Capitol Hill Shooting Magnified By "Shutdown" Drama

As expected CNN is making this Capitol Hill incident into a REALLY BIG DEAL. 

They're interviewing DC staffers and congressmen who look hella shook over hearing gun shots. That tubby little clown Blake Farenthold (R, Texas) looked like he was going to shit his pants. Maybe he thought someone was mad at him and Ted Cruz (wonder why?) or maybe he just momentarily realized shit could get real. 

This shooting though sounds like basically a lady went crazy and the police shot her and her car. Luckily the child inside is okay. Maybe this had something to do with the shutdown, maybe not? There's probably been 10 shootings across the country since this story broke but "the networks" will be stuck on this one until some other relevant TV drama happens.


I bet "the networks" would secretly love some good old fashioned Republican vs Democrat violence to go down in DC right about now. I wonder if the GOP in DC are prepared for bringing about such violence? I does not look like they are ready for it judging from shitpants Representative Farenthold's interview. They talk a tough game but it's all about their bullshit spinster political reality of tug of war. They don't really realize they are playing with people's lives. It's just a game to them. On camera Mitch McConnell and Paul Rand pretend as if they are really in this for the greater good of the nation but off camera they whisper to each other like petty little girls ganging up on the new girl in school because "how dare she."


Meanwhile, the Tea Partiers that now seem to be dictating the wayward Republican agenda happily push things toward an explosive confrontation with the debt ceiling looming amidst the shutdown. You literally have misguided, misinformed, and moreover nut-jobs, from all over the place ready to hop in semi-trucks and pop-off shots at the White House because they think "Socialism" is taking over... yet none of them could actually define socialism and apply it accurately to our current reality which is conversely hyper capitalistic.


Seeing these people on CNN freak out just now over a few gun shots on Capitol Hill really shows me that these people are very out of touch with reality. The Republicans in DC are truly playing with fire like a punk kid that doesn't know what to do once he "accidentally" sets the entire hill behind his house on fire. 


America is totally unstable right now. People are getting shot every day in poor neighborhoods like its no thing. People are going crazy cuz they don't have proper mental health care. Since 2007 people have been losing homes, jobs, and their minds. And you have politicians and media busy ramping things up with phony "buzz words" adding legitimacy to illegitimate movements and illegitimate solutions. Instead of asking tough questions and working to fix this broken ass nation.


I have friends reaching out to me telling me that they are Conservative but they do not support what the GOP is doing. I have independent folks reaching out and talking about the fact that they can't stand to see our country being divided like this as if we are reverting backward to the days of the confederacy and civil war.


Personally, it's been hard for me to support Barack Obama when he continually sides with Wall Street, Big Business, and Insurance companies, and pushes hawkish foreign policy like the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan. But when I see these Tea Party phonies being controlled by greedy billionaires playing puppeteer and stoking the fires to divide the nation along racial lines and radical political ideology in attempts to either crash the economy and/or the Government for their own reckless gains its hard not to choose a side, even if it is once again the lesser of the two evils.


Maybe we should just not give a shit and let them destroy everything so we can rebuild? But I don't really think that sounds like a great plan at this point.


Ultimately, we all deserve better than this. We deserve much more than the Tea Party and these crooked toothed GOP electeds. But we also deserve more than what the Democrats have been able to give us which is promises of major change but ultimately they cannot deliver and are aligned with many of the same corporate interests as the other side. At the end of the day we are only able to discern one party from the other because the Republicans have been pushed so far right that the right is now the center, and the left mostly only exists if you now consider the radical Tea Party to be a normal example of conservative. It's totally ridiculous and not representative of our nation.


Unless we as a people realize that the phony "right vs left" drama is just divisive bullshit, and that they want us to fall for it so they can better manipulate our minds and our votes... Until we wake up and realize that big business is controlling both parties and that big business does not care about the middle class, or small business, or the poor, or children, or elderly, or schools, or police, or fire, or soldiers, or parks, or beaches, or music, or the future, or America... our nation will continue to spiral downward.

Kanye West & the Ghost of Emmett Till

"Sticks and stones may break my bones..."

My last post was about the now infamous Kanye West/Taylor Swift incident at the VMA's and the dumbing down of our society thanks in part to a soulless pop-culture driven youth and the Reality TV-reality in which we now live. But, after seeing the intensely personal and sometimes virulent public reaction to West's silly publicity stunt I was once again reminded that 'sticks & stones' always start with silly little words, and people can and do get hurt.

The dangers of this slippery slope are boldly highlighted in "media assassin" Harry Allen's recent piece addressing West's antics and the subsequently frequent and causal usage of the N-word all over Twitter in the aftermath. Coincidentally, as the N-word was flying around the Twittersphere and no doubt the water cooler, classroom and dinner table in many parts of our diverse yet confused nation, president Obama was caught on tape calling West a "Jackass." While the video shows the prez casually laughing off his comments, assuming his lighthearted but poignant remarks are not being filmed, he exemplifies an honesty and yet a naivete to the potentially dangerous situation looming.

You see, however stupid, unimportant and even harmless his actions were, West, a black man, was upstaging a young, beautiful, blond hair, blue eyed white woman; a country singer none the less. By threatening the very image that has long epitomized Aryan purity and white supremacy, something to be protected in the eyes of certain white people, West opened up a Pandora's box full of worms.

Think about it, if Kanye would have upstaged Keisha Cole, a black female singer, the outcry would definitely not have been nearly as intense. At least not in the mass media nor in white circles. And, if you think this desire to protect such a manufactured image of racial purity is not a potentially dangerous subject you are obviously not familiar with American history.



To point out the most obvious example, it was the brutal murder in 1955 of 14-year old African-American, Emmett Till, in Mississippi for allegedly whistling at a white woman that helped to shift the civil rights movement into gear. Of course, many other black men met similarly horrific fates before and after, lynched and murdered by groups of white men, victims of 20th century 'Jim Crow justice.' Today, the unsettled souls of that very ugly period in our country's history continue to haunt our national subconscious.

This high level of seriousness that continues to be the issue of race in America is why it is not only important to call out West for being a "jackass," but to also call out the people who feel comfortable with using overtly offensive, hurtful and racist language in response. Such behavior, whether unchecked or simply misunderstood, only work to reinforce a very insidious, systemic oppression of people of color.

In 2009, it is up to us all to refuse to remain silent when faced with these ghosts. Silence is merely acceptance, and such acquiescence is very dangerous. Indeed while president Obama laughs off his Kanye West comments, he has hate filled language being piled atop of him every day of the week by the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the Joe Wilson's of the world. He may have to take the highroad and pretend that they are not there, ominously looming in the shadows like the barrel of an assassins gun, but we cannot afford to do so. We need to take notes from former president Jimmy Carter, an 84 year old white Southerner, who's recent remarks addressing the racism facing the Obama administration, were not only brave but more importantly responsible and necessary.