You know that warning on plastic bags…..

You know those hideous plastic bags that we use at the grocery store–the ones that take a gazillion years to deteriorate and float like leaves across the Arizona landscape?  Well the State Legislature passed a bill that would forbid local governments from banning them.  And of course, Gov. Douchey signed it.  There’s a warning on most plastic bags that say don’t put this over your head because suffocation….duh!  Too bad we can’t ignore that and put it over the head of the legislators who voted for it and the governor who signed it.  Some day Arizona (if it’s not under water) will be a mountain of trash with tornadoes of dust and plastic bags and the most advanced life form will be cockroaches and conservatives basking in their land of unadulterated freedumb.  Good luck with that.

UPDATED: Kids with guns

UPDATE:  The shooting range involved is now closed indefinitely.  I’m seeing various reports saying it is closed pending an OSHA investigation and other’s showing that it was simply closed at the owner’s discretion.

Oh, the stoopid it hurts.  Sometimes though it kills.  A 9 year old girl accidentally shot and killed a shooting instructor at an outdoor range in northern Arizona.  Her family was on vacation and decided they’d stop and let her their little darling shoot an Uzi.  From the picture she looks like she weighs 90 lbs at most so handling the recoil of a weapon like that is NOT going to happen.  Her parents are the biggest idiots on the planet except for perhaps the firearms instructor who took one to the head.   What they did was equivalent to allowing a child to ride a motorcycle before they’ve even learned to ride a bicycle.

Now the instructor’s family is missing a father/brother/uncle/cousin etc, the range has lost a friend and employee, and the little girl will be traumatized for the rest of her life.  This is what comes from the American obsession with guns and the push by the NRA to remove any and all common sense rules and regulations about their possession and use.  According to them guns don’t kill, people do.  Except guns are specifically made to kill things.   Would you give Anthrax to a child of 9?  How about a grenade?  An RPG?  A tank?  A nuclear weapon?  No?  I didn’t think so.  So why would you give a gun, particularly one you KNOW that many adults can’t even handle?

But ya know, Liberty!  It’s the answer to everything apparently.    Don’t want to live with the nasty stain of the social contract any more?  Is it getting in the way of your freedom?  Just add a touch of NRA Liberty and it will wash it all away!

Second verse same as the first…

So we just got over the Jim Crow anti-LGBTQIA bill that the Gov. vetoed the other day.  Well, they’re at it again. House Bill 2481 would allow ministers the right to refuse to perform same sex weddings.

My drawing of “Just a Bill”

Never mind that they already have that power.  [ht Ashby at BobCesca.com] A minister is by definition bound by his particular faith and is NEVER required to marry anyone.  They’ve always had this choice.  However, this new bill defines minister very broadly.  So broadly that it would allow government officials like judges, county clerks, etc the right to refuse to marry same sex couples.  Essentially allowing government officials to discriminate.

Again, this bill is so unconstitutional it’s laughable and it would continue to be laughable if it didn’t have a good chance of passing.  See the religious right here in AZ (really around the country) are engaging in a broader strategy that you might not notice unless you were paying attention to the kind of bills that are being promoted and passed in all of the different state legislatures.  For example, everyone knows that conservatives are unhappy with Roe v. Wade and have tried and tried to get it overturned through the Federal Court system to no avail.  So they’ve inundated state legislatures with bills that aren’t specifically about abortion or are about various aspects of abortion but affect abortion anyway.  The Wisconsin “we have the right to shove a wand up your hoohoo” bill was one of those.   Other examples include attempts to have the fetus given legal “personhood” status, laws prohibiting abortions after 20 weeks, and modifying regulatory laws that affect clinics so they can’t provide services or cutting of their funding entirely.  On this last effort in Texas, I think there are only two clinics left to service the entire state that meets the new regulatory restrictions.  To make matter worse, Texas has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country.  I hope taxpayers there are as interested in paying to raise all those children as they were in forcing the mother to give birth.

This is just a few examples of their attempts to overturn Roe v. Wade “de facto” because they couldn’t do so “de jure“.  The same thing is happening with same sex marriage laws.  Hence the recent attempts in Arizona (and elsewhere).  And you will see the pattern on every single issue that the right has lost on over the last few decades.  In one sense it’s very frustrating to fight against this kind of attack because you’re constantly putting out a fire in different states and having to shift focus.  This is intentional on their part, of course, to make us fight in all fifty states and use up our more limited resources (they have the Koch brothers and other billionaires bankrolling their efforts–the laws were drafted by ALEC which is funded by these conservative billionaires).   And it distracts us from focusing on doing things that could really help people on a day to day basis like healthcare, raising the minimum wage, decreasing the gap between the 1% and everyone else (again, this benefits their wealthy benefactors).

In another sense, this may be a good sign because it means they’re getting desperate and that their values are dying as society changes both demographically and culturally.  In the meantime, we need to continue to fight all of these kinds of “local” incursions against our Civil Rights until the day when these zealots no longer have a choke hold on the nation’s political agenda.  I don’t care how they “phrase it”, discrimination is discrimination and I will oppose it to the bitter end.  It’s a Rubicon that this country cannot afford to go back across because it will mean that the LGBTQIA won’t be the only group they can and will exclude from having all of the same Civil Rights that they enjoy.  First they came for the Jews and I said nothing because I wasn’t Jewish, then they came for….

 

Edited after publication — see red text

Bending over backward

The online version of the major state paper, AZCentral.com, did a little fact check on the following statement by State Rep. Adam Kwasman (R-Oro Valley):

This (Senate Bill 1062) is not a discrimination bill. It makes no mention of sexual orientation.

At first they decided it was “True” then they revised their decision to say it is “somewhat true, somewhat false”. What they’re really doing is trying to be balanced to avoid being labeled as biased as either too conservative or too liberal. So they hemmed and hawed and still haven’t gotten it right.

If they take the literal meaning of what he said in the second half–no mention of sexual orientation, then yes, it’s true. BUT the first part that says it’s not a “discrimination bill”? Is patently false. Which makes the entire thing false. Just because a bill doesn’t use an exact phrase doesn’t mean that the intention and effect of the bill wasn’t to violate the Civil Rights of American citizens.

Discrimination in the U.S. often takes the form of Civil Rights violations. Refusing to serve someone on the grounds of her race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, and in some states sexual orientation, would be a civil rights violation. Arizona does not prohibit discrimination against LGBTQIA. However, if it went up through the Federal Courts I can guarantee you that they would uphold it as discriminatory regardless of what state law says. Even if they didn’t, it’s still discrimination based on religion. For example, a business person saying “I won’t serve you because you’re gay and my religion says that’s evil” is the same as saying, “You believe that being gay is okay, so your religion allows it. That is different than my religion, so I am not going to not serve you.” Still discrimination.

So no matter how you slice it the paper got it flat out wrong–their “fact checker” sucks and it’s because they’re so scared of the “bias” criticism that they’ll bend over backward to make both sides happy. They’ve forgotten that journalism is about pleasing the politically motivated. It’s the report the objective truth–sometimes that truth is a conservative thing and sometimes it’s a liberal thing. But it’s still the truth and should be reported as such. This is precisely why our entire MSM (with the exception of Fox News who is clearly conservatively biased and makes no apologies for it) is quickly becoming useless.

No do-overs

Three AZ state senators who voted for the hideous “Jim Crow Bill” permitting civil rights discrimination against LGBTQIA people are now asking the Governor to veto it.  Sen. Bob Worsley (R-Mesa), Sen. Steve Pierce (R-Prescott) and Sen. Adam Driggs (R-Phoenix) said they have received feedback from fellow Republicans from across the nation that the bill was unacceptable.  They also say that they didn’t get enough time to really consider the bill.  And finally, they’re saying that opponents of the bill are mis-characterizing it as “religious intolerance” and that this accusation is “causing our state immeasurable harm.”

First, I don’t EVER, EVER want to hear from the people who make laws on behalf of this state or country that they were rushed.  Bullshit.  I don’t care how much pressure they feel. When it comes to ANY bill related to Civil Rights, it’s their job to slow down, present it to their constituents, think about the ramifications (good and bad), run it by some Constitutional Lawyers, and take their DAMN time before making up their mind. Saying they were rushed is a child’s excuse.

Second, why did they have to hear this from their fellow Republicans from other states?  There are plenty of people, you know their actual constituents, complaining right under their noses.  On Feb. 21st about 300 people gathered at the Capital to protest and encouraged Gov. Brewer to veto the bill.  As of last night, the crowd has grown to around thousand–on a weekday.  NYC or LA probably gets flash mobs with more people, but for AZ that’s not a bad turn out.  And it wasn’t just in the state capital either.  Tucson had protesters as well.  And I know the activity online is hot and furious–I wonder how many emails and calls the Legislature and Governor are getting now….  The very angry and active LGBTQIA community and others who support them, like myself, need to be heard.  That’s who our Reps and Senators should be listening to…not other members of their political party from out of state.  Those other Pols are much more concerned about optics than real justice or good governance.

Third, this change of heart is really about money.  They spoke to leaders of the business community (Apple, Inc, American Airlines, etc) who said if you do this, not only will tourists stop coming to the state (and we rely heavily on tourism for our economy) but businesses would also stop moving to Arizona.

Fourth and final, I get the impression that they’re saying [paraphrasing] that ‘people’s misconception of the bill is making us look bad.’  No, no that’s not it. What’s making us look bad is literally the bill itself.  It’s because the bill is an unconstitutional abomination that makes Arizona look like the home of the American Taliban.  Who needs to worry about Sharia Law?  It’s not the scary Muslim Usurper in the White House you need to worry about.  It’s the American (supposed) Christians that are trying to install their very own theocracy that keeps me up at night.  They need to stay out of people’s bed rooms and treat everyone with respect, compassion and kindness….I seem to recall a famous guy who purportedly lived in The Holy Land about 2,000 years ago  saying something like this…..hmmmm….if only I could recall his name…….if only THEY could recall his teachings.