Wednesday, August 31, 2011

AZ State Sen. Russell Pearce’s version of the Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan was a far-right extremist organization that advocated white supremacy and anti-immigration.  I grew up in the South of the 1940s and 1950s where the Klan was in full bloom and remember the attempts to scare Blacks into complete servitude in order to keep them in line.  It wasn’t a pretty picture, and I wondered then as a young man, just what had these people done to deserve this? 

Although the KKK movement wasn’t designed to run the Blacks out of the South like State Sen. Russell Pearce’s actions to force illegal Hispanic immigrants out of Arizona, it did succeed in a relocation of many Blacks to the North and West.  Southern racists actually preferred to keep the Blacks where they were and maintain an atmosphere of slavery and bondage even though it was illegal.  It would go on like this for years, and still does to some extent today.

Dee Dee Garcia, a conservative Latina activist wrotea letter to the Mormon Church re. the persecution of illegal immigrants in Arizona and how State Sen. Candidate Jerry Lewis is more in tune with the church’s Prophet, Thomas S. Monson, than his opponent Russell Pearce.  She quoted a Mormon canon of scripture as a reference to the humanism of this issue, Pearce in particular:

We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.”  §121:39.

Garcia draws a parallel between Arizona’s anti-immigration fight with the Extermination Order signed by the Missouri Governor of 1838 to drive the Mormons out of his state or be exterminated.  In this case, Joseph Smith, LDS Prophet at the time, surrendered to the Missouri militia, which resulted in the forcible removal from Missouri of virtually all members of the Church.  Precisely what State Sen. Russell Pearce had in mind for Hispanics when passing SB-1070.

The Ku Klux Klan has no stronghold in Arizona but with Pearce’s past association with J.T. Ready, confirmed racist and former neo-Nazi, and the State Senator’s relentless efforts to run all Hispanics from Arizona, he has created his own modern-day version.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

It’s time to take the power from the 2-party political system


In Democrat or Republican party partisan primaries, you vote and the top vote-getter from each primary wins, going on to the general election.  In Arizona, as in most states, that is the way it is done today.  But in the Sunshine State, extremist politics slant the system toward candidates that may not actually be the choice of the people.  There is a movement on to correct this with the recent surge of Independent voters.

The Open Government Coalition ofArizona is proposing a single-primary system open to all voters where the two top vote-getters, even if they are from the same party, would advance to the general election.  This primary would completely eliminate party selection as a prerequisite for voting.  The coalition feels it will bring more Independent voters into the fold, thus, making it a more popular vote than the current system.  In Arizona, Independents number 32.5 percent of voters.

As it stands now, an Independent voting in the primary must pick one party’s ballot and go with it all the way. 

The Open Government Coalition is run by Arizona Democrat and Republican business leaders which tells us that the higher-ups are just as fed up with the state’s political extremists as the average person.  The movement started this past spring with organizers’ aversion to state politics moving to the far right.  It is this conservative right wing political manipulation that has “kept us on the front pages,” says former Phoenix Mayor, Paul Johnson.

The coalition plans to start collecting signatures this month to get the issue on the 2012 ballot.

Is it just a ploy to move Arizona politics further to the left?  Now that’s not a bad idea either.

Read more here.

Monday, August 29, 2011

It’s time to dump the Tea Party overboard

In a recent NBC News/Wall StreetJournal poll, most Americans said they want the President and Congress to compromise rather than take the hard partisan party approach.  A strong majority of Independents want compromises by Democrats but almost 70 percent want Republicans to find a middle ground.  Nearly 60 percent favor Obama’s $4 trillion proposal whereas only one-third prefer the Republican’s lower figure of $2.5 trillion.

But then the Tea Party introduced a laughable bill called “Cut, Cap and Balance” that “demands deep spending reductions and congressional approval of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution in exchange for raising the nation's debt limit,” according to the Associated Press.  Obama calls it “duck, dodge and dismantle, and vows he will veto it if it comes to his desk. 

As an example, in Arizona, Tea Party backed Republicans voted for the House bill.  They are Trent Franks, Jeff Flake, David Schweikert and Ben Quayle.  These four supposed congressional leaders wasted precious time to meet the Aug. 2, deadline because of the pressure from Tea Party wackos.  The bill passed the House 234 to 190.

The most important finding in the NBC News/WSJ poll is the fact that Americans are more favorable toward raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy to balance the budget than cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  Some 52 percent oppose the latter.  Considering the major thrust of the GOP is to protect corporations and the wealthy, isn’t it safe to assume the grand old party has completely lost touch with its American constituency?

Friday, August 26, 2011

Conservative talk-radio stinks


First off, there’s Glenn Beck’s continuous ranting that everything even slightly liberal is a Socialistic plot to overthrow the American government.  Like most conservative talk crackpots, he never gets anything right.  It’s too bad Beck can’t be recalled from broadcasting like politicians from their seat in Congress.  Beck was caught in a big lie recently over Arizona’s Mexican border and Americans’ guns. 

Now he has compared the murdered victims of Norway’s massacre by Anders Behring Breivik to the Nazi youth movement.  Beck said:  "There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like the Hitler Youth, or whatever.”  Then later, “I mean, who does a camp for kids that's all about politics?  Disturbing.”  It is beyond me how anyone could follow this maniac after a statement like that.  It only proves the low mentality of his radio audience.  He was kicked off TV.

Glenn Beck is broadcast by KTAR radio in Phoenix, which I never listen to except for the news.  But recently I decided to see what the other side was talking about early AM on my way to take my car in for maintenance.  Two ignoramuses were congratulating President Obama on his birthday, while exclaiming he had done nothing since elected in 2008.  After considering the source, I decided to research Obama’s accomplishments since taking office.

Following are a few, but you can see the complete list of 90 here: Appointed two moderate Supreme Court judges, both female, one Hispanic; moved us closer to Universal Healthcare to cover all Americans; Financial industry reform; Pulled us from the brink of another Great Depression orchestrated by George W. Bush and his band of conservatives; Finally winding down the war in Iraq; environmental legislation. 

The list was compiled by 3ChicsPolitico and there are many more of the President’s feats, but that’s probably all the two KTAR baboons can handle for now.  Sorry, the monkey family didn’t deserve that.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Wacko newspaper relentless in pursuit of Obama birther issue


The Sonoran News, published in cowboy town, Cave Creek, AZ, has been on a harebrained tirade over whether Barack Obama is an American citizen; intimating that he isn’t and not qualified to be President of the United States.  Even another conservative wacko running for Obama’s job, Michele Bachmann, says his birth certificate settles the issue. 

But in a Sonoran News article byLinda Bentley on July 20, the birther thing raises its ugly head again in the form of a Summit on this controversy in March of 2012.  I guess someone has to vent this crap, and it is fortunate that it is in a neighborhood rag tucked away in the Northeast section of Phoenix that has a limited readership.  I’m all for the 1st Amendment but this comes off like a vendetta.

Some deluded crackpot by the name of Dean Haskins has organized the Birther Summit scheduled to take place in Washington, DC, on March 28-30, in 2012.  He says “Barack Obama’s ineligibility” (to be in the Whitehouse) is the Summit’s “line in the sand.”  Apparently Haskins has spent too many days in the desert talking to too many saguaros that no doubt flipped him off as cuckoo.

Haskins questions Obama as a person and said to the Sonoran News, “Allowing this nefarious band of reprobates to continue refusing to properly resolve this constitutional catastrophe they created will be the death knell of America. Their next assault on our Constitution and heritage will be that much harder, if not impossible, to stop.”  Unfortunately, it’s too far from Christmas to offer this fruitcake as a gift…to the epitome of kooks, the Tea Party.

Read more here.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Enough is enough. It’s time to challenge the 2nd Amendment

How did we ever allow gun rights advocates to amass such power? For years we’ve given in to the gun nuts who scream they have unlimited rights for their weapons under the 2nd Amendment. There are 27 Amendments to the U.S. constitution but the one we hear the most about is the 2nd. And it is also the one that we can thank for the gun violence that is reported on a daily basis in the media. Even though it’s improving, gun killings are still a daily event.

The latest two mass murders by shooting are in Arizona and Texas, and I’m not even talking about the one in Tucson, AZ, last January involving Rep. Gabby Giffords. Three bikers were shot and killed at Mormon Lake last Friday night at a motorcycle rally. The victims were reported to be from the Phoenix area, according to the Tucson Daily Sun. Another woman was shot six times and is just “clinging to life.” The rally, which took place about 35 miles southeast of Flagstaff, had 2,000 attendees.

In Grand Prairie, Texas, six people were shot dead by a gunman at a roller rink this past Saturday. Four others were wounded with their conditions unknown at area hospitals, according to the Chicago Tribune. It was a private birthday party but at least no children were involved in the shooting. The gunman ended up shooting himself and is included in the six dead. Participants say a man drew a pistol during a fight between a husband and his wife. The relation between the gunman and his victims was not clear.

Neither of these killers would have had the firepower necessary to carry out these massacres had it not been for the lax gun laws in Arizona and Texas, made possible by the 2nd Amendment. Has the time finally come to reevaluate the 2nd Amendment and make radical changes to the gun laws throughout the U.S.?

Read more here and here.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Obama vague on medical marijuana but so is Constitution

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According to the Tenth Amendment Center, the Constitution doesn’t really give the feds the right to control marijuana in states.  It is the interpretation from a “group of activist judges that one blogger described as nine unelected and unaccountable bureaucratic central planners who detest the limits of the Constitution,” they claim.  The Tenth Amendment says: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Based on commerce laws, the Center states, “the federal government has no genuine constitutional authority to regulate marijuana, medical or otherwise, that is never transported across state lines for commercial purposes.”  As an example, if the plant is grown in and stays in the state of Arizona, it should be regulated by state law.  Is this what Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and AG Tom Horne are going for in their lawsuit?  I doubt it; as opponents of the new law, they just want to stop it.

In November 2010, voters passed the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, a citizen initiative, Proposition 203.  It made the use of medical marijuana legal in the state of Arizona and was to begin processing user authorizations in April of 2011.  Instead, Arizona’s boneheaded Gov. and AG filed a lawsuit to challenge the legality of the will of the people.

The infrastructure is all set and ready to go, but the bobbsey twins decided to take it to court and prevent those in Arizona who really need the marijuana for medicinal purposes to get it.  In the meantime the feds have confirmed a lack of interest in prosecution.

Read more here.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Nasty Jack launches new blog for progressive critical commentary


Critical commentary is necessary to keep daily living in perspective, particularly when it comes to politics.  But there is also education, healthcare, government and religion, to name a few major areas.  They all have their issues, and I plan to cover each and every one of them in this blog. 

To criticize is to find fault with, judge, and/or discuss the merits or shortcomings of a matter of importance.  Subjects that are crucial to all of us happen on an hourly basis and need attention to help in rooting out the problems in the system.  The latter is the daily environment in which we live and participate on an individual basis in our attempt to survive.

My intent is to point out these concerns and raise red flags, even create controversies when I think the system is wrong and needs fixing.  You as a reader can agree or disagree, but I will always welcome your comments regardless of where you stand on the issue.  Join me in making Nasty Jack a fixture in progressive thinking.

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