Arizona Republicans Want To Make The First Amendment Cost You, Big Time

Some Republican state lawmakers are trying to find ways to
stop mostly peaceful demonstrations like this one

UPDATE: 

Public outcry over a bad idea by lawmakers is always a good thing.

That bill that I describe below that could have led to racketeering charges and asset seizures for even the most innocent protest organizers is gone. 

Stick a fork in it.

Arizona House Speaker J.D. Menard said his office got manhy calls about the proposal and the conversation around it had become "toxic"

He will not be moving the bill forward, so it's dead.

Remember, folks, if something doesn't sound or look right, speak up! It worked here in Arizona.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION:

There's been lots of protests around the nation lately, mostly by liberal groups and people opposed to Donald Trump, and by extension, Republicans who are propping him up.

That's cool. It's always refreshing to see people express their First Amendment rights to speak out.

Be assured, I'd say exactly the same thing had it been a bunch of conservative Republicans marching out in the streets.

One thing I don't like, and few people do, is when demonstrations turn violent and ugly. Usually, it's a peaceful protest, and then a few yahoos in the crowd smash windows or set fires or do something stupid.

Sometimes, it's an anarchist who generally agrees with what the protesters are saying, but want to take it further and cause trouble.

Other times, it's provocateurs who oppose what the protesters stand for and want to undermine their message.

Either way, that behavior is criminal, and I'm all for arresting people who do that type of thing.

However, Republican lawmakers in Arizona want to take this beyond criminally charging idiots who cause injury or damage.

They've introduced a bill that would allow the state to charge protest organizers with racketeering and seize their property if somebody turns violent during the demonstration. 

Never mind if the protest organizers intended a peaceful demonstration. Never mind if the organizers had no way to know that somebody would end up causing trouble. If one moron causes trouble, the protest organizer is in big trouble under this legislation.

You can see pretty plainly what the Arizona Republicans are trying to do here. Many Republicans are increasingly hostile to First Amendment rights and are really sick and tired of people going out into the streets to publicly criticize their policies.

So their trying to shut everybody up so they can do what they want, voters and constituent sbe damned.

This legislation would mean that everybody would be afraid to organize a demonstration. Or, if someone does organize a march, somebody who doesn't like the demonstrators' point of view would break a window or start a fire.

That way, the organizers woud be in hot financial water (or worse) and not organize future protests. And everybody who knows that the organizer who has his or her assets seized because of the actions of someone they had nothing to do with would never set up any new protests.

As Arizona Democratic State Senator Martin Quezada said, "This bill only serves to chill people's rights to free speech by allowing one bad actor to turn peaceful demonstration organizers into racketeering felons."

Why do so many Republicans hate democracy lately?

As Quezada points out, it's already illegal to start riots, break windows and set arson fires.

Sponsors of the bill say they want to stop riots before they start, and dragged out that Donald Trump trope that people are paid to demonstrate and cause trouble, so they want to stop those allegedly paid thugs.

Democrats point out that, besides the legislation probably being unconstitutional, it could backfire on the Republicans. 

Say a Tea Party group wants to hold a demonstration to cheer on something Trump or Republicans in Congress are doing. Great! Then some idiot, maybe a liberal activist, smashes some car windows during the Tea Party party.

Would these Republicans be willing to charge a fellow Republican with racketeering if that happened? I wonder.

Either Arizona Republicans can't think ahead to such circumstances, or they would only apply their proposed law to liberal demonstrations.

Which is it?

In any event, this crackdown of First Amendment rights is spreading among Republican controlled legislatures nationwide.

According to Alternet:

"In recent weeks and months, politicians in at least 11 states - Minnesota, Washington, Iowa, Michigan, North Dakota, Indiana, Virginia,  Colorado, Missouri, North Carolina and Arizona - have either introduced or threatened to introduce bills that make it more dangerous or costly to attend protests, or be anywhere near them."

The Arizona legislation, like some of the others, could hold people who merely peaceably participate in demonstrations to those racketeering charges and asset seizures.

Say you object to Trump's immigration policy and your city is holding a demonstration against that and you want to participate. Would you go if you knew if some moron caused even a tiny bit of trouble that you could have your life ruined?

This legislation is the stuff of dictatorships.

Let's hope everybody protests against this type of legislation, before they essentially become illegal.

This Republican Wants Another Kent State To Teach 'Em Good!

This idiot from Michigan was just
wondering if shooting a couple
protesters would help end all those
anti-Trump demonstrations. 

Every once in awhile, a public official accidentally tells us what he or she is really thinking, with disastrous, jaw-dropping results.

Our latest exhibit in this wall of shame is Dan Adamini, the Secretary of the Marquette (Michigan) County Republican Party. And possibly soon to be former Secretary.

Adamini was apparently upset by a demonstration that turned violent in Berkeley, California and forced the cancellation of a talk by odious weird right-winger Milo Yiannopoulos.

Adamini tweeted this gem in response:  "Violent protesters who shut down free speech? Time for another Kent State. Perhaps one bullet stops a lot of thuggery."

He also went on Facebook and said this, grammer issues included:

"The violent protests at universities certainly indicate Portage acacian at the lower level. I'm thinking another Kent State might be the only solution protest stopped after one death. They only do it because there are no consequences at all."

That's quite a bit of word salad there, but you can see what Adamini seems to be suggesting.  Just shoot somebody and that will make people just shut up already.

Kent State, as you might remember, was the 1970 anti-Vietnam protest at Kent State University in Ohio. Some of the protesters threw rocks and such at police and National Guardsmen. The Guard opened fire, killing four of the demonstraters.

So yeah, that's right,  Adamini was suggesting what happened at Kent State back in 1970 was a swell idea.

Of course, if you want demonstrators to quiet down and stop, maybe shooting them isn't the best idea for many reasons, beyond the crime of killing people.

It'll backfire, pardon the awful pun. People were so outraged by Kent State that many believe it hastened the end of the Vietnam War. Which wasn't exactly what the Nixon administration wanted back in 1970.

Would violence against anti-Trump protesters hasten the end of the Trump era? I frankly don't want to find out, and I'm sure most other people feel the same way.

Since posting and taking down those offensive posts in social media, Adamini says he's against violence, too.

He posted this on Twitter, says MLive:

"Taking a lot of heat for a very poorly worded tweet yesterday. Sorry folks, the intent was to try to stop the violence, not encourage more."

Well, maybe, if he considers all demonstrations against Trump and his actions and his minions "violence." It doesn't seem to daw on Adamini that telling people to shut up when the criticize an elected official is also an attempt to squelch First Amendment rights.

I'm being Captain Obvious here, but sometimes, you gotta spell it out.

Calling his bad tweet "poorly worded?" I think the problem here goes way beyond grammar issues.

This White Guy Has Questions About All Those Police Shootings

Police officers comfort each other at an Dallas
area hospital after a sniper killed five officefs
Thursday night during a Black Lives Matter
 demonstration. Photo by Ting Shen/
Dallas Morning News.  

Here we go again with the deaths of black men during encounters with cops.

Even worse was the violence we saw in Dallas Thursday night when that sniper opened fire on cops who were protecting peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrators. Five officers died.

It just goes on and on in such a sickening fashion.

The whole week made no sense. All these good people dying for no good reason.

As is always the case in these too-often mass killings,  most of the nation was shocked, supportive, and wanted to help, but also felt helpless.

Unfortunately, again as always a few people took the tragedy as another opportunity to Not Help. There's always a few morons to make a situation worse. Thank goodness they're not in the majority.

As you no doubt heard on the news, this latest episode all started with  the deaths of two African-Americans during police calls this week. One in Baton Rouge, one near St. Paul, Minnesota.

Understandably, the nation erupted in protests because of this new batch of sorrowful shootings of African-Americans who were not doing much of anything wrong to begin with.  Black Lives Matter organized demonstrations in dozens of cities. The demonstrations were all largely peaceful.

I'm a totally naive white guy, so I hope somebody can answer some questions that came to my mind during this terrible week.

Question 1. Please explain and put in context and the reasons behind the all-too-frequent incidents of black males dying at the hands of white police officers.

I have found some facts that partly help, but still, it's all so unnerving.

We know from the Washington Post that nearly 1,000 people died in police involved shootings in 2015. Most of those shot were wielding weapons, were mentally ill or suicidal, or ran when officers told them to stop.

Four percent of those who died in police shootings during 2015 were unarmed black men, the Post says.

That doesn't sound like much until you realize, as the Washington Post did, that black men make up only 6 percent of the U.S. population but accounted for 40 percent of the unarmed men shot to death by police in 2015.

Says the Post:

"In the majority of cases in which police shot and killed a person who had attacked someone with a weapon or brandished a gun, the person who was shot was white. But a hugely disproportionate number -- three in five -- of those killed after exhibiting less threatening behavior were black or Hispanic."

OK, there's obviously some sort of racial problem going on here.

In the Minnesota case this week, the state's governor, Mark Dayton said:

"Would this have happened if those passengers, the driver and the passengers, were white?......I don't think it would have. So I'm forced to confront, and I think all of us in Minnesota are forced to confront, that this kind of racism exists."

Question 2. The officers involved in the deaths are not KKK white hood wearing cross burning bigots. But there seems to be some sort of terrible racism going on. What's up?

I have the displeasure of knowing a couple awful racists/bigots. I never hear even these asshats saying black guys ought to be hunted down and shot.

Which surely means police aren't hunting down and killing black men for sport. Were many of us white guys - some of whom became police officers - sort of semi-subconsciously instilled with the notion that African-Americans are somehow "scarier' and "more of a threat" than white guys?

Does that make some police officers more ready to shoot a black guy?  Regarding the death of Philando Castile last week in Minnesota, the lawyer for the cop (who is Latino) involved said he was reacting to the presence of Castile's gun rather than his race. (Castile had a conceal carry permit, and had the gun with him but did not threaten officers with it.)

Would the cop have reacted to such an extreme had Castile been white? Quite possibly, I think.

 If so, how do we erase this ingrained, perhaps rather involuntary racism? Or do a small minority of police officers just plain hate African Americans?

Beyond that, there almost alwasy seems to be acquitals when police officers get in trouble for causing a death. Fair justice or is something wrong with the judicial system too? I don't know, but it's worth asking.

Question 3: Is this issue with black men dying during encounters with cops a new thing, or has it always been going on?

Obviously, we've been hearing more and more about these shootings in recent years. But how long has this been going on? Decades? We probably weren't aware of these white cop on black man shootings until everybody suddenly had a smart phone with a camera in their pocket.

Castile's girlfriend posted the immediate aftermath live on Facebook, which ensured no corrupt cop could erase her video. (That sometimes happens, though I have no idea whether that would have happened in this case.)

Are all these cameras bringing a long-standing but "quiet" crisis to life?

Question 4: Isn't it possible to be both pro-cop and pro-Black Lives Matter?  I am.  So why do some people think the two ideas are mutually exclusive?

I'm stating the obvious here, but most cops are incredible people. It's an unbelievably tough, dangerous job, requiring life and death split second decisions.

Many police departments are excellent, but none are perfect. They're run by humans, after all. All cops are human, so they can  make mistakes.

Isn't pointing out that there are too many incidents in which white cops kill black men in a way supporting cops? Isn't that in part an effort to improve policing in the United States? Don't we all want our great police forces to be even better?

On The Daily Show the other night, Trevor Noah said it best:

"You know, the hardest part of having a conversation surrounding police shootings in America, it always feels like in America, it's like if you take a stand for something, you automatically are against something else....

"But with police shootings, it shouldn't have to work that way. For instance, if you're pro-Black Lives Matter, you're assumed to be anti-police, and if you're pro-police, than you surely hate black people. When in reality you can be pro-cop and pro-black, which is what we should all be."

Question 5: So why do some so-called leaders fan the flames of division when we have a terrible week like the one we just had?

As note, there are always asshats out there. The biggest meme among these idiots who are so-called political leaders is that Black Lives Matter wants all cops dead.

It seems like there's a competition among these merry band of asshats to outdo each other with their outrageousness.

Perhaps the winner of this sweepstakes was Texas Lieutenant Gov. Dan Patrick, who had this to say about the Black Lives Matter demonstration in Dallas that ended in that fatal sniper attack on the police who were protecting the protesters:

"All those protesters last night, they ran the other way expecting the men and women in blue to turn around and protect them. What hypocrites!"

In other words Patrick is so stupid he thinks that the demonstraters hate all cops and should just protect themselves. How the hell did he get to be lieutenant governor?

Another question for the top brass and union chiefs of all the cop shops around the country: When someone criticizes the actions of a particular police officer, will you please stop getting your panties in a wad and saying that these criticisms are attacks on each and every police officer out there?

Here's one response, as noted in the St. Paul Pioneer Press:

"'Gov. Dayton's extraordinary presumptive conclusion that the tragic incident in Falcon Heights was motivated by race is the height of political malfeasance that could lead to a miscarriage of justice, if not more violence,' Dennis Flaherty, executive director of the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association said Friday."

Yeah, we don't know exactly what was in the officer's head, but Governor Dayton was right to at least consider some form of innate racism a possibility.

I have to repeat and emphasize police officers have incredibly tough jobs and sometimes have to make life or death decisions in milliseconds.  Mistakes are inevitable.

But it's the job of the citizenry, and investigators, to hold our public servants accountable. Did a particular officer do anything criminal? Or should we beef up training?

These aren't questions that indict every police officer in the country, many of whom do amazing work. Including on the behalf of racial minorities.  So, union bosses and police chiefs: Will you quit ordering us to stop asking questions already?

Question 6: Are we, the citizenry supporting the police enough through our tax dollars? If we're indeed stingy, do we share the blame?

 I know you get what you pay for. Is one reason for these police shootings inadequate training? Are some cops not adequately trained to handle highly charged situations when guns are around?

Do they also have training on how to deal with those subtle and not-so-subtle racial undercurrents that seem to stew in some (most? all?) jurisdictions?

That takes money.  And time. And commitment. Are politicians too ready to embrace trying to do things on the cheap and not pay for adequate training and policing? Are taxpayers, who understandably can't pay all of their income for services, also trying to get police services on the cheap?

Are we paying in the long term with lives so we can save a few bucks in the short term?

Trump Violence A Hallmark Of World's Most Ignorant, Entitled Candidate

Anti and pro Trump partisans confront each other
in Chicago Friday night.  

Trumps famous incendiary words are only part of the reason why there's so much hate and trouble surrouding his increasingly odious rallies.

A lot of the trouble comes with Trump's attitude that he's going to do what he wants, when he wants, without ever consulting with anybody else.

He lies to get his way.  He's a classic bully who gets what he wants at the snap of a finger, and he's not going to stop now.

That's to everybody's detriment. Except Trump, of course.

It appears a lot of the trouble in Chicago Friday night came when Trump abruptly canceled the rally for safety reasons "after meeting with law enforcement."

Note the artful dodge here. Somebody in Trump's camp probably did talk with someone in law enforcement, so you technically have a "meeting" here with law enforcement.

However, both Chicago and University of Illinois police said they played no part in the decision to cancel the rally and as Acting Police Superintendent John J. Escalante said, "were kind of taken by surprise" by the announcement to call off the rally.

Surprising the police like this is never a good situation, especially when you have two large groups of people angry at each other - the Trump partisans and those demonstrating against the candidate.

Police usually have crowd control methods that work a lot better when they know something is coming, i.e. a rally with 10,000 people being cancelled.

I bet the police, through no real fault of their own, were caught flat footed by the announcement the rally would be canceled, and inevitably chaos erupted.

This plays right into Trump's (small) hands and perhaps that was his plan all along. Trump had been under escalating criticism for the violence at his rallies.

Now, he had a bunch of anti-Trump protesters here, and an abrupt rally cancellation would inflame the situation. The anti-Trump crowd would  get into fights, and then Trump could blame the liberal "goons" for all the trouble at his rallies, deflecting the blame away from Trump and his supporters.

I might have gotten too conspiratorial here with my theory but I wouldn't put it past Trump.

A Trump rally earlier Friday in St. Louis, which until Chicago was one of the worst yet, lends credence to my theory.

There's no question Trump is a goon. In St. Louis he said of the protests: "Part of the problem and part of the reason it takes so long (to kick protesters out) is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore....There used to be consequences. There are none anymore."

Essentially he was saying it was OK to beat up a protester, then. I'm all for arresting and charging someone if, IF they're doing something illegal. There's you consequence right there. It shouldn't be assault, as Trump advocates, at least implicitly.

I get it that Trump isn't the one that made many of his supporters so angry. A complex, messy stew of economic turmoil, social change and other frustrations did that, not Trump. But Trump is using that anger to his advantage, and creating a show by whipping up that anger until we literally get sucker punches being thrown at his rallies.

Trump is a showman, and he realizes the rage he fans just makes the show all that much better. At least to his fans. And his ego. It's all about his ego, after all.

Trump said the protesters were "so bad for our country." Really? Protest, peaceful protest, anyway, is enshrined in the First Amendment.

But I know how much Trump hates the First Amendment except in the moments it benefits him.

Not all anti-Trump demonstrators are blameless. True,  rhe vast majority were peaceful, as were the vast majority of the Trump supporters, Neither side should resort to violence. It was a fail to see fists flying.

I'm also gratified there were large anti-Trump protests, but if their aim was to shut down the Trump rally rather than just demonstrate against it, that makes me uncomfortable. Free speech, even odious free speech, should be encouraged, not shut down.

The antidote to bad free speech is more free speech, so of course peaceful demonstrations are fine here.

I'm definitely no fan of Trump's GOP rivals in the presidential campaign, but I have to say they were spot on and  made some very good points in reacting to Trump's Friday Night Fiasco..

"There aren't fights breaking out at my rallies, Ted Cruz rallies, John Kasich rallies, Bernie Sanders rallies," noted GOP candidate Marco Rubio, the Senator from Florida.

Cruz correctly chimed in: "There's no doubt that a candidate bears responsibility for the culture that is set from the top."

Which proves Cruz and Rubio at least occasionally understand something Trump does not.  That with rights come responsibilities. We are free to say what we want in this nation, but there are consequences to what we say.

Trump, as noted above, wants consequences all right. As long as he never has to deal with any of thoae consequences.

Consequences, apparently, are for the little people.

Pepper Spraying Seattle Cop Might Be Worst Yet

An unhinged Seattle police officer pepper sprays
passersby for no apparent reason on MLK day in Jan.  

I know, I know, I've been complaining about bad cops quite a bit lately.

My excuse: The more attention paid to the bad ones, the better. If everybody did this, the powerful police unions might see the error of their ways, stop protecting the bad cops and help get rid of them. Then let the good ones, which are in the majority, do their jobs well.

It's a dream anyway.

So it is that I give a Seattle cop her due in the rogues gallery of really bad cops.  The as-yet unidentified cop is new Queen Of Pepper Spray, the biggest doofus with the spray since John Pike, the infamous UC Davis cop who in 2011 pepper sprayed a bunch of peaceful protestors as if he was trying to clear the odorous aftermath of a frat party with Fabreze.

Unless I'm missing some context of what might have happened before this latest viral video from Seattle went out, I have to ask: Why was this dipshit cop in a panic, pepper spraying random people as they walked by, all in the name of keeping them from walking down a certain street during Martin Luther King events in mid-January?

On that day, demonstrators blocked major roads in Seattle in a "Black Lives Matter" protest that reported resulted in 19 arrests and one police officer suffering a broken leg. There have been numerous "Black Lives Matter" protests around the country in recent months during which protestors block roadways.

At least judging from the video, things didn't look out of hand at the scene of this pepper spraying, that is until the cop went totally off.

If you watch the video at the bottom of this post, you see the cop that did the pepper spraying is totally unhinged. She's yelling frantically, sounding panic stricken, as most passersby don't seem all that tempted to go down the street she doesn't want them to go down.

The other cops there look pretty chill, although I fault them for not calming our panicked cop down.

As the very brief video opens, you do see people off to the left, many of them clearly demonstrators of some sort. Some of them look like they might be itching to go down the street where cops, for whatever reason, don't want them to go.

Then this unhinged cop starts yelling frantically randomly spraying passersby, including Jesse Hagopian,  a locally well-known social justice advocate and a teacher at a Seattle public school.  It appeared that nobody on the scene was being particularly threatening.

All he seems to be doing in the video is walking by, then away from the police barricade, talking on a cell phone, seemingly in a hurry to get to another appointment elsewhere in the city.

I wonder if the woman just to the left of Hagopian triggered this. She seems to be a mild mannered, middle aged lady looking bemused as the cop with the pepper spray can yells incoherently. Maybe our unhinged cop noticed this and opened fire?  

Jesse Hagopian, a Seattle teacher and activist, was pepper sprayed
for the sin of walking down a street while talking on a cell phone.
Not surprisingly, he's getting ready to sue. 

Glad it was pepper spray and not a gun in her hand.

It's lucky this got captured and uploaded to YouTube, because I'm sure the police would have just said Hagopian was threatening officers, he was a menace, blah, blah, blah.

Aside from the pepper spraying, which apparently was inspired by Hagopian being guilty of walking in the city where he lives while black, this cop is apparently not good at crowd control, and keeping the peace.

It's hard to tell, because the video cuts off, but it looks like things were fairly mellow until the stupid cops starts spewing pepper spray in all directions. Then it seems people are starting to get angry.

The video ends with a woman scolding the cop: "We have the right to walk on this sidewalk!"

Maybe you used to, lady, but now cops can do what they want, apparently, laws and First Amendment be damned.

Way to de-escalate, stupid cop.

Why is it the worst cop, the incompetent ones, seem to be always itching for a fight? Yes, sometimes things escalate to violence in the police world, and it's totally not the fault of law enforcement. Face it, some people are jerks, and police, like it or not, have to respond with force.

But in this case, WTF?

Hagopian has announced his intention to sue, and good for him, especially with Seattle's reputation of stonewalling and denial when law enforcement is questioned.

Seattle Police say the incident is "under investigation," code word for letting this die a quick death after the media attention dies down and we hope no nosy reporter follows up in a few months.

We don't know the identity of this officer, or any other details.  It'll be interesting to see if anything comes of it.

Hagopian's lawyer, James Bible is not optimistic.

"They're not going to respond......I would be surprised if the city of Seattle finds yet another way to absolve itself of any wrong-doing. They've made a mockery of accountability and until that changes, we're not holding our breath."

The U.S. Department of Justice in 2011 said Seattle Police engaged in a repeated pattern of excessive force, and critics say little has changed since that report came out.

A Seattle police officer recently got in trouble for arresting a 70-year-old black man because she apparently thought a black guy using a golf club as a cane is a menace to society.

It practically took an act of Congress to suspend that police officer, though.

All cops accused of wrongdoing deserve due process. But when the due process shows that they've done wrong, why is it so hard to get rid of them?

I think a lot of people in this country want to know the answer to that question.

I know I do.

Why We Must All Step Up to Fight Fundamentalism

"Je Suis Charlie" has become a rallying cry for
for free speech and against fundamentalists since last week
s terror attack.  

A video has gone viral this weekend that shows some right wing "religious" preacher bragging.

This so called pastor was proud about the time he punch a kid hard in the chest to make him comply with his word, which he thinks is God's word.  

Yeah, he's a real peach.

Here's the video of this idiot, and then I'll talk about why this guy crystalizes everything that's wrong with all forms of fundamentalism:



A telling passage in this nut's talk comes when he notes the kid he assaulted was bright. This jerk, Eric Damman of Bible Baptist Church in Hasbrouck Heights, N.J., in his video said. "Ben was a bright kid, which didn't help things. It made him even more dangerous."

Bingo! This guy in one sentence explains fundamentalism. Not religion, mind you, but fundamentalism.

The main rule of thumb for virtually all fundamentalists is any independent thought, or any deviation from their sick orthodoxy is to be met with violence and repression, and not any kind of intellectual persuasion.

It's all because fundamentalists tend to be stupid. Intentionally stupid.

It's too painful, too much work, apparently to think anything through. So they resort to some strange harsh, by the books ideology. Maybe the pain of that harsh ideology somehow feels good to them?

Well, knock yourself out, fundamentalists, if you like that sort of thing.

Of course, no fundamentalist would dream of just wallowing in his own misery. They have to spread it. That's where the problems come in.

Yes, I get it, this jerk in New Jersey who hit the kid can't be compared to those Islamic fundamentalist terrorists who go around killing anyone they don't think adheres to their quote, unquote ideology.

He assaulted a kid, but sure as heck didn't commit mass murder.

He can't be compared to those killer terrorists, except in one respect: Both seem to agree any form of intellectualism is bad. Asking questions, any questions, is bad. Independent thought is bad. Saying, even thinking outside their narrow orthodoxy is bad.

Three of these four people are dead, their twisted, violent
fundamentalist voices forever gone, thank goodness.
As for the other fundamentalists out there, we'll combat
their hate of free speech with more free speech. 

That's why the Jersey jerk probably hit Ben, that poor kid. The kid was smart. He was probably asking questions. Challenging our "pastor."  The pastor couldn't reason with the kid, because he has no reason, so he decked the teen.

You can tell how proud he is of that. I also sure as hell bet the kid he hit wasn't led to the Lord, at least Jersey Jerk's lord, as the preacher says. I just hope he's OK. The kid, not the Jersey Jerk.

Fundamentalists live in a small little blank world of their own making. It's an awful place to be, I'm sure, which is probably why they insist that everyone else need to be locked in that hell with them.

They can't stand the sight of anyone experiencing joy, or fun, or interest, or something new, or engagement, or something that makes them learn, or something that satisfies their curiosity, or

For most people, adherence to these fundamentalist nutcases would be excruciatingly jail-like.

But for a small minority of people in the world, those fundamentalists who twist and torture and really violate the peaceful tenets of Christianity, of Islam, of Judaism and other religions, are going to continue to lash out at those of us, the vast majority of the world, who actually think for themselves.

We know the Paris attacks by so called Islamic terrorists were not isolated. It happens a lot.  Just ask the unfortunate people in Syria and Iran victimized by ISIS.

The jerk from Jersey isn't an isolated incident either.

We have "religious" nutcases in the United States suggesting parents beat up their four year old kids if you think they're acting gay. An Arizona "pastor" thinks the way to banish AIDS from the world is to kill all gays.

If you want a film fest of hate, watch the videos of Bryan Fischer who is some sort of head honcho of some outfit called the American Family Association.

Most of the world's fundamentalists are right-wing, but the right doesn't have a lock on this crowd. There's left wingers as well. You know, the type who, instead of lobbying for anti-environmental policies, burn down housing developments and laboratories, and vandalize scientific or corporate experiments.

I'm not advocating that we shut these guys up, right wing or left wing. Quite the opposite in fact. Yes, if they act violently or harass somebody, charge 'em with a crime.

But if they keep blathering on about their "religious" ideology, let them. The old saw that says the best antidote to excesses of free speech is more free speech is an excellent one. It's our duty - all of us - to rebut people who make all these fundamentalist claims and statements.

As I said before, there's big differences between the assholes in Paris who shot all those people at the satirical magazine, and in that Jewish deli and some nutcase "pastor" in that New Jersey suburb.

No matter what their stripe or propensity to violence or not, there are a lot of fundamentalists out there. Ranging from the garden variety right wing American pastor all the way up to mad bombers who think nothing of killing several hundred people at one time with a big bombing.

The good news, of course, there's a lot more of us than there are of them.

The rules for us on how to combat fundamentalism are pretty simple. We stand up for ideas, questions, alternative theories, satire, comedy, political arguments and all that jazz, even if some of it offends us. We stand for all these as often as we possibly can.

We don't have to like or embrace anything that offends us, but we have to let it exist. That includes religions we don't like. As long as those religions don't violently lash out at the rest of us, or try to suppress us.  

Some of the more than million people who
marched through Paris Sunday, standing for free speech
and against repressive fundamentalism.  

As I write this, more than a million people are marching through the streets of Paris, offering an answer to those who would deny our freedom, our right to think, to question dogma. Some of the marchers are heads of state from around the world.

Other large demostrations have happened or are scheduled in major cities throughout the world.

Good!

Often, this type of response to fundamentalism requires no bravery at all. I jumped on the bandwagon last week of saying on social media. "Je Suis Charlie," in solidarity to that satirical magazine that was so horribly attacked in Paris.

My action was tiny, required absolutely zero bravery and won't make any difference by itself. But if everybody joins in, like those million plus people marching through Paris, it will show the fundamentalists what kind of world they really live in.

By the way, the French government says this is the largest mass demonstration in the country's history.

So there, fundamentalists! It show the fundamentalists that their hate, their stupidity, won't win.

Sometimes the resistance against fundamentalism will take great bravery, like the good Muslim store employee in Paris, who secretly hid people who were in that store in a basement refrigerator, escaped, then told police what was going on at the store.

That guy's actions led to a solution to the crisis that would have been a lot bloodier if not for his bravery.

Whether it be a violent terrorist attack with lots of bloodshed, or some idiot in the United States claiming that somehow, two people who love each other are suppressing their supposed "religion" and must be stopped we need to speak up.

We need to speak up against anyone who would stop comedy or satire with bullets. Even if that satire or comedy is kinda stupid. We need to speak up for science, for reality, for discovery, for questions, for answers, for creativity, for newness, for fresh thought, for life.

Always.

Fundamentalism isn't going to go away. It's always going to be a problem. But it won't win, as long as the rest of us with our loud voices, our worn out computer keyboards, our over-used pens and our filled-to-capacity cameras don't ever shut up. No matter what.  

These are our voices.

So use them.

Update: Fiery Cheerios Protestor Dies

Earlier this month, I made fun of Michael Leisner, who accidentally set a lawn fire at the Minnesota General Mills headquarters because he didn't like the company's pro same sex marriage stance.

Michael Leisner, recently made famous in his
fiery Cheerios protest, has died.

General Mills makes Cheerios, and he tried to torch a box of the cereal to express his dissatisfaction, but the fire got a bit out of control and he fled. No real damage occurred, but the embarrassing YouTube video of the incident sure was a hit.

Boy, do I feel bad about making fun of Leisner now. Word now comes that Leisner has died of an apparent heart attack. He was waiting in his car for his two sons to finish playing tennis when he passed away, according to The Smoking Gun.

He's been described as a nice guy, though his virulently anti-gay stance understandably put me off. My condolences to his family, though.

Even in death, things got screwed up for Leisner in an unfortunately comic way. According to the Smoking Gun report, a nephew wrote, in Spanish, a loving tribute to Leisner.  Bing translated it from Spanish to English, and they garbled it. The translation read: "Please pray for the family of Mike to feel the spirit of God as dildo in this time of loss."

Sigh. I really hope the afterlife goes better for Leisner.