Indiana governor Mike Pence is adamant that a controversial law many see as an excuse to discriminate against gays is actually something else entirely.
"This is not about discrimination," he says. "This is about protecting the religious liberty of every Hoosier of every faith."
Though state legislators are busy messing about with the language of the bill, trying to clarify exactly what sort of beast they have, Pence wants to make it quite clear: "We're not going to change this law."
Indiana is one of nineteen states that have enacted Protection of Religion laws. A dozen others have bills pending or in some stage of development.
Apparently a lot of conservative Americans are afraid their religious freedom is under attack by the federal government.
The matter came up a while ago in the debate over Obamacare. Would religion-based businesses have to provide hated methods of birth control, and so forth.
The idea of having to pay for something you yourself would never do (for religious reasons) sticks deep in the craw of a lot of people. It's almost like paying for someone else to do the forbidden act is the same as doing the forbidden act yourself.
Mostly the problem shows up in businesses where religious people might have to smile at gay guys and gals and sell them the product routinely supplied to normal people.
And isn't this just the pointy end of the wedge? One day you're forced to sell tires to a gay man so he can drive his car on public roads just like real folks. Next week you'll have to marry the son of a bitch.
That's the fear, at least.
Of course, there's fear on the other side as well. Today you'll have to go without tires. Tomorrow you'll have the torch-and-pitchfork crowd hollering outside your tastefully decorated apartment.
Here's my question: When will the defense of religion go on the offensive?
Merely discriminating against gays may not be enough. Don't we need to move to the next level? There must be religion-based authorization packed into the Bible somewhere that calls for the death of such unclean creatures.
True religious liberty demands the legal tools to take those freakish "people" out, permanently.
Unfortunately, there's a niggling problem of logic: Gay folks exist. If they didn't, nobody would be worried about what those bastards were going to pull next.
Gay people are real—far more real than any evidence that God exists. They're also more real than evidence the Big Guy has opinions about gay people, one way or the other.
And frankly, religious people represent a far greater threat to life on this planet than gays could every hope to throw together.
Religion shouldn't be protected. It should be outlawed altogether.
But that will never happen. Politicians have to be religious critters in order to get elected. In this country, at least, elected officials need to keep one eye on the world and the other eye on God's giant rectum, from whence will emerge the next glorious installment of divine knowledge.
Hey, it's a living.
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Saturday, March 14, 2015
DOING THE MATH
Nothing new to report, really. Just the same-old, same-old:
Information released at the Boston bombing trial reminds us the suspect did what he did because American troops prosecuting the War on Terror were killing innocent Muslims.
British chicks inspired by social media are headed out to join ISIS.
Two policemen were shot in Ferguson, MO, during a demonstration reacting to the federal Justice Department report of widespread racism in the police department.
Revealing videos surfaced, one showing frat boys from the University of Oklahoma chanting racist sentiments, another immortalizing the fraternity's house mother gleefully repeating the n-word as she sang along to a rap song. Seemed to me she was just using the opportunity to have some good clean racist fun. Why else shoot such a video?
Another unarmed black man was killed by a white policeman, this time in Madison, Wisconsin. More protesters hit the streets with the familiar chant: Black Lives Matter.
Folks do what they do because they know what they know. They look the situation over and "do the math."
One might imagine guys joining ISIS just so they could have a chance to kill folks, using religion as cover. Or maybe they're sincere.
Chicks apparently want to join so they can become sex slaves to the fighters or hump a backpack suicide bomb to a clogged check point full of Christians or Shia Muslims.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev dropped his pressure-cooker bomb amidst the crowd at the finish line of the Boston Marathon knowing full well "innocent" civilians will be killed.
He did the math.
An eye for an eye, baby. If American soldiers can kill "his" civilians, he feels justified in killing "ours."
In our defense, we can argue: Hey, it's a war over there! Shit happens in a friggin' war!
(That's us, doing our own math.)
Tsarnaev can argue the same: The U.S. is in a war against Islam. Anything you do to Muslims we can do to you. Turnabout is fair play!
(He's balancing the equation.)
We used nukes during WWII. Soon as they can manage it, the "terrorists" will do the same. Tit for tat. And they know they're right. More math.
Every new drone strike targeting jihadist leaders proves them right. The equation is solved: America is in a war against Islam! The school-yard excuse ("Well, you started it on 9/11!") is turned against us: "No, no! You started it! Long before 9/11!"
(We engineered the coup that brought the Shah back to Iran, among other politically selfish actions.)
Tsarnaev felt justified in his actions because of what he knew to be true. (Would we better accept his attack if he'd waved an ISIS flag as he set his bomb to work?)
In the same way, if white policemen are going to keep on murdering unarmed black guys, cops everywhere should expect some righteous payback. It's only fair, right?
Do the math.
How long before suicide-bent black guys decide to start something with the police just to prove the reality of what they can so clearly see?
When protesters say Black Lives Matter they mean Stop Killing Us In The Street! It doesn't matter that all the high-profile cases of white cops killing black guys appear to be examples of justified shootings.
If in the future some cops are indicted by grand juries, it might be because the juries were worried how black folks will react to one more non-indictment. That would truly be a case of "No Justice," though the reality of their misjudgment might be impossible to untangle.
The question is, would such an action quiet the mob? Or would it merely prove to the protesters that all those earlier non-indictments were unfair.
It doesn't really matter. Protesters don't need to get bogged down in the details. They already know all those shootings were cold-blooded murders.
They've done all the math they need to do.
The situation may have entered a death spiral. It's inevitable: There will be more killings of unarmed black men. (Or, for that matter, armed black men.) The list will always increase, new cases popping up on a random schedule. (Random reinforcement is the most powerful method of learning new behavior.) No amount of arguing the facts will get one name removed from the roster of the martyred.
Protesters are forced to take this position: No action by a black man can ever justify the use of lethal force.
Cops have another opinion: When a man comes at you, action must be taken. That's their math.
During take-downs, where guys have to grapple physically with uncooperative suspects, the thing cops fear most is the bad guy grabbing their weapon and using it on them.
This very legitimate worry figures in a number of prominent cases (Michael Brown in Ferguson and the homeless fellow in Los Angeles). I think it's fair to say the fear of losing control of a weapon may cause premature escalation of an incident.
Interestingly, the Boston bombing trial has revealed a twist on that topic. The Tsarnaev brothers attempted to get a gun from a campus cop in Cambridge. They failed because the man's weapon was locked in a holster only he could operate.
Considering that most police officers never draw their weapons, maybe a slight delay in retrieving a service pistol could be tolerated, if such a delay would lessen the fear of giving up that weapon to the offender.
Beyond that, cops need better technology to take down unruly folks, a method that doesn't involve lethal force. And that new technology needs to be right there with the officer at the scene, not locked in the trunk of selected vehicles.
Imagine a standard-issue handgun that could only be fired by a cop, a weapon that was capable of firing a number of different types of rounds, from deadly jacketed lead to less-than-lethal rubber pellets to some sort of sticky glop that could bind a perp in goo and remove him from a position of threat.
Unfortunately, new technology cannot erase what so many people already know to be a rock-solid fact: Racist white cops are murdering black men all across America.
Things may eventually cool off, but the list of the murdered dead will never shrink.
Another unfortunate fact: Even if every case is found to be a legitimate shooting, we may never be able to erase the possibility the cop acted properly despite an underlying racist attitude.
Here's an analogy: A drunk driver may not have caused the accident, but he was nevertheless driving drunk. Would an unimpaired driver have had a chance to avoid the collision?
We may not actually be doomed by racist (and other faulty) thinking, but maybe it's close enough. In this case, the math is still being calculated.
Information released at the Boston bombing trial reminds us the suspect did what he did because American troops prosecuting the War on Terror were killing innocent Muslims.
British chicks inspired by social media are headed out to join ISIS.
Two policemen were shot in Ferguson, MO, during a demonstration reacting to the federal Justice Department report of widespread racism in the police department.
Revealing videos surfaced, one showing frat boys from the University of Oklahoma chanting racist sentiments, another immortalizing the fraternity's house mother gleefully repeating the n-word as she sang along to a rap song. Seemed to me she was just using the opportunity to have some good clean racist fun. Why else shoot such a video?
Another unarmed black man was killed by a white policeman, this time in Madison, Wisconsin. More protesters hit the streets with the familiar chant: Black Lives Matter.
Folks do what they do because they know what they know. They look the situation over and "do the math."
One might imagine guys joining ISIS just so they could have a chance to kill folks, using religion as cover. Or maybe they're sincere.
Chicks apparently want to join so they can become sex slaves to the fighters or hump a backpack suicide bomb to a clogged check point full of Christians or Shia Muslims.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev dropped his pressure-cooker bomb amidst the crowd at the finish line of the Boston Marathon knowing full well "innocent" civilians will be killed.
He did the math.
An eye for an eye, baby. If American soldiers can kill "his" civilians, he feels justified in killing "ours."
In our defense, we can argue: Hey, it's a war over there! Shit happens in a friggin' war!
(That's us, doing our own math.)
Tsarnaev can argue the same: The U.S. is in a war against Islam. Anything you do to Muslims we can do to you. Turnabout is fair play!
(He's balancing the equation.)
We used nukes during WWII. Soon as they can manage it, the "terrorists" will do the same. Tit for tat. And they know they're right. More math.
Every new drone strike targeting jihadist leaders proves them right. The equation is solved: America is in a war against Islam! The school-yard excuse ("Well, you started it on 9/11!") is turned against us: "No, no! You started it! Long before 9/11!"
(We engineered the coup that brought the Shah back to Iran, among other politically selfish actions.)
Tsarnaev felt justified in his actions because of what he knew to be true. (Would we better accept his attack if he'd waved an ISIS flag as he set his bomb to work?)
In the same way, if white policemen are going to keep on murdering unarmed black guys, cops everywhere should expect some righteous payback. It's only fair, right?
Do the math.
How long before suicide-bent black guys decide to start something with the police just to prove the reality of what they can so clearly see?
When protesters say Black Lives Matter they mean Stop Killing Us In The Street! It doesn't matter that all the high-profile cases of white cops killing black guys appear to be examples of justified shootings.
If in the future some cops are indicted by grand juries, it might be because the juries were worried how black folks will react to one more non-indictment. That would truly be a case of "No Justice," though the reality of their misjudgment might be impossible to untangle.
The question is, would such an action quiet the mob? Or would it merely prove to the protesters that all those earlier non-indictments were unfair.
It doesn't really matter. Protesters don't need to get bogged down in the details. They already know all those shootings were cold-blooded murders.
They've done all the math they need to do.
The situation may have entered a death spiral. It's inevitable: There will be more killings of unarmed black men. (Or, for that matter, armed black men.) The list will always increase, new cases popping up on a random schedule. (Random reinforcement is the most powerful method of learning new behavior.) No amount of arguing the facts will get one name removed from the roster of the martyred.
Protesters are forced to take this position: No action by a black man can ever justify the use of lethal force.
Cops have another opinion: When a man comes at you, action must be taken. That's their math.
During take-downs, where guys have to grapple physically with uncooperative suspects, the thing cops fear most is the bad guy grabbing their weapon and using it on them.
This very legitimate worry figures in a number of prominent cases (Michael Brown in Ferguson and the homeless fellow in Los Angeles). I think it's fair to say the fear of losing control of a weapon may cause premature escalation of an incident.
Interestingly, the Boston bombing trial has revealed a twist on that topic. The Tsarnaev brothers attempted to get a gun from a campus cop in Cambridge. They failed because the man's weapon was locked in a holster only he could operate.
Considering that most police officers never draw their weapons, maybe a slight delay in retrieving a service pistol could be tolerated, if such a delay would lessen the fear of giving up that weapon to the offender.
Beyond that, cops need better technology to take down unruly folks, a method that doesn't involve lethal force. And that new technology needs to be right there with the officer at the scene, not locked in the trunk of selected vehicles.
Imagine a standard-issue handgun that could only be fired by a cop, a weapon that was capable of firing a number of different types of rounds, from deadly jacketed lead to less-than-lethal rubber pellets to some sort of sticky glop that could bind a perp in goo and remove him from a position of threat.
Unfortunately, new technology cannot erase what so many people already know to be a rock-solid fact: Racist white cops are murdering black men all across America.
Things may eventually cool off, but the list of the murdered dead will never shrink.
Another unfortunate fact: Even if every case is found to be a legitimate shooting, we may never be able to erase the possibility the cop acted properly despite an underlying racist attitude.
Here's an analogy: A drunk driver may not have caused the accident, but he was nevertheless driving drunk. Would an unimpaired driver have had a chance to avoid the collision?
We may not actually be doomed by racist (and other faulty) thinking, but maybe it's close enough. In this case, the math is still being calculated.
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
ALLEGIANCE
The Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram has recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (AKA ISIS or ISIL). In so doing, Boko Haram has joined a number of jihadist groups in the Middle East and Africa (and elsewhere) to support IS.
There appears to be a kind of slow motion rush to join up, in part driven by "unwarranted" attacks from infidels. Every little bit--the attacks and the recruitment successes that come from the attacks--boosts the State's position and stature in the world of the Jihad.
These actions may define the general trend for the future: As more and more groups around the world add their numbers to the State, it slowly becomes the nexus for all Islam.
More moderate Muslim groups will feel pressure to join; more traditional (and conservative) groups may see a growing legitimacy to the new Caliphate. The State is, after all, populated by Sunni Muslims, which make up 85% of the religion. They are already the majority sect, and working hard to eliminate the competition by bullet and blade.
At some point in the future, the State may represent Islam in the world.
Oh, there will be glitches. When the State pulls off some horrific event of blood and death, timid folks may back away--for a time.
But the State can simply remind people that whatever happens is willed by Allah. If there is a tsunami of blood rolling up on the land, Allah must want that blood to roll and splash and wet down the world.
Not even the timid folks can argue with that. They know the Will of God pulses behind all the world's events, driving and shaping them. You simply can't do that which Allah wishes not to be done.
You could point out actions against the State (bombs falling from American or Jordanian or Saudi jets, for instance) and wonder why Allah permits such things to happen.
Fortunately, there's an explanation for that: Jihadists have to see who their enemies are. Allah permits these attacks so the faithful can know whom to destroy.
When the goofy folks at Charlie Hebdo print cartoons depicting the Prophet, it's permitted by Allah so strict Muslims can locate their next target.
See, it's all good.
Maybe one day Allah will permit the complete destruction of Islam. But don't let it bother you, faithful followers. It will all work out properly in the end.
How can it not?
There appears to be a kind of slow motion rush to join up, in part driven by "unwarranted" attacks from infidels. Every little bit--the attacks and the recruitment successes that come from the attacks--boosts the State's position and stature in the world of the Jihad.
These actions may define the general trend for the future: As more and more groups around the world add their numbers to the State, it slowly becomes the nexus for all Islam.
More moderate Muslim groups will feel pressure to join; more traditional (and conservative) groups may see a growing legitimacy to the new Caliphate. The State is, after all, populated by Sunni Muslims, which make up 85% of the religion. They are already the majority sect, and working hard to eliminate the competition by bullet and blade.
At some point in the future, the State may represent Islam in the world.
Oh, there will be glitches. When the State pulls off some horrific event of blood and death, timid folks may back away--for a time.
But the State can simply remind people that whatever happens is willed by Allah. If there is a tsunami of blood rolling up on the land, Allah must want that blood to roll and splash and wet down the world.
Not even the timid folks can argue with that. They know the Will of God pulses behind all the world's events, driving and shaping them. You simply can't do that which Allah wishes not to be done.
You could point out actions against the State (bombs falling from American or Jordanian or Saudi jets, for instance) and wonder why Allah permits such things to happen.
Fortunately, there's an explanation for that: Jihadists have to see who their enemies are. Allah permits these attacks so the faithful can know whom to destroy.
When the goofy folks at Charlie Hebdo print cartoons depicting the Prophet, it's permitted by Allah so strict Muslims can locate their next target.
See, it's all good.
Maybe one day Allah will permit the complete destruction of Islam. But don't let it bother you, faithful followers. It will all work out properly in the end.
How can it not?
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