This from todays New York Times 9-8-11
It’s long overdue but still gratifying to hear mainstream religious leaders in this country strongly speak out against the frenzy of hate and intolerance being whipped up by the hate mongers in the Republican party and their subsidiary , the Tea Party. As one of the Rabbi’s in attendance put it, “We cannot allow this to happen in America in 2010″ The Jews in this country certainly can speak to the issue of religious intolerance. It’s time for all of us to stand up and speak out against this ugly behavior.

As one letter writer so aptly put it, “that sound you hear is America going down the toilet.” What have we become as a nation when vigilantes fired up and fueled by the racist, hate mongers on vomit radio and Fox News are able to terrorize other American citizens just because of their nationality and religious beliefs. This is just too perverse for words. It takes me back to the early 60′s when I remember African American churches being fire bombed in the South and people of color being terrorized.

What you are seeing is the rise of the American version of the Taliban disguised as flag waving, Christian Patriots. Makes me ashamed to share the same citizenship with these morons. One only hopes that hate crime prosecutions will follow.

And does vomit radio or Fox news accept any responsibility for inciting this kind of behavior. I don’t think so. Wake up America, the American Taliban is coming to your town soon.

It is astounding to me that there isn’t a great moral outrage from average citizens in this country about the insane and totally unjustified vilification of the Islamic faith and it’s practitioners. To make matters worse, there are politicians who are making this hate centered propaganda the center piece of their campaigns. What have we become as a country if we don’t stand up to this kind of insanity? Are people really so ignorant that they totally buy into everything they hear on vomit radio and Fox News? If this hate monger in Florida follows through on his plan to build a bonfire with Korans he should be prosecuted for hate crimes.

Wake up America…you may be the next target of the lunatic fringe.

“President Obama showed his understanding of the Constitution, and his respect for the American people, last week when he defended the right of a Muslim community group to build a mosque and Islamic center two blocks north of ground zero in Lower Manhattan.

Mr. Obama and all people of conscience need to push back hard. Defending all Americans’ right to worship — and their right to build places to worship — is fundamental to who we are.”

I couldn’t agree more. If clear thinking Americans don’t stand up to this hate mongering, racist, intolerance, our once great country will be the worse for it. It is astounding that people are so willing to buy into the nonsense spewed forth by the hate mongers. It’s never too late to stand up and do the right thing. Tale a stand, don’t let hate and ignorance rule the day.

An increasingly disquieting feature of today’s political discourse is that bits and pieces of misinformation are regurgitated endlessly, indulging the feeding frenzy that fills the airwaves and print media. Constant polling and partisan talking points are the order of the day whether or not they contribute to rational debate.

It’s only human nature to gravitate towards perceived winners, a tendency too often persuaded by the quick takes of glib correspondents who are not only poorly informed but who celebrate their ignorance, as the members of the Fox team do, by pointing to their ratings. That ratings are somehow meant to convey relevance is an all the more discouraging indication of how poorly voters are served by people who speak with authority but lack the background, intellect or education to make the kinds of critical assessments they so loudly broadcast. No doubt Dancing with the Stars gets good ratings too, but participants aren’t usually interviewed about their political inclinations.

From deep in a national psyche battered by the right-wing ridicule machine come the most absurd and insulting broadsides against the president. In one instance the suggestion was made that electing someone whose experience consisted of handing out pamphlets on street corners was a choice that has brought the country down – - a reference to Obama’s work as a community organizer that ignores his other substantial credentials. Did such a person actually vote for George Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Sarah Palin?

For it would be difficult indeed to find anyone less qualified to be president than Bush or more deeply enmeshed in energy-industry power brokers than Cheney. And what business exactly did McCain operate unless he opined about his wife’s extensive beer company holdings? As for Palin her service as mayor of a smallish city and her half term as Alaska’s governor aren’t what most people would call extensive business experience.

In fact W’s business ventures didn’t do well despite help from his father’s friends. As for his political credentials he served as governor in Texas, a state where the legislature only meets every other year and where his circle of supporters included Enron’s disgraced CEO, Ken Lay or as Bush labeled him, “Kenny Boy.”

So how do such insubstantial people rise to the level of serious consideration for the highest offices in the land if not for vast infusions of cash and willful misrepresentations that ignored their limited proficiency and nefarious relationships? A national economic meltdown that began before he was elected and bailouts that were structured in the previous administration are attributed in the heat of election-year politics to President Obama. And it is his wars and his debt though clearly the Bush tax cuts while we were at war, underwritten by borrowed funds that started a spiraling deficit impossible to restrain once the country fell into recession.

And because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are targeted Democratic malfunctions Republicans always make them the villains in the country’s financial collapse. They are far less likely to focus on malfeasance in the banking industry and Wall Street for their derivative machinations and deceptive mortgage-writing practices and far more likely to obstruct administration efforts to regulate those giants. In the face of all that has occurred, conservatives continue to insist that government should get out of the way and let unregulated markets prevail, a position that even former Fed Chairman, Greenspan now considers bad policy.

No matter what the issue, Republicans find a way to make it serve their purposes, stonewalling White House initiatives and framing their opposition in terms of liberty and constitutional rectitude whether or not that frame of reference has any factual basis. General Odierno says there has been progress in Iraq though some groups ‘want to halt the way forward’ and do it with car bombs. Here at home Congressional Republicans obstruct the way forward with filibusters and call it patriotism.

In a moment of introspection regarding the super-inflammatory issue of immigration and ‘the law’, someone observed it was a good thing there were no laws when the first settlers arrived or the indigenous population would have had them deported. But in the midst of a partisan sinkhole created by people who have less interest in making things work than in propagandizing every situation and staking out their personal political turf there seems to be precious little time for deep thought about our most important national concerns.

An increasingly disquieting feature of today’s political discourse is that bits and pieces of misinformation are regurgitated endlessly, indulging the feeding frenzy that fills the airwaves and print media. Constant polling and partisan talking points are the order of the day whether or not they contribute to rational debate.

It’s only human nature to gravitate towards perceived winners, a tendency too often persuaded by the quick takes of glib correspondents who are not only poorly informed but who celebrate their ignorance, as the members of the Fox team do, by pointing to their ratings. That ratings are somehow meant to convey relevance is an all the more discouraging indication of how poorly voters are served by people who speak with authority but lack the background, intellect or education to make the kinds of critical assessments they so loudly broadcast. No doubt Dancing with the Stars gets good ratings too, but participants aren’t usually interviewed about their political inclinations.

From deep in a national psyche battered by the right-wing ridicule machine come the most absurd and insulting broadsides against the president. In one instance the suggestion was made that electing someone whose experience consisted of handing out pamphlets on street corners was a choice that has brought the country down – - a reference to Obama’s work as a community organizer that ignores his other substantial credentials. Did such a person actually vote for George Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Sarah Palin?For it would be difficult indeed to find anyone less qualified to be president than Bush or more deeply enmeshed in energy-industry power brokers than Cheney. And what business exactly did McCain operate unless he opined about his wife’s extensive beer company holdings? As for Palin her service as mayor of a smallish city and her half term as Alaska’s governor aren’t what most people would call extensive business experience.

In fact W’s business ventures didn’t do well despite help from his father’s friends. As for his political credentials he served as governor in Texas, a state where the legislature only meets every other year and where his circle of supporters included Enron’s disgraced CEO, Ken Lay or as Bush labeled him, “Kenny Boy.”

So how do such insubstantial people rise to the level of serious consideration for the highest offices in the land if not for vast infusions of cash and willful misrepresentations that ignored their limited proficiency and nefarious relationships? A national economic meltdown that began before he was elected and bailouts that were structured in the previous administration are attributed in the heat of election-year politics to President Obama. And it is his wars and his debt though clearly the Bush tax cuts while we were at war, underwritten by borrowed funds that started a spiraling deficit impossible to restrain once the country fell into recession.

And because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are targeted Democratic malfunctions Republicans always make them the villains in the country’s financial collapse. They are far less likely to focus on malfeasance in the banking industry and Wall Street for their derivative machinations and deceptive mortgage-writing practices and far more likely to obstruct administration efforts to regulate those giants. In the face of all that has occurred, conservatives continue to insist that government should get out of the way and let unregulated markets prevail, a position that even former Fed Chairman, Greenspan now considers bad policy.

No matter what the issue, Republicans find a way to make it serve their purposes, stonewalling White House initiatives and framing their opposition in terms of liberty and constitutional rectitude whether or not that frame of reference has any factual basis. General Odierno says there has been progress in Iraq though some groups ‘want to halt the way forward’ and do it with car bombs. Here at home Congressional Republicans obstruct the way forward with filibusters and call it patriotism.

In a moment of introspection regarding the super-inflammatory issue of immigration and ‘the law’, someone observed it was a good thing there were no laws when the first settlers arrived or the indigenous population would have had them deported. But in the midst of a partisan sinkhole created by people who have less interest in making things work than in propagandizing every situation and staking out their personal political turf there seems to be precious little time for deep thought about our most important national concerns.

Scoreboard:

Justice, Fairness and The Constitution   –   1

Racism, Hatred and small mindedness  -  0

Nothing more to say about this.

Yeah buddy, it’s the shootout at the OK corral nationwide. As insane as I think this is the conservative lunatic fringe ought to read the fine print behind the Court’s reasoning, specifically,

“The Supreme Court already has said that most of the guarantees in the Bill of Rights serve as a check on state and local, as well as federal, laws.”

When the gay marriage issue finally gets to the Court this is a no brainer in terms of up holding the bill of rights and guaranteeing the right of gays and lesbians to marry.  So sorry my homophobic friends, you can’t have it both ways, the constitution works for all of us.

Millions of unemployed Americans will soon have no unemployment benefits thanks to the courageous cost cutting of our United States Senate. Yet just recently this same group authorized some 33 billion dollars for continuing the war in Afghanistan. This is truly one of the most shameful times in American history. My most sincere wish is that come election time the millions of voters who have been screwed by the government sworn to look after the least of it’s own citizens combined with people of color rise up against racism and military spending and vote these people out of office. Liberal Democrats and  America need to stand up.

It’s so refreshing when the Democrats take a stand against social injustice. This ill designed and ultimately flawed piece of state legislation is nothing more than state sanctioned racial profiling, and that is illegal. The police did for years to African Americans and it was wrong then and is wrong now. So let this be a warning to all those racist folk out their who think that White America rules the day. The Supreme Court is not on your side.

Some complain about shoppers speaking Spanish at the Wal-Mart, businesses with phone messages saying “Press 1 for English,” and the need for two interpreters last fall at the annual “kindergarten round-up” where children meet their teachers.

via Nebraska City Torn as Immigration Vote Nears – NYTimes.com.

This legislation is a carbon copy of the law soon to go into practice in Arizona. In fact it was written by people from Arizona for the local city council in Nebraska. What is so infuriating about this bullshit is these people have come to be convinced that if only we can get rid of the immigrants all of our problems will be over. Exactly what the Nazis convinced the German people of when the Jews and other non Aryans were labeled as the cause of Germany’s problems. These insane laws will never survive a court challenge and are doomed. I continue to believe that America at it’s core is not a racist country. We have to stand up and confront this nonsense whenever it shows it’s ugly face in public.