Second Amendment Remedies

I've heard a lot over the last week about the shootings in Arizona. Fox claims the shooter was a leftist, MSNBC that he was a brainwashed right-winger. Some say that we need to use this as an opportunity to tone our political rhetoric down, some to say that free speech is more important in the aftermath of this shooting than ever.

The thing that really pisses me off, though, is when I hear someone say that political rhetoric on BOTH sides is EQUALLY responsible for extremist behavior like this.

I'm sorry (not really) but that is utter bullshit.

Last year, the media made such a huge deal out of a comment by a politician in a neighboring state to Arizona, and now we seem to have forgotten it utterly. And the connection between this person's comments and the recent shootings is DIRECT. And yes, this politician was not only a republican, but a person that I consider a right-wing extremist.

Last year, during her run against Harry Reid, Sharron Angle said "You know, our founding fathers, they put that second amendment in there for a good reason and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government." Then she talked about Jefferson's comment about having a revolution every twenty years, and said "… if this Congress keeps going the way that it is, people are really looking forward to those second amendment remedies…"

Let's be utterly clear here.

First off, the second amendment, the right of Americans to keep and bear arms, was put into place for SEVERAL reasons. Yes, one was to protect themselves against government incursion into their lives. Another was because the founders didn't want us to have a standing army, for fear that an army would RESULT in government tyranny. Instead, they wanted every adult male to stand in a state militia, and have their own guns to defend their state and their home. So why aren't nut jobs like Angle arguing that we need to dismantle the army and go back to state militias in order to prevent governmental tyranny? Also, we have to remember that when the right to bear arms was ratified in 1791, we had to protect ourselves not only from a theoretical tyrannical government, but from very real marauders, Indians and bears. There were also no easily accessible grocery stores. If you wanted meat, you had to kill it.

Secondly, armed insurrection is NEVER the answer. What results is worse tyranny than that which the insurrectionists are trying to overthrow. It is the strong bullying the weak at gun point.

Peace.

Rev. Randal

Reading List 2010

For anyone interested, here's my reading list for the year just passed. I read or listened to a total of 48 books this year, all of them first time reads. 30 of them were non-fiction, 18 fiction.

The End of Food
My War
Last Night In Twisted River
Shock Doctrine
Shutter Island
South of Broad
American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Consipiracies
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men
God's Problem
Mere Christianity
I Killed
Man's Search for Meaning
The Problem of Pain
The Conscience of a Liberal
Reconcilliation
American Conspiricies
Jesus, Interrupted
Freethinkers
The N Word
The Lovely Bones
Pygmy
Comeback America
Wingnuts
Tales for a Stormy Night
How To Win A Fight With A Conservative
Idiot America
Storm Prey
Failures of the Presidents
The Gun Seller
Dead Until Dark
The Burning Wire
Game Change
Just How Stupid Are We?
Dirty Sexy Politics
When Religion Becomes Evil
Dexter Is Delicious
Earth: The Book
Living Dead in Dallas
Packing for Mars
Full Dark, No Stars
The End of the Free Market
Homer's Odyssey
The Bible According to Mark Twain
The Hunger Games
Damage Control: How to Stop Making Jesus Look Bad
Holiday Classics
The Reason for Christmas
The Confession

I Am No Longer Non-Partisan

When I registered to vote, I registered as an independent. I think that this was largely because my parents were independent. Looking back on it, I consider myself a liberal republican. For most of my adult life, I have considered myself an utterly non-partisan independent.

This has changed.

With the blockage of the health care bill for 9/11 first providers, the republicans have gone from being a good party to being a bought-and-paid for party to being an EVIL party.

They blocked this health care bill simply to muscle through the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

Even if they pass this when they come back into session, it will be too late. People will suffer because of their blockage of this bill. People will crumble financially because of their blockage of this bill. People will DIE because of their blockage of this bill.

I will never again support the republican party or a republican candidate until I start hearing some sincere repentance for this, and I urge all of my brothers and sisters of conscience to do the same.

The republican party should be ashamed of itself. Republican politicians should be ashamed of themselves for associating with this diseased party. Anyone who voted republican in the last election should be ashamed of themselves for voting for this diseased party.

I usually end these things with "peace", but I… I just CAN'T this time. Republican candidates have been using 9/11 to scare people into voting for them since 2002… George W. Bush even used images from the 9/11 attacks in his 2004 reelection ads. This is pathetic enough. But now that they had the opportunity to do something positive for 9/11, they refused so that they could enrich themselves and their rich rat-bastard friends.

It's time to kill the American republican party until it gets it's head out of Phil Knight's ass.

Randal

The More Things Change....

Found myself in a conversation yesterday with a woman about a garment made in Mexico. Her comment was that maybe that would keep THEM there instead of coming here. (THEM, presumably, being Mexicans.) My first problem with this is that if we don't figure out that there is no THEM, but only US, and right quick, our world is going to become a more unpleasant place to live pretty damned soon.

I told her that since my father's people had immigrated here that I couldn't say that immigration is a bad thing. She responded that America NEEDED immigrants when my father's people came here.

I hate to burst her bubble, and yours if you believe that, but there has ALWAYS been an anti-immigration sentiment in the US. At least, let's say, since the time of the founding fathers. What changes is the group that is suffering the bias. For instance, at the time of the founding fathers, it was Eastern Europeans and Germans that Americans wanted to keep out. This can also be read as "Jews". Up until probably fifty or seventy-five years ago, if you said that someone was a "Russian" or "Polish", what you meant was "Jewish".

What really pissed her off, though, was my observation that, when my father's people came here a century and a half or so, the bias was against the Irish. Anti-Irish laws, similar to later Jim Crow laws, or the anti-Mexican law that Arizona tried to pass recently, were being passed in several cities. This was during "Black 47". I don't know if you know this or not, but Ireland is actually the only country in the world whose population has decreased. This is because the British were forcing the Irish to ship out all of the food that they grew to England except for the potatoes, which the English hadn't really developed a taste for at that time. So the Irish had potatoes and a few scraps of other foods. In 1847 (Black 47), a blight attacked the potato crop, wiping out more than 75% of the Irish potato crop. This is what we now incorrectly call the "Potato Famine". As a result, a huge percent of Ireland's population left the country, many of them coming to America.

And again, the backlash against the Irish was largely religious. Many of the Irish who came to America were both poor and Catholic, and so the good Protestant Americans didn't want the "Shanty Papist Irish" here.

She coldly responded that SHE was Irish and stalked off. So the truth is that 150 years ago, her ancestors were in the same position that the Mexicans are now, and I think that didn't sit very well with her.

Think about it.

Peace.

Rev. Randal

It's Still Wrong...

It really bothers me that not doing anything wrong has become associated with not getting caught in America today. With all of the talk since the Clinton administration about America's "morals" it really bothers me that we've lost our moral center so badly that we've turned into a nation of Bart Simpsons. "I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, you can't prove anything."

Wrong… is STILL wrong. Regardless if anyone saw you doing it. It's still wrong. What the hell ever happened to doing right simply BECAUSE IT IS RIGHT?

I write this, because I saw a film clip the other day of Kathy Lee Gifford when she "discovered" (yeah… right…) that her branded line of clothes at K-mart was being manufactured by children in Chinese sweatshops for pennies a day. The nation was outraged… so she was sorry. Boo fucking hoo. It is my belief that she was NOT sorry that children were being enslaved to line her pockets…. I'm pretty sure that she KNEW about that and was okay with it. It is my belief that she is sorry that she GOT CAUGHT.

And now, think about us. Think about the buying American public. We were collectively outraged that Kathy Lee Gifford's clothes were being made by child slaves. How dare they. You can't buy Kathy Lee Gifford clothes anymore, because that wicked witch was profiting from the enslavement of children.

So why do we tolerate all of the other junk that's made by Chinese slave children? BECAUSE THE COMPANIES HAVEN'T GOTTEN CAUGHT. We willingly close our eyes to this so that we can have our cheap shit. Which means, as near as I can tell, that we are economically willing to smilingly slit our own throats en masse to insure that a few Americans remain very, very rich while the rest of us struggle to get paycheck to paycheck and live off the sweat of enslaved Chinese children.

Peace.

Rev. Randal

DVD Review: Superman/Shazam: The Return of Black Adam

I was REALLY looking forward to this DVD. I mean REALLY. Like I'm looking forward to Harry Potter and Green Lantern really.

Imagine my disappointment, then, when I was finally able to watch this train wreck.

Let me start by talking about Captain Marvel. (And yes - the hero's name is Captain Marvel - NOT Shazam.) Cap first appeared in Fawcett Publications "Whiz Comics # 2" in February, 1940. In 1953, DC forced Fawcett to stop publishing Captain Marvel, claiming that it was a copyright infringement - they claimed that the character was an infringement of Superman. Personally, I think that has always been a miscarriage of justice, because aside from some surface and power similarities, the two characters are almost nothing alike. In 1972, DC was able to gain the rights to the Marvel family, and has tried several times to revive them, including the unfortunate way that most people know Captain Marvel - from the campy, 1970's TV series.

DC Showcase was a (now-defunct) comic book series that DC used to spotlight new and minor characters starting in 1956. Probably best known for introducing the most famous incarnation of The Flash in issue # 4 and ushering in the "silver age" of comics, the title was cancelled in 1970, and then enjoyed another brief run from 1977 to 1978. DC is now reviving this as a series of shorts on their DVD's. Each episode focuses on one DC hero (except for this one which features both Cap and Superman). Each is around 20 minutes long, about the same length as any given episode of one of their animated series. The first four have focused on Jonah Hex, Green Arrow, The Specter and now Cap and Superman. All four of these are featured on this DVD.

I have always been a DC guy. Batman and Superman are my boys. Lately, Captain Marvel has joined them as they have allowed the character to become a little darker and more complex. Let's just say that this short DOESN'T highlight the new depth for the character, although he's not quite as goofy as he was in the 1970's TV show.

One terrific thing that DC is doing with all of its animated features on DVD is to include selected episodes from their TV series that are related in some way to the feature. This one includes an episode from the Batman animated series featuring Jonah Hex, an episode from Batman: The Brave and the Bold featuring The Specter, and two episodes of Justice League Unlimited focusing on Green Arrow and Captain Marvel. (The last of these, by the way, is a vastly superior Superman/Cap story to the feature.)

THE GOOD: Seeing Black Adam. Adam is a rich, complex character who was used to terrific effect in the DC comics miniseries 52. This series featured a year without Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. The series focused about equally on Booster Gold, The Question and Black Adam.

Adam is another to whom the wizard Shazam gave the powers of the gods to be protector of the Earth. The powers went to his head, however, and he decided that rather than just be ruler of his little nation of Khandak, he should be ruler of the world. Because of this, Shazam sent him to the far side of the galaxy, from which it took Adam five thousand years to return to Earth. For some reason that I've never been able to figure out, the artists always show him with pointed ears like Spock.

My one real problem with the way that the character is portrayed here is that several times he is seen standing on the ground, which Adam, in his arrogance, never does. He's always shown flying or hovering a few inches above the ground.

THE BAD: The story. It sucks. It's basically Superman and Captain Marvel beating the crap out of Black Adam for twenty minutes. Also, the physics are wonky, but I'm used to that in superhero films. About the only one to get them even half-right was Hancock.

THE UGLY: The animation in this short isn't great, but the biggest problem is Fawcett city. It's empty. In the aerial shots of the city, there are no cars and no pedestrians. Aside from some empty cars that Black Adam chucks at Captain Marvel, we don't see a car until about 3/4 of the way through the film.

Also, I wish that they hadn't revived Talky Tawney, Captain Marvel's talking tiger sidekick. At least they had the good taste to simply call him "Tawney" and have him be a REAL tiger instead of walking on two legs and wearing clothes.

Peace.

Rev. Randal

Election Post-Mortem

Okay, so we gave the republicans the wheel back. So where do we go from here?

I've got to tell you quite honestly, I don't really give that much of a crap about which party is in control. I think that they're both corrupt… with the dems maybe having proven themselves slightly less corrupted than the republicans.

I do have to tell you, though… anyone who think that putting the republicans in power is going to do anything about our budget mess is in for a somewhat rude awakening. We've been sinking between one and one and a quarter trillion dollars in the hole since 2003, and I'll bet my whole allowance that it'll continue for the next two years. Especially since it seems almost a given that the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans will continue unabated. You know why I say that the debt problem will continue? Because we haven't done anything to address the core issues. We blindly replaced one party with the other without bothering to think about WHY we're digging ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole, let alone trying to fix it. In this respect, Americans kind of remind me of Alaskans. Alaskans get this thing called a "Permanent Fund Dividend Check". Every Alaskan gets one based on the state's oil revenue. You know… Sarah Palin took credit for it, even though it's been going on since she and I were trying to figure out high school (her in Wasilla, me in Chugiak just up the street). After we had received these checks for several years, Alaska (which has no income tax) found itself in something of a budget crunch. So two proposals went before the Alaska legislature: kill the Permanent Fund Dividend, or institute an income tax. One of the local news agencies did a man-on-the-street type segment on this, and the answer of one woman really stuck with me. She said "I don't really want an income tax… but I don't really want to lose my Permanent Fund check either." No. She just wants things to get better all by themselves.

I'm not even saying that things are that bad nationally. We just have to be more involved in what our government is doing to help cut the fat. Giving the president a line-item veto or eliminating earmarks altogether would be good. Calling our troops home from Germany, Japan and Korea and closing the bases in those countries would help. Legalizing and taxing pot. Not only would that give us additional revenue, but how much would that save us in incarceration costs? Instituting all of John Boehner's Social Security reforms (except privatization) would help.

I do have a fear with the republicans back in power, though. I am afraid that we're going to return to the late nineties. You remember the late nineties? When the republicans spent 700 million of our money persecuting the president for no reason and to no end? I think that's going to happen again.

Why?

Because Darrell Issa, whom I usually like, said that he wants to see a hearing every day on the actions of the Obama administration. How much is THAT going to cost? And lets face it, you may not like what Obama's done, but, just like President Clinton, he hasn't committed an impeachable offense.

And Mitch McConnell, speaking to the Heritage Foundation, said that he wanted the republican's primary focus over the next two years to be to insure that the president doesn't have a second term.

Really, folks. Honest to God. Don't we have more important things to worry about right now?

Peace.

Rev. Randal