Political

Hate is NOT a Crime

~ lobablanca

The phrase “hate crime” has always made me uncomfortable in a very Orwellian way, and the feeling has returned in full force in light of the recent events at the Holocaust Museum. Hate is not a crime. Hate, like love or fear or anger, is an emotional response. Hate cannot be policed. Hate cannot be arrested. Hate cannot be punished by the law.

Oh but wait. It can be. In fact, there are several documented instances in which those accused of hate crimes have received stronger punishments than those who have committed comparable “non-hate” crimes. What I do not understand is this: Are not all criminal acts driven by some kind of emotional urge? Lust for money, lust for power, lust for control, crime of passion, crime of regret, crime of greed, crime of hate. How is murdering your neighbor because you hate him for being Black any different than murdering your neighbor because you hate him for having a Lexus and a Rolex? How is raping the woman at the bar who refused to dance with you because she is gay any different than raping the woman at the bar who wouldn’t talk to you even though she was dressed “provocatively”? Isn’t the end result the same in both scenarios? One crime was committed under the emotion of hate, the other under the emotion of greed and/or lust. Should one receive a sterner punishment than the other?

I think it is incendiary and intolerable to allow any government entity to label an emotion as a crime. This is as close to the Thought Police as we have ever come in this country…and that’s saying a lot considering who our last president was. Policing who we hate is as dangerous as policing who we love. Hate is not the crime. The action inspired by hate is what should be policed. But how is the policing of a premeditated “hate crime” any different from the policing of any other premeditated crime? It’s not, and it shouldn’t be. As disdainful as groups like the Ku Klux Klan or the Aryan Nation are, they are protected under the First Amendment. Their hatred is bilious and corrosive to their members…but what they believe, what they feel is not a crime. It only becomes a crime when they act on it, and only then can the law step in.

Of course, that begs the question, how can we step in before the hatred leads to a criminal act, as it did at the Holocaust Museum. You want to stop “hate” crimes? It’s the same as stopping any crime. Try investing less money into prisons and more into schools. Try spending less time writing bills to police emotions and more time writing bills to increase funding to afterschool programs, accessible housing, improved community facilities, access to suitable employment and the training to perform these jobs. Try spending less time feeding the emotional blood lust and more time feeding the intellect

Give Me Liberty…Or Give Me Free Will

~ lobablanca

It is the duty of every student to respect Liberty’s Statement of Doctrine and Purpose. They may not engage in any activity on or off campus that would compromise the testimony or reputation of the University or cause disruption to Liberty’s Christian learning environment.

Guess what Liberty University now considers to be compromising to their testimony. Nope, it’s not the evangelical porn club. It’s not even the Jews for Jesus pig roast.

It’s the LU College Democrats Club. You can read the entire e-mail sent to the head of the Democrats Club at theWashington Post. Or, if you’d rather read the news from a more fundamentally approved paper, you can read the article at the Washington Times.

Am I surprised by this move? Not one bit. After all, Liberty was Jerry Falwell’s baby. And as we all know, Jerry Falwell was many things in this life…but a good Christian was not one of them. Good hypocrite, yes. Good manipulator, of course. But I refuse to believe that he correctly represented Christianity with the hatred and castigation that he spewed throughout his lifetime. Let’s just review some of his “greatest hits” in his honor:

  • AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.
  • It appears that America’s anti-Biblical feminist movement is at last dying, thank God, and is possibly being replaced by a Christ-centered men’s movement which may become the foundation for a desperately needed national spiritual awakening.
  • The ACLU is to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews.
  • There is no separation of church and state. Modern U.S. Supreme Courts have raped the Constitution and raped the Christian faith and raped the churches by misinterpreting what the Founders had in mind in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
  • Good Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions.

That last one I added just because it represents to me the keystone of why people like Jerry Falwell get away with peddling their hate and ignorance to misguided masses: Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you exactly what I want you to believe. And since his death, his like-minded son has been running his legacy, including Liberty University.

Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster I didn’t go to this Offred Reprogramming Center like I was supposed to. I’ve changed many of my opinions since I last blogged regularly. I’ve even changed many of my opinions regarding religion. But one thing that has not changed is my absolute intolerance for this kind of manipulative mind fucking. Jerry Falwell represented everything I saw wrong with organized religion, everything that I still find vile and reprehensible. I’m so very glad that I have met others beyond the scope of Falwell’s narrow and bigoted religious views who have helped me see hope for the future of the religious finding its right path in this country.

Unfortunately, however, schools like Liberty University (or worse…let’s not forget that Bob Jones University is still pumping out its own Baptist sock puppets) continue to mold young minds into the shape of religious perversion that these fundamentalists have decided is God’s will and God’s message.

Too bad Reverend Falwell can’t give us a little sign as to what that message should really be…

Ultraliberal Leftist Assault

~ lobablanca

rncstupidity

So, dipping into the Angry BloggerTM topic files, I still receive e-mails from the GOP at my junk e-mail account. Said e-mails are still addressed to my father. Said e-mails still both amuse and unnerve me (kind of like the GOP in general). The e-mails are punctuated by catty swipes at all the big Donkey names: Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Frank. They each contain some puerile jab like “Ultraliberal,” “Leftist Radical,” or “Kitten Crusher.” Almost all the messages harp on the national deficit (but strangely fail to mention the name of the president responsible for plunging us into said deficit).

Each message is “signed” by Michael Steele, current RNC chair, former lieutenant governor of Maryland, and eternal douche bag. I love how he is so gung-ho for his party now. Funny how he did everything short of actually switch parties when he ran for the U.S. Senate a few years ago. Funnier how he lost. The messages also always end with a plea for donations to the RNC. Let me get my checkbook now!

To your right you will see a particularly amusing graphic from one of these e-mails. The graphic comes from an e-mail decrying outrage over Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democratic party. It rebukes Specter for:

[peddling] his services

Seriously?

~ lobablanca

I keep coming back to what I want this new lair to be. I know that’s strange to say at this point since I’m steadily closing the gap on my first 100 posts, but that’s just the way I am. I can worry a hole into any issue imaginable (or imagined).

I actually do still feel very passionately about things like politics and society, and I suppose most of how I feel is still positively negative. But when I come here to vent, I always get sidetracked by all the pretty, shiny WordPress things like widgets and plug-ins. Case in point: Do you all like the pretty progress meter I snagged for my 50 Book Challenge? It’s originally a meter to chart progress for those who participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), but it works in this instance as well.

I suppose I also feel a certain sense of “what’s the point” regarding venting about things over which I have no control and no way of changing. Politics, for example. What’s the point? Our political system is interminably corrupt to the point that we shouldn’t believe a single word that passes from the lips of any of them, Obama included. How many times have we heard him beat the “difference between campaigning and governing” horse? It’s dead, Mr. President. Stop kicking it. Besides, I don’t think there should be a difference between the two. If you don’t think you can carry it through in reality, don’t promise it. I’m tired of ample servings of empty promises. Give me honesty or give me four more years of same shit, different party.

Speaking of parties, I’m so glad to see that my political party is still full of jackasses. Nancy Pelosi, WTF? We’ve already got Joe Biden sticking his foot in his mouth every other sentence; could you maybe STFU? And, yes, I’m going to be incredibly hard on the Democratic party here at the lair, probably even more so than the GOP. Why? Because I expect better from my party (whereas my Republican expectations have always been more than exceeded, which should let you know just exactly what I expect from them).

Here, however, is a recent GOP disappointment. Today’s WaPo has an article about how Republicans are worried about how to approach the task of opposing Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s pick to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter:

An all-out assault on Sotomayor by Republicans could alienate both Latino and women voters, deepening the GOP’s problems after consecutive electoral setbacks.

As a woman, I take deep offense to this statement. I despise that we have become a society that accepts granting preferential treatment or kid glove treatment based on one’s gender. Guess that’s why I also have a huge problem with affirmative action in action. As a law to level the playing field in the job market, affirmative action was a remarkable ruling. Then they added quotas. Quotas don’t level anything. And I can only speak for myself on this one, but I would rather lose out on potential employment if I lose because my competition is more qualified than receive the job because I happened to be born with “girl boobs.” Just like it’s not cool to knock me out of the competition because I’m a woman, it’s equally unfair to give me bonus points for being a woman. It almost makes me feel like there’s justification to the ridiculous notion that I am inferior because of my gender and that I need bonus points in order to compete. Screw that mindset.

(By the way, that YouTube clip contains the only things that were actually funny in that craptastic TNG episode of Family Guy).

Oh, and screw you, Senator Schumer for saying “[Republicans] oppose her at their peril…. I think this process is going to be more a test of the Republican Party than of Sonia Sotomayor.” Again, right back to my original argument: If the GOP have justifiable reasons for opposing her based on their party’s dictates and standards, then they should do so. And we should not assume that they do so because she is a woman or because she is a minority. I should also like to point out that it was under Republican presidents that the Supreme Court received its first woman justice and its second minority justice…you know, just in case anyone out there is keeping score of things that should come secondary to actual qualifications.

Jackass Democrat: Brian Moran

~ lobablanca

No, his last name isn’t Moron, but it might as well be. Seems that Brian Moran, one of three Democratic contenders in this year’s Virginia gubernatorial primary, is holding against Terry McAuliffe the fact that McAuliffe supported Hillary Clinton for president rather than Barack Obama.

What bothers me the most about these accusations is this:

Moran this week unveiled radio advertisements in the heavily African American communities of Hampton Roads and Richmond reminding voters of Clinton’s “3 a.m. phone call” ad that questioned Obama’s qualifications for the presidency.

By unveiling these ads in “heavily African American communities,” I can’t help but extrapolate a sinister unspoken accusation from Moran’s camp. It’s the same sinister accusation that WaPo op-ediot Eugene Robinson made when he wrote: “I know there’s a possibility that [W]hite Americans, when push comes to shove, won’t be able to bring themselves to elect a [B]lack man as president of the United States.”

Two different approaches, one seemingly similar message: If you’re White and you didn’t support Obama, it’s obviously because you’re racist and didn’t want to vote for a Black man.

Am I reading too much into this to think that Moran is trying to paint McAuliffe as racist because he chose to support HRC for president rather than Obama? As someone who glutted themselves to the point of political apathy on everything that pertained to the 2008 presidential race

Pandemic Pigs and the Specter of Republican Moderation

~ lobablanca

So Maryland apparently has swine flu. Or at least six people living in Maryland. Since when did six sick people qualify as a pandemic? I hate that word. I hate any word that is over-used, especially when it’s used incorrectly. This isn’t a pandemic, just like the avian flu outbreak wasn’t a pandemic (I kvetched about this in my angry blogger days, too).

Yes, this is something to be treated with due caution and care. But stop trying to freak us all out. You’re going to scare the children, and then they’ll start crying. I hate the sound of crying children. It irritates me like nails on a chalkboard might irritate normal people.

Doesn’t matter to me anyway. According to my dad, I might actually be immune to piggy flu (ew, that evokes Lord of the Flies imagery that I just don’t want to have in my head this early in the day). Apparently, he believes that both my parents went through swine flu back in the seventies…1976, to be precise. And my mom just happened to be pregnant with me at the time. I wonder if that’s true…the immunity part, not the pregnant with me part. I think this will be a theory I’ll refrain from testing.

On other news fronts, I’ve been thinking about this whole deal of Arlen Specter switching teams. I think this was a bad idea. If there’s one thing that the GOP needs more of, it’s moderate thinkers. They need people in the party who will start pulling them away from the far-right precipice on which they’ve been teetering for far too long. I get that Senator Specter is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that he has a better chance of winning next time he’s up for re-election (if I remember correctly, he came close to being trounced soundly by his Democratic opponent last election), but this is a Spock sacrifice moment if ever I saw one: needs of the many, my friend. And right now, the GOP needs many, many more of your moderate type.

Also, I don’t necessarily think I like the idea of a filibuster-proof Senate. Democrats are running all the tables right now, and I don’t even think that’s a good idea. Everything requires balance. The government has been fairly imbalanced for a while, what with the GOP running the show for practically 8 years straight. Now we’re just flipping over to the exact opposite end of the spectrum. Avoid the middle at all cost.

Never mind that most people actually exist in the middle anyway.

Psychological Audit

~ lobablanca

Due to the piss-poor economic state of affairs as of late, many people are choosing to tighten their belts when it comes to monthly expenditures, even if they happen to fall in the “Well Off” category. As noted in this WaPo article:

Economists say many still-flush consumers are handcuffed by psychological traps that cause them to tighten their purse strings even though economic hardship is not their reality. Underscoring the crucial role that consumer psychology will play in turning around the economy, President Obama and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke have both been on the hustings this week sounding notes of optimism.

The most troubling things about this quote are: a) the fact that fiscal responsibility is being labeled a “psychological trap”; and b) the fact that the Obama administration is trying to paint a happy face on this situation as a way of encouraging people to spend more.

Does no one find it horrifying that the fate of the American economy apparently rests on the shoulders of consumers and how much Chinese-made crap we’re willing to buy? Is our economic salvation really contingent upon people like me finally breaking down and buying a plasma television? Because if it is, we’re in bad shape. I’m a cheap mofo. You know the old saying: “Live simply that others might simply live.” I believe it’s more than just something to read off a bumper sticker. I think it should be part of our overall belief system.

Yes, I own way more DVDs than I really need. I have five bookshelves full of reading material. I love my Xbox 360. I’m not going to lie and act like I don’t indulge myself now and again. But the indulgences are few and not what you’d expect. My DVDs and video games? Many of them come from used CD/DVD stores or Amazon Marketplace (the greatest online service on earth, if you ask me). Marketplace is also from where most of my book purchases come. No shame in proving that “one man’s junk is another geek’s treasure.” I come nowhere near spending $100 a day (of course, I’m also not “upper-income,” so I guess I’m okay there). If I do spend a significant amount of money, it’s either because I couldn’t find a better deal, or it’s for someone else.

I’m just really displeased with the idea that we are being expected to spend more in order to fix our economy. If that’s the case, then this country needs to start giving us better merchandise. I’m sick and tired of shoddily made merchandise that breaks soon after I purchase it. You want me to spend more money? Give me better quality. Oh, and here’s an idea: Maybe you could give me that better quality actually built here in America. I get that this is supposed to be a global economy, but that doesn’t mean that we have to completely gut a whole subset of our own economy. How many thousands of former industry workers would love to be able to work again? Call me crazy, but bringing some of these jobs back to our own shores might do more to boost our economy than buying a pile of Chinese-made plastic crap from Wal-mart ever would.

Rediscovering Cuba

~ lobablanca

Another step in the right direction from the Obama administration: He has relaxed the sanctions against interaction with Cuba.

This is another of those tangents I often strayed into during my last blog (I swear, I will link to it!). I continue to fail to understand why we have for so long not been allowed dealings with Communist Cuba, but we can outsource practically our entire blue-collar workforce to China, which, in case you were wondering, continues to be Communist. Oh but wait. This article does state that:

The changes do not alter the Cuban government’s long-standing efforts to hinder foreign companies operating on the island.

I get it. We can’t exploit the Cuban workers the same way we’re exploiting the Chinese. Makes perfect sense now.

I’m very interested to see what sort of changes these loosened restrictions will bring, both to Cuba and to the United States. Perhaps Cuba will reinstate the sanctions themselves once the infection of American stupidity starts to seep into their culture. After all, there is talk that soon they may be subjected to utter tripe such as Howard Stern. I don’t know about anyone else, but I would consider that to be more punishment than positive…

When Freedoms Collide

~ lobablanca

Interesting article from the local rag regarding faith groups losing numerous legal battles in regard to their discrimination toward homosexuality. The articles states right off the bat:

Faith organizations and individuals who view homosexuality as sinful and refuse to provide services to gay people are losing a growing number of legal battles that they say are costing them their religious freedom.

Here

Slow on the Uptake…

~ lobablanca

I’m still trying to get back into the swing of regular blogging. I do believe I’m a bit rusty, though. Quick, where’s my oil can, woodsman? Plus, it doesn’t help that I’ve currently got several irons in the fire right now that all need equal tending. I’ll get back into the game, though. No worries.

I suppose I should touch on something that played a significant role in my former blog: politics. Seems my attitude toward the political game has changed a bit since we last hung out. I don’t necessarily think I’m a full-blown Democrat anymore.

Wait. No, I am not now nor will I ever be a member of the Republican party. I just don’t feel particularly enthusiastic toward my own party. Independent has begun to trip off my lips with greater frequency. I was just so utterly disappointed by this last presidential election and the wholesale pandering of Barack Obama as almost messianic, both by the Democratic party and the media.

He’s not the Messiah. He’s not even all that different from most politicians. Yes, he is an intellectual and linguistic improvement over the last guy. But really, that’s not much of a feat, is it? I guess I have become so jaded by politics in general that I don’t place much faith in any of them, least of all the option with the least amount of political experience. So I failed to drink my portion of the Obama Kool-Aid sent to me by the DNC.

Does that mean that I’m looking for him to fail? No. In fact, I hope that he does become all that he promised to be. But I’ve never been good at holding my breath for extended periods of time, so I won’t be holding it now either. However, we’re in such a disgusting mess in this country right now on numerous levels that the last thing I want is for him to fail. We need someone with a plan to help pull us out of the muck into which we’ve been steadily sinking for the last 8 years. Bush definitely got one wish: He’s quite possibly had the most impact on this country of any president in recent history. Too bad it was impact comparable in scope and damage to an atomic bomb.

Anyway, so I don’t really know what kind of a role politics will play in this new blog. I’m not quite as angry as I used to be, but I think that stems more from the fact that I’ve become increasingly more apathetic to the entire process. I do have to say, though, that I have been noticing small silver linings, such as President Obama’s recent reversal of Bush’s ban on embryonic stem cell research.

I know there is endless debate going on right now regarding the morality of this research. I can’t help but question the opposition from many Republicans regarding the “destroying of a potential life” through this form of research when they seem to lack the same concern in regard to our military. But I digress.

All I know is that within this form of stem cell research lies the key to unlock the cure for so many diseases, including Alzheimer’s. My grandmother passed away last year, due in part to Alzheimer’s. No one should ever have to be condemned to such a slow and awful death, and no family should ever have to watch a loved one leave them in such a horrible way. So if this is the key, I say it’s time to blow this locked door right off its hinges.