Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Wholesome Local Radio

Feeling like shopping for the holidays? Like to listen to the "local" radio stations? Then think about this before you step out and spend your hard earned cash at local businesses who knowingly advertise during this fine show:
LIMBAUGH: I got two more stories in the stack today about how black unemployment is through the roof. Black unemployment is terrible. The black frame of mind is terrible, they're depressed, they're down -- Obama's not doing anything for 'em. How is that hoax and change workin' for ya? They're all livid. I mean, they thought there were gonna be an exact 180-degree economic reversal and it's done nothing but get bad for everybody, but they're especially upset about it because they look at him as one of them, and now they feel abandoned. And I'm sure Tiger Woods' choice of females not helping 'em out with their attitudes there either.
For the defenders of the radio stations airing this garbage, and for the defenders of the show itself--who will undoubtedly declare that this statement was taken out of context, and that this was a totally isolated incident, we have some more:

"We are being told that we have to hope [Obama] succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles ... because his father was black."

"[I]n Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering."

"Obama's entire economic program is reparations."

"Obama has disowned his white half ... he's decided he's got to go all in on the black side."

Limbaugh on Gates controversy: "Here you have a black president trying to destroy a white policeman."
More here.

Tis the season.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Little Blue Footballs

Fair is fair. C'mon guys. You get to regulate the uterus, then we get to regulate your Viagra.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Support Our Teachers/Mercenaries

Looks like a certain special someone may be looking for a job teaching high school history or economics--maybe even in North Carolina, if our kids are lucky. He's very familiar with the state--he used to be in charge of a 7,000 acre private military training compound here.

He has excellent real-world experience. He's well traveled, straight as an arrow, and is deeply, deeply familiar with how valuable public-private partnerships can be.

Oh, the things he can teach.

Also too, he's a good Christian:
Scahill: Blackwater USA was founded by a man named Eri[k] Prince. And Eri[k] Prince is ... currently in his late 30s, but at the time of founding Blackwater in 1996 he was believed to be the wealthiest person that had ever enlisted in the U.S. Navy SEALs, which is widely considered to be the most elite force within the U.S. military. And Eri[k] Prince came from a very conservative evangelical Christian family in the state of Michigan. His father was a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps businessman who started a very successful auto parts manufacturing business called Prince Manufacturing. And what the company was best known for was inventing the now ubiquitous lighted sun visor. Any time you’re in your car and you pull down that visor and it lights up, that’s Eri[k] Prince’s family that invented that. So this company was very successful throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and really, young Eri[k] Prince watched as his father used his very successful business as a cash-generating machine to fund the rise of the Republican revolution in 1994 that brought Newt Gingrich and the Contract With America to power. To give the kick-start money to Gary Bauer to start his group, the Family Research Council. They were heavy funders of James Dobson and Focus on the Family. And so young Eri[k] Prince grew up in this family that was very strict Calvinist in their religion and then real free-market-gospel followers. And so he saw this sort of model from his father, and that really has been the model that he has picked up and ran with as he’s built up his Blackwater empire.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Distract, Distract, Distract

Whenever local pols start to do the stoopid, we tend to dig in a little bit more to try to find out exactly what it might be that these same pols are trying to distract us all from seeing.

These pols seem to know that if they can somehow make people frightened about something, then their constituents will re-direct their growing frustrations onto the scary/evil something the pols just invented.

Works like a charm, right? The last thing we all want to hear about is how poor we've gotten over the last several years.

The cumulative impact of the economic policies pursued by the Bush administration over the course of the last 8 years on North Carolina is staggering. In Wilkes County, according to a report by the North Carolina Justice Center, the poverty rate now stands at 25.2%. Fully ONE QUARTER of the population of Wilkes County now lives in poverty.

That is not a recession, it is a depression. And it's brutal.

What do we hear about this shocking news from the elected ones? Nothing. We hear nothing.

How about the "local" media? Gobluridge.net recently offered up these Pulitzer-worthy Wilkes County articles:

Haunted Wilkes Paranormal Conference Begins Tomorrow

929 Gallons of White Lightning Found in Wilkesboro

Motor Racing Network to Broadcast Live from Wilkes

Man Leasing North Wilkesboro Speedway Arrested

Looks like we can't count on the "local" media to call it straight either. Two peas in a pod.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

The C Street Widening Project

Heath Shuler is a Stupak:

Sunday, November 1, 2009

The Oppressed Minority

As holy activities in the High Country wind down for the day, we thought we'd quiz you. Who said this? We'll tell you at the end of the post.
"Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history."
Hint: He also said this:
The noose has tightened around the necks of Christians to keep them from speaking out on certain moral issues. And it all was embodied in something called the Hate crimes bill that President Obama said was a major victory for America. I’m not sure if America was the beneficiary. [...] We have voted into office a group of people who are opposed to many of the fundamental Christian beliefs of our nation.
Yes, in this country we are somehow supposed to believe that Christians are "oppressed". An oppressed minority in need of protection, even. The fact that that protection already exists seems not to matter, from Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

Under Title VII:

  • Employers may not treat employees or applicants more or less favorably because of their religious beliefs or practices - except to the extent a religious accommodation is warranted. For example, an employer may not refuse to hire individuals of a certain religion, may not impose stricter promotion requirements for persons of a certain religion, and may not impose more or different work requirements on an employee because of that employee's religious beliefs or practices.
  • Employees cannot be forced to participate -- or not participate -- in a religious activity as a condition of employment.
  • Employers must reasonably accommodate employees' sincerely held religious practices unless doing so would impose an undue hardship on the employer. A reasonable religious accommodation is any adjustment to the work environment that will allow the employee to practice his religion. An employer might accommodate an employee's religious beliefs or practices by allowing: flexible scheduling, voluntary substitutions or swaps, job reassignments and lateral transfers, modification of grooming requirements and other workplace practices, policies and/or procedures.
  • An employer is not required to accommodate an employee's religious beliefs and practices if doing so would impose an undue hardship on the employers' legitimate business interests. An employer can show undue hardship if accommodating an employee's religious practices requires more than ordinary administrative costs, diminishes efficiency in other jobs, infringes on other employees' job rights or benefits, impairs workplace safety, causes co-workers to carry the accommodated employee's share of potentially hazardous or burdensome work, or if the proposed accommodation conflicts with another law or regulation.
  • Employers must permit employees to engage in religious expression, unless the religious expression would impose an undue hardship on the employer. Generally, an employer may not place more restrictions on religious expression than on other forms of expression that have a comparable effect on workplace efficiency.
  • Employers must take steps to prevent religious harassment of their employees. An employer can reduce the chance that employees will engage unlawful religious harassment by implementing an anti-harassment policy and having an effective procedure for reporting, investigating and correcting harassing conduct.

It is also unlawful to retaliate against an individual for opposing employment practices that discriminate based on religion or for filing a discrimination charge, testifying, or participating in any way in an investigation, proceeding, or litigation under Title VII.

Looks like those evil, "special rights", librul laws protect Christians, too.

The viewpoints and stories of the truly oppressed are NEVER heard. The for-profit media world in which we live considers their viewpoints to be irrelevant, or worse--unprofitable. So, look around the dial in the High Country, and witness the oppression of the poor Christians in action:

There are at least nine radio stations used by the oppressed Christian minority to lament their plight. What a pity. Depending on where you live in the High Country, the oppressed Christians can be heard on up to nineteen radio stations.

Oh, the oppression! It hurts so bad!

The person quoted above? Pat Robertson.