Burning the Quran is bad for all of us

Posted on September 7, 2010 by 40andover

General Petraeus commented that burning the Quran is dangerous for US troops. (See below.)

It is dangerous for all of us.

The Nazis burned books. The Communists burned books. The McCarthy-ites burned books.

Is this really what America stands for?

And just a little side note: and these Quran burners call themselve the DOVE WORLD OUTREACH CENTER? Really? Really?

P.S.: ONLY C-SPAN and CNN carried live the interfaith press conference denouncing the burning of the Quran. Fox News Channel had no coverage and MSNBC did not carry live coverage. WHAT DOES THAT SAY???

****************************************************************************************************
By KIMBERLY DOZIER, Associated Press Writer Kimberly Dozier, Associated Press Writer Sept. 7, 2010

[Truncated; excerpt only]

KABUL, Afghanistan – The top U.S. and NATO commander warned Tuesday an American church’s threat to burn copies of the Muslim holy book could endanger U.S. troops in the country and Americans worldwide.

Meanwhile, NATO reported the death of an American service member in an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday.

The comments from Gen. David Petraeus followed a protest Monday by hundreds of Afghans over the plans by Gainesville, Florida-based Dove World Outreach Center — a small, evangelical Christian church that espouses anti-Islam philosophy — to burn copies of the Quran on church grounds to mark the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States that provoked the Afghan war.

What, REALLY?

Posted on August 3, 2010 by 40andover

Mitch McConnell,

the most recent face of resident evil since Dick Cheney left office, wants to have hearings on the meaning of “born” in the 14th amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

(See article http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gqnOBf_QRibbHZe0ieJDDRnvWxRgD9HC9ESG2).

Ok, my head is spinning. Here’s a guy who says he thinks that the Constitution is sacrosanct. Now he thinks we ought to INTERPRET this document? Ahhh, it is sacrosanct . . . . until it’s not.

WAIT, I get it. The Constitution is crystal clear about an individual’s right to bear arms (see the muddy Second Amendment)

“Amendment II — A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Um, wait, doesn’t the Second Amendment mean that you can bear arms as part of a well regulated militia (i.e., sanctioned by a governmental entity)?

BUT Resident Evil finds it very confusing when it comes to the meaning of “born“:

“Amendment 14 Section 1: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Hmmm. What is the plain meaning of this? If you are born here, you are a citizen whose rights of citizenship may not be infringed upon.

Ok, this Amendment was not written by our Founding Fathers. It was written in the aftermath of Civil War as a nation needed to heal and learn to be citizens of one nation for the common good and to protect the children of newly emancipated slaves.

So, we have to have hearings on what “born in the United States” means. If McConnell and his ilk weren’t talking about people’s lives and the very meaning of a free and open society, it would almost be a humorous riff on Bill Clinton’s “depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is”.

But it is not funny at all.

Uproar over a mosque? Really?

Posted on August 1, 2010 by 40andover

Why not a mosque near Ground Zero?

If we cannot separate out bad actors from an entire religion, then we are the evil bigots in the propaganda.

AND, we have to look in our collective mirror and see that we are not the people or nation of freedom and “ill-will-toward-none” that we would like to believe (and have others believe) we are.

Ok, so no mosque at Ground Zero. Then what logically flows from that statement are:

All Oklahomans should be barred from national monuments because Timothy McVeigh, our HOMEGROWN terrorist, was from Oklahoma. In fact, Oklahoma is so close to those other states (help me out here) that they may harbor terrorists or may have recruitment camps. So, let’s ban them (once I look at a map and figure out who they are). Also, are they practicing Methodists, Baptists, Unitarians or some other Protestant sect? If so, then none of those churches can be erected near national monuments. No, sirreeee. [It would be kind of funny if only ashrams, synagogues, Sikh temples, Hindu temples and Buddhist temples could be built on Ground Zero.]

The good ol’ USA is a rogue nation. We are the only country that has used nuclear weapons. We have not renounced them (like New Zealand — ok, not a newsmaker, but a start). And bombing Nagasaki after we obliterated Hiroshima makes Kim Jong Il seem like just another weird guy with a bad haircut, wearing woman’s sunglasses.

Lady Liberty, the welcoming beacon in our Harbor, has to be renovated so she can raise one hand with a sign or she can fling people back out to sea (see video, too crazy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BE6GyHcASE&feature=related) because we forget that EXCEPT for the Native Americans, whom we decimated under the theory of “Manifest Destiny” (oh, yeah, add GENOCIDE to our nuclear bad acts), we all descend from immigrants.

I am glad my grandparents and my mother never lived to see this day. Their America was the beacon of hope and the fulfillment of their dreams. To them, this was a great country where whoever you are and from wherever you came, you could make a life for your family. Maybe people didn’t like them because they were Jews but people left them alone.

That was America. This, this, this is a place I don’t know or understand.

Rand Paul, the Prophet with the Pitchfork

Posted on May 26, 2010 by 40andover

That crazy Tea-Party-er is good for America. You’re thinking: some crazy person is guest blogging. Nope.

Rand Paul is a false prophet. He is rationalizing our nation’s three-decade long drift into a selfish, ego-centric theocracy. He is giving us a way to rationalize and even celebrate our nation’s screw-your-neighbor-because-it-is-your-G-d-given-right hypocrisy. Yes, if we listen to him, we will surely perish.

He lays bear the essential pathos of the Tea Party movement — the fight for white supremacy and control over diminishing resources. Neo-Nazis and Neo-Klansmen with an apocalyptic rapture.

I am over-reacting, maybe?

He said that the President’s criticizing British Petroleum was un-American. Does being American mean I have to applaud and support corporate greed that despoliates the earth? (Psssst, Randy, BP is headquartered in Switzerland to avoid US taxation).

Then he drew a line in the sand — saying that an individual’s right to be a racist is improperly impinged upon by the Civil Rights Act. (If a black proprietor refused to serve a white man, I don’t believe Mr. Paul would be so sanguine about the protections of the Civil Rights Act.)

No, I am not overreacting.

After thousands of years of human civilization and evolution, it still all boils down to the epic battle between good and evil. On one side of Mr. Paul’s line is our common humanity and sense of decency, justice and fair play. All the things that — we say — define us as Americans. On Rand Paul’s side of that line, there are only Freud’s id, chaos and brutality.

Good versus Evil. Yes, it is that simple.

Out at Work

Posted on April 8, 2010 by 40andover

I “out”ed myself today at work — not as a lesbian [remember, I am here, I am queer and I am over it] but as a blogger.

While I didn’t give away the site, apparently some of my coined phrases, like “schlepic” — in the passages I cut and pasted for a colleague — can lead straight to this blog. So, the secret is out. I will never be on the Supreme Court as a result of my writings. That’s okay. First, I am not qualified. Second, I am one of the few New Yorkers who doesn’t look so good in basic black. Phew, intellectual and sartorial disasters averted. Our nation is safe again.

Although, come to think of it, I would dispense justice, tempered with mercy. As in, “would you like extra fries with your LAST meal?” I fear that most people would be horrified if every opinion from the bench started with, “Schmuuuuuck, what were you thinking when you . . . ?” I would imprison people who tortured the words of laws or statutes beyond all recognition to fit their desired ends as violations of the Geneva Convention. You know, the Geneva Convention, the so-called “quaint” doctrine discredited by Dick Cheney and his highly educated legal “scholars”. Just using fancy words doesn’t make an idea good; it just makes it high-fallutin’ bullsh@t. But I digress. See, I would get on a roll and mayhem would ensue in my court room. Maybe I should get the Presidential Medal of Honor for having the patriotism not to seek a judgeship.

Anyway, today was a regular day without many gross things to report. Other than the fact that the Virginia governor forgot that slavery was part of Virginia history. That’s like a Texan forgetting the Alamo, for G-d’s sake. But the governor’s omission did hit an impressive trifecta: gross, idiotic and inflammatory.

And then there is the mining company that put profits ahead of lives and now 25, possibly 29, miners are dead. I think Lady MacBeth found that blood stains your hands forever. That crazy Bill Shakespeare. Our very own Elizabethan Nostradamus.

Starvation in the Sudan is at a humanitarian crisis level. (There are so many centers of humanitarian crisis, wouldn’t it be easier for the UN to list where there ISN’T a humanitarian crisis?) We really should think about how lucky the majority of us are in this nation (and remember and help the less fortunate). But, tea party-ers are crying over taxes, which most of them don’t pay anyway. Children starving in the Sudan. Spoiled Americans are protesting a functioning government that protects their liberties and provides a safety net from starvation. Let’s put these two concepts on the scales and balance them. Ok, why are the tea party-ers still talking?

Associate Justice 40andoverblog of the United State of America. It has a nice ring to it.

The Health Care Debate

Posted on March 27, 2010 by 40andover

Let’s just hold this space for my rant, once I get it under control. Setting aside what you believe, there are people in the country who have behaved so abominably in the tactics they used and the violence they unleashed. And they are maybe worse than unpatriotic, because what they did undermines our system of government and our society. I believe that these people are traitors to our nation and its government because they want to win at all costs, without thought to the preservation of the union. In contra-distinction, those opposed to government action under the Bush-Cheney years did not physically and verbally attack lawmakers who put us in debt for generations, have rifle scopes put on where lawmakers live, and say things like, “you’re a dead man!”

Sen. McCain wants to repeal some of the very things that were part of his platform, until he changed with the direction of the wind. Some maverick.

Many of our representatives have breached their oaths of office. And in the process, they have stoked class warfare and racial distrust and enabled fringe groups to deny the legitimacy of Barack Obama as president of the United States.

But, still, I haven’t gotten my thoughts together yet, so stay tuned.

Why is Sarah still in my life?

Posted on February 9, 2010 by 40andover

How does a woman deride hope and faith in our democracy and receive standing ovations?

I am going out on a limb here, but not everyone can be president of the United States. Neither Joe Six Pack nor Joe the Plumber can run a nuclear superpower. Also, not every opinion is worth as much as any other. To think otherwise is ridiculous. One may have a right to one’s opinion, but if it is illogical or ill-informed, it should be ignored. Remember how much flack then-President Carter got when he said he asked his daughter Amy what she thought of nuclear disarmament? Because we knew that a 13 year-old is not an expert (to be fair, he was making a point about that younger generation’s desire to live nuclear bomb-free). The GOP lambasted him.

Now, the GOP thinks that every stupid idea based on half-truths and discredited sources should be held as on par with those of the President of the United States and his cabinet and advisers. That is just mean-spirited, corrupt and disrespectful. [Now, I didn’t think much of the ideas of GWB, his cabinet and his advisers, but I certainly agree that they knew more than most people and that the relevant opinions were those of experts who thought the Bush doctrine and the Cheney secret police were ill-conceived and ignorant.]

Sarah Palin has some great one-liners but a stand-up comic is not good training for president. Also, other than one-liners, she cannot put together a string of words to make a coherent sentence.

Ok, I am going to pretend I am a GOP operative and Sarah is a Democrat (G-d forbid). Here is my theory:

No matter how many times she makes mistakes or shares her baseless views and ideas, there is this invisible machine that rehabilitates and spins the mistakes and idiotic policy statements into victories for the true America. Any ordinary candidate — especially a female candidate — would be left to tend the embers of her political career after the various Sarah fiascoes. But there is an invisible force that will not let her fail. Why are people so invested? Well, I just keep thinking of that cold war movie about a sleeper mole who is in line for the presidency . . . . maybe . . . naw . . . yes? . . . Is Sarah Palin the real Manchurian Candidate?

Hey, according to the GOP, my opinion is as important and valid as that of any politician or commentator. So, my opinion is that Sarah Palin is the Manchurian Candidate and she was sent to the US to ruin us. In your face, lady in the McCain town hall who believed that President Obama is Arab (and so what if he was).

But Sarah was right about one thing: “President Palin” breeds fear in my heart AND, I hope, all those who love their children and want the world to survive for a few more generations.

Tea Party-ers in Revolutionary Get-Ups

Posted on February 5, 2010 by 40andover

Ok, I don’t get what was so great about the pre-Revolutionary War period.

Milk and water had deadly bacteria, “medicine” consisted of bloodletting and leaches, and the economies of the colonies went through more boom and bust cycles than we have in the 20th and 21st centuries combined.

Also, women didn’t vote, slavery was legal and an education was a luxury. Life expectancy was short and infant mortality high. You were either born into poverty or great wealth — no in-between. There was war and its unspeakable human carnage.

In case the tea party-ers are not students of history, they are in the costumes of either the unofficial American aristocracy who made incredible fortunes from smuggling and the slave trade or those who were the impoverished masses and were controlled by that unofficial aristrocracy. And the Boston tea party was a Samuel Adams’ instigated mob riot intended to rile everyone against the king of England. All engineered by the wealthy colonials, not the “common people”.

If you are looking for grass roots democracy, try the Native American tribes on which Jefferson based his vision of government.

So, tea party-ers, what is your point? If you want to go back to that time, well, have fun but count me out. I would rather deal with a spoiled society on the verge of global devastation, but with the brain power and ultimately, I hope, the conscience and the technology and intelligence, to figure out how to save our earth and our humanity.

But if you just want to dress in knickers and wigs, then knock yourselves out.

Transportation Safety Administration

Posted on December 28, 2009 by 40andover

We know that TSA personnel are mean and threatening. They enjoy lording over passengers and looking at each pereson suspiciously. And yet, they still seem to effect that attitude of “I’m doing you a favor, so don’t piss me off.”

We also know that having some one’s smelly shoes in a bin next to your bin (and permeating your coat and blazer) is no way to start or end a trip.

My favorite, though, is the full-body glaucoma test, where you are in a Woody Allen-esque orgasmatron machine as jets of air hit various areas of your body. The point is to find any trace chemicals. I also had someone swab my dirty underwear (I was on my way home) looking for trace chemicals. And, G-d forbid, you wanted to pack some hair gel.

We put up with these and other indignities. Why? Because they are keeping us safe.

Hmmm. Then how does a man previously denied entrance into this country, whose family alerted the authorities that he was dangerous, walk on a plane with a syringe and more liquid than “allowed”?

What have we learned? TSA personnel are mean and threatening AND incompetent. Luckily, the terrorist in this case was more incompetent.

There are a lot of very qualified people out of work. Maybe we should upgrade our TSA personnel (and personality).

Taxi cab stories

Posted on December 13, 2009 by 40andover

Since I threw out my back, I have taken a lot of cabs (the subway just seemed too much to handle).

Cab drivers like to talk to me. I must have “schmuck” written across my forehead.

One cab driver starts a conversation with, “you don’t look Christian.” Bait me, why don’t you. So, I say, “I am not”. “You are Jew!!” Oy, I think, this is going to be bad and all the world’s ills are being distilled in this one moment in a cab in holiday traffic. I say nothing. He says, “I know you are not Muslim.” So I respond, “Maybe I am Sikh or Hindu.” He laughs. He is a Christian from Egypt. He hates Muslims. He says all the Muslim cab drivers are terrorists. I knew that Christians had it hard in Egypt, but he went on a diatribe against Muslims for what seemed like an eternity. Then he says, “I don’t believe in G-d anyway. How do I pray to G-d who makes me short and fat?” I think to say, “and with enormous earlobes” but I think better of it. I get out of the cab, exhausted from the hatred spewing out of this guy.

That evening, in another cab, the driver asks me, “have you done all your holiday shopping?” I respond, “I don’t celebrate these holidays.” He says, “you are Jew!” [Now this is becoming weird.] He goes on without a response from me, “I am Muslim and I know you are not Muslim.” So I try my Sikh or Hindu line on this guy. He laughs, too. I ask him where he is from. “Egypt.” Ok, I don’t usually get Egyptian cab drivers and in this one day alone, I have an Egyptian Christian and now an Egyptian Muslim. So I ask, “who do you think will succeed Hosni Mubarak?” He answers, “Mubarak’s son will, but that is no democracy, that is a dynasty like Syria or Jordan. I would vote for Boutros Boutros Gali, but he is a Christian and a Christian head of state would never be allowed in a Muslim country.” I mention that no one ever thought that a black man would be president of the United States. He responds, “I live in this country and I am glad to have a job, so I do not worry about politics. But it would be great if Mr. Obama were President of Egypt!!”

An angry Christian and a grateful Muslim. Each the opposite of what the other envisions.

The next day I get into a cab and the radio is on. Someone is talking about global warming. “Miss, do you believe in this global warming?” I respond yes. “My village will be flooded in 2050! I must buy a boat!” Ok, no one has EVER been cheerful about global warming. Clearly, this guy is out of kilter, just like our ecosystem. “Where are you from?” “Bangladesh, Miss. Do you hear of it?” “Yes, of course, but I heard on CNN that the flooding [other than during rainy season and when India opens a large dam] in Bangladesh won’t be bad until 2100,” I say, trying to be helpful and upbeat [ok, now I am in his crazy world of surreality]. I think, wow, coastal cities in the US will be flooded. Good thing we live on the fourth floor. Now I am crazy enough to drive a cab.

Next week I take the subway, even if I have to crawl up and down the steps.

40 — oh wait, yikes!! 50 — andoverblog

Aging and living in urban US

Category Archives: radicalism