Early Onset of Night

Wherein I seek out and sign a petition.

Tagged politics, obviously.

Here in my town last year, a city council member got all racist and birther with a news reporter. I wrote about it once before.

It seems that an important decision was before the city council. One that was newsworthy. A reporter for a local tv station, who happened to be a black woman, was doing her job as a reporter and calling the city council members to get their opinion and anything else they might have to say about this apparently important issue. Most gave a no comment or an innocuous non-statement. One, however, got pissy.

Why did SHE want to know? Was SHE going to vote? No, obviously. It was a vote before the city council. Was she even American? Should we send her back to Kenya with Obama? Et cetera.

I’m serious.

So it all blew up and then he pretended he didn’t know she was black. This lady is a TELEVISION reporter for the local news. She appears on local tv every evening. Yet this guy didn’t know she was black.

Whatever, dude. We here in South Dakota might be rural. We might be simple in the Lynard Skynard “Simple Man” context, but we ain’t idiots.

No one would suggest a person go back to Africa UNLESS they knew they were black. I mean, come on.

So the reporter lady was a bit miffed. Rightfully so. She complained to the mayor and an investigation was launched. The dipshit in question eventually “apologized” but in the most unapologetic way ever. It was an unapology, sort of “I didn’t do anything wrong, but since everybody’s mad, yeah, I guess I’m sorry”.

That shit wasn’t good enough for a lot of us. Some politically active person started a recall petition so that we can put this clown’s ass up to a vote and I got in my car and actually drove down to sign it.

I have never done that with a petition before. I always sign petitions, too. I figure, let’s vote on it! no matter what it is. But I only sign them when I run into them….at the library getting books, at the courthouse paying fines, at the strip mall buying beer.

This time, though, I went to THEM.

They were sitting in a circle in a corner of Black Hills Bagels. They were all surprisingly old. I looked around when I entered and they noticed me looking around. I made the pen sign with my hand….”Check, please!”

They all nodded.

I went over. Immediately, the youngest woman in the circle, who was about 85, poked a big fancy microphone in my face. She was from NPR. Would I care to share why I was signing the petition?

“Because I thought those were racist comments and I don’t want a racist on my city council,” I said.

They all nodded and smiled.

So I signed the petition, wished them luck, and went up to the counter and got a giant pizza bagel.

It was fucking excellent.

My state (South Dakota) has done much to limit abortion.

It’s a very anti-choice state.

It’s worked, too. Abortions have been going down and down here. They are half what they were 20 years ago. Women have to jump through a lot of artificial hoops made up to make getting an abortion difficult—mandatory counseling, waiting period, forced to look at sonograms, etc. We try to fuck with their fragile heads as much as possible around here. So far, though, we’ve drawn the line at shoving medicial instruments into their vaginas. So far.

Today in the local paper, they are lamenting the rise in unwed pregnancies in the state. Lulz.

It seems that unwed, single mother pregnancies have gone up and up, kinda like how abortions have been going down and down, only backwards.

It’s a real head-scratcher, I’m tellin’ ya.

The people lamenting this, of course, say a bunch of tired crap about how important mom-and-dad traditional families are, but mostly they’re worried about what all these little babies are going to cost. You see, a great many, if not the majority, of these single unwed mothers are poor and are seeking and getting help from the state.

And that’s expensive.

Anne Hajek, one of our state legislators, wants to know, and I quote, “Who pays the bill?”

Gee, I wonder, Anne. Another real head-scratcher.

Linda Schauer, state director for the anti-choice group Concerned Women for America, said, “It appears that perhaps a woman in South Dakota in an unplanned pregnancy is more likely to give birth and raise her own child.”

She also noted that the sky was blue, mountains tall, and rocks hard.

But isn’t this the whole point of passing laws designed to be mean and intrusive, to limit abortions? Since the Supreme Court won’t let a state ban abortion outright, states have to make getting an abortion so difficult and uncomfortable they’re practically banned anyway.

So now we have all these little babies who need state assistance. Schauer says we need to make sure the parents take care of them.

With or without the help of the community, Schauer? Help from the wider community in which a person lives is usually derided by conservatives as “welfare” or “entitlements”. According to conservatives, not only MUST you carry that baby full term, you have to fend for yourself with it after it’s born, amiright?

Whether or not you are pro- or anti-choice, we should all be pro fucking baby once the damn thing is born.

(Source: early-onset-of-night)

Whatever happened to the Secession Movement?

I miss those wacky bastards!

Now we’re back to politics as usual, with conservatives arguing tiredly against the same old shit as they continue to fade further and further into ultimate irrelevance.

I miss the anger and utter shock, the crazy pronouncements of doom for America. At least those guys were interesting. There was that brief moment of soul-searching which resulted in absolutely nothing learned, then back to the grind.

How the hell am I supposed to write about politics in this environment?

Jesus.

Today, the George W. Bush Presidential Library opens.

So what’s in it, comic books?