Race Baiting

I have heard lots of defensive posturing from those on the anti-immigration side of the current debate that they are not racists. Well, I just call bullshit on that. And it takes no more than a few minutes of on-line searching to find a lot of examples of the thinly-veiled racism that is the backbone of this anti-"illegals" movement. Our friends at Media Matters are a great resource for this stuff.

A lot of the leaders of this racist agenda driven movement make a lot of claims like "protecting American jobs" or "preventing terrorists from getting in" (and they need to constantly be reminded that that's not how the terrorists get in), but they don't take too long to show their true colors. Check out this woman from something called Mothers Against Illegal Aliens. And this link to their mission statement, it's priceless. My favorite line is "Our beautiful Nation has been turned into a jungle by the mass invasion of illegal aliens." Yeah, it's a real "jungle" out there.

Then there's this guy named Joseph Turner in San Bernardino, CA that has drawn up an anti-immigration initiative and gotten enough signatures to get it on the ballot. It would, among other things, lay out penalties for landlords who rent to illegal immigrants, ban city-financed day-laborer centers, and require that all city business be conducted only in English. During the hearing at the city council over the measure (the council voted it down, so by law in San Bernardino it has to go to the voters since Turner got enough signatures), this moron said that illegal aliens were turning America's cities into "third-world cesspools" and that Americans are "sick of pressing one for English." Yea dude, I'm so fucking put-out by having to press a number on my phone when I call to check my bank balance. Those precious extra nano-seconds that I'm forced to spend away from my family are ruining my life. And I think the "cesspool" statement speaks for itself. This guy should come visit Boston. It's the Southies (South Boston people, like in Good Will Hunting, for you non-New Englanders), not the Mexicans, that make this a shitty place.

You've got to see his Save Our State site. It is hilarious and creepy all at the same time. And this Nazi fucker's claim that he's not a racist goes out the window with a section called the "Gallery Of Goons" that includes this Photoshopped picture of Hispanic protestors. OK, so maybe my previous "thinly-veiled" comment was a little off. This isn't even close to subtle.

And of course no right-wing racist agenda would be complete without support from FOX. John Gibson tells his viewers (he presumes they are all white, which is probably true) to "make more babies" because if we don't the Hispanics will be in the majority in 25 years. Oh the horror!

Aunt Tom

Mary Cheney needs to be bitch-slapped. What the hell is wrong with this woman? She's out there on her book tour, a tome she calls Now It's My Turn, speaking out against Bush's idea for a constitutional amendment banning all gay marriage. She, as we all know, didn't say one word about it during the 2004 campaign when Dubya made it a big issue to get all the right-wing bigots to the polls. In fact, she was a member of the reelection campaign. Her reasoning is that, even though the Texas dipshit was trying to outlaw what she is, he was the strongest on national security.

Great thinking Mary! Not only vote for, but work for the reelection of a man who thinks you are a degenerate who is going to go to hell and that you are threat to the American way of life and wants to put anti-you laws into the Constitution, all because you like his views on national defense. But in her book she refers to Kerry and Edwards and as "a son of a bitch" and "slime" respectively for just mentioning that she is a lesbian when talking about supporting gay rights and accuses them of using her sexuality as a campaign issue. This girl is seriously more mental than even her father.

Who else would do this besides a typical self-loathing gay Republican? Can you even imagine this happening with any other minority? Do you think there were any black men sitting around supporting members of the KKK in national elections using the same kind of logic?

Seriously, imagine a black person saying, "Let's see, I'm not a big fan of his anti-interracial marriage and pro-lynching positions, but I like his ideas about the economy and education, so David Duke is the right man for our country."

That's the logic of Mary Cheney. She makes me sick.

Newtie!

I like to stay up late at night, much to my wife's chagrin sometimes. She likes it when we go to bed together, but I really like staying up and channel surfing or reading (OK, mostly channel surfing, but sometimes I'm actually catching up on New Yorker articles). My wife has actually wondered out loud what I could possibly be doing at that time of night, and I wish it was that I had some secret life like sneaking out and fighting crime with a secret identity under the dark of night or passing out coats and sandwiches to the homeless. But no, it's mostly that some of my extreme dweeby tendencies are best practiced out of sight of my lovely wife lest she figure out how big of a nerd I really am. I'm talking, of course, about watching C-Span.

I truly do think that C-Span is the single greatest thing about Cable TV, barely edging out VH1's Behind The Music and the ability to see an episode of Law & Order at any given time of the day. I tend to watch it a lot at night after my better half has gone to bed. It's better at this time because they show speeches given by people earlier in the day or week or interesting interviews with authors/politicians/commentators/documentary filmmakers/etc, rather than during the day when it is mostly boring speeches from politicians to a mostly empty House or Senate chamber (seriously, do any of our elected officials even go to work except during the State Of the Union address?).

Anyway, the other night I flipped it over to C-Span after watching the midnight airing of Countdown with Keith Olberman - I just love his comedic commentary on the news and his never-ending bashing of O'Reilly and FOX - and they were airing, one right after the other, John McCain's kissing-the-ass-of-Falwell commencement address at Rightwingfreakazoid University and Newt Gingrich's speech to the Iowa Republican Party's Lincoln Day Dinner. Seeing the fat bastard giving a speech at a political event made me time warp back to 1995, which on one hand would be cool because it would mean I was 25, but on the other hand it would mean I'd still be working as a pizza cook, and that was a shitty job. The dinner was held on April 29th, which doesn't seem to hold any significance whatsoever in the life of Lincoln. It is more than a month and a half after his birthday and it is nowhere near the dates of the Gettysburg Address or the Emancipation Proclamation. The closest thing in the Lincoln bio to the date of this event is his assassination (April 14th), which seems an odd (not to mention macabre) choice for celebrating. But nobody claimed that Iowans were smart people, except for the ones that were smart enough to escape that horrible place. Lucky me, my mother is trying to get me to attend the upcoming family reunion there in July. I should start practicing my stupid now. But I digress...

I flipped it to C-Span after the McCain speech, that got a lot of media coverage anyway, was over and it was toward the end of the Newt Gingrich talk. Later I learned he was introduced by the Neanderthal twit Sean Hannity. I've watched a lot of the parts that I missed online, but I'll just briefly tell you about a couple of the things he said just toward the end that I saw that night. One was this idea he has to create a Travelocity-like website for prescription drugs that would "reduce the price of drugs in the United States by 40%" and then made a joke about how Canadians would be coming to the U.S. for medication, which got a nice little chuckle out of the Iowa blue hairs. I just love how the idiot thinks that putting stuff on computers just magically lowers the price. The internets is magic!

He also spoke about one of his requirements of citizenship for immigrants to pass a test about the history of our country. I think if he was really worried about the well being of this land he would spend his energy trying to make sure that high school graduates knew more about the Constitution than they do the American Idol contestants. Pssst, hey Newt, guess what? Immigrants already have to take a test on American history and government that most Americans couldn't pass. So you're not exactly throwing out any revolutionary ideas there.

He ended his talk to the Iowa Republicans by touching on the glorious fight against terrorism. One thing he did that I found interesting and honest in a horrifying way was admit that this war could go on for 50 or 70 years. Oh happy days are here again, eh Newt? By the way is it just me or does everyone else also think of Monty Python every time they hear his name? (You know the one - "She turned me into a newt!" "A newt?" "Well I got better.") But he used this moment, in the usual conservative bullshit way, to do some liberal bashing. Here is how he finished up his speech:

We are faced with enemies in the irreconcilable wing of Islam who want to destroy us. And they're irreconcilable for a simple reason. If they were to win - if we sat down and said "let's have detente," to use a term out of the cold war - their first requirement would be that all the women in this room leave. Go look at how the Taliban ran Afghanistan, go look at how the Saudis run Saudi Arabia. So my first question for all of you - and I love doing this with liberal women reporters, we'll be in the middle of a discussion and I'll say "do you like your job?" and they'll go "yeah," and I'll say "well do you want to keep it," and they'll say "yeah," and I'll say "well then you better hope we win," and they go ""what are you talking about?" I did this one day with a BBC reporter. It was summertime and she was in a short sleeve dress and I said "do you think anybody in the other team is going to let you stay on television?" She was just stunned, 'cause she was sitting there going "I can't be on your side, your the real enemy. What do you mean their the real enemy more than your the real enemy? Now I have two real enemies?" As you could see, she was in total confusion.

Ah yes, yet another silly "strawman" argument from the conservatives. They can't actually knock down the real things liberals say or believe in so they make up fake "liberal" arguments that they can easily knock down. I don't buy for a minute that this conversation has ever taken place with any reporter, liberal or otherwise. I love how he tries to make the claim that the left is completely clueless about how Islamic countries treat their women, like the conservatives have been out there fighting for them all these years. Right pal, whatever. Human rights groups were ignored for years while women were being oppressed beyond belief and Newt and his cronies gave the Taliban free money. And people like Gingrich have helped keep the House of Saud in power for years. That he even pretends to give a shit about the plight of women in the Middle east is beyond laughable, it's just plain disgusting. And the claim that Newt is out there educating the "liberal press" about the horrors of the Taliban and Saudi regimes, how ridiculous can you get? And then there is the whole black and white way of looking at the world, the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," or "with us or against us" routine. I got news for ya Newtie, hating you and Osama Bin Laden at the same time and wishing you both would die is not a hard thing to comprehend. Hating both Hitler and Stalin even though they were fighting against each other wasn't so hard, it shouldn't be a stretch to wish horrible pain on both Kim Jong Il and Dubya at the same time.

Bombing the hell out of the Middle East or letting radical Islamists take over our country aren't the only two options you fat-ass moron.

He also refered to the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the "dictator of Iran," despite the fact that the president of Iran is a largely ceremonial office and the real "dictator" is the Supreme Leader Seyyad Ali Hossayni Khamenei and the rest of the power lies with the Gaurdian Council made up of leading clerics. Calling Ahmadinejad a dictator is a lot like claiming Miss America rules the U.S. with an iron fist.

He finished up by talking about how winning the cold war was different because they were atheist and "You're never a suicide bomber if you're an atheist because there's nowhere to go," which got another nice chuckle from the upstanding, corn-fed Iowan Christians. Easy crowd.

So why am I telling you all of this? For those of you who don't watch C-Span at one in the morning, you should be warned. This guy was in Iowa remember. And he was there just a few days before that, and he'll be there again in a couple of weeks for an event. I'm sure he also has some New Hampshire events on his schedule. And South Carolina and Ohio and Michigan. Newt is trying to make a comeback and take out another contract on America, this time shooting for the top prize. He's running for President, and we need to warn everyone. Right now he's quietly making the rounds in the small GOP gatherings making his little jokes and making himself out to be some sort of humble, wise, old outsider with fresh ideas and a new direction for our country (gives me a gag reflex just to think about it). Pretty soon though, we'll be seeing him all over the place telling us about American values (the replacement phrase for "family values" from the 80s/90s) and how we should live our lives. Just in case anyone forgot, here is the Cliff's Notes version of Newt's "values:

Adultery (for him at least) = Good
Two men in a long term committed, monogamous relationship for over twenty years = Evil
Democrat draft-dodgers = Evil
Republican draft-dodgers = Good
Democrat president getting blowjob from staffer = Evil
Republican Speaker of the House getting blowjob from staffer = Good, very good
Poor citizens bouncing bad checks = Evil
Congressmen bouncing bad checks, with overdraft fees paid by taxpayers = Good

And of course, his best "family value" is:

Serving your wife (who you've been cheating on) with divorce papers as she lies in a hospital bed recovering from cancer treatment = Priceless

Warn everyone you know. Newt is back. And he's fatter and dumber than ever.

God, I need to stop watching C-Span.

Asshole

This is my new favorite find on the web. This is what will come up if you type Asshole into the Google search box and click "I'm feeling lucky."

Send the link to all your friends and enemies.

They should book this band for next year's Washington Correspondents Dinner....

Best. Performance. Ever.

There has been a lot of talk about whether or not the Stephen Colbert performance at the White House Correspondents dinner was funny. I really just have this to say. If you don't get irony or sarcasm and didn't think he was funny and, even worse, think the Bush "self deprecating" skit with his look-alike was better, well I'm sorry for you. I'm sure there is a collection of Horatio Sanz SNL skits you could be renting or a Saved By The Bell marathon on TBS you could be watching.

As for the members of the press who have been bitching and moaning about what he did (Gasp! He was insulting to the media and politicians), who the hell did you think you were booking for this thing? Have you ever seen the Colbert Report? Get a grip. Your little dinner is a joke, and Colbert just pointed that out to you.

What you all should be worried about is that, in twenty minutes, he called the dumbass president out on his shit more than you guys have done in five years. That's what is not funny.

Lou Dobbs Must Die

Please! Someone put Lou Dobbs out of our misery. I am so sick of this bastard. I try to avoid watching him at all, but he shows up in other places sometime that I end up hearing his vile nonsense. The other day I was flipping the channels and he was being interviewed by Anderson Cooper (the media is so ridiculous these days that they think its legitimate to conduct "interviews" with hosts of other shows on the same network) and he made the comment that seeing flags from other countries involved in protest in the US make him "nauseous." Gee, exaggerate much Lou? What the hell about that would make someone nauseous? Why would anyone give two shits what kind of flag or banner someone was carrying at a rally or protest? This is only partially true anyway, as he has stated in the past that he doesn't like seeing foreign flags flown in this country at all, not just at protests (he must have hated the Salt Lake Olympics). And to claim that it actually makes you physically ill? Give me a fucking break. This is another one of those situations that Bill Maher refers to as people feigning outrage. Like the whole Dixie Chicks thing a couple of years ago. I don't buy that it really bothers him, he just likes the sound of his voice and the power that goes along with him stirring shit up for no reason. Lou then went on to state, for about the gazillionth time, that he doesn't like celebrating our differences (code for hating multi-culturalism) and wants us to only celebrate our "commonalities" as Americans.

He has said this over and over and I have never heard anyone actually follow-up with a question about what that really means. He's always crystal clear about what it doesn't mean, waving flags of other countries or celebrating any ethnic holidays such as Cinco de Mayo. He even said that we shouldn't celebrate St. Patrick's Day, because that's an Irish thing and people wave Irish flags during that time. Of course, he doesn't really have a problem with St. Paddy's Day, he just said that when he got backed into a corner when he was bitching to some Latino guest about the waving of Mexican flags and she commented that no one complains when we wave Irish flags during St. Patrick's parades. The only way he could save face and not look like the racist prick that he is was to say he didn't like people celebrating that either. That had to be the biggest line of bullshit I've ever heard, at least from someone outside the Bush administration. A problem with St. Patrick's Day?????? Is he serious? Could he possibly expect people to believe that he thinks St. Patrick's Day is bad for America, and that it's one of the things that "separates us" as a nation? Bad for livers maybe, but fuck Lou, you are a ridiculous man. Just admit you are a racist Nazi ass-hole and move on. But no, he must continue the mirage that he's a "populist" who cares about the American worker. He even defended himself once against the charge of hating Mexicans by saying that he loves Mexican food. Good one Lou, I'm sure they all bought it.

But back to our commonalities. What the hell does that mean on a practical level? So we know it means not waving the flags of any other country or celebrating any holiday that has anything to do with any heritage except America itself. OK, so nothing but the old stars and stripes and any event. But what about places like Puerto Rico and American Samoa? Are their flags OK? They are, after all, US territories. If those flags are not allowed, are you also against state flags? Will you be bitching the next time someone brings a Nevada state flag to a political rally? After all, that goes against the "commonality" Nevadans have with the rest of the country. How do you solve that problem? You can't ban the flags of Guam or the Virgin Islands (both US territories and therefore the people there are American citizens) if you allow any state flags. And while we are talking about the territories, what about the English-only rule that you are a big fan of? Should those places be subject to that rule, since they are part of America? Are you in favor of making the schools in those places teach classes only in English?

And holidays. So Lou, no Cinco de Mayo and no St. Patrick's Day. What holidays are OK to celebrate? I would assume that Christmas and Easter are out since those are Christian holidays and that would exclude Americans that are Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim or Atheist. Be careful how you answer this one, you fellow scumbag Bill O'Reilly will come after you for waging a "war on Christmas." So do we lose those days, along with Passover, Kwanzaa, Ramadan and L. Ron Hubbard Day? Or do we do a majority rule commonality and keep the Christian one's but lose the others? I'm sure the Jews wouldn't mind at all.

So what holidays would that leave us that celebrate our commonalities as Americans? I suppose Columbus Day. But isn't that too Italian to celebrated Lou? Personally, I would say that a holiday that celebrates someone who slaughtered and enslaved as many innocents as he did is not a great idea, but hey, if the Italian reason works for you it works for me. Veterans' Day, Memorial Day and any of the other ones that honor veterans (how many of these do we need anyway)? Those have to go, a small minority of Americans are veterans so they would be deemed too exclusionary. Labor Day? We can't make people like Donald Trump, Paris Hilton, and George W. Bush (people who have never labored a day in their life) feel left out so that one is out. I guess that leaves us with Independence Day. Although, very few families in this country can trace their roots all the way back to the founding of the Republic, so that would leave out the newer arrivals, so I guess the 4th would have to be cut as well.

I suppose all that we have left is Flag Day. And nothing says a rip-roaring good time like Flag Day. But that sure isn't very many days off from work every year. So how about a compromise Lou? What if we gave you Bloviating Jingoistic Fat-Ass White Male Bigot Day?

Could we have Cinco de Mayo back then?

Boston's Finest Escort Service

Not sure whether to file this item under "another thing I hate about Boston" or "another stupid thing about America," because this nonsense would probably have happened in other cities as well. I was watching the beginning of the Red Sox-Yankees game last night to see the response to Johnny Damon getting introduced for the first time in a Yankee uniform at Fenway Park (For those of you who don't follow baseball, Damon was probably the most popular of all the Red Sox players on the 2004 World Series team, but then signed with the much hated Yankees this last off-season). It was pretty much what one would expect from a bunch of sports fans, lots of signs around the park calling him "Johnny Demon" and booing him every time he ducked his head out of the dugout before the game. And his first at bat was a cavalcade of boos until he tipped his hat at the crowd and they seemed to instantly change to cheers. Sports fans are so easy to manipulate.

But this isn't what the thing that was so annoying on this day. Earlier in the day the team re-acquired backup catcher Doug Mirabelli in a trade with the San Diego Padres, they had traded him away in the off-season only to find out that their new backup catcher has a really hard time catching Tim Wakefield's knuckleball, which is what they use their backup for. And since this particular game had Wakefield as the starting pitcher they wanted to get him to Fenway as soon as possible. So a private jet flew him from California to Logan Airport in Boston, where a police SUV was waiting to whisk him to the ballpark. Really, I'm not kidding. A policeman, with Mirabelli's uniform waiting for him in the car, picked him up at the airport and raced to Fenway with sirens blaring. By Mirabelli's account the cop was going over 100 miles per hour. His plane landed at 6:48pm and the cop car arrived at Fenway at 7:00pm. Twelve minutes, including the time it took him to walk off the plane and get into the car and get out of the airport.

Can anyone say misuse of government services? Not a single Boston media outlet seems to have a problem with it. In fact, they seemed to love it. Globe sports columnist Bob Ryan even made a joke that being able to get him there that fast made the $15 billion spent on the Big Dig worth it. Of course, the fans loved it too, and gave him a standing ovation. And this is just another example of why I can't wait to get out of this town. Why does no one else see a problem with this? A police officer (on or off duty is unclear) uses a government vehicle to escort a private citizen to his private job just so he can get there in time. And puts the public at great risk by driving recklessly. All to get a jock to the park on time. Now, I love baseball, but this is utterly fucking ridiculous. I can't see how this is acceptable on any level. I can't support this any more than I could support it if it was to get Noam Chomsky to a lecture on time, and that would be a hell of a lot better reason than getting a weak-hitting (.182 average going into last night's game) backup catcher to the game on time.

The cop who participated in this should be fired. If there was a supervisor in the police department who approved this, he or she should also be fired. Red Sox owner John Henry, club CEO Larry Lucchino, and GM Theo Epstein should all be fined $1 million each. That they even thought this OK is astonishing. PEOPLE, IT'S A BASEBALL PLAYER! This was not bone marrow or a kidney bound for the Children's Hospital.

I don't know if this would only happen in Boston or not. But it's not surprising it did happen here and that everyone seems to be OK with it, what with the fact that most people around here drive like maniacs anyway and they treat the Red Sox like a religion. If you think Scientology is a stupid religion (and it is), you should see the idiocy of the one they call Red Sox Nation.

This is what happens when you have a town full of those Southie dunderheads. They may have made for cute little lovable characters in Good Will Hunting, but in real life they're just a bunch of fucking Neanderthal dumbshits.