The Columbus Stupid- Check it out

I wanted to do something more local, about the goofy politics here in Columbus Ohio. I'd love for you to come take a look at my new project, The Columbus Stupid. It's as good a name as any, I had a dream the other night I got a job at a new newspaper called the Columbus Stupid, so here we are, dreams can come true, Dorothy! I hope you'll all (both) check it out!

Malaysia Teapot Cult Attacked

No, really, there is a group in Malaysia that built a giant teapot "to symbolise its belief in the healing purity of water," and apparently they were attacked by a group of about 30 men throwing molotov coctails, according to the BBC on Monday.

Besides being really funny, (relax mother, nobody was hurt) it reminds us of one of the many great things about America. According to the BBC report,

Earlier this month, the group was raided by police, and 21 followers were arrested for possessing documents contrary to Islam.

That's what our establishment clause is about. For those of you who aren't political junkies or constitutional scholars, (I am both, as well as an expert in the use of parentheses) the establishment clause is in the first amendment to the constitution, it is probably the wisest 16 words ever writen into law, and it reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

Meaning no matter how much Rod Parsley wants to, nobody can tell you how or whether you worship in America. I pick on 'Pastor Rod' because he is infamous here in Columbus, but its true for all of us. We all think we know the answer don't we? Even those of us who say we don't know the answer, we look at those who say they do know and we say they must have it wrong!

The establisment clause gives us the freedom to follow our own concience, even if we are in the minority. If you want to worship a magic teapot in America, that's ok.

What a country!

On a sadder note, it seems we have news coming from all over the world every day about religious intolerance. Hindus bomb Muslims who bomb Christians who bomb Jews, not always in that exact sequence, but you get the idea. I know that it's nothing new, but it seems global in scope now, perhaps it always was and we just didn't always have Google News.

Whether or not it's worse than it was 100 years ago, it is terribly sad that humanity as a whole seems destined to pervert even our highest aspirations into senseless violence.

Million Moms - or 40 toothless hilljacks .com

Have you heard about Million Moms? No? Let me tell you about them. I first heard about this lunatic fringe group on a right-wing radio show, probably Hannity. Don't let their name fool you, they ought to call themselves "fortytoothlesshilljacks.com" The apparent purpose of their existence is to reduce all entertainment to G-rated dribble. (these are people who demanded that TV stations not play the movie "Saving Private Ryan" on Memorial Day.) -- Oh yeah, they also want to make homosexuality illegal.

After hearing about Million Moms on Hannity, I decided then and there I had to be on their mailing list. I love their emails for the same reason I listen to Hannity on the radio: sometimes I just like to hear the shrill voices screaming from the fringes of the right wing. It reminds me that I have to speak up too, or these idiots will really damage my country.

So I signed up, and every so often (about 3 times a week) I get an email instructing me to become offended at some company or other because of some thing or other. today I got this:

Johnson & Johnson has placed an ad for its Tylenol PM product in the July 19 issue of The Advocate , the nation's leading homosexual magazine.

The ad shows two shirtless men in bed side by side. The text over one reads: "His backache is keeping him up." Over the other: "His boyfriend's backache is keeping him up."

Click here to see a copy of the ad. (Be warned, it is offensive)

HUH? These are anti-gay activists, looking at gay magazines for ads to get upset about? You are surprised that a company marketing its products in gay magazines has an ad that shows to men in bed together? They are not doing anything other than lying awake with a headache. How does this offend, exactly?

Usually, Million Moms provides a link to their email server so you can send a canned message saying how you disapprove. I ALWAYS click that link, erase their form letter and write in big CAPITAL LETTERS in the subject line "DONT LET MILLION MOMS UNCHRISTIAN GOOFBALLS BULLY YOU."

If you want to look at the Million Moms website, click here, (Be warned, it is offensive.)
Because that's what I do, I look at right-wing pseudo-religious wackos and get offended when they do what comes natually to them.

Maybe we're not all that different after all.

Mercenaries Are Bad Investment

Looking back into some old notes, I see on April 7, 2005 Brian Ross at ABC reported
Blackwater, apparently a mercenary company / defense contractor, was being sued by the mothers of some of it’s employees who were killed in Fallujeh during the first part of the war, I remember they were set on fire and hanged from bridges. It got a lot of airtime on Al-jazeera in the Muslim world, and over here it was used to prove the inhumanity of the enemy. A mother that was suing Blackwater claimed the company sent their sons (former special forces) out in unarmored suvs, only 2 to a car instead of 3 and she wasn’t necessarily interested in monetary damages, but she had to sue Blackwater just to get any records of what happened.

My old link to Brian Ross’s article is no longer operative, to borrow a phrase from the press corps, a but the latest thing I found on Google today was at CNN: Family’s Lawsuit Over Slain Contractors Stalls from April 21, 2005.

Why are private armies bad? First is cost, these kids were getting 600 dollars a day. If they had stayed in the army, they would make 1 / 15th that at best. And that’s not including overhead. Second, they are illegal. They don’t even meet the qualifications for irregular forces under the Geneva Conventions, and if they were captured by an enemy army, it could be legal to shoot them, they don’t qualify for POW status. Third, they are unaccountable, in Kosovo a ring of them was arrested for selling slaves. Seriously, selling slaves? Who does that?
Employees of DynCorp, a major U.S. defense contractor, that’s who.

But wait, It gets better. Blackwater is owned by Erik Prince, a former SEAL, who’s father Edgar prince, get this, a huge donor to the Republican party and co-founder of the Family Research Council. I did some research into the FRC, they aren’t listed on Guidestar like most non-profits, but they do publish their tax records at The evangelical council for financial accountability. The employees at this place are bringing in 90-100k per year. Not bad for a non-profit. Also, the 6 largest donors, who gave 200k to 1.2 million, aren’t listed by name, just that they are (persons) and how much they gave. I would like to know who they were. That has to be available somewhere, or maybe it isn’t. I am afraid that's where the trail ended for me but my feeling is that money given by the US government to the mercenary company Blackwater is then funneled into the Family Research Council, who then promotes republican / conservative political causes.

I am counting on you, the readers of this blog (both of you) to dig up something new on this so lets go !

Just a Rant

We have to stop this whole enemy combatant thing. If someone is picked up during a military action somewhere, ok that’s an enemy combatant. The law and order types hate it but we can’t treat people caught here the same. If someone bombs something in america, he should get the same treatment we gave Eric Rudolph. Our law doesn't distinguish between citizens and non-citizens, and it shouldn't. Here on the soil of our land, all people have the same rights, the only difference being if you are a non-citizen, we can send you home.

I have heard, mostly on the right wing radio but also now in the mainstream press, that we may have to give up some of our civil liberties in order to protect us. Face it people, even with the Bin Ladens and Eric Rudophs of the world out there, you're still more likely to die in a car accident than in a terrorist plot. Should we all stop driving? Think of the brave people of London in the second world war. They could have stopped the bombing with a single word. Would they have been better off?

Freedom is not the safest way to live. Freedom is dangerous, sometimes protecting freedom means taking risks. Freedom is costly. It costs blood, not just the blood of the brave men and women in our military, but sometimes it requires our blood. Sometimes we pay for our freedom in our cities, in our airplanes, in our subways, in our busses. We do the best we can to keep our people safe, but we must draw the line somewhere. If we give up our liberty in pursuit of security, we deserve only tyranny.

We can’t be locking people up without due process, or we are not free, we are the victims of tyranny, neither safe nor free. The sad fact is no amount of arrests will make us completely safe. We should do what we can to protect ourselves within the law, because it is the law, and our respect for the law that keeps us free.

If that means some of us will die that would have lived under tyranny, I for one choose freedom, danger and all.

Another Lesson From The Netherlands

I am a pro-Labor type of guy, but the situation in Holland has helped me understand the point of view of the business lobby. We shouldn't give away the farm but we have to work together. One businessman I met on a recent trip to Amsterdam told me he was afraid to hire new employees that weren’t his relations or otherwise very well known to him, because as he said, “You can’t fire them, they don’t come to work, or they do a lousy job, and you try to fire them, the government tells you to take them back, you actually have to get permission to fire someone for doing bad work.”
Now that last bit sounded a little unlikely to me so I checked it out. Kernkamp Advokaten, a Dutch law firm, has this to say on the subject:

The dismissal of employees with a contract for an indefinite term is generally not impossible, but this will most always cost time, effort and money. In the absence of mutual agreement or cause the employer may generally not terminate the contract of employment without a permit, to be obtained from the Dismissal Authority. This will take several months and it is not always predictable whether one will obtain the required permit or not.

In other words, unless your employment contract specifically states a date that you will be let go (you are hired as a temp), your employer has to get a permit to fire you. While this sounds nice from a labor standpoint, even I can see how it might cause some business to flee the country. Even a die-hard Liberal like me has to be willing to compromise when it comes to issues like this. I don’t want my labor reduced to a commodity to be sold to the lowest bidder, but there needs to be some freedom of action for the business owner also. Something between what we have in the Western U.S. and the Netherlands would be a good place to aim at.

John Roberts

The only thing most of us really want to know, on both sides of the issue is right here in black and white:
John Roberts quoted in the report of the Alliance for Justice:

“[w]e continue to believe that Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled… The Court’s conclusion in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an abortion… finds no support in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution.” (Brief for the Respondent at 13, Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173 (1991) (Nos. 89-1391, 1392).

There you have it folks, this jurist is on record saying Roe V Wade should be overturned. I don't think it should be overturned, I guess I'll have to talk about why I think that but I am saving that for another post, so I encourage everyone to contact your senators and let them know about this part of John Roberts' record.

The idea, politically, is to cause a big fight. No democrats in the Senate can possibly give this guy a free ride, they're going to have to ask about this, and when they do, well, we'll see. But I am certain that this nomination was sped up a smidge to give Rove and Co. some breathing room, the idea being that the American people are too stupid to be able to fight over a Supreme Court nomination and a treasonous act by a White House official at the same time.

I guess we'll find out.

Lessons From the Netherlands

My dear friend DirtyPants sent me the a link yesterday, it’s an op-ed piece in the NY Times by Leon De Winter, called “Tolerating A Time Bomb.” We had a good discussion about it- (Meaning I talked a lot and she probably fell asleep) but today she suggested I talk about some of the issues we brought up in that discussion. There are a lot, so I am going to make this into a miniseries column, look for updates.

I thought the NY Times piece was a very clear-headed discussion of the issues facing the Dutch today. They have had a very permissive society practically since the middle ages, and I hope they never give that up. Somebody has to provide sanctuary for the likes of Descartes and the early American Settlers we call the Pilgrims. I love Holland, my wife and I honeymooned there, and the people we met and the society we saw were an inspiration to a couple of American Liberals. We can learn some very important lessons from Holland.
First lesson: allowing people to smoke pot in coffee shops doesn’t destroy the social fabric any more than letting them drink beer in sports bars. The Righties will all tell you that Amsterdam is flooded with heroin and crack, but it isn’t. I was just there in December 2004. Every city in America has a much bigger drug problem than Amsterdam. But beyond that, there are some real problems in this permissive utopia.

The idea of the welfare state causes problems. Mr. De Winter didn’t touch on this as much as I would have liked but, Imagine a country where you can live and be free to practice your religion and you are given the equivalent of a middle-class income, including health care, housing, food, and a cash stipend, just for living there. Now imagine you live in a village in the mountains of Morocco, and someone comes and recruits you to live and work there. It won’t take long for you to find a way to bring everyone you know to this paradise, and if they can’t find jobs, well that’s fine because they don’t have to. Just by being married or related to you, your family can live off the welfare system for years. Given the choice between eking out a living in Morocco and living on the dole in Amsterdam, well what would you choose? Even if you were born in Holland, raised on strict Calvinist values, you might be tempted to just take what you can get on the dole and play video games and smoke (legal) marijuana all day. (Maybe I am projecting here, as Dr. Phil would say.)

All or most of these North Africans happened to be Muslims. They found themselves in a situation where they had to live in The Netherlands to make a good living, but the permissiveness of Dutch culture was diametrically opposed to their more conservative values.
They must have felt culturally superior to the Dutch, and at the same time, by having to deal with the government bureaucracy of the welfare system, must have also felt humiliated. It is always humiliating to ask a stranger for help, even more so in the context of a welfare office in a strange country, with the clerk’s condescending attitude, the constant waiting and being forced to accept what is given to you.

These Muslims would not be inclined to assimilate into the larger Dutch culture, their opinion of the permissive society that they found themselves in kept them separate. Over time, some of these North African immigrants became intolerant of the tolerance of the Dutch. If anyone spoke out against this, watch out.

Here’s a real problem with liberals: just pointing out a problem like this gets you labeled anti-Muslim, or racist, or a right-wing bigot. Look at what happened to Pym Fortuyn. Mr. Fortuyn dared to say that Holland couldn’t accept too many more Muslim immigrants and retain its traditional liberal culture, and now we are seeing, maybe he was right. Over here in America Pym Fortuyn was portrayed in all the news outlets (at least the ones I read) as a real fire-breathing right-winger. Ok, but there are Righties from Texas, and Righties from Amsterdam, and they ain’t the same.

We need to remember that sometimes, to honestly confront a problem, we have to admit that there are issues that are going to make people uncomfortable. Just because a problem involves immigrants, doesn't mean that my wanting to solve the problem makes me anti-immigrant. I can be against further immigration from some regions for practical reasons and not be a racist or anti-immigration. I know that its a "slippery slope." But we have to talk about things sometimes, and we can do so in a way that is inclusive, and when we don't, the far Right comes in and makes a real mess. We should be openly discussing what our options are and what we can do to make the situation better, because we are better at it than the Righties, and these are issues that people will trust us with.

I was one of those who read a little about Pym Fortuyn when he was alive, and I seriously considered him a dangerous right wing nutball. I look back now and see how naive I was. Part of tolerance means being intolerant of intolerance. Maybe, as Leon De Winter says:

Perhaps what this country needs most of all is another unconventional, outspoken gay politician.

I need to get back to the news, More Lessons from the Netherlands to come.

Posting comments

I got some emails saying people had trouble posting, I tried it, and it seems to work, all I can tell you is if you don't have a blogger ID, just click on the anonymous button above the post. If you want to say who you are, or give a handle, feel free, but it's not required.

July 18, 2005

I can't believe the news today, It wasn't that long ago, when the patriot act was passed, I said we'd be returning to the bad old days when the FBI kept files on their political opponents. Yes, the FBI has political opposition. Think ACLU, any civil rights or peace organization, etc. Everyone on right wing radio (which was all I could get where I lived at the time) said "Oh no, we are only going to use this against terrorists." Yeah right. The ACLU gave a press release today that indeed, since 2001 when the patriot act was passed, the FBI has bravely infiltrated and kept files on the dangerous people at the ACLU, Greenpeace, United for Peace and Justice, Code Pink, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

PETA? maybe. I have heard allegations that PETA was associated with some extremist animal rights dimwits. I have personally had to deal with PETA's weirdness so I can understand that a police organization might want to have a file on them. Fine, if you really have evidence that they did something wrong, but really, you shouldn't. They are mostly just people who read "The Jungle" and decided eating meat was evil so don't waste a lot of time on them, ok?
Code Pink? WHO IS CODE PINK? Sounds like some kind of gay thing, but no, its actually "Women for Peace" according to http://www.codepink4peace.org. A group of women who participate in peace marches? I can think one or two things I'd rather have the FBI spending time on. Greenpeace? There's a real threat to national security! I have to admit, I haven't heard much about the rest of them, but a quick check on Google finds that none of them seem terribly dangerous, except for having the word "Arab" or "Muslim " in the title.
Most egregious though, to my mind at least, is the ACLU. No police organization likes the ACLU. The ACLU tries every day to limit police power, sometimes they win, sometimes they don't, its all part of the marvelous mess we call democratic government. Everybody gets to have their say, sometimes we decide they're right, sometimes not. But the ACLU is not a terrorist organization! To imply otherwise is plain lunacy. We as a nation do not need an FBI file on the ACLU. We can disagree with the ACLU, we can even hate the ACLU, but we can not, must not use police power to intimidate and spy on those we disagree with!
Does the EPA have a surveillance file on its political opponents? I doubt it. Does the defense department? Maybe, but I honestly doubt it. And I haven't heard of it (which in the end might just mean they are better at it.) The point I am rambling on about is, the government MUST NOT use its police powers, its executive powers, to interfere with political discourse. If that happens, we slide toward dictatorship. Yes, the FBI thinks the ACLU is wrong. Of course they do! Nobody at the FBI thinks the FBI would ever abuse any power it has, but here they are, abusing it!

In other news, today, we find out that Eric Rudolph got 4 consecutive life sentences for his bombing efforts. Here's a real danger to the public, here is a real jerk who actually KILLED people because he is an unchristian pseudo-religious nut, and he gets life in prison. I am not usually one to call for someone's execution, in fact, I would be pleased if we did away with state execution altogether. But since we have it as an option, why is this unrepentant murderer not twisting in the wind? He admits to his bombings, he says he was justified. He practically incites others to do as he did. If I was prosecuting this case, I would not allow any plea bargain. I would make sure this guy gets the chair. I would prefer he got blown to bits by a pipe bomb, like his victims, but that would be barbaric. Keep in mind, I oppose the death penalty, I do believe that there are people who really deserve it, but I also think that with the death penalty, there are bound to be innocent people sentenced to death. So I am against it as a law. But it is the law; I can be against abortion, that doesn't mean I can stop you from getting one, I can try to talk you out of it, but for now, it's the law. If Eric Rudolph was an unrepentant Muslim bomber, who killed people because he hated abortion and gays, we'd kill him twice. Why not Rudolph?

Karl Rove? Sorry, I can't comment on that because of the -you guessed it- ongoing investigation. sheesh.

JC

Welcome

Welcome to JC reads the news, I'm JC and I'll try to post as often as I can, I have to write fluff for a local paper all day so some days I may not post. I'd love to read your comments whether you agree or not, please post, it helps me feel like I am not the only one reading this.