Why Stop At The Methodists?

As this congress session draws to a close, another congress is chomping at the bit to set their agenda based on a mandate they feel they have from all the lunatics who were crazy enough to vote for them. And just how crazy are they? Bull goose loony squared is an apt description.
Take Tea Party nation founder Judson Phillips. He wants to get rid of the Methodist Church because they preach that togetherness, and understanding peace and other hippie crap espoused by Jesus, instead of twisting his words to suit their own selfish agenda. Feed the poor? No way! Make them work two or three part time jobs instead.
Not to be outdone, Rep. Peter King has decided he wants to hold hearings on radical Muslims. Because you can never persecute them enough. I thought the Republicans were about saving the tax payer's money, but there's always room in the budget for a little fear mongering, especially with a presidential election not too far away.
Yes, it's hunting season again, and the GOP has set it's sights on finishing the job they started in 2000: getting Americans to vote against their own interests by keeping them in fear of, well, everything different. Especially those which threaten threaten the thing unique to white people.

The Twenty Four Hour All Anxiety News Cycle

The other day on the way home from work I was passed by a car sporting the old "I Don't Believe The Liberal Media" bumper sticker. I chuckled to myself at the cluelessness of this driver for believing that the corporate media is liberal or, with the exception of FOX NEWS, conservative. What we have is the All-Anxiety American Media, all anxiety, all the time, designed not to enlighten and inform, but rather to keep viewers in a constant state of anxiety, crying wolf, as it were, about things they are ultimately powerless to end.
A prime recent example of this is the "ground zero" mosque controversy, manufactured, for sure, but in the end neither opponents nor defenders have any real power to make a difference. The die has been cast and while people browbeat each other over religious freedom and security issues, I'm sure somewhere they have already forgotten all the other things they threw at you to keep you reaching for your Xanax.
As an example, we were warned of the imminent end of the world when Iran acquired nuclear power, yet they launched their first nuclear power plant, and everybody's okay, except for this guy.
Today I caught a glimpse of a story on the Internet Bin Laden, the next in a long line of Boogeymen that the Anxiety News Cycle has to shake at you once you realize that the real Osama Bin Laden is dead. Once you have nothing to fear, there is nothing to keep you tuned into the news to see how to protect your family and yourself, and every viewer lost is a loss of revenue for them. The meat on that dead horse must be really tender they way they've been flogging it. It's no wonder alleged 'patriots' across the country are protesting the building of new mosques, or that in a desperate move, the RNC sent a tweet saying Obama has confessed to being a Muslim. Fear sells, but what's really scare is the type of people who are buying it.

They Take Everything You Have And Yet You're The Traitor

It's officially over. The shining city on the hill has become the shining gated community in the lower tax suburbs. The rest of us? We're left to defend ourselves from the avatars of avarice who constantly demand more work, time and money from us while giving us less and less in return.
How did they do it? The poor have always wanted to be working class, the working class have always wanted to be middle class, and everybody wants to be rich. We've seen it on TV, force fed frolicking filthy rich fornicators on television for years, we all dreamed of the day when we won the wheel of fortune, that's how they sell lottery tickets and casino junkets.
Sorry folks, but the easy money you secretly wish for every night isn't for you. The rich right wing Republican robber barons rip you off using the carrot and stick method (beat you on the head with their stick then feed you carrots)to keep you slaving away, making them more money while discovering new ways to take away more of your hard earned dough. Welcome to New America!
Justice? Maybe if you have more than the corrupt corporations, otherwise, you and your family are at risk. Freedom of speech is reserved for those who say what the corpocracy wants you to hear, while dissension is a one way ticket to terrorism charges. Love our leader, or face the prospect of losing your liberty.
We have become like cattle at a kosher carniceria, hung up and bled dry until they can feast on our fetid flesh at the mortuary of miracles. Your money is not yours, but their money, well, that's just a matter of opinion.
It's a good thing that someone keeps us doped up through the water supply (notice how they always drink bottled water?), other wise there may be riots in the streets, or an awful lot of people in FEMA concentration camps.

I've Been Among You My Whole Life, And I kn ow You All Are Racist

I grew up in a small town on the west coast of Michigan. An idyllic place, it's only crimes were pot smokers, drunk drivers and the occasional sex offender. It was isolated, cut off from the big cities by vast stretches of farmland and rolling dunes on which the very wealthy built their summer homes. It was almost 100% white except for the family of the chauffeur of the town's wealthiest family. And they had more class and intelligence than most of the white people in town, so they were accepted, because they weren't too black.
My Dad moved our family there in 1967. We had lived in Muskegon, a large city north of my hometown for a couple of years. We even had a black maid, Daisy, who would come to the house and help out my poor Mom with her five children, and once or twice, watch us younger ones at her house, a nice place in a decent neighborhood. But then the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing, and my dad, who was prejudiced, heard that Realtors in my hometown has worked to keep black people out. I can still remember him talking to a neighbor about the "riots", and his fear they might spread to this little Eden on the shores of Lake Michigan. Fear.
Growing up there, you never met any black people. It wasn't until much later, when Brother James moved to Grand Rapids, and formed a band that happened to have a couple of black members in it that I got to actually know a black person. Sure, we had seen them on television; Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, and laughed with them as they exposed our racist beliefs for the fear based hatred that they were, but this was someone who knew me, and my out look changed considerably.
When I first was out of high school, I got a job loading plants into a semi. Some days I'd be in the back of the truck, and others I'd be riding around, helping to fill orders. It was a hard job, and not one I had planned to do my entire life, unlike a lot of the white people I was working with, so they stuck me with the black crew. That was my punishment, but the black crew saw I wasn't bothered by this, and took to me because I was a hard worker. Out in the fields, working with the white guys, I would hear that epithet tossed around casually. It changed my opinions of a lot of people I worked with and for, because I didn't like that word. When my friend the Guru would come over to visit, he would casually spout off with that word, and I would ask him to not use that word at my place because it offended me. He looked at me like I was crazy. Other friends would patronize me after using it "oh, that's right, he doesn't like that word."
As many other white people will admit, privately, they don't like black people. I've heard them use terms from 'pickaninny' to nigger, to people who to this day refer to black people as colored, and not one of these people who use these words, would I consider to be intelligent creatures at all. Because nothing makes a person look like an idiot more than spewing forth race based hatred and couching it in terms they feel are acceptable in the presence of other white people.
At this point in our history, America is supposed to be united against a common enemy. There are no more hyphenated Americans, just E Pluribus Unum. How can a man claim to be a patriot because he wears a flag on his lapel, or on the tailgate of his SUV, turn around and hate a fellow American because of the color of their skin? A fellow American? This isn't patriotism, it's racism, and if we let that divide us then we deserve everything bad that happens to us.
E Pluribus Unum. From many, one. American.
The candidacy of Barack Obama has shown us how far we haven't progressed as a nation. The primaries in West Virginia and Kentucky, proves that the women's movement has made significant strides in the last forty years to the point where Southeners who wouldn't have voted for a woman forty years ago, now are willing to vote for one, only because she's the only white candidate on the ticket. But the Civil Rights movement has a long way to go before it catches up.