Like 'Shrooms On Shit, The Klan Grows On Hate...As Do Some Of My Neighbors

There are some groups that feel almost like fictional creations in today's modern world. Like the Boogieman, Nazi's and Klansmen sometimes feel like they have faded away to that dark place under the bed where nothing evil really lives. Then you read a story like this and suddenly evil crawls out and reminds you that it is alive and kicking in America.

CNN: Klan growing, fed by anti-immigrant feelings, report says

After reading the article, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. The Klan hit its peak during the great flood of new immigrants during the 1920's. Fueled by anti-Catholic rhetoric, the Klan had nearly 4 million members back then. And now, we have a sudden influx of immigrants from predominately Catholic countries and the Klan is there to exploit it.

So many things bother me about this story, but what frightens me is the nationalist, anti-immigrant language they are using sounds an awful lot like some of the things I hear coming from the mouths of my neighbors here in the suburbs.

College educated professionals are openly talking about how the "Mexicans" are ruining the schools and killing the standard of living.

(Funny how everyone with a Hispanic name is suddenly Mexican. Ever heard of Ecuador? San Salvador? Do you think they should call all white people Canadian?)

Hey neighbor, I hate to point this out to you but the vast majority of your families came over in that wave of immigration during the 1920's. And you know what Americans did? They called those immigrants names; they denied them work and basically did everything they could to make sure that they got no quarter from the country your families had chosen.

Just ask my mother-in-law who is a first generation Irish-American. She tells stories about how businesses would have signs up advertising open positions except at the bottom they would say "No Irish". Remember, approximately four million Klan members wanted your relatives gone, and yet, here you are.

It scares me that the very issue the Ku Klux Klan is using to drive up membership is the issue that neighbors of mine are not only talking about, but in part, agreeing on with the Klan, despite what the Klan tried to do to many of their ancestors.

The difference they'll say is that they don't actually hate the Mexicans, they just don't want to share their city with them.

"I pay a lot of taxes and I don't do it to teach a bunch of damn Mexicans to speak English."

"The reason the schools are so packed is because of all the damn Mexicans."

Sound familiar? They do to me, and I feel the need to point out one little thing. Their being Hispanic as nothing to do with it. They are people. People who live in your city. They could be brown, white, green, or plaid and the results would be the same.Therefore, the problem isn't them, it's the community itself.

For example, tying school funding to property taxes is a sure fire way to make sure that wealthier kids get a better education than less-fortunate kids. Here's the thing, rich people like it that way. They like their smaller classes and better facilities (Who wouldn't?!) and don't really give a shit about how the rest of the world lives. Hell, they're paying for it, they should get what they want, just ask'em.

But when the rest of the world starts to move into the neighborhood, suddenly, the resentment comes out.

"Those damn Mexicans are ruining everything. The immigration problem is screwing up this country my friend and we need to do something about it."

Well neighbor, I happen to know of a few guys who agree with you. They're easy to spot. They're the ones wearing the designer hoods from Linens & Things.

I'm not completely idealistic. I understand the issues. Do we need to limit immigration? Yeah, we do. We don't have the infrastructure to handle an endless flood of immigrants.

Do we need to protect our borders? Of course, technology has given any individual the ability to be a weapon of mass destruction.

But do we blame the immigrants who have chosen to come to America to do work that many Americans refuse to do? Hell no. They are doing what our grandparents and great grandparents did nearly a century ago and we need to show these new immigrants a level of courtesy that our families didn't get.

Why? Because of some things called "progress" or "common decency" or "Christian values" to name a few. It's called all kinds of things depending on your perspective, but the common ground is this: it's the opposite of hate, exclusion, racism, and indifference.

Those are all things I feel comfortable being against, just like I'm definitely anti-Boogieman. You get a few of those in the neighborhood and everything goes to hell in a hand basket. Just you wait and see.

Miss USA Admits Cocaine Use -- Still Wears Crown

My post prior to this stated that Tara Conner, Miss USA was alleged to have been doing drugs. She has now admitted it to the world in the form of a Today Show interview.

Donald Trump is such a hypocrite.

Today Show: Miss USA Admits Cocaine Use

The Ethics Of Donald Trump

CNN took up some of the valuable front page space on its website to tell the world that a new Miss America had been crowned. Frankly, I don't give a crap. I have always thought that the Miss America Pageant and the Miss USA pageant and the like were nothing more than 1950's style soft-core porn designed to titillate and feed the fantasies of middle aged married men while promoting a style over substance ideal.

But this year, there were all kinds of problems with the Miss USA pageant. Sex, drugs, lesbianism, and even a pregnancy all interfered with the squeaky clean image that The Donald and his lackeys are trying to promote for their T & A cattle call.

For example, the young woman in red is the now ex-Miss Nevada. She wasn't Miss Nevada at the time, she was a 19 year-old at a party after having too much to drink. She later became Miss Nevada. But then this, and other more explicit photos hit the Internet and Donald Trump stripped her of her Miss Nevada crown.

In an article onCanada.com last December, Donald Trump was quoted from an interview with Larry King.

"The pictures were disgusting," Miss USA co-owner Donald Trump told Larry King on CNN Thursday night. "These pictures were pretty far out there and that is not representative of Miss USA. We had no choice but to terminate her."

Compare this to the allegations against last years Miss USA Tara Conner. You've heard of Tara, I'm sure. She was nearly dethroned late last year when it was reported that she was spending a lot of time drinking in New York bars. In addition to the booze, there were allegations of drug use, having men in her New York penthouse apartment, and french kissing Miss Teen USA Katie Blair on the dance floor of a club.

What did Trump do about her? He sent her to re-hab and let her keep her crown. Trump was quoted on People.com as saying: "I've always been a believer in second chances. Tara is good person. Tara has tried hard. Tara is going to be given a second chance."

Miss Nevada has pictures show up of her flashing tit and kissing girls while drunk and she gets the boot even though the pictures were taken years before she was named Miss Nevada. The reigning Miss USA gets caught drinking, allegedly doing drugs and sucking face with an underage beauty queen in a New York dance club and she gets a second chance.

What does this tell us about the ethics of Donald Trump? It tells us that to Donald, image is more important than substance. It's about what the camera caught, not what really happened. It wasn't the fact that Miss Nevada had once been drunk and swapped spit with another girl, it was that someone had pictures.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Donald. But then, what should we expect for a man who put himself on television every night shattering the dreams of young people for the entertainment of others. Right is what looks good, what gets the best ratings, not something supported by fact or even compassion. So says the actions of the self-appointed face of American enterprise.

Honestly, I don't care about beauty queens. I think pagaents promote the wrong values and encourage young people to worry about what they look like instead of what kind of person they are. But then maybe that's why Trump owns the Miss USA contest, he seems to live and breath a value system based on looks over substance. It just seems a shame that he gets a ton of attention for doing it.

Please! Stop It With The "Real Heroes"

When Ronald Reagan pointed to the balcony during his State of the Union (SOTU) speech and started talking about a real American, the nation was enthralled. (Photo by AP)

"Wow!" we all said. "The Great Communicator at work."

When President Bush pointed up into the balcony during his SOTU speech, I suspect most Americans shared my response of:

"Who the f^$% do you think you are. Did you build a hospital in the Congo? Did you dive on the subway tracks to save a stranger? Hell no. And back when your country was calling young men to serve, you f@%#ed around in the National Guard. Geez, you've got big brass ones to think you can suck some of the credit off these folks."

And then they got to the soldier.

Now here is something for which the President can take credit. This brave young man fought off counter attacks and used himself as a human shield during a fire fight in Iraq. He was maimed and injured and awarded the Silver Star for his bravery. And lord knows he could never had done that if the President hadn't sent him to Iraq in the first place.

Bravo Mr. President. A war we can't justify, a war no one wants, a war that has alienated two-thirds of the globe is resulting in our soldiers acting heroically in order to save themselves and the lives of their comrades. That is one hell of an accomplishment Mr. President, thanks for sharing it with me.

The Foley Problem Solved? Not.

The U.S. House has approved "improvements" to the Congressional Page program that are designed to prevent a Congressional pederast like Mark Foley from conducting his personal page penis census. Their solution? Put more people on the oversight board for the program and require them to have meetings.

Yeah, that was the problem, there weren't enough people on the board and they didn't meet enough. If you have ever wanted to see the Potomac Two-Step, you have just had a front row seat.

Let's recap, shall we?

1) Foley gets caught soliciting male pages for cyber-sex.
2) It turns out he has been doing it for years.
3) It is further discovered that Republican congressmen and their staffers knew about it.
4) They choose to do nothing about it to help keep his seat on their side of the aisle.

And now the good part...

5) NOBODY TELLS THE PAGE BOARD.

From today's AP article: "Shimkus had learned of Foley's e-mails in November 2005. While he went with the House clerk to confront Foley, Shimkus never convened a page board meeting and Foley failed to stop his messages to male former pages." Source: House approves page program reforms

Can someone please explain to me how adding a few seats to the Board is going to prevent unethical Congresspeople and staffers from doing the exact same thing again? It isn't, and you know why? Because the problem wasn't the Page Board, it was the Republican leadership.

The House Ethics Committee investigated this matter and found that people acted improperly, but refused to dole out punishments. Why? Republican Congressman and staffers knew what was going on and didn't report it. They put their political futures ahead of the well-being of the teenagers for whom they were supposed to be caring. They were co-conspirators in Foley's actions and they deserve to be punished.

That is how you solve the problem. Hold the people who protected Foley accountable. Let the world see that this type of political cover-up will not be tolerated. Make the men and women we elected understand what we expect of them and show them the consequences of failing to uphold that standard.

But that isn't how the Potomac Two-Step goes. Instead they sell America a reform that has a great beat and is easy to dance to but doesn't do a damn thing to correct the original problem: the Congressmen themselves.

Personally Mr. Clark, I give it a two. It is hard to dance to and mostly just makes me want to scream.

For a more complete history of the Foley scandal, check out the posts in The T-Dude October Archive

Oil It Up And Stick It To Big Oil

Finally, we have a chance to start separating President Bush from the tit that has fed most of his political life -- Big Oil. Not only did President Bush and his party grant huge tax breaks to the oil companies that have been reaping record profits for the past few years while you and I pay over a buck more a gallon at the pump, they also ignored mistakes that would have made Big Oil pay billions of dollars to the federal government. The following excerpt from today's AP story illustrates what I mean.

"The bill is largely aimed at recovering an estimated $10 billion that stands to be lost to the government because of an error in deep-water drilling leases for the Gulf of Mexico issued in the late 1990s. Congressional auditors and the Interior Department's inspector general have said the mistake was ignored for six years by the Minerals Management Service, which oversees the leasing program."

Dems poised to roll back oil subsidies

How long has President Bush and his band of cronies been around? Hmmmmm. Would that be about 6 years? And in that 6 years, they have failed to correct a known error in the deep-drilling leases that would have cost a major industry funder of Bush's campaigns ten billion dollars? Now that's what I call sound investing on the part of Big Oil. They throw a fraction of that amount into a campaign fund for the President and his fellow Republicans and they get $10 BILLION in return. And who gets screwed? The taxpayers. Twice. Once at the pump and once in the form of a growing federal deficit.

Hell, we didn't even get kissed afterward.

So bend over Big Oil, your turn has come and Nancy Pelosi has greased up a big fat 10 billion dollar dong to return the favor.

I only hope they get it on video. And I'm praying for at least two more sequels.

Beckham - 1; Bush - 0

You have got to be kidding me. Our President stands in from of the nation and declares that he is sending an addition 21,000 of our fellow citizens overseas to fight and die in a war that the vast majority think is wrong, and CNN.com and MSNBC.com both lead with Beckham moving to LA to play soccer.

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

I am suddenly stuck in a quandary. Are the major news outlets in this country under-reporting the war and the politics behind it, or are we as American so tired of hearing about the war that they don't feel like they can give it the attention that it deserves? The answer is probably a little bit of both, but either way, it makes me queasy.

Listen, if we as media consumers are more interested in Britney Spears' bare cooter and the living arrangements of a soccer player and his plastic wife, then that is what the news providers will report. But I have to believe that somewhere in the editors' offices and the newsrooms across this country, someone is performing a smell test on what ranks as top-of-the-page headline news.

Whoever they are, I think they need to start sniffing a little harder because their current efforts pretty much stink.

Farewell To A Good Man

President Ford was never elected by the country. In fact, he never even won a statewide race, but he played a vital role in the healing of a country. When he pardoned Nixon, it cost him an election, but he thought it was the right thing to do. When he was a Congressman he would fight the good fight against his Democratic brethren and then they would go out for beers together. He believed that you could disagree with someone but respect their commitment and be their friend.

History will never call Gerald Ford one of our greatest Presidents, but frankly, we could use a few more politicians like him today to show the purveyors of the politics of division how our government is supposed to work. (Are you listening Karl Rove?)

Thank you President Ford, Rest in Peace.

CNN Coverage President Ford's Funeral

The Greatest Editorial Ever?

Every year about this time, someone reminds us of this editorial. It is lovely, if not a touch too sentimental. But I am always amazed at how well written it is. If only the public were such that newspapers could make money delivering editorial writing of this style to your door step each morning. For information on the article and the parties involved, including Virginia herself, I suggest the background section following the editorial as it appears here. For those geekier types who require more links to other info, here is the Wikipedia posting, which is where this image of Church was obtained.

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus
By Francis P. Church, first published in The New York Sun in 1897. [See The People’s Almanac, pp. 1358–9.]

We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

Dear Editor—

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

I'm Baaaack

Holy moley, I've been gone for quite some time. I have been transitioning to a new job, attending family events, and I've been trying to keep my family from killing each other as we get closer to the winter break. So far, I'm sucking wind on the last one, but everything else is going well.

It seems we have a little catching up to do:

Election Predictions

Let's get the gloating out of the way. My predictions were pretty damn good. (Even a stopped watch is right twice a day, right?) I nailed the Senate races and my predictions for the House were mighty close. I'm still bummed about Tammy Duckworth losing, but hey, you can't win them all.

Iraq

It's a quagmire. What else is there to say? Good men and women are dying for no good reason and the President and his lackeys have no clear exit strategy. That means those people, Americans and Iraqis, will continue to die. And it is the President's fault. Honestly, I wonder how he can sleep at night.

Obama

Wow, I haven't seen this much hype around Christmas time since Cabbage Patch Dolls. But the question I have is this: Is it that people are so enamored of Barrack Obama that they are willing to woo him into running or is it that people are so desperate for change that they just want the anti-Bush. I think it's the second and they seem to have made a good choice. Here is the side by side comparison:

Race : Bush=White; Obama=Man of color

Politics: Bush=Conservative; Obama=Moderate

Iraq: Bush=Started War; Obama=Opposed War from Beginning

Speaking Ability: Bush=Bumbling Butcher of English; Obama=Exceptionally Well-Spoken

Previous Employment: Bush=Oil Executive; Obama=Non-profit Aiding Inner-City Poor

Intelligence: Bush=Barely Survived Yale; Obama=Columbia and Harvard Law

I could go on, but you get the point. Obama is the anti-Bush, but is that enough? Does his lack of experience and his funny name come back to bite him? Can he survive the primary season with enough credibility intact to survive the Republican money machine? I just don't know.

Foley

The ethics investigation is over and those involved were found to have ignored their responsibility to protect the Congressional pages from a sexual predator. A Congressional sexual predator. A pederast who they knew to be stalking teenage boys. But apparently, indifference to the well-being of teenagers under their care isn't a punishable offense. I knew that labor laws didn't apply to congressional staff and I knew that smoking bans and the like never applied to Capitol Hill, but I didn't know that promoting the sexual harassment of minors fell in that same bucket.

I guess the Republicans can count on the sexual deviant vote next cycle. I wonder how the religious right feels about that...oh yeah, I keep forgetting, it's often the same lobby.