Monday, July 22, 2013

Why

Why do Republicans think a white man openly carrying a loaded handgun is a citizen expressing their Second Amendment rights, but a black man openly carrying a loaded handgun is a suspected criminal, a latino man a suspected gang member, and a Middle-Eastern a suspected terrorist?

I thought the Second Amendment was color blind, except in the eyes of Republicans.

Monday, July 15, 2013

Hate Crime

The Department of Justice should indict and prosecute George Zimmerman for a hate crime in his attack, assault and killing of Trayvon Martin, even if they lose in the end. They need to do this because it's the right thing to do for Trayvon, it's the right thing to do for justice, and it's the right thing to do for the American people. Just do it.

House Farm Bill

The Republicans in the House of Representatives have passed the Farm Bill which includes subsidies to corporate agriculture and even members of both the House and the Senate in Congress who own farms (actually they're just part owners and not the people who run it), but they exclude the entire Food Stamp Program, citing that will be taken up in another bill, meaning not.

So while members of Congress line their fat ass pockets with taxpayers' money they're not willing to put basic food on the table of working people and families who need food stamps to survive. They even refused to vote on an amendment banning members of Congress from receiving farm subsidies.

That's the message they sent to the people of America. They're in it for themselves and only themselves. And you still think the Republicans represent the American people?

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Lesson Learned

I learned a lesson about Tumblr when you post a statement stating the term "Native American" only applies to American Indians since they were the first humans in North America about 12,000 years and were here before Europeans by all but the last 500-plus years of their time here.

I stated that people of European ancestry are not native in the sense of the ancestry, and that draws the conservatives on Tumblr out of the Internet to post comments. I posted it because I get tired of white people who claim their native not just by birth but by ancestry assuming the arrival of the Pilgrims were the first "real" people in North America.

I won't argue people can call themselves native by their birth, but they can't by the ancestry, but the truth is we're all immigrants from somewhere else, it's just depends on how far back you go in time and place.

Even Europeans are a hodgepodge of ancestries but many lived in relative isolation for many generations before integration by other people. American Indians crossed on the land bridge between Alaska and Russia between the ice ages.

From there they migrated down into Central America and Mexico by about 12,000 years BP. It's understood that native South Americans migrated from the South Pacific and then up to Central America  from their arrival in the southern areas of South America.

Europeans didn't arrive until the late 15th century but really a century or two later with the conquests in South America and the settlements in North America. That doesn't make them native is the same sense as the American Indians who were already here.

And that was my point, being native is relative to time and place.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

The NRA

Why do I get the impression the NRA is now what the FBI would classify as a "domestic terrorist organization" when they openly and publically advocate citizens to take up arms against the government?

That's what the newly elected president of the NRA said at the recent annual meeting in Houston, Texas when he said members should be armed and ready to fight the tyranny of the government and members should train themselves in the use of military style weapons to fight.

That isn't sugar coating their hate for the government, which is their and our government. It's outright treason to advocate violence and the overthrow of the government. These are the very people who benefit from the government and the freedom to buy as many guns and ammunition they want.

What's interesting is the FBI has said the top ten terrorist organization are domestic white supremacist groups and militias. To that now they can put the NRA at the top of the list. They are by far now the most dangerous group to the US government advocating the political and violent overthrow of the government.