In the Wake of the Cambridge Affair

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

It has been over two weeks since the dignified university community of Cambridge, Massachusetts, became a focus of national attention in America’s continuing catharsis over race. A very tired, and very distinguished, professor, who happened to be black, returned from a long and grueling flight from China only to discover that he could not get his front door open. He and his driver went around to the back of his house and commenced to force the back door open.

A passerby in the very nice residential neighborhood called police and reported that a break-in might be occurring. When the police arrived, they confronted the professor in his home. What happened after that is in dispute, but the result was that the professor was arrested for interfering with a legal process. He was later released. The professor claimed to have been a victim of racial profiling, and the policeman felt that his authority had been questioned, and that he had been disrespected by the professor – and later by the President of the United States who remarked during a news conference that the Cambridge police had “acted stupidly.”

Right wing radio predictably went nuts over Obama’s comment and tried to ignite a national brush fire of raging racism. Surely the offended policeman would get loud and angry over being disrespected on the national stage. One Republican congressman put forth a resolution demanding that the President apologize to the Cambridge Police Department. The whole thing looked like it would be a godsend for the loony right fringe.

What happened, of course, was that President Obama, clearly the most brilliant and politically savvy individual to be President of the United States since Woodrow Wilson, and possibly since Lincoln, held a Beer Summit at the White House and gave the situation a positive thrust, one in which the professor and the police sergeant agreed to work together to improve race relations in America. Rush Limbaugh’s wet dream of increased racial strife and commotion withered and died.

Well, not completely.

One problem with people who incite others – for ratings, personal glory, to promote their personal or political agendas, for money, or whatever – is that when they are finally shut down, not everyone gets the memo.

Cambridge is a sophisticated enclave surrounded by rough-and-tumble metropolis of Boston, an urban area with a long history of racial strife. Officer Justin Barrett, a thirty-six-year-old young man who had been on the Boston Police Department a scant two years, got swept up in the noise over the incident in Cambridge. Filled with righteous indignation, the young cop sent out a mass email referring to the professor, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, as a “banana-eating jungle monkey,” and noted that if he had been the responding officer Professor Gates would have been introduced to the effects of pepper spray. Barrett has since apologized, but he has been suspended and will likely be fired over his remarks.

And that’s too bad because Rush, or Bill-o, or Sean, or Lou, or Ann, or Glenn, or whichever racist cretin pushed him into action is still employed – and making a nice salary, thank you very much.

The Cambridge affair has also stirred some antisocial behavior from the political left. Pepin Tuma, a thirty-three-year-old lawyer from Washington, D.C., took a message from the incident that police are thugs and tend to overreact, especially when they are dealing with racial minorities. He and some friends had spent a lot of time talking about the affair in Cambridge. As the group was walking down a street in D.C. they came upon a traffic stop, and Tuma began chanting “That’s why I hate police” loudly enough to ruffle the blue feathers of one of the police officers who was handling the traffic stop. Officer J. Culp didn’t take kindly to what he took as being publicly disrespected. He pushed the young lawyer up against an electric utility box while demanding, “Who do you think you are to think you can talk to a police officer like that?” Tuma was eventually cuffed and arrested for disorderly conduct.

So while Professor Henry Louis Gates and Police Sergeant James Crowley have apparently moved on, the Cambridge affair has left some angry individuals bobbing in its wake. Ending racism in America will not be easy, but the day is coming when race will no longer matter. The day is also coming when police will master the art of public relations and learn how to diffuse angry but harmless individuals without overreacting. It is all going to happen whether Rush and his hate-filled minions like it or not – and the sooner the better!

The Roots of Domestic Terrorism

by Pa Rock
Social Crusader

While our country seems to be all about finding and fighting foreign terrorism, particularly if it can be tied to Muslims or Mexicans, as often as not we completely ignore, or try to ignore, a far more brutal and insidious variant of extremism: domestic terrorism.

America is awash in hate groups. They burn clinics, kill doctors, protest at funerals, terrorize immigrants, disparage non-Christian religions, and vilify racial and ethnic minorities, gays, and independent women. These people often believe that their government is corrupt, voting is inconsequential, and the possession of guns is the only sure way of maintaining their freedom.

The past two weeks have witnessed two classic examples of hate crimes, both carried out by “lone wolf” extremists – people who participate in the fiery hate rhetoric but commit acts of violence on their own.

Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion activist, killed Dr. George Tiller in church on Sunday morning two weeks ago. This past week James Von Brunn, described by an ex-wife as being a “racist alcoholic,” killed Stephen Tyrone Johns, a black security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. Both were senseless acts committed by people whose minds had long ago succumbed to the deleterious effects of prolonged and bitter hatred.

People don’t arrive in this world imbued with hatred, they acquire it through a learning process – the same way that others learn how to become accepting and to love. The haters are patiently and painstakingly trained by social critics and master haters who fan the flames of ignorance and then run for cover whenever one of their creatures explode.

Bill O’Reilly, a socially irresponsible entertainer on Fox News, referred to Dr. Tiller dozens of times on the air as “Tiller the Baby Killer,” yet when Scott Roeder went over the edge and murdered the physician, O’Reilly proclaimed sanctimoniously that he hadn’t pulled the trigger. He didn’t murder Dr. Tiller.

Perhaps not, but he was most certainly an accessory. O’Reilly's hateful sputum was sprayed on the masses for a reason, and Scott Roeder was the stupid and willing pawn who finally acted on it.

The very day that 88-year-old James Von Brunn stormed into the Holocaust Museum and killed a black security guard, Rush Limbaugh had been on the radio saying that all Barack Obama and God had in common was that neither had a birth certificate. In addition to being a loud and proud racist, Mr. Von Brunn was also a “birther,” one of the many who subscribe to the fiction that Barack Obama was born outside of the United States and therefore ineligible to be President. (Factoid: One of the 2008 Presidential candidates actually was born outside of the United States – John McCain was born in Panama.)

Rush Limbaugh didn’t kill Stephen Tyrone Johns, but his malarkey certainly helped to keep a mental deficient like James Von Brunn stirred up.

Last July (2008) a fellow named Jim David Adkisson entered the Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, and opened fire with a shotgun killing two people and wounding others. He chose his target for the indiscriminate attack because of its association with liberalism, noting that he hated liberals, gays, and democrats. When police searched his home they found the following three books: Liberalism is a Mental Disorder by radio talk show host Michael Savage, Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty Over Liberalism by Sean Hannity, and The O’Reilly Factor: The Good, the Bad, and the Completely Ridiculous in American Life by Bill O’Reilly.

Savage (whose real name is “Weiner”), Hannity, and O’Reilly didn’t carry a weapon into a church in Knoxville and open fire, but the bile flowing from their pens helped to motivate Adkisson to commit his horrid crime.

America is armed and dangerous. It is a house on fire with a basement full of powder kegs. Hate speech fans the flames, and when one of the kegs explodes – as it is bound to do – the bigoted bastard who lit the fuse rushes out to face the cameras and deny any responsibility.

Domestic terrorists are our worst enemies, a far greater threat to the survival of this nation than any danger from abroad. It is well past time that the "good" and "Christian" Americans who commit these atrocities are recognized for what they truly are: terrorist scum. It is also well past time that their cheerleaders and enablers accept a fair share of responsibility for the part that they play in these crimes against America.

And it is certainly well past time that all of these criminal bastards get the treatment they so richly deserve.

Waterboarding, anyone?

Arrest Cheney and Haul His Sorry Carcass to The Hague!

by Pa Rock
Public Citizen

Dick Cheney needs to crawl off into a hole and pull the hole in after him. One would assume that after eight years of systematically dismantling the Constitution of the United States and shaming his country as no other Vice-President has since the days of Aaron Burr, The Dick would have the decency to just shut up and go away. But one would be wrong.

This morning as I was getting ready to go paint, I had the CBS news program, Face the Nation, playing for background noise. Cheney was the guest, and he was in full attack mode.

The former Vice-President is very pissed that President Obama released the torture memos and shined a light on the crimes of the previous administration. Cheney is going at it hammer-and-tong trying to rewrite, or at least justify, the history of his glory days. He has very good reason to be in attack mode: he doesn't want to be the subject of civil suits that could put a dent in all of those Halliburton millions that he piled up while he was supposed to be serving America - and he doesn't want to go to prison - even one of the country club prisons frequented by Republicans and the business classes.

I used to agree with President Obama that nothing would be accomplished by dredging up the past and trying to punish the Bush administration officials for their stupid, dangerous, and treasonous acts. But that was then and his is now. If The Dick is insistent on flaunting himself in front of every available camera and microphone and bloviating about how much safer he made America, then I say let Congress, and the Courts, and the Spanish judges, and The Hague have him - and let the cow chips fall where they may!

America doesn't owe Dick Cheney squat, but he owes us for destroying our national pride and our reputation for fairness and honesty. Cheney and his minions managed to decrease our national integrity to a level comparable to that of North Korea in just eight short years. The Dick owes us for the deaths of over four thousand of our finest young people (and the senseless mangling of countless thousands of others) in a futile and needless war - while letting our true enemy, Osama bin Laden, a relative of Bush and Cheney's Saudi oil buddies, get away. He owes us every corrupt dollar that was funneled to Halliburton, Blackwater, and Kellogg, Brown, and Root for those scurrilous no-bid contracts. And lest we forget the thousands of dead and mutilated Iraqi children, their blood is on his hands as well. All of those bills need to be paid.

But, the former Vice President did not really come up with anything new or newsworthy until near the end of the interview when Bob Schieffer asked him about the leadership of the Republican Party, and, in particular, should the party be looking for leadership from a moderate like Colin Powell or a firebrand like Rush Limbaugh. Cheney took the bait and ran with it.

Cheney said, "If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I'd go with Rush Limbaugh." He then went off on a mean little tirade about the renegade Powell supporting Barack Obama over McCain in the November election.

Translation: Colin Powell was a good nigra back when he was steppin' and fetchin' and carrying water for the Bush team - telling their lies to the United Nations with a straight face, but now that he has developed a spine - well...the Republican party doesn't need any nigras that have the ability to stand tall. Rush Limbaugh is a more representative face of the Grand Old Party.

How sad is that?

The Worst Person in the World

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Keith Olbermann has a regular segment on Countdown where he identifies the three worst people in the world. Each day three new individuals are selected for this honor based on their crimes, outrages, or dumb comments. Usually Bill O'Reilly of Fox News (whom Keith refers to as "Bill-O the Clown") makes the daily top three, accompanied by a couple of other buffoons like Rush Limbaugh ("Comedian Rush Limbaugh" or, more recently, "Boss Limbaugh"), Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, or any other easy mark.

And while it would be nice if those Neanderthal jugheads were the worst people in the world, clearly they aren't - well, with the possible exception of Cheney.

My nominee for Worst Person in the World is Steven Dale Green. The twenty-two-year-old Green was serving with the United States Army in Iraq when he and three of his buddies decided that breaking into an Iraqi home and raping a young girl would be an entertaining way to spend an evening.

According to at least one of the attackers, the four had spotted the fourteen-year-old girl while working at a checkpoint. They found out that she lived close by. The girl's mother, fearing that he daughter had attracted the interest of some unsavory U.S. soldiers arranged for the daughter to sleep at a neighbor's house. The problem didn't come that night, though, it happened late the next afternoon.

Private Green and his friends had spent that afternoon playing cards, drinking whiskey, and hitting golf balls. At some point after they began to get their drunk on, Green brought up the idea of breaking into the Iraqi home and raping the girl. One of the gang later described Green as being persistent about wanting to rape the young girl. At some point the group gave in to Private Green. They put on dark clothing, painted their faces, and proceeded to the girl's house.

One of the men related that after pushing their way into the home, Green took the parents and the five-year-old little sister into a bedroom and gunfire was heard. When Green emerged alone from the bedroom he said simply, "I just killed them. All are dead." Green and one of the others then got what they had come for. They raped the fifteen-year-old. After they were done, Green reportedly shot her in the head two or three times. They finished off the evening by burning the girl's body.

When the murders were discovered, the Army was quick to blame it on insurgents, even though the locals suspected that it had been committed by American soldiers. The FBI was brought in to assist with the investigation. A few months later two soldiers were abducted from Green's platoon by Iraqi insurgents. When their mutilated bodies were discovered, some felt that they had been murdered in response to some outrage committed by the Americans. One of the men who had been with Green that day was overcome with guilt for his dead comrades, and blurted out the story of the killings of the Iraqi family.

By the time the story of that awful evening in Iraq came to light, Private Steven Green had been honorably discharged from the Army after being diagnosed with a "personality disorder." The three who were still in the Army were tried for murder and rape in a military courts-martial and received sentences ranging from 27 months to 100 years in prison.

Steven Green, by virtue of no longer being in the military, was tried in a Federal Court in Paducah, KY. This past Thursday he was found guilty of murder, rape, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice. The penalty phase of his trial will begin on Monday, and it is likely that he will be sentenced to death.

The four young men who committed this awful crime were part of the Army's 101st Airborne Division out of Ft. Campbell, KY. I didn't know Mr. Green or any of his gang, but I was at Ft. Campbell during the time they were there. And while I never met, and probably never even saw, Steven Green, I feel like I do know quite a bit about him.

Though it has not been reported in the press, be assured that Steven Green was seriously abused as a child, physically without doubt - and probably sexually as well. Children aren't born bad - ever. They are often taught to behave badly by those who are entrusted with their care. A brutalized child learns to cower in weakness or to lash out against anything that gets in his way. A child who is repeatedly raped learns to fear sex, or use it to survive, or to use it as a weapon. Every child, and each of us, is a product of our life experiences.

Steven Green grew up flawed - and then he joined the Army. He became part of a large enterprise that valued violence, an organization that saw Iraqis as something less than good Christian humans. His deeply flawed character became immersed in the military and the occupation of a foreign country, and the result was almost inevitable. He was an open can of gasoline sitting in a room full of burning candles.

Society failed Steven Dale Green, and society suffered his rage for that failure. How many more Steven Greens can we bear before society completely breaks down? We need to be watching our children and listening to what they tell us. We need to be respecting our children and celebrating the fact that they are our future. When it comes to children, we truly do reap what we sow.

And we need to be highly selective about who we allow to serve in our military. Psychological tests are available that would have weeded out Steven Green - but some recruiter was hard pressed to make his quota. By the time he was weeded out with a "personality disorder," two innocent children and their parents had lost their lives.

So is it fair for the government to take the life of Steven Dale Green if he is indeed the product of forces beyond his control. Of course it isn't. If he is sentenced to prison for the rest of his life, can he be rehabilitated and be of any use to society? Probably not. Green who grew up in Midland, TX, the same affluent community that produced President George W. Bush, will either be killed for his crimes or warehoused.

Death or warehousing? Two bad choices, but what other choice is there?

Republicans Goosestep Toward Party Purity

by Pa Rock
Amused Spectator

Arlen Specter, the moderate Republican Senator from Pennsylvania today became the moderate Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania. Specter said that he no longer felt at home with the Republicans who seem hellbent on letting hard right wing ideology define their party for the foreseeable future. Democrats are happy because they are now just one vote short of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and Al Franken is going to be seated as the new Democratic Senator from Minnesota sooner or later. President Obama said that he was "thrilled" at Specter's change of parties.

Specter's big switch had more to do with political realities than it did with ideology. Republicans were planning to unseat him through a tough fight in the Pennsylvania Republican primary. The seventy-nine year old Specter, who isn't ready to retire, did the math and decided he had a better chance of political survival by running as a Democrat.

And the Republican ignoramus comitatus was quick to bid Arlen Specter a hale and hearty farewell, with remarks similar to Roy Clark's classic line (gender bent): "Thank God and Greyhound he's gone!" Most were on the air all day braying about how much better off the party was without him. There were a few exceptions to that idiot-ology, though. Maine's Senator Olympia Snowe said the loss of Arlen Specter from the Republican ranks was "devasting." Senator Snowe, one of only a handful of moderate Republicans in America, may one day be forced from the ranks of the "real" Republicans herself.

America's premier gasbag and the de facto head of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, bid good riddance to Senator Specter today, and suggested that he take John McCain and his daughter, Meghan, with him. (Take another bottle of pills, Rush. It will all be better in the morning!)

The Republican purists are glad to see Arlen Specter fly his true colors and join the opposition. Keep on purifying the party, folks, and your next Minneapolis convention will fit into the Larry Craig memorial restroom at the airport!

Trivia: As a young man, Arlen Specter was a lawyer working for the Warren Commission on the assassination of President Kennedy. He was the person who came up with the "magic bullet" theory to explain how one shooter could have done so much damage.

The Bard of Lard

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Conservative jaw-flapper Rush Limbaugh has been all over the news for the past few weeks. He got the publicity ball rolling when he stated that he hoped the Obama administration failed, and then, after near unanimous criticism, even from members of his own party, he repeated and expanded on his scurrilous statement at a national conference of conservatives. One blogger compared the remark to a passenger on board the Titanic saying that he didn’t like the Captain and hoped that he would steer the ship into an iceberg.

But the White House countered Rush’s silly piece of bombast with a move so crafty and cunning that it would impress a Chess Grand Master. President Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, went on a Sunday talk show and make a reference to Rush being the intellectual force of the Republican Party. Newly elected Republican Party Chair Michael Steele felt obliged to weigh in by remarking that Rush was an entertainer, and not a political leader – and with that bit of truth, the intra-party fracas was on!

Would the GOP officials line up behind the party chair, a man who supposedly was elected to show the newer, more inclusive face of the party, or would they jump behind a vitriolic loudmouth who is viewed favorably by less than a fifth of the population – a group that is the total embodiment of the party’s racist, hate-mongering old face? Well, Republicans are nothing if not persistent in their failings. Everybody that was anybody in the Grand Old Party lined up behind their pet buffoon, leaving the embattled Chairman Steele with few viable options but to apologize to the party’s “intellectual” leader.

Limbaugh, who apparently lives by that old axiom that all publicity is good publicity, took advantage of the national press’s sudden focus on him and issued a challenge to President Obama to show up in his studios for a debate – without teleprompters – a not-so-veiled accusation that the brightest person to occupy the Presidency in the last couple of generations could not stand up to Limbaugh’s fierce intellect without cue cards. The President, whose positive poll ratings are over three times greater than those of Limbaugh, ignored the bait.

So where has this world-class narcissist focused his attentions this week? Unbelievably, Rush has turned his noise on the ailing Senator Edward Kennedy, stating with the assurance of someone who has a direct line to God, that Kennedy will be dead by the time Obama’s health care package is passed into law. Hopefully the Lion of the Senate will take that as a personal challenge and strive to outlive the drug-addled radio clown.

America may not be perfect, but it is certainly better than Rush Limbaugh!

The Stimulatin' Blues

by Pa Rock
Political Commentator

If the hypocrisy generated by Republicans and their media mouthpieces was pure manure, it could fill the Grand Canyon and create a victory garden that would feed America! (Alright, so it is manure, but like most things produced by the GOP, it is lacking in quality.)

Today a handful of Republican Governors from the American South were gnashing their teeth and saying that maybe they wouldn't accept any of that stimulus money. Yeah, wanna bet? Try telling that one to the voters back home who are without jobs and mired in debt. Big talk emanating from big mouths - but when the cash starts rolling, they will be the first hogs at the trough!

Today the big conservative whine revolved around the unfairness the "bailout" of people having trouble with their mortgages. First of all, the "bailout" doesn't pay the mortgage, it just gives people in trouble an opportunity to take care of their debt rather than walk out on their obligation and let the banks handle the loss. Poll those same Republican noisemakers and you will learn that damn few want the banks to suffer. Second, Obama is right. The people who aren't in mortgage trouble don't really want a bunch of foreclosures in their neighborhoods. Boarded up houses with ragged lawns hurt the home values of all of the neighbors.

But my favorite hypocrite isn't a governor or a radio maggot. My favorite hypocrite is Senator Kit Bond of Missouri. Yesterday he stayed busy travelling around Missouri proudly pointing out how its citizens would benefit from certain parts of the stimulus package - never mind that he had voted against that same package when it passed in the Senate. Keith Olbermann wisely made Bond his "Worst Person in the World" on Countdown yesterday for his opportunistic buffoonery.

Rush Limbaugh put the Republican strategy into words when he said publicly that he wanted to see Obama fail. Fair enough - it's all politics. The problem is that if Obama fails, we all fail - even drug-addled radio clowns. The economy is a lemon, a big sour lemon. Do we want to sit around sucking on it and feeling sorry for ourselves, or do we want to roll up our sleeves and at least try to make lemonade? The GOP likes to squint and pucker and tell us how awful anything is that is done for the public good, but the rest of us don't have to buy into their miserable view of life.

And I, for one, choose not to!

Gobama!

Political Diarrhea

by Pa Rock

I've been busy elsewhere and have sadly neglected this blog as of late. During my hiatus, the political crap seems to have backlogged - but now I'm back and it's time to let 'er flow!

Whoops! Dear Leader has been telling us for years now that we will leave Iraq when and if the government there ever asks us to. John McBush even bought into that highly unlikely scenario and implied that his opponent was promoting unconditional surrender for even suggesting a time table for withdrawal. Then last week Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki up and declared that it was time for the US to start planning an exit from Iraq - or at least get a time table set up. Whoops! I guess he shot the Bush/McBush never-ending war rationale right in the ass! Has al-Malaki forgotten who his masters are? Who cut the strings on this once dependable puppet?

Hypocrisy Watch: Jesse Jackson was caught on a live microphone saying that Barack Obama should have his nuts cut off because he encouraged young black males to be responsible parents. Reverend Jesse felt that our future President was "talking down" to these men. Give it a break, Jesse! Someone should have bent your ear on that subject a few years ago before you fathered a child out of wedlock. You're not offended by Obama's advice - you're offended by the fact that you, like me, are quickly slipping into insignificance. Old age is a bitch, and so is irrelevance. Get over it - or get out and do some work in the community and make yourself relevant again. And quit worrying about Obama's nuts - yours seem to be much more problematic than his!

(For the record, I have a certain amount of respect for Reverend Jackson, and even voted for him in Missouri's 1988 Presidential primary. I feel sad that people like him and Bill Clinton, once formidable political figures, are letting unnecessary pettiness obscure their legacies.)

Cancel My Subscription: This week's much maligned cover of The New Yorker has certainly generated a lot of controversy. Personally, I thought it was funny. Of course, I also think Rush Limbaugh is funny. Unfortunately, both reinforce a portrait of the Obama family that is patently false and feeds into the fears of the underinformed masses. The New Yorker has handed Obama a lemon, and he needs to squeeze that sucker into lemonade. I think it would be a great lead-in to a speech on patriotism and faith - much like his earlier, highly praised, speech on race. Lay it on the table and serve it up!

Oh Those Girls! The conservative press let out a roar regarding the Obama girls' television interview. They seemed to feel that allowing the interview to take place was tantamount to bad parenting. What I saw was two very articulate young ladies who were very loved and quite comfortable talking about their daddy. And even though Daddy winced a few times (and a few times I winced for him), he was comfortable enough in his parenting experiences to let them meet the press. And they were great! You go girls!