Friday, October 8, 2010

A Rant is a Rant

There are a couple of things on my mind today (although my children don’t think that there is much left of it).

First: It absolutely amazes me that conservatives get away with so much misleading bullshit.

Then I got to thinking one of the people that they idolize is Ronald Reagan. Would you like some quotes that he made?

“Well, I learned a lot…I went down to (Latin America) to find out from them and (learn) their views. You’d be surprised. They’re all individual countries.”

“I’m not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.”

“Facts are stupid things.”

So we actually end up with a straight line from Reagan to “W” drawn with a red crayon, and it is only a dotted line away from Palin, Bachmann, Beck, and the others.

There have been several books written that had the title “A Nation of Sheep”. However, they were all written from the Conservative perspective and attempting to illustrate how America was “going to hell in a hand basket” because of Liberals and the encroachment of the federal government.

I have a suggestion for a new title…”A Nation of Lemmings” and it is about how a country can mindlessly follow FOX NOISE, Beck, Palin, Bachmann, and company off a cliff and into the abyss. It includes: racism from the pulpit, the use of misinformation and disinformation to rally those individuals that can’t or won’t think for themselves to act against the “greater good for the country”. It even persuades them to act against their own interests to keep a malevolent group of individuals in power. These people do not understand or care about the poor or the middle class. They will ensure that they make profits at any cost. They bought and paid for by the lobbyists who got them elected.

Second: I think it is unconscionable that "batshit crazy" protesters choose to disrupt and carry obnoxious signs to military funerals. The call it First Amendment rights, I call it bullshit.

Oral arguments for the case Snyder v Phelps began before the Supreme Court this week.

The Westboro Baptist Church (pretty much a cult because they are disowned by all other Baptist congregations) of Topeka, Kansas is headed by Fred Phelps.
On March 3, 2006, Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder was killed in Iraq in the line of duty. His funeral was held in his hometown of Westminster, Maryland at Saint John’s Catholic Church.

After notifying the media seven members of the Westboro Baptist Church showed up outside the church where Matthew’s funeral was being held carrying the following signs:
“America is Doomed”
“God hates the USA/Thank God for 911”
“Pope in Hell”
“Semper Fi Fags”
“Thank God for Dead Soldiers”
“Don’t Pray for the USA”
“Thank God for IEDs”
“Priests Rape Boys”
and
“God hates Fags”

I have a very simple solution to the entire situation. Since the congregation of about sixty (50 of whom are Phelps family members) hates this country so passionately...put them on a C-17 and take them to Iraq where they can experience those IEDs that God loves “up close and personal.”

That’s all for now…see you next time!

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Concerning TRF

I have occasionally written about Thief River Falls. But I need to say a little more about my new hometown.

Thief River Falls is a town of about 8,500 that the Red River runs through and exists somewhere between Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon and the Cohen Brothers’ Fargo. Life is quite different up here in the Frozen Tundra.

I mentioned before that you could leave your car running while you were shopping, and walk through TRF any time, day or night with no worries. People leave their cars with their keys in them and their doors unlocked.

Marge Gunderson has been cloned many, many times and lives happily in TRF. You don’t have to go very far to hear UFFDA, or Ya betcha, or Don’t ya know. A typical conversation runs something like this: “We were at the Legion don’t ya know and UFFDA they were serving the best tater tot hotdish, ya betcha."

Thief River Falls has a Sears, a J C Penny’s, a hardware store, a few gas stations, two Chinese restaurants and a few fast food places. There is Dee’s Diner and the Lantern, a few bars, three banks, a couple of really good grocery stores, and five or six gas stations. The residents were sure that “it was on the map” when Walmart put in a store with a grocery deprtment.

Walmart shopping in TRF is a very different experience for me. There are little clusters of people who have “parked” their grocery carts and are engaged in conversations about church and school, kids and grandkids, and in-laws and outlaws. It is a place where a perfect stranger walks up to me and says: “UFFDA, those are some nice whiskers”, or “I didn’t get everything on my Christmas list last year, don’t ya know,” or “Ya, you betcha, I knew that this was the Frozen Tundra, and seeing you I am sure of it.”

Typical conversations at Dee’s Diner run something like this: the weather, sugar beets, the weather, soybeans, the weather, those damn Vikings, the weather, that damn Gopher football team, the weather, “sledding” (snowmobiling to the uninitiated), the weather, combines, the weather, guns and ammo, the weather, who hit a deer or got hit by a deer, and the weather. There is usually a table with a Sherriff’s Deputy and a few city policemen sitting at it, and sometimes they join the conversation, but most of the time the talk amongst themselves about chasing speeders and DWI arrests, oh, and guns and ammo, and the weather.

Now it may sound like I am poking fun at these people…I’m not they are the most honest, genuine people I have met, and it is the place where if you need help someone is always there, and you can still make any deal with a handshake.

That’s all for now…see you next time!