For Five

The Supreme Court is going to hear the case of of a man who was forced to listen to, read obnoxious phrases on homemade signs, and in general was harassed while he buried his son on what is usually the worst day in any parents life by a group of so-called religious fanatics.  What makes it even worse is that his son was a Marine who died in service to his country.

I am a strong defender of our First Amendment's rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion. but I have to wonder why this is even an issue, much less, has become a case that for the Supreme Court.  It brings to mind the famous phrase "You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?  Have you left no sense of decency?"  As a side note, the McCarthy-Welch exchange was quite insightful and reading it showed me just how far our behavior (and that of a certain South Carolina representative) has fallen from civility.

As the Supreme Court has been exceedingly liberal in its interpretation of the Second Amendment and now considers a corporation an individuals, it shouldn't be that much of a stretch for them to decide that the behavior exhibited by members of the Westboro Baptist "Church" and others like them goes against all decent human behavior and should be called what it is, the equivalent of falsely screaming fire in a crowded theater.

I've never had children, but I have known people who have lost one.  My father's mother had a daughter who died at sixteen and my dad also died before she did.  Her words at his funeral still ring in my mind.  "I never thought I'd outlive him."  She didn't speak much in her remaining seven years and she stared out into space as if she was lost.  She still had her faculties but she wasn't the same woman.

I remember how I felt listening to the proceedings, carrying his casket to his final resting place and watching as the dirt covered him up.  It still affects me the same way nineteen years later and I don't know how gracefully I would have handled the Westboro nuts if they had been picketing my dad's funeral.  Probably not very well.

Since Liz Cheney can't keep her stupid mouth shut over things she knows nothing about, does this mean that John Adams was unpatriotic because he defended the British after the Boston Massacre?  And successfully at that?

Now Cheney's daughter, Liz, has taken up the cudgel by heading what some are describing as a McCarthyite campaign to purge the government of lawyers who dared to defend men, and even a child, accused of terrorism. The lawyers drew particular ire by sometimes defeating in court the Bush administration's attempts to declare itself beyond the law.

Liz Cheney and her organisation, Keep America Safe, have dubbed lawyers who acted on behalf of accused terrorists, and who now work for the department of justice, the "al-Qaida seven". The group has rebranded the justice department the "department of jihad".

President Adams believed that we were a nation of laws, I'm pretty sure he would be appalled at the disrespect the Constitution has been receiving for the last ten years.  You don't pick and choose who gets what rights, they should be apportioned equally and defendants must be treated equally under the law.  It's what separates us from the savages.  Why are she and her father so determined to sink lower than Al-Qaeda and and still act like they're taking the high road as they shred what's left of the Constitution?

Just because it snowed it doesn't mean that global warming isn't occurring.  All it takes is a little common sense.  Is the weather in your area the same as it was ten years ago?  I doubt it.  Places that were hot have not been as warm lately and places that were cold are warmer than they should be.    Change is happening and just because it isn't happening overnight, doesn't mean it isn't occurring.  Considering all the cuts to education that have eliminated critical thinking classes, it is no wonder that nearly half of Americans don't believe in global warming.

The stupid person of the day has to be the woman who crasher her car while she was shaving her pubic area.  Isn't that one of the things you do in the shower at home?

Well of course Pink Floyd music should be sold in album form.  Duh!  All their albums tell a story and other than Money or Another Brick in The Wall, most people can barely name the albums and don't realize what the inspiration for music was.  Most people can't tell you that Dark Side of the Moon is about a plane crash, mainly because they've never listened to the whole album in one sitting and when the songs are sold as singles, the interludes between songs are eliminated and the story is lost.  And yes, playing Dark Side of the Moon while watching the Wizard of Oz Really does work.  Amazingly so, at least until you past Dorothy meeting the Scarecrow. 

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If These Guys Only Had A Heart

Or a brain.  Tom Delay, and by extension, most Republicans and the media that drools over their every word, believes that people prefer to live on unemployment checks that barely cover their rent and that they enjoy standing in line at food banks instead of getting a job.  Like a true Republican he doesn't let facts get in his way.

"You know," Delay said, "there is an argument to be made that these extensions, the unemployment benefits keeps people from going and finding jobs. In fact there are some studies that have been done that show people stay on unemployment compensation and they don't look for a job until two or three weeks before they know the benefits are going to run out.

Host Candy Crowley: Congressman, that's a hard sell, isn't it?

Delay: it's the truth.

Crowley: People are unemployed because they want to be?

Delay: well, it is the truth. and people in the real world know it. And they have friends and they know it. Sure, we ought to be helping people that are unemployed find a job, but we also have budget considerations that are incredibly important, especially now that Obama is spending monies that we don't have.

Perhaps if you and Bush hadn't given the rich people all those tax breaks or allowed American companies to move their headquarters and manufacturing offshore so they wouldn't have to pay taxes, there might be jobs available. I'm a person in the real world and as I drive around town I see empty buildings where businesses used to be.  Mr. Delay, you aren't just willfully stupid, you are a jackass.

Walt Baker just couldn't keep his stupid under controleither.  He just had to send an email comparing the First Lady with a chimpanzee.  How a state as pretty as Tennessee can produce such backward people does boggle the mind.  I almost feel sorry for its citizens.

And then here comes Texas,it might not be the largest state in the Union, but it is definitely trying to spread its stupid to every impressionable child.  In a few years the United States will be completely out of the running in technology and medicine.  Or hasn't anybody noticed that a good proportion of the doctors don't speak English as their primary language?  And for those of you who believe that evolution is a theory and not true, I would like to remind you that gravity is also a theory and as of today nobody has said it doesn't work.

Christian-based materials dominate a growing home-school education market that encompasses more than 1.5 million students in the U.S. And for most home-school parents, a Bible-based version of the Earth's creation is exactly what they want. Federal statistics from 2007 show 83 percent of home-schooling parents want to give their children "religious or moral instruction."

No wonder they don't understand the consequences of inbreeding.

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