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H/t High Barnett. Sign a petition asking Obama to challenge Arizona’s new law, SB1070, which legalizes racial profiling to find undocumented people.
OF COURSE IT IS! Long-time bigoted Kansas politician Kris Kobach took his racism across state lines to help craft the controversial Arizona anti-immigrant law, SB1070. TOTAL SURPRISE.
Kobach, an Oxford and Yale-educated lawyer, has been bumping around politics for a few years, yet to get a real (strangle) hold on my fair homeland of Kansas, but not for lack of trying. As a matter of fact, he is running for Kansas Secretary of State right now, which I’m sure in no way affected his decision to get involved in this Arizona immigration hooey. To wit: “Kobach said he didn’t believe his involvement in creation of the law would have any impact on running for secretary of state.” Allow me to register my skepticism.
Kobach has an interesting and extensive history in anti-immigrant litigation, specifically, on the losing side. See for yourself. He also has ties to FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform), a white-supremacist, anti-immigrant hate group whom he has worked for in the past.
“There are some things that states can do and some that states can’t do, but this law threads the needle perfectly,” Kobach has said. Whatever that means.
He’s also said he’s doing this because, “I believe in the cause.”
I don’t doubt that a minute.
UPDATE 5/1/10: Kris Kobach shares his totally reasonable, non-bigoted thoughts with the New York Times.
UPDATE #2 5/3/10:
Republican secretary of state candidate Kris Kobach not only helped write Arizona’s new immigration law, but he has been working for $300 per hour to train law enforcement officers there on procedures in arresting suspected illegal immigrants.
Kobach, an attorney, was hired as an immigration expert to help the Maricopa County sheriff’s office in immigration enforcement activities and policy. The contract, signed in October, calls for a minimum payment to Kobach of $1,500 per month, plus expenses and travel.
A quarter of Americans are having trouble finding medical care and/or paying their rents and mortgages. 70% have had job- or finance-related problems in the last year. Of workers, a quarter expect to take a forced pay cut this year, and another quarter expect to lose their jobs within a year. 85% of Americans are having trouble finding jobs in their community. 44% of American workers are long term unemployed.
Or so says the Pew Research Center report, “A Year or More: The High Cost of Long-Term Unemployment”.
An interesting article about these numbers: Collapse of the Standard of Living in the USA.
Kansas State Rep Lance Kinzer (et al)’s weird anti-abortion bill has been vetoed by governor Mark Parkinson. HALLELUJAH!
The bill would have eliminated threats to mental health as an acceptable reason to obtain a late-term abortion and forced doctors to hand over medical details about women receiving late-term abortion to politicians. Another part of “pro-life” attempts at chipping away women’s medical rights and bodily autonomy.
On a different note, how come every article about stupid anti-abortion antics has to include 1.) a quote from someone representing a wacko pro-life agency and 2.) someone from Planned Parenthood? Well, I guess Missouri is changing the standards, since the article under discussion was printed in the redoubtable bastion of unbiased journalism, the Kansas City Star, it only contains quotes from the Kansans for Life wacko and from the pro-life politician, Kinzer. Bleh.
UPDATE 5/5/10: On the second try, the Kansas Legislature overrode the veto. On to the Senate…
Tim James, a Republican who would like to become governor of Alabama, has a special election message for YOU about his carefully prepared platform on how he will improve the lives of Alabamans:
I wonder how much 30 seconds of bigotry—whoops, I mean business sense—costs these days.
H/t Shakesville
You preach it, Tim! Look what I found on rad blog Siditty: Imagine: Protest, Insurgency and the Workings of White Privilege
A quote:
Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters–the black protesters–spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government. Would these protesters–these black protesters with guns–be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.
Here we have the late, great Divine with “You Think You’re a Man”:
“Every culture lives within its dream. That of Christianity was one in which a fabulous heavenly world, filled with gods, saints, devils, demons, angels, archangels, cherubim and seraphim and dominions and powers, shot its fantastically magnified shapes and images across the actual life of earthborn man [sic]. This dream pervades the life of a culture as the fantasies of night dominate the mind of a sleeper: it is reality – while the sleep lasts. But, like the sleeper, a culture lives within an objective world that goes on through its sleeping or waking, and sometimes breaks into the dream, like a noise, to modify it or to make further sleep impossible.”
-Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization, 1934
Implausibly, Michael Steele was supposed to be like a pied piper to black people, leading them to the Republican Party by… being black himself, I suppose. I guess he was hoping on a kind of “What’s the Matter with Kansas” effect.
Apparently, blacks and other voters of color have failed to materialize for the Repubs. In 2008, before Michael Steele was elected to lead the RNC, 28% of “non-white voters” viewed the Republican Party favorably. Now that number is 23%. Good work, Michael.
So here’s the quote of the day, à la Perry Bacon Jr. and Krissah Thompson of the Washington Post:
Beyond a handful of speeches by Steele before minority audiences, there is little evidence the GOP has launched an “off the hook” public relations offensive that would take the party to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings,” as Steele promised in an interview with the Washington Times shortly after taking the RNC reins.
Pa-DOW!
Another tidbit of interest from the same article:
It remains likely that, after this year’s elections, the number of black Republican members of Congress will remain the same as it has been since Rep. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.) retired from the House in 2003: zero.
I’m not trying to make the point that voting Democrat rather than Republican is the way to advance racial equality. The parties are very similar in most crucial matters, such as being in the pocket of big business, bowing to Christian theocrats, promoting war, perpetuating social inequalities, believing in American exceptionalism, and worshiping the Invisible Hand. No non-affluent person could truly act in their own interest by voting for either major party.
However, it is clear that Republicans are more open in their disregard for people of color, and are willing to publicly promote policies that disproportionately harm communities of color. Democrats are similarly uncaring towards POC, but they have the decency to understand their actions are despicable and at least try to cover their intentions with respectful language. If that does it for you.
Ah, Michael Steele. Look what happens if I reflect on him for even five minutes. I turn into a seething revolutionary anarchist… or something.
I’d hate to be a cop in Arizona about now. The Arizona state Senate just passed a bill that requires cops, under threat of lawsuit, to enforce federal immigration laws. … They’re not supposed to use race to develop reasonable suspicion but how could they avoid using the color of a man’s skin as a preliminary determinant?
Aside from recent changes in Arizona law basically making it illegal to be brown in that state, there are also changes that could even effect white (i.e. good) Arizona inhabitants:
It’s also now illegal in Arizona to pick someone up in your car if you “know or recklessly disregard the fact” that they are an illegal immigrant. Thankfully, the Arizona House added “a prosecution exemption for people who drive illegal immigrants to church.”
Whew. So if you’re Christian the laws don’t apply. Thank God.
Wow. The CNN story ‘I am transgender, and I want my voice to be heard’ is shockingly compassionate and prioritizes the words and lived experiences of actual trans people. I have to say I am pleasantly surprised that a mediocre MSM outlet like CNN could achieve something like this.
See the article and photo slideshow here.
Here we go again with Florida. From the LA Times:
Dare to buy red roses or a newspaper from a street vendor, and soon you could be breaking the law.
At least in Oakland Park, Fla.
Citing traffic safety concerns, officials in the Fort Lauderdale suburb of 42,000 tentatively approved an ordinance targeting not only panhandlers and peddlers, but the people who give to them or buy something from them.
Under the ordinance initially passed last month, anyone who responds to a beggar with money or any “article of value” or buys flowers or a newspaper from someone on the street would face a fine of $50 to $100 and as many as 90 days in jail.
There was only one “no” vote against the ordinance, cast by City Commissioner Suzanne Boisvenue, who said: “You’re going to put someone in jail for giving someone a coat when it’s cold or a hamburger if they’re hungry? For me, it’s so wrong.”
To be clear, the rule only applies to beggars and vendors on the street and not those on the sidewalk. So the rule isn’t quite as harsh as it may seem at first blush. Nevertheless, I find this ordinance extremely unpalatable. Outlawing charity to the homeless or the very needy seems a rather callous and tone-deaf move in any year, but a year like this – with high unemployment, foreclosure rates, and homelessness – well, I have to wonder, is this really the most pressing issue the city of Oakland Park faces? Why criminalize more people for previously legal activities? Why focus on criminalizing society’s most vulnerable?
Poverty is not a crime.
federal court struck down a [Miami] city ordinance … holding that “[Miami's] practice of arresting homeless individuals for performing essential, life-sustaining acts in public” violated the homeless plaintiffs’ rights to travel, and due process under the 14th Amendment, and right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.
Jay Smooth‘s stand-in Hari explains how we could have better negotiated so that we’d have the public option by now:
Oh lord.
The hierarchy of the Catholic Church cannot find anything more useful to do than to repeatedly and publicly proclaim their complete moral bankruptcy.
For example, did you know that the real victim of all these pedophilia scandals isn’t the child assaultees but the Catholic Church that harbored the perpetrators and hushed up the raped children? Yes indeed, the victims’ complaints against Catholic child rapists are actually analogous to what the Holocaust did to the Jews.
What, does that sound crAzY? Well, I didn’t make it up.
From the AP:
Pope Benedict XVI’s personal preacher on Friday likened accusations against the pope and the Catholic church in the sex abuse scandal to “collective violence” suffered by the Jews.
Reaction from Jewish groups and victims of clerical sex abuse ranged from skepticism to fury.
The Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa said in a Good Friday homily with the pope listening in St. Peter’s Basilica that a Jewish friend wrote to him, …[saying] “The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.”
Oh yes he did.
Stephan Kramer, general-secretary of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, said Cantalamessa’s remarks were “a so-far-unheard-of insolence.”
“It is repulsive, obscene and most of all offensive toward all abuse victims as well as to all the victims of the Holocaust,” Kramer said. “So far I haven’t seen St. Peter burning, nor were there outbursts of violence against Catholic priests. I’m without words. The Vatican is now trying to turn the perpetrators into victims.”
Minor details. Oh, but one more minor detail:
Italian prosecutor Pietro Forno said that once investigations have gotten under way, church officials have never tried to interfere or hinder the probes. But he added, “In the many years that I have dealt with this, never — and I stress, never — have I received a single complaint from bishops, or priests. And that’s a bit odd.”
Haha! HILARIOUS! Just don’t try to turn such details into a Holocaust on the mostly clear reputations of pedophile priests! You anti-catholic jerk!
Word to the Catholic hierarchy: when it turns out that hundreds of your authority figures have committed thousands of instances of abuse upon children, it is not time to defend your reputation. That is the most callous, wrong-headed, and immoral response possible, as it implies that you are the victim, unjustly compelled to admit to your own crimes by those uncouth and bullying rape survivors. The childhood rape survivors are not the bad guys here.
No, proper responses would include: 1. public acknowledgment of a system that promotes rape culture, 2. unqualified apology and reparations to the victims, 3. an honest assessment of the rape culture in the Catholic hierarchy by a disinterested outside investigator including recommendations for improvement, 4. publicly and in good faith making significant changes in the system to eliminate rape culture, 5. being the first body, and not the last, to bring child abusing priests to the proper authorities, and 6. continuing to address and assess the situation proactively going into the future.
Did I list anything about “defending reputations”? No I did not. Blaming the gheyz? Covering up abuse? Protecting abusing priests? Calling accusations of abuse analogous to the Holocaust? NO.
We need to see sincere and proactive action now. Heel-dragging on this matter is criminal.
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