News From Hell

The past six days have been an amazing news cycle, one of the busiest we've seen in ages.  A lot of very important stuff happened, and there was something for everybody to love and hate.

First off, last Friday the jury in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse trial came back with 45 guilty counts out of 48 charges.  The whole situation is pretty dreadful and awful, and is an object lesson in how things can get completely out of control when authority figures feel they can do whatever they damned well please and the "good ol' boy" network will shield and protect them.  Sandusky's predation on young boys is stomach-turning in the extreme, and the administration of Penn State University choosing to do nothing in the face of undeniable evidence is something they will have to answer to and pay for dearly.

One has to wonder how such horrendous abuse seemed so easy.  There has been a lot of investigation into the mindset of child molesters, and a lot of them pick occupations or endeavors that place them in direct contact with their quarry.  Sports coaches in the past have been automatically assumed to be benign and the vast majority of them are, but for the small percentage who are child predators, it provides an ideal shield and opportunity for their nefarious activities.

When I was a child, I was taught that adults were to be obeyed unconditionally and they were always right.  For me it was a fact of life that if the teacher gave you a beating in school for doing something wrong, when you got home you got another beating, because the teacher was always right, and you were always wrong.  That kind of blind, abject deference to "authority" creates the perfect climate for abuse.  It's like if a burglar comes to your home to rob it, and you welcome him with open arms and make him a nice dinner as he ransacks your house.

Sandusky will die in prison, as he deserves, but what of the lives he has destroyed with his sick activities?  There are no winners in this whole sorry situation, just pain and wreckage.

The following Monday had the Supreme Court striking down most of Arizona's hateful, racist SB1070, the draconian anti-immigration law passed in 2010, much to the delight of the bigots and hate-mongers in this wretched, godforsaken state.  Governor Jan "The Walking Dead" Brewer signed it with much fanfare, and used the resulting court challenges as a tool to raise nearly $4 million to defend it.  Even as recently as last week, when conventional wisdom indicated (incorrectly, it turns out) the Court would uphold the legality of SB1070, that dried-up old corpse was gleefully sending training materials out to police officials.  So it was particularly gratifying when the Court struck down most of the provisions of the law, and left the door wide open for future legal challenges to the part of it that was left standing.  Brewer immediately went on the news media and we were treated to the pathetic sight of that delusional, hatchet-faced old hag trying in vain to spin the ruling in her favor.  It's been obvious for a very long time that Brewer is incredibly stupid and most likely mentally disturbed, and she can add pathetic embarrassment to the very long list of reasons why she needs to go.

There was also a ruling in a Montana case which very tragically affirmed the vile, loathsome Citizens United ruling of 2010, which opened the floodgates to a deluge of corporate money into the election process.  This is plainly astonishing, as nearly everyone except the Republicans agree that the original ruling was a horrendous, horrific abomination and probably one of the very worst Supreme Court rulings in the history of this country.  As Mannequin Romney says, "Corporations are people!" and much to the detriment of this country, the Court agrees.  Another terrible, awful ruling from a Court that seems to take the side of corporations over the welfare of the American people.

Of course in the midst of all this history there just has to be some batshit-craziness, and that was provided by the witch hunt tight-assed douchebag Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Ca) is waging against Attorney General Eric Holder.  There was this little sting operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives called "Fast and Furious." started during the George W. Bush administration, which sought to trace firearms used by Mexican drug cartels back to sellers in the US.  They ran into a little snag due to the incredibly lax and ridiculous gun laws in (where else?) Arizona.  It seems that a couple of people plopped down $350,000 for 650 guns, got them, and just waltzed across the border to the south where drug cartels got an early Navidad, because according to AZ gun laws, there wasn't anything illegal or suspicious about a purchase that size. Now that this fiasco has blown up all over the place, AG Holder is getting blamed for everything, and the 2nd Amendment gun nuts are all bent out of shape, saying the failed sting operation is all a big scheme by the Obama administration to ram stricter gun laws down everyone's throats.  Because it's so important to be able to spend $350K on guns without some law enforcement agency asking you a lot of inconvenient questions.  Yeah, they really ARE that stupid.  They're gun nuts.

The big-deal ruling dropped this morning, when the Supreme Court basically reaffirmed the constitutionality of Obama's centerpiece Affordable Health Care Act, individual mandate and all.  There is still much to discuss and learn about this ruling, but the important take-away is that Republicans and right-wingers are crapping broken glass now, and will do so for the foreseeable future.  It is extremely gratifying to see all the right-wingers losing their shit in a very public fashion.  Anything that makes conservative right-wingers unhappy makes me EXTREMELY happy, and I have a great deal to be happy about this morning.

Roller-Coaster Ride From Hell

This has been some kind of week; it's like the cosmic floodgates of crazy opened wide and unleashed a deluge, nearly drowning us in bizarre behavior and really bad things. I know that Mercury is in one of its frequent, damnable retrogrades until May 13, and that usually means strangeness and perversity will prevail, but Mercury must be retrograding itself clean out of the Solar System because tons of weird shit have been happening all over.

Oh, speaking of "shit", we heard that word, or variations of it, echoing off the august alabaster walls of Congress as Senate hearings into the vile machinations of Wall Street raged on for five hours. The leaders of various financial firms got their buns raked over the coals by angry Senators, but they must have been wearing asbestos underwear because they didn't seem to be much phased by the whole ordeal. Maybe when you know you're making 50 million dollars this year you don't need to take some crotchety old man with a gavel seriously. I think that Wall Streeters know that their lobbying money has bought them protection from any meaningful reform, especially because the people trying to navigate the country out of the crippling, damaging recession are the very same people who caused it. So they don't have anything to worry about.

Very disturbing story about an environmental catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico as a British Petroleum oil rig spews over 200,000 gallons of crude oil a day into the rich seafood beds and delicate wetlands ecosystem off the Louisiana coast, a truly special and unique part of the world that can't seem to catch a break when it comes to natural disasters. I wonder where that shithead Sarah Palin is now - we don't seem to be hearing a lot from her on one of her favorite subjects, offshore drilling. Who can forget her childish, simplistic chant of "Drill, baby, drill" at last summer's Republican convention, and the sight of all those wrinkled, pinched faces of the dessicated old people madly cheering her on. If I could, I would ask her, "Hey Sarah, how's that drilly-spilly thing working for you?" We'll see how far offshore drilling goes now.

And we're having our own shitstorm here in Arizona, as the whole nation goes ape shit (yes, I'm going to use that word as much as I can, while I can). The local news shows babble on breathlessly about the economic "backlash" this bill will cause us. In sonorous tones they announce the conventions that are being canceled left and right. The first convention canceled was for some immigration lawyers' group, so that wasn't exactly a horrible shock. But hotel owners are already declaring Armageddon and claim to be teetering on the edge of ruin. Various big-city governments, most notably San Francisco, Dallas and New York, have cut business ties with our fair state. But we've seen this before - Arizona caught all kinds of crap when it refused to honor Martin Luther King. Despite all the dire predictions, over 60% of Arizonans approve of the new law and Governor-Without-A-Mandate Jan Brewer's approval rating has gone up around 15 percentage points. What does that say about us, that we somehow invite and look forward to economic ruin? I guess this little psychodrama has to play itself out and by next week everybody will have moved on to the next manufactured crisis, and life here will return to relative normalcy. People have very short memories, especially when it comes to disasters.

I hope we can get some rest this weekend and nothing awful happens for a couple of days, at least. It would be just our luck that some flashpoint in the world will pop off, like North Korea or Iran, and all of a sudden everybody's attention will go over there. Either that or some dimwitted Hollywood starlet will make another public appearance without panties or someone will uncover a nest of 50 new Tiger Woods mistresses or some shameless trollop will parade around in a bikini with Nazi tattoos on her butt. And everyone will be interested in that.

Mercury, give us a break and un-retrograde yourself. We can't stand much more of this cosmic craziness.

Arizona: But It's A Dry Stupidity

I have to admit that living in Arizona these past 17 years has been a great experience for me. I've grown to love the enormous diversity and tremendous natural beauty of this state. From the intensely colored sunsets to the out-of-control summer monsoon storms that come barreling like a freight train down the Mogollon Rim straight into the valley, there is something for everyone here when it comes to weather. It is truly a miraculous sight to see the pure white of the San Xavier del Bac Mission emerging from the shimmering layers of heat and the muted colors of the desert south of Tucson; you can see my photos of the Mission on my website here. Arizona is dotted with wonderful, picturesque towns and cities like Sedona, Tubac, Jerome, Payson, Prescott and so many more. The cool, fragrant pine forests of Flagstaff on a bright, crystal-clear morning are unforgettable, as is our Wonder of the World, the Grand Canyon. The mixture of cultures, including Anglo, Hispanic and Native American influences, form an occasionally unstable but invariably rich and fascinating pastiche of art and color. An area so blessed with natural resources, history and culture must have something wrong with it, you might speculate. And you would be right.

The Republican party has held sway in this state for a long time (it seems like centuries). In the last decade it has been completely hijacked and taken over by its far-right, ultra-conservative faction, and that has shown up in Arizona state politics. A couple of weeks ago the Republican-dominated state legislature passed a law which allows anyone with a gun permit to carry a concealed firearm on their person without a previously-required concealed weapons permit. The Republicans have long been the bottom bitch of the NRA and the gun lobby so this is no major surprise. What is a bit startling is the prospect of so many badly-educated, mentally unstable people packing heat under their enormous flabby bellies. I don't feel one iota safer now that any of the meth-heads and alcoholics you see stumbling down the hot sidewalks every single day just might be hiding a pistol. But the Republicans had to bow down and pay tribute to their puppet masters in the NRA, so that's what we have to deal with every day now.

Another sideshow in this never-ending Cavalcade of Idiocy is the so-called "birther bill" making its way through the legislature. This bill would require anyone running for national office on the ballot in Arizona to present proof of citizenship. Proponents say it's needed for all office-seekers to prove they are qualified for the office, but it is a cheap, cynical and badly-concealed back-door attack on Barack Obama. The "birthers" in this country will just not give up their debunked, ridiculed notions that somehow Obama is not a U.S. citizen and has no claim to the Presidency. How sad and pathetic that the birthers still hold on to these childish notions and the Arizona legislature gets right in line behind them. This just adds to the general perception in America of Arizona as a dust-choked, sun-baked nest of batshit-crazy paranoid schizophrenics who see vast, interconnected webs of treachery and conspiracy everywhere they look.

But the biggest thing that has, in the national view, catapulted Arizona to the upper-echelon levels of mean-spirited insanity has been something called the "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act," a noble-sounding but totally misleading title for SB1070, a new set of laws that give local law-enforcement great latitude and great responsibility to enforce federal immigration laws, and allows them to demand proof of citizenship from anyone in the state of whom the police feel a "reasonable suspicion" that they might be here illegally. Now exactly what this "reasonable suspicion" is, no one knows, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with having brown skin and speaking Spanish.

Opponents of SB1070 were quick to point out that it could easily be viewed as a massive infringement by big government on the personal liberties of people. You'd think that would be tailor-made fodder for the Tea Party movement, as one of their tenets is the evil, pervasive intrusion of government in every aspect of life. If so, why aren't they protesting along with all others at the State Capitol? Where are the obese, sweaty white men in stupid costumes and the senile, confused old people doddering around with their hilariously misspelled signs? The stony, deafening silence of the Teabaggers in the wake of SB1070 speaks volumes to the innate ignorance, duplicity and hypocrisy of their movement. Could it be that their strident, anti-government, all-American populism does not extend to people who came here from other countries?

No one who lives here disagrees that undocumented immigration is a huge problem. Twenty-five years ago it was considered a regional problem affecting mainly the states that share a border with Mexico. Everyone in Montana and Vermont and Wisconsin felt it didn't apply to them and thought it was something that Arizona, California and New Mexico had to deal with, and there was little pressure for Congress to come up with a national solution. Since then, everything has changed: undocumented immigrants have shown up in every state of the continental U.S., taking low-paying, labor-intensive jobs that most Americans don't want, and it has become a national security issue in our post-911 world. Recent estimates state that as many as half-a-million undocumented immigrants reside in Arizona, and this sizable fraction of the population has been criminalized by SB1070. Blame for this new law has been spewed far and wide, but the lion's share has to go to the federal government, which has completely shirked its responsibility to come up with a coherent, effective national immigration policy for so many years. Something had to be done to address the issue, but is SB1070 a overreaching, misguided attempt to do something/anything? The lawsuits and court challenges to this bill are only just beginning and this drama will be unfolding for a very long time into our future.

It's very depressing when you live here and witness so many selfish, cruel and small-minded people continually get elected to state-wide office. It seems that voters intentionally go for the most reactionary, hateful and unqualified candidate there is (J.D. Hayworth, I'm talking to you). Maybe it's due to how poorly-educated and unsophisticated so many people are in this state, or the idea that Arizona is somehow a safe haven for crackpots and crazy people from all over the country. Stupidity just attracts more stupidity - as any personal appearance by Sarah Palin will clearly show - and somehow the dumber you are, the more media attention you will receive. Normally really stupid people would be grudgingly tolerated as some unfortunate genetic consequence of human inbreeding, but when they become state legislators and start writing their mental illnesses into laws that affect us all, then they become a really big problem.