Miscellaneous: September 2005 Archives

“Let us bow our heads and pray together that half the jig population of New Orleans stayed behind to do some lootin’ and this one finishes them all off. And Lord, let’s hope all the faggots in the French Quarters stay as well.”

“They should pile up all the n-----s and use them as human sand bags against the rising storm surge.”

“That’s why Hurricane Katrina needs to wipe out the French Quarter and every faggot in it, along with the rest of that n----r-infested city.”

“Nature is washing the city out and if every n----r, fag, fruitloop and Third World POS drowned today, the country would be better off.”

Those are quotes from “Christians” that were left on various sites around the Internet, in response to Hurricane Katrina.

I’m not surprised. Christianity today has absolutely nothing to do with love, understanding, or forgiveness. It’s simply another way to express hatred.

I think it’s an interesting observation that the comments were edited by the web master. Where the poster used the word “faggot”, it is spelled out. Where the poster used the word “nigger”, it is substituted for “n----r”. I’m sure that those who posted these hateful messages didn’t post them that way. I’m sure that all the words were spelled out. Think about it. If someone has that much hatred for these two groups, do you really think they are going to mask what they say?

My observation is simply this; it’s still ok to using the word “faggot” all over the place, but you will never see the “N word” spelled out. It’s always, “n----r”, never... should I say it, “nigger”.

What is the difference? None.

So much of what I’ve written about of late has been very negative because they have focused on the news. It’s hard to find much positive in the world right now. So, I’m making a conscious decision to stop worrying about much of it.

In our personal lives, we are doing well. We have refinanced our home for a lower interest rate, and in the process, have decided to put hard wood floors in our home and do some repainting. This all starts next Monday. We are excited about it, although I’m not so sure that my cats will be thrilled with the construction. Hopefully, they will come to like their new digs.

WASHINGTON (BP)--Supreme Court nominee John Roberts told senators Sept. 15 that although he provided pro bono work for homosexual groups in the landmark Romer v. Evans decision, he “probably” would have assisted the other side in the case if approached with that opportunity first.

Some social conservatives have expressed concern that Roberts donated several hours of work to assist homosexual groups in the 1996 case, in which the Supreme Court struck down a Colorado constitutional amendment that had prevented homosexuality from being given civil rights status. At the time Roberts was working as an attorney with a Washington law firm. (source)

I think it’s very telling that social conservatives were concerned that Judge Roberts assisted in the demise of an act that was extremely hateful and mean spirited at it’s core. They are talking about Colorado’s Amendment 2, which would have repealed anti-discrimination ordinances in several Colorado cities, and prohibit the passage of any such ordinances in the future. The amendment supported state-sanctioned discrimination based on sexual orientation and protects such discrimination from redress at local, county or state wide levels. If it had been upheld, it would have marked the first time a state constitutional amendment had revoked previously granted civil rights of a group of citizens. Fifty-four percent of Colorado’s voters approved the measure in 1992.

The Supreme Court said this about the amendment:

...the amendment has the peculiar property of imposing a broad and undifferentiated disability on a single named group, an exceptional and, as we shall explain, invalid form of legislation.

Amendment 2 confounds this normal process of judicial review. It is at once too narrow and too broad. It identifies persons by a single trait and then denies them protection across the board. The resulting disqualification of a class of persons from the right to seek specific protection from the law is unprecedented in our jurisprudence.

In layman’s terms, the amendment basically said that any business can fire you, for example, for being gay, even if you town or city doesn’t like it. Cities such as Boulder that had a local anti-discrimination policy in place would have that policy invalidated by the state-wide amendment. And furthermore, it would have made it illegal for any town or city to even seek to give any protections to gay citizens. Pretty nasty stuff.

But the real killer is this; if you were discriminated against by any means on the basis of your sexual orientation, you would have no legal means to address your grievances. In other words, you would be denied access to the legal system. That is what the Supreme Court had a problem with, and rightfully so.

And now, we have “social conservatives” who are concerned that Judge Roberts (or anyone for that matter) would stand up to that kind of horrible legislation? They should be ashamed of themselves.

The fact that Judge Roberts worked on this case made me give him the benefit of the doubt. I know he’s been labeled as being a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but I figured that he would at least be fair. I never thought that he particularly liked gay citizens. On a personal level, I’m quite certain he doesn’t. But, what I was after was his ability to be fair. So, when we do eventually come before the Supreme Court arguing for federal benefits that come with marriage, I would hope that he would at least listen to the arguments.

I’m not sure what to make of the comment that he “probably” would have assisted the other side in the case if approached with that opportunity first. Does that mean he would have personally preferred to fight against us, or was he just making that comment to settle down these social conservatives who were upset with him working to uphold basic rights for gay citizens?

Does it really matter? How much can you rely on someone to be objective if they state that they would have assisted the other side if approached with that opportunity first? I mean, doesn’t that show bias?

I suppose (if I’m being objective) that perhaps he was suggesting that he really didn’t care which side he represented. We’ll never know what he feels... until we are judged.

Investigators appointed by the Vatican have been instructed to review all 229 Roman Catholic seminaries in the United States for “evidence of homosexuality” and faculty dissenting from church teaching.

A Vatican document prepared to guide the process, given to The New York Times on Wednesday by a priest, surfaced as Catholics awaited a Vatican ruling on whether gays should be barred from the priesthood. [...]

Gay seminarians and priests have come under particular scrutiny because a study commissioned by the church found that about 80 percent of the young people victimized by priests were boys. (source)

So of course the priests who abused the children must be gay? I guess that means that they are saying that all gay men are pedophiles?

The Catholic Church has got to be the most “intrinsically disordered” church I have ever come across. Why people stay is beyond me, because the great majority of people attending the church do not practice what the church teaches. I know many Catholics and let me tell you, THEY USE BIRTH CONTROL!

I can live and let live I suppose. But when the church starts saying crap such as this, it makes me want to scream.

The church is doing a great disservice to it’s members by trying to convince people that they are dealing with the problem of pedophile priests in their midsts by getting rid of homosexual priests. The truth is, they knew about the pedophile priests for decades and they did nothing but ship them around from one place to the next to avoid the problem. Meanwhile, the lives of many boys have been damaged. And, it still goes on.

You can get rid of all the homosexual priests, assuming that they tell the truth about being homosexual. But, you will still have pedophiles in your midst.

NEWS FLASH TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: BEING HOMOSEXUAL AND BEING A PEDOPHILE ARE NOT THE SAME THING!

Facing senators for a third day, Chief Justice nominee John G. Roberts Jr. said today it was appropriate for Congress to consider using legislative means to overturn Supreme Court rulings. (source)

Then why have a Supreme Court?

Judge Roberts was referencing a 5-4 decision last spring where the court said that a city, in this case New London, Connecticut, could seize private property to construct a shopping center, holding that the commercial enterprise was for the public good.

I also feel that the ruling was wrong. There are people who have worked their whole lives for their home. It’s now paid off, and now the city comes along and tells them to get out so they can build a shopping center. That’s wrong, in my opinion. But I believe that giving Congress the ability to override a Supreme Court decision is dangerous and an abuse of the balance of power.

I read this on The Daily Campus, the University of Connecticut student newspaper. I thought the article had some very good points, for all of us.

The most prolific statement Renzi said concerned class. “If you don’t like the class, you won’t like it as a job,” he said, “if you don’t like what you’re doing for homework, you’re not going to want to do it everyday.” Renzi said he was saddened by people who “lived for the weekend” and believed that their day-to-day work was not really “living.” He quoted the common mantra, “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”

“You do have your own life, you focus on yourself and then you find these problems, and you’re at a college therapist, and then taking Zoloft, and you forget the whole point of why you’re here, you’re here because you’re lucky,” he said.

While the rest of us are still shell-shocked over the mass casualties of Katrina, Pat Robertson says John Roberts can “be thankful that a tragedy has brought him some good.”

Thankful? (Because America won’t want any “inflamed rhetoric” at the hearings, the televangelist says.) Not the most sensitive comment I can imagine, with more than half of New Orleans inundated with disease-laden water and an untold number of bodies still to be pulled out. (source)

I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I think the world would be a better place without people like Pat Robertson. But, unlike Pat Robertson, I’m not going to advocate that anyone “take him out”, like he did to Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.

“If he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war.” - Pat Robertson (source)

Ok fine... but now he’s “thankful” for the tragedy in New Orleans because it takes the spotlight off of Judge John Roberts. It is just amazing to me that he calls himself a man of God.

On May 26, 2005 Burger King Corporation Political Action Committee donated $5,000 to the Rick Santorum Campaign.

I know a lot of people are going to read this and say, “They got what they had coming to them.” I disagree with that. They were caught, convicted, and they served their time. They were being monitored by the state. They had paid for their crime.

It appears that two of them were executed by some one who is taking the law into his own hands. Execution was not their sentence. This is the problem I’ve always had with publishing the names and addresses of convicted sex offenders. Their sentence never ends. Their names and addresses remain in the list for the duration of their lives.

So, twenty years after being released from prison, a sex offender will still have his name on the list. His neighbors will all know as well as any friends he may have, not to mention the loss of jobs and livelihood. At what point is that cruel and unusual punishment? Do we feel that they should just be the target of this kind of punishment? I wouldn’t object to the state monitoring them permanently, if that is what is deemed necessary. But to publish their names and addresses on a public website is only inviting this to happen. We might as well put a bulls eye on their back.

It was only a matter of time before this happened.

I do feel for the children who were molested. I care very much about that. But, it is the job of the state to protect its’ citizens. Making sex offenders a target for discrimination and death is not the way to achieve that, in my opinion.

BELLINGHAM, Wash. -- On Friday night, a man claiming to be an FBI agent dropped in on three Level 3 sex offenders living together, supposedly to warn them of an Internet hit list targeting sex offenders.

The man was not an FBI agent, but he may have been enforcing a hit list of his own.

Two of the roommates were found dead of gunshot wounds early Saturday, and Bellingham police are investigating a crime authorities say may be one of the nation’s most serious cases of vigilantism aimed at sex offenders.

The killings also highlight a potential problem about Washington’s 1990 law requiring sex offenders to register their addresses so the public can keep track of them.

Police Chief Randall Carroll said it is too early to conclude that Hank Eisses, 49, and Victor Vasquez, 68, were killed because they were sex offenders. Police released a sketch of the suspect, who is at large.

But Carroll noted that their address and descriptions of their crimes were posted on the city’s website. If someone used that information to target Eisses and Vasquez, it could have a broad impact, Carroll said.

“Certainly if sex offenders were targeted and attacked because of their offense, the Legislature could decide they could repeal our sex-offender notification law,” Carroll said. [...]

The public is understandably concerned about sex crimes, but Kit Bail, a Department of Corrections official, said the three men had been quiet and law abiding while they were living together. None of the three had violated supervision conditions, she said, and none had reoffended.

“In a sense, they are a success story,” said Bail, the field supervisor for Whatcom County. “These guys were doing fine. They were employed. They were living according to the conditions.” [...]

John La Fond, a lawyer who fought the notification law on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union, said posting sex offenders’ addresses “almost becomes a confession by the state that they cannot keep the society safe from harm, and invites society to take matters into its own hands.” (source)

That was published on August 31, 2005. Then today, this came out.

Michael Anthony Mullen, 36, called police Monday to turn himself in and later confessed to killing Hank Eisses, 49, and Victor Vasquez, 68, on Aug. 27, officers said. [...]

Police believe Mullen killed the Bellingham sex offenders because he knew details only the killer would know, according to a department news release. He knew that the victims were each shot once in the head, and he knew the caliber of the weapon.

“Mullen also said that he had planned the murders for some time and that on July 13, 2005, he had accessed the Whatcom County Sheriff’s sex offender Web site, and from that selected at least one of the two victims,” the release said. (source)

09/07/2005 - Man says he'll plead guilty to killing sex offenders

The Red Cross has been doing this for years in America. No one here cares. Blood shortages happen. People die. No one cares. Even though all blood is screened, it still happens because of bigotry. In America, they get away with it.

Rome, Italy, Sept 3 - The minister of health, Francesco Storace, has said, “What happened at the Milan General Hospital is unacceptable and could actually be deemed a crime”. He was commenting on the hospital having refused to take blood from a homosexual man. The Rt. Hon. Storace has also opened an inquiry into the matter. It aims to see whether the responsibility lies in the administration, or whether the hospital’s behaviour constitutes a crime. It is being carried out by the Ministerial Prevention Office together with the Research Centre, who are responsible for overseeing Scientific Research and Care Institutes. (source)

“This is a national disgrace. FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control. We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can’t bail out the city of New Orleans.” - Terry Ebbert, head of the New Orleans emergency operations.

89-year-old Dorothy Divic (L), near death and in and out of consciousness, is anguished over by relatives outside the New Orleans Convention Center in New Orleans, Louisiana. Survivors of Hurricane Katrina, huddled in sweltering squalor and terrorized by armed gangs, expressed outrage at the authorities' failure to come to their aid. (AFP/Getty Images/Mark Wilson)

Source Material

The transcript of WWL correspondent Garland Robinette’s interview with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin Thursday night. Robinette asked the mayor about his conversation with President Bush:

Photo credit: AP

NAGIN: I told him we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice. And that I have been all around this city, and I am very frustrated because we are not able to marshal resources and we’re outmanned in just about every respect.

You know the reason why the looters got out of control? Because we had most of our resources saving people, thousands of people that were stuck in attics, man, old ladies. ... You pull off the doggone ventilator vent and you look down there and they’re standing in there in water up to their freaking necks.

And they don’t have a clue what’s going on down here. They flew down here one time two days after the doggone event was over with TV cameras, AP reporters, all kind of goddamn -- excuse my French everybody in America, but I am pissed.

WWL: Did you say to the president of the United States, “I need the military in here”?

NAGIN: I said, “I need everything.”

Now, I will tell you this -- and I give the president some credit on this -- he sent one John Wayne dude down here that can get some stuff done, and his name is [Lt.] Gen. [Russel] Honore.

And he came off the doggone chopper, and he started cussing and people started moving. And he’s getting some stuff done.

They ought to give that guy -- if they don’t want to give it to me, give him full authority to get the job done, and we can save some people.

WWL: What do you need right now to get control of this situation?

NAGIN: I need reinforcements, I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. We ain’t talking about -- you know, one of the briefings we had, they were talking about getting public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out here.

I’m like, “You got to be kidding me. This is a national disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans.”