An Ohio man, Jerry Kane Jr., was shot and killed, as was his 16-year-old son, after the elder Kane shot and killed an Arkansas police officer. Kane was one of the “sovereign citizens” and considered himself part of the “patriot” movement, which has distrust or even hatred for the government and its agents. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, says that anti-government groups have increased almost 250%, up 363 groups in 2009 alone!

While the death toll from Kane’s attack was only 2, (not including his son, for which I hold him responsible as well), he is nonetheless a homegrown terrorist because he believes in using violence and has no problem taking innocent lives to advance his agenda.

What do you think would have happened if Jerry Kane Jr. had been of Middle Eastern descent? Or if he’d been a Muslim?  He’d have been called a terrorist in the original story and the FBI/CIA would have weighed in saying there was no evidence he was linked to Al Qaeda or the Taliban. But because he’s a white man, he isn’t called what he is.  A local sheriff in Ohio warned law enforcement officials that he was a danger, and yet he wasn’t on anyone’s “terrorist” list.

In addition to demonstrating the escalating racism and religious discrimination in this country, this shows the utter insanity of a “war on terror” that focuses on those outside the country but forget about their own homegrown terrorists.

CBS is planning a new series based on the Twitter feed “Shit My Dad Says”, except CBS is going to use symbols instead of the actual word. Now the group Parents Television Council is raising a stink about the word “shit”, even when it’s in symbols. They claim they’re going to challenge the right to have a license for every station that airs the show before 10 pm.

Now, the PTC claims to be a non-partisan group. Yet the PTC was founded by L. Brent Bozell III, a conservative political activist who wants to insure that television focuses on “family centered” entertainment during prime time. Bozell was also the national finance chairman of Pat Buchanan’s failed 1992 presidential campaign. Buchanan is well known for his racist tendencies. Additionally, PTC’s rating system involves a stop light and one gets a “green light” if one’s show is “Family-friendly show promoting responsible themes and traditional values.” And “traditional values” does not include gay or gay-themed shows. America’s Next Top Model received a yellow light for language because of discussions about “virginity, homosexuality. and other activities.”

Conservatives, like the founder of PTC, are usually about smaller government and keeping government intrusion out of personal lives. How ironic is it that they’re also the one’s most likely to support censorship on TV (even on cable and movies), government laws creating “traditional values” as the law of the land, etc.

Hypocrites!

Are you really surprised? The Republican party and its spin-off of radicals, the Tea Party, spent all 8 years of the Bush-Cheney regime spinning facts into fiction and twisting truth into lies. Now, once again, we’re seeing how they use their fear-mongering to pass their racist, elitist agenda through deceiving the public, who cannot remain blameless in this since they’re allowing it to happen.

While Arizona politicians are screaming about how they have to pass this immigration law because the crime along the border is out of control, statistics from an ABC analysis of crime data and interviews with law enforcement show that all the chaos, mayhem and crime that the law’s supporters talked about really doesn’t exist at anywhere near the levels they suggested. In fact, in many border communities in Arizona, New Mexico, California and Texas, violent crimes have gone down, the number of illegal aliens has gone down and the number of those captured trying to cross the border has gone down (indicating that the flow of those trying to cross has gone down according to the Border Patrol) while the number of detentions of illegals living the US and being deported back to Mexico is at a record level.

So why the need for such a law? I’m sure you can figure it out…

Racism has been on the rise in recent years, especially towards those of Middle Eastern, Indian (not Native American) and Hispanic descent. But racism against blacks is also on the rise. And nothing proves the continuing racist attitudes than the study that found that the wealth gap between whites and blacks has grown from $20000 in 1984 to more than $95000 in 2007! The change is so drastic that at this point, middle income whites have more assets than high income blacks.

There can be no denying that continuing and increasing racism (thanks to the fear-mongering of the previous regime and the radical religious right) has contributed to this widening gap. And yet there are so many people calling for an end to affirmative action. If it’s this bad with affirmative action, how much worse will it be without it?

If anyone had any doubts that the Tea Party movement is being funded and organized and controlled by a bunch of bigots, the comments by Mark Williams, an organizer of the Tea Party Express, should put your doubts to rest.  According to a CNN article, Williams wrote on his blog that the mosque planned for NYC near the site of the WTC will be “for the worship of the terrorists’ monkey-god and a ‘cultural center’ to propagandize for the extermination of all things not approved by their cult.”

Of course there was an uproar not only from Muslims in America and around the world and from Islamic organizations but also people who are tired of the bigotry and the hate being propagated in the name of patriotism and American ideals. Calls came demanding an apology from Mr. Williams who did offer an apology the next day: not to Muslims but to Hindus who worship Hanuman, a god who looks like a monkey. His apology was a second slap inthe face to Muslims and American ideals in as many days.

Like probably everyone else, I figured the man was just another bigot in the Tea Party, which seems to have more than their fair share of bigots. Then I went to Mr. Williams’ website to try to read the quote for myself in context. And this is what I found at the entry for May 19th.

The article you are looking for is at this link:

http://www.marktalk.com/blog/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=9636

It is password protected and available to those who have a copy of  “Mark Williams Taking Back America One Tea Party at a Time” (click on the title of the book to get your copy now – either hard copy or eBook).

In other words, if you want to see his blog post with the quote, you have to buy his book first. So maybe it’s not just about bigotry. Maybe this is all about money. Creating an image as a bigot and selling it for money.

So my question to you, dear reader, is this:

Is Mark Williams a bigot or a whore or both?

Oh, wait, I owe an apology to whores around the world….

[Note: Use of the word "whore" is not to be taken as a disparagement of those who choose to earn their living as a prostitute. I believe prostitution should be legal so that everyone can be better protected. Laws aren't going to stop it any more than it will stop drug use and as long as it is consensual and between adults, it's none of the government's business.]

A pharmaceutical giant, Novartis, maker of such drug standards as Ritalin, Theraflu and Lamasil, has been found guilty of gender discrimination for paying female employees less than male employees and for denying females promotions. The class action lawsuit awarded the original 12 filers $3.3 million and punitive damages have yet to be determined.

The irony is that Novartis has for many years  been hailed by many women’s magazines as a great place for working moms to find employment because of programs such as job sharing and a variety of child care options.

The skillful marketing? Like it or not, women are nurturers who very often feel guilty about nurturing themselves. (I’m not even going to get into how this has been programmed into us by various media and religious beliefs.) By offering all these options to working moms, yet paying them less than male counterparts, was Novartis hoping to use this guilt to increase their profits? Were they hoping that women would think something like “Where else can I find a company that’s gonna let me job share or provide this many options for child care? So what if I have to get paid less than the guy who does the same work as I do? My kids are worth it!”

Either way, this is just the latest example of why programs like affirmative action are still necessary for anyone whose not a white male.

In 1966, William Barnes shot and paralyzed a Philadelphia police officer during an attempted burglary. He served almost 20 years for attempted murder of a police officer. In 2007, that officer died and the medical examiner ruled that his death was the result of an infection from the 41 year old gunshot wounds. Now, William Barnes, 74, has been arrested and charged with murder and is on trial once again.

How is this legal? If they’re charging him with murder now, 43 years after he shot the officer in the first place, then the charges of attempted murder that he already served 20 years of his time for should never have been filed! The man is now 74 years old and has lectured at Temple University on his criminal past and his desire to turn his life around and now they’re going to stick him back in jail for murder?

To me this is a complete and utter waste of taxpayer money. The man already served 20 years for his crime, he’s trying to not only turn his own life around but help others turn their lives around by sharing his story. And now that he’s in the last years of his life, they’re going to take that away from him too.

This sounds like a situation where the DA is trying to make a name for him-/herself  and prove s/he is “tough on crime”. It also sounds like retribution because the victim was a cop.  I hope the guy is found not guilty. And yes, I believe I’d say that even if it were my brother/father/son who had been shot 43 years ago.  Even if we were to assume that an eye for an eye is actually justice, this goes beyond an eye for an eye.

Our criminal justice system is based on the principle that once you serve your time, you are free. You’ve paid your debt to society and unless you get in trouble with the law again, you’re supposed to have the same rights you had before. First, they took away the right to vote from convicted felons (how long varies from state to state), then they introduced the Miranda law, which required sex offenders to register with the state whenever they move, then there’s all the rights they abrogated with the passage of the PATRIOT Act and PATRIOT II (which are too numerous to list here) and now the US Supreme Court has ruled that certain federal sex offenders may be kept in jail indefinitely even after they’ve served their sentence.

Mind you, I’m not on the side of child molesters and rapists. I’m on the side of the US Constitution. And if we set a legal precedent that allows us to set aside the Constitution under certain circumstances without passing an amendment allowing such, then we’re on a very slippery slope. And who gets to decide what people are allowed to be held indefinitely.

I know it’s very easy to say “Let those bastards rot in their jail cell for all I care!” when you’re dealing with someone who molests children and rapes women. But they are still US citizens, still human beings and still entitled to the same rights that every human being is entitled to.  While it’s also easy to say “They’re monsters!” it wasn’t all that long ago that blacks were considered 3/5 human and that gays were considered mentally sick and a danger to society. (Some still consider gays a threat to society. You need only look at the gay bashing going on by the radical religious right for some examples.) So who is and who is not a monster is not always something that’s universally accepted.

The answer is not to violate the US Constitution but to change the sentencing guidelines for these kinds of crimes. Far too often, the maximum sentence possible is far less than what it should be. Unfortunately, our jails are so clogged with victims of the “war on drugs” who are sentenced under mandatory sentencing (usually very harsh) that they can’t be released even if they’re only three time convicted small time users. So they end up releasing those who really need to be kept in jail. (This is just another of the many benefits of legalizing all drugs. And I mean ALL drugs.)

We’re sliding down the slippery slope to a police state if we keep standing by while the rights the US Constitution are supposed to protect are eroded by public policy and the knee-jerk emotional reactions of the majority of the public. I want child molesters off the street as well but not at the expense of undermining the US Constitution. That price is too high.

I am so absolutely against trying children as adults because a child’s mind is not fully developed enough to understand the consequences of his/her actions. I also believe that the line between reality and fantasy for many kids is becoming so blurred due to the graphic violence they are subjected to on a daily basis through music, video games, movies, television, etc.

So I wholeheartedly agree with the recent US Supreme Court decision to forbid life sentences without parole to many teenagers convicted of crimes they committed as children where no life is lost. The justices ruled that such a sentence is a cruel and unusual punishment for a child.

Children are much easier to rehabilitate than adults (barring some mental illness) and it makes absolutely no sense to stick a 15 year old behind bars for what could amount to 80% of his life!

Far too many people are so eager to seek revenge and punishment without looking at the circumstances behind what motivated a child to commit a crime. Usually there are a lot of factors involved, including the mental health of the teen. I find it incomprehensible that states are allowed to charge mentally challenged children with crimes just as they would charge a normal adult.

It seems that we want all kinds of benefits for kids, we want to shelter them and keep them innocent children as long as we can and we want to give them the benefit of the doubt in just about anything unless it involve crime. Then we treat them like full-grown adults with the mental and emotional capacity of a healthy adult. That’s just so totally screwed up.

Yes, Portugal. The kinda rectangular shaped  nation on the western end of Europe that’s surrounded by Spain on two sides and the Atlantic Ocean on the other two. Not much is ever heard about Portugal but they are now the 6th European nation to legalize gay marriage!

Portugal, which is 90% Catholic, passed the legislation in January and President Anibal Cavaco Silva signed the legislation into earlier this week. With Portugal’s stepping into the 21st century to uphold human rights, that brings the number of countries who have legalized gay marriage to eight, which includes South Africa.

One day, the rest of the world will remember with shame the ignorance of  the United States with respect to gay marriage the way we remember the ignorance of those who support(ed) apartheid.