Koran burner Derek Fenton booted from his job at NJ Transit

Good. Fuck this guy and his "First Amendment rights." He's just a hateful piece of shit who would probably pull the fucking switch on anyone who is Muslim. Thoughtless reactionary fuck, running around screaming about 9/11 with no consideration given to what he says, means or does. Please, do not let reality get in your way, sir.

I would like to point out that his protest site, the "Ground Zero" mosque isn't a mosque and it's not at "Ground Zero." I quote from Frank Rich:

THE “ground zero mosque,” as you may well know by now, is not at ground zero. It’s not a mosque but an Islamic cultural center containing a prayer room....Still, the battle that has broken out over this project in Lower Manhattan — on the “hallowed ground” of a shuttered Burlington Coat Factory store one block from the New York Dolls Gentlemen’s Club — will prove eventful all the same.

And here we have some basically brilliant commentary from Gawker (the post is worth reading in its entirety):

While you spent your Sunday trying to teach your cat to go to the bathroom on a human toilet, a group of brave, freedom-loving Americans gathered in New York City to express their extreme disapproval with the Park 51 project, an al-Qaeda plot to build a community center featuring a swimming pool and auditorium on the very site where a Burlington Coat Factory once stood.

I love how his neighbors are all defending him. I'm sure they wouldn't be talking about any rights if he were burning such things as a bible, an American flag or pictures of their children. It's so cool to hate Muslims right now.

How fucking shortsighted are people? "Muslims killed Americans! Muslim bad! Islam no good, bad bad! I wanna fuck Sarah Palin!!!"

Please don't misunderstand me as defending religion. It's all profoundly stupid and silly, no matter what god you worship. It all saps your energy, will, and faith in the self. Fuck it all. But the thing is, you can't just pick one religion and say "Oh, this is the bad one. I hate it so much, because, you know, it's just so bad. And mine is so great. It's very, very different. Just so different." It's all the fucking same.

Fuck this place.

True words

Brilliant insight.

"Racism continues to reflect a disparity of power and it is as egregious today as it was in the eighteenth century because the advent of less dramatic forms of dominance is not progress. More insidious in modern social relations is the fact that white people do not have to expressly target black people in order to exploit them. They only have to locate their interests in private and public policies that have disparate impact. Freed from involvement in color-specific political decisions and specific acts of racial oppression, white Americans can more easily imagine the injustices of their society to be natural or irrational."

- Craig Steven Wilder, A Covenant with Color: Race and Social Power in Brooklyn, p. 241.

Leadership

Here is Jan Brewer, governor of Arizona and the country's leading anti-immigration politician, giving a public address on television as to why people should reelect her:




Yup.

I guess her groomers/coaches tell her to never stop smiling, no matter what.

The only people who have justification to act like this are the senile and the very high.

Smart people

Have smart things to say. Finally, the real Americans emerged from Wal-Mart and their PT Cruisers or whatever.

It's nice to see a group of people who really "get it," whatever "it" may be. But let me tell you, they get it. I hope they are able to stop Saddam.

I must say, I am disappointed to not have seen Hulk Hogan getting in on this, though the man directly above may be related to him.

In case you have forgotten:

How the Mighty Have Fallen, Part 1

Rancid. What a great band. A lot of people I know are real into the first self-titled record, but I am not one of them. After that, however, it's hit after hit - Let's Go, And out Come the Wolves, Life Won't Wait, and the second self-titled, or "Rancid 2000" as it's often known. Everything else after that sucked. Still, four (by my estimation) great, and I mean great, records is really something. There are no bad songs on those records (well, there is one, but I will get to it, and it's only lyrically bad). Fucking gold.

I was listening to Let's Go this morning and reveled in Tim's hatred of the police, listening to him singing in "Harry Bridges" about how "Bloody Thursday was July 5th, the pigs killed 3 workers, Harry Bridges grabbed the mic," and certainly best of all, when "every single cop got a bullet in the head" in "Sidekick." Even Lars gets in on the action, telling us about Mary being "out the door with a loaded .44 in her hand, shooting down the law that shot down her dear departed man." Fuck pigs, yes, fuck them all to hell.

It was bad enough to find out the man is a Christian (that's the one bad song I was referencing above, "Who Would've Thought" from Life Won't Wait - it's about him "finding god" or whatever bullshit. Unfortunately, I am not able to locate the interview in which I read that at this time.) but now he fucking writes songs about the troops. And not in the good way. No no, Tim unequivocally praises them. He's one of those all-too-common people who somehow views soldiers in a morality vacuum, seeing them as simply "doing their job," no questions of wrong or right being asked, never mind answered. Why, here he is, quoted recently in the Navy Times (not kidding):

“Whatever you think of the war — everyone has their own opinions — you’ve got to give respect to the soldiers,” Armstrong says. “I do, big time.”

No, actually, I need give no respect to the soldiers. You see, the reality that no one wants to admit is that THEY ARE THE FUCKING WAR. Yes, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and Obama could have all the plans they want, the Pentagon could draw up all the strategies it could muster and Lockheed Martin could stockpile millions of tons of weapons and munitions, but if no one actually went to fight the war, then there couldn't be one, could there? And seeing that there hasn't been a draft in decades, there is no excuse there. It's a volunteer military. Sure, people get conned into joining. But then they get enthusiastic about shooting whomever crosses their paths and kicking in strangers' doors and screaming at them in a language they do not understand. So, once you've gone and invaded someone's sovereignty for no reason at all, aside from because you elected to do so/were ordered to, you've forfeited all rights to life. As much as I hate to use the war makers' terms, you are then a thief of freedom and liberty and the people whose land you are invading and occupying, the ones whom you are terrorizing, they have a right to resist and expel you by any means available to them. Especially now! There is NO MISUNDERSTANDING about what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are not popular wars. All that shit about 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden and whatever else is a bunch of garbage. None of that has anything to do with what's going on in those countries and no one even bothers to claim it does any longer.

Simply put, you are no hero while you are there unless you turn your weapons back on your own side, absolutely refuse to participate regardless of the consequences to yourself or somehow manage to perform a substantial subversive function, like the tragically foolish traitor to the imperialist cause, Bradley Manning.