Summertime, and the Livin' is Crazy

As we start our long, slow descent into Hades, otherwise known as summertime around here, we begin to feel the fear and loathing as we anticipate the inevitable 110-plus-degree days sure to come. This discomfort is made a tad bit worse due to the craziness which still envelops us like a sweltering, humid monsoon afternoon.

The blowback from the passage of SB 1070 continues unabated and even the Gulf oil spill can't knock it out of the top news story position. For anyone who's been living in a cave, SB 1070 is the new, get-tough illegal immigration law recently passed by our fair state. I was all ready to jump on the liberal bandwagon and condemn this law as racist and unconstitutional, but when some of its opponents catagorized it as "un-Christian," well, they lost me. Since when do our laws have a Christian aspect to them? Like we have to get the Catholic Church to approve them before passage? This is just one more of the annoying and vexing instances of the church-state separation being breached as part of some group's agenda.

Also on this topic, our lovely governor-without-a-mandate Jan Brewer is trying to counter the anti-SB 1070 furor and push back on all the boycotts and economic backlash that have been directed at us by holding a press conference and dredging up that chirpy, detestable Sarah Palin to come in and talk to us about something or other. The second I saw that pinhead's face and heard her fingernails-on-a-blackboard voice I changed the channel, but you know things are going to hell whenever you have to trot out an ignorant, inbred hillbilly to make a point. Brewer has also been taking to the airwaves in support of Proposition 100, which would add 1% to our state sales tax, ostensibly for education and public services. I am so against any new taxes because I feel I pay my share and so much of our money is wasted on stupid nonsense, but I would definitely be in favor of kicking in a couple of bucks to get that woman a face lift. She always looks so horrible on the news, like she is over 200 years old. The phrase "rode hard and put away wet" fits her perfectly and her face truly does look like 100 miles of bumpy dirt road.

President Obama nominated Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court and everyone seems to agree (or can't find evidence to the contrary) that she is a pre-eminent legal scholar and would make a good Justice of the Court. But, in a development that is completely incomprehensible to me, some people are moaning about the fact that there will be no more Protestants on the Supreme Court, only Catholics and Jews. Is anyone actually serious about that? Why would the religious make-up of the Supreme Court matter to anyone? Again, to run the point into the ground, our government is not supposed to be about religion. The Founding Fathers made no provision for religious balance on the Supreme Court, and in fact if there is ANY arm of the government that needs to be free of religious influences, it should be the Supreme Court. Remember, there's this little something called "equal justice under law" that says our legal system should not, and CANNOT, take into account religious affiliation when interpreting the Constitution. If people are so wound up about some kind of religious "balance" in the highest court in the land, why are there no Buddhists, Muslims, Quakers or atheists on the court? Another of the really loathsome and distasteful incursions of religion into the lifeblood of our democracy, and it is very shameful and disgusting.

And, last but certainly not least, we have been subjected to a really obnoxious political ad by the eternally creepy Senator John McCain, an incumbent who is facing an uphill re-election campaign against opponent J. D. Hayworth this fall. Only this wretched state could come up with someone even more repellent and repulsive than McCain, but more on that in a future post. The television ads in question shows McCain doddering along the Arizona-Mexico border fence with Pinal County sheriff Paul Babeu, discussing the sorry state of illegal immigration and how we need to "complete the danged fence". Since when does the word "danged" enter into political discourse among adults? Babeu is wearing his full sheriff drag, but an amusing little disclaimer on the bottom of the screen quietly notes that he is "appearing only in his personal capacity." That means that despite wearing his uniform, we should ignore that fact that he is head of the Pinal County Sheriff's Office, wink wink nudge nudge, and is only granting us the benefit of his own personal opinions. Then why isn't he wearing civilian clothes? Maybe because no one would give a crap if they thought he was just a civilian expressing his own views, but do pay attention if they think he's a law enforcement officer. I'm sure there are some legal prohibitions against a county sheriff using the power of his office to endorse a candidate, and this is the McCain committee's underhanded, cynical way of getting around that. And the very saddest part of this is that it will work with a number of voters who are too gullible and dimwitted to realize they are being played.

So, life here continues to swirl around the toilet bowl and each passing day brings a new load of baffling, confusing and demoralizing examples of people being stupid morons. It is really going to be a long, hot, depressing summer.