Westbozo takes on Weird Al

The bigots have been doubling down in recent days, and the far-right Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas - which pioneered the Tea Party's tactics - is no exception.

Now - for no apparent reason - they plan to picket a "Weird Al" Yankovic concert in Kansas City. They put out a press release attacking the iconic singer and mocking his deceased parents.

The press release also suggests, "Weird Al should be taking a lesson from fellow parody performers WBC and write his songs to glorify God." Westboro admits they're a parody now? What this likely refers to is Westbozo congregants - who are almost entirely Fred Phelps's family members - infamously butchering "We Are The World" in a YouTube video. Surely, this is one of the most ridiculous things they've put in their press releases since they said Frank Sinatra was responsible for "Sesame Street making Big Bird a fag" (in their words).

Weird Al has posted a copy of Westboro's press release on his Instagram site...

https://instagram.com/p/4hdw-dGu68

The Far Right hasn't been taking things too well lately. Now there's 5 counties in Kentucky that won't comply with Obergefell v. Hodges. (Then again, there's probably just as many school districts that defy Tinker v. Des Moines, so why should we be surprised?)

Tea Party loses their shit over marriage equality

If anyone out there still thinks the Tea Party is just a movement against excessive government spending and has no interest in social issues, think again.

Let's be clear: Nationwide marriage equality is a positive development. I'm wary about the Supreme Court undermining progress on other issues in other cases, but America got lucky in the marriage equality case. However, the Tea Party is blowing their stack like we haven't seen since, well, the last time they blew their stack. I thought Team Tyranny was going to finally cool their crappers a bit, because it's hard to claim you're for limited government if you oppose marriage equality in 2015, but instead they're doubling down.

And it's as hilarious as you might imagine.

The Northern Kentucky Tea Party sent out an e-mail newsletter that thunders...

"Friday's Supreme Court decision represents a collective shaking of our fists in God's face saying, 'We don't care what You say about life's most important relationship. We know best.'"

That's a rather odd thing for a limited government group to say, isn't it? Some folks think the Tea Party is largely separate from the Religious Right, but this is one of many instances where they've couched their fury in religious terms. The Tea Party is a dominionist movement. Another recent e-mail from the Northern Kentucky Tea Party invites people to a presentation by a dominionist speaker.

Meanwhile, Boone County refuses to abide by the Supremes' ruling. It is reportedly the only county in Kentucky not to comply. The Far Right is defending Boone County, saying the other 119 counties are guilty of illegally modifying state-issued marriage forms.

Marriage equality now federal law!

So far, today has been a bad day for the "right-to-work" gestapo.

This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court quite justifiably ruled that marriage equality is the law of the land. This is of course a good ruling, but I thought the court would rule 5 to 4 against marriage equality. Instead it ruled 5 to 4 in favor.

But what does it mean for other cases? Americans are right to celebrate, but will the celebration drown out news of other rulings the Supreme Court might make? As Justice Anthony Kennedy was the only conservative Justice who voted with the majority, was Kennedy's surprise vote just a ruse to get people to forgive bad rulings? In other words, did the court's conservative bloc concede this case so that people will put up with other cases?

Folks are also still celebrating yesterday's ruling in the King v. Burwell case - in which the Supreme Court quite rightly upheld Obamacare subsidies, rejecting a frivolous lawsuit that sought to gut them. I didn't think this ruling was a surprise, because the Supremes had already balked at a chance to gut the Affordable Care Act - and much of that law is actually fairly conservative by any raw measure. Remember, much of the ACA was based on ideas conservatives had 20 years ago to stave off single payer.

Marriage equality. It's fair, and it's the law.

Bevin's weird presidential pick

Look, folks, you can vote for whoever you damn well feel like voting for. Just don't expect to be free from ridicule for it.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Matt Bevin, for instance, admits to voting for some straaaaange people (and not just himself). In 2004, Bevin was a staunch backer of Michael Peroutka for President. Peroutka, as you may recall, was the candidate of the far-right Constitution Party. Last year, Peroutka was elected to public office in Maryland as a Republican running on a dominionist platform.

Bevin boasted, "I have a 'Peroutka for President' t-shirt from 2004 in my drawer."

Peroutka has stated that he wishes Maryland had joined the Confederacy. The Human Rights Campaign has called Peroutka an "active white supremacist."

But it's not fair to pick on only Matt Bevin over his 2004 presidential choice. Most other Republicans voted for George W. Bush, also an active white supremacist.

(Source: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/06/24/3915582_matt-bevins-choice-for-president.html)

Boone County loses child abuse cases

When we let utter incompetents take power, this is what happens.

Officials from Kentucky's Cabinet for Health and Family Services say 92 cases involving child abuse or neglect in Boone County have been completely, thoroughly lost. Records of these cases could not be found - and languished for months before they turned up again.

We allow this? How can Boone County lose something as important as this?

That they accidentally lost the records isn't even the worst-case scenario. Since most Tea Party members beat or molest their kids, the records were probably lost on purpose by some hacks who were hired because of their Tea Party support.

Meanwhile, the Cincinnati media that ostensibly covers Boone County has ignored this story.

(Source: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/06/22/3912761/social-service-workers-lose-92.html)

Bevin accepted white supremacist donations

It's yet another scandal for Kentucky gubernatorial candidate Matt Bevin (R-The Media).

In recent days, it's been discovered that nationally known Republican politicians - including most of their leading presidential aspirants - have received campaign contributions from Earl Holt, president of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens. This is the same Council of Conservative Citizens that says racist mass murderer Dylann Roof has "legitimate grievances."

But this scandal has a Kentucky connection too. Not only has Holt donated to Rand Paul, but it turns out that Holt also gave to Matt Bevin's ill-fated Senate campaign.

The usual suspects have defended Bevin, but if the Republicans don't want to be linked with racism, they should stop adopting racist policies. Then racists like Earl Holt will have less reason to fund their campaigns. I guess they'd rather appeal to rich racists and risk getting caught than do without their money. At the very least, we can hold the GOP accountable for racist policy stances.

The Council of Conservative Citizens has been linked with the Republican Right for decades now, and everyone knows about the CCC's racist views. Why hasn't the GOP done a single damn thing to show the CCC the door?

God help us if Bevin wins the election.

(Source: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/06/23/3913958_report-white-supremacist-donated.html)

None dare call it terrorism

James Comey - the former Bush regime official who now serves as FBI director - should resign or be fired.

The recent terrorist attack at a church in South Carolina sets a new low in hate crimes. But Comey says that the mass shooting that killed 9 people is not actually terrorism.

What is terrorism then? Why do we even have a word for terrorism when it doesn't even apply to a racist mass murder? I guess it's so it can be applied to everything except this action, as right-wing gasbags seem to call everything else "terrorism." They think Occupy is "terrorism." They think tearing up a golf course after it expands into your yard is "terrorism." But killing 9 people in a racially motivated massacre? Comey says that's not terrorism.

Who's surprised? The government used to have an office specifically dedicated to investigating domestic terrorism such as this mass killing - but the office was closed amid right-wing pressure.

Anyone should have been able to see that Dylann Roof was on a collision course with trouble - because militant racists usually are - but I guess people were conditioned to overlook it until it was too late. When we have a system that denies right-wing domestic terrorism even exists, I guess many folks internalize this denial.

It's also factual to say that conservative media outlets and organizations have some responsibility for the massacre. Dylann Roof adopted racist views after reading the website of the Council of Conservative Citizens - a group that itself has had its leaders appear at Tea Party events. Right-wing pundit Megyn Kelly has tried to make excuses for police misconduct that took place recently in McKinney, Texas. Statements by Kelly and other right-wing talking heads fuel viewers' racism.

In the eyes of many Americans, right-wing elitism and propertarianism are increasingly untenable. But conservative elites - who falsely claim to represent the public - have doubled down more and more lately. It is a recipe for guaranteed disaster.

Some won't call it terrorism. But I will.

Tea Party sewer board robs cities to bail out luxury housing

Sanitation District 1 - which governs northern Kentucky's sewer system - was long a target of Tea Party wrath. That is, until Tea Party leaders ordered county officials to appoint them to SD1's board, and county officials eagerly obliged.

Lately, urban areas like Covington and Newport have passed resolutions urging SD1 to bring back a program that fixed broken sewer lines and relieved homeowners and residents of costly repairs. But Tea Party supporters on SD1's board not only refused to reinstate the program but also raided $4 million from SD1 reserves so it can be used on future luxury housing as far away as Richwood and Hebron.

It was luxury subdivisions that overloaded the region's sewers in the first place. What's more is that customers whose sewer lines are breaking are being forced to pay for this new expense!

City officials are furious!

This story is further proof that when the Tea Party claims to be for fiscal restraint, you can't trust them. Team Tyranny has a history of raiding public coffers for pet projects - even while claiming to support limiting spending.

(Source: http://www.rcnky.com/articles/2015/06/17/river-city-leaders-upset-sd1-boards-budget-decisions)

Have no fear, the June ish is here (finally)!

Finally!

After a couple weeks of being bogged down by various important errands, the June issue of The Last Word is finally pub!

You're gonna love this ish, because it talks about the many hilarious things that cool people think are hilarious. There's also a couple minor pee and poo stories, as usual.

So read The Last Word now before The Last Word reads you...

https://www.scribd.com/doc/268867241/The-Last-Word-6-2015

3 injured in Alexandria drive-bys

"Butbutbutbutbutbutbutbut...southern Campbell County doesn't have drive-bys! Stop overreacting! Be thankful you don't live in Seattle in 1974 like Kenny G!"

What happens when it's finally confirmed that Tim Brown was right and everyone else was wrong?

The area from roughly Highland Heights to Alexandria is the one part of greater Cincinnati that I'm actually scared to visit. It's been years since I've been scared of Over-the-Rhine or West End, but I won't go very far out in Campbell County without carrying a huge rock. This fear was confirmed last night by a series of 3 drive-by shootings in Alexandria.

Two men on motorcycles were hit by someone shooting them with a pellet gun from a moving vehicle. A juvenile male in a parking lot was also hit. All 3 victims were hospitalized.

The River Cities News website and Channel 9 have covered this story, but as far as I can tell, the rest of the local media has completely ignored it. Most of the press doesn't want people to think the right-wing suburbs aren't some sort of utopia.

It's unknown whether the assailants in this story were adults or juveniles. I bet it's Bishop Brossart kids again.

(Source: http://rcnky.com/articles/2015/06/14/3-sent-hospital-after-drive-pellet-gun-attack-campbell-co)

1% whines over having to save water like everyone else

When the Cincinnati media speaks of a "drought", you can rest assured it's not like what other areas would call a drought. In California, for instance, a drought is a drought.

Recently, California officials ordered folks to reduce water usage by 25% to fight the drought there. But some people in the wealthy San Diego suburb of Rancho Santa Fe think rules are just for the little people. After the water conservation order was issued, water usage in Rancho Santa Fe actually increased by 9%.

Rancho Santa Fe's affluent residents began deliberately wasting water just because they were told to conserve it. One resident groaned on the Internet that he and his neighbors "should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful." But shouldn't everyone share the burden of reducing water usage, regardless of their personal opulence? "No, we're not equal when it comes to water," he went on to say. Another resident sniffed, "What are we supposed to do, just have dirt around our house on 4 acres?"

Yes, they really said that.

Even before the order, Rancho Santa Fe - which is full of country clubs and gated neighborhoods - used 5 times as much water per person as the statewide average.

Because of locals wasting water, Rancho Santa Fe is now forced to enact water rationing - for the first time ever.

Wealthy crybabies are also shooting their mouths off in other rich California suburbs. A resident of another rich community cried, "I call it the war on suburbia." Well, I call suburbia a war on America. So tough toilets.

Laugh it up all you want, but the rhetoric about the "war on suburbia" has already wriggled its way into the Far Right's lexicon. If you read any article online about any issue of public interest, you'll notice the comment page is full of diatribes by paid trolls about how rough it is to be a rich suburbanite.

The 1% is all about taking entitlement to new levels.

(Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/rich-californians-youll-have-to-pry-the-hoses-from-our-cold-dead-hands/2015/06/13/fac6f998-0e39-11e5-9726-49d6fa26a8c6_story.html)

Bevin broke state ethics laws

Republican gubernatorial candidate Matt Bevin is already facing what seems to be his first new scandal since winning the primary.

Bevin - a Tea Party favorite - failed to disclose his positions with Bevin Bros. Manufacturing and Academic Merit on his financial disclosure statement. In doing so, he violated Kentucky ethics laws.

It's not a possible ethics violation as the media seems fond of reporting. It's a certain ethics violation. The statement of financial disclosure requires candidates to reveal these positions. Period.

Imagine if you can if a Democrat - even a mediocre one - had committed a violation like this. That would be the end of their candidacy. But rules don't always seem to apply to Republicans - especially Tea Party blunderkinds like Matt Bevin.

(Source: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/06/11/3896171_bevin-didnt-disclose-positions.html)

When fascists move to your area

I said it months ago: I was going to do more to expose individual right-wing loudmouths who clutter Facebook and other websites with their garbage. I exposed a few at the time, and now I've encountered another. This is how they treat us, so I fight back. Fair is fair.

And (as they say on the news) she's right here in the Tri-State!

The person I'm talking about is one Melissa Mcintosh who claims on her Facebook profile to be from St. Augustine, Florida, but lives in Florence, Kentucky. That's a common name, so we have to make sure we have the right one.

Why do we let right-wing extremists move from other areas into our area? It's bad enough that we have some who are homegrown. Is there something around here that attracts them from out of town? Florence is relatively far from some of the local trouble spots that always come to mind, so I'm not sure what the lure is.

Extreme right-wingers have no place in the Tri-State - unless extreme right-wingers are what most of us around here already are, which I doubt. The area is still pretty conservative, yet it's too liberal for the sorry excuse for a person who is the topic of this entry - so she can't adjust, and she lashes out. Her face would explode if she actually had to adjust to a genuinely liberal city.

She needs to go let it explode somewhere else. Not in our community.

Tim fights the Tea Party with maps!

I told you right after the Madison roadmeet that I was going to step up my campaign against the Far Right in a whole new way. There had to have been somebody somewhere who didn't believe me, but now their faces are caked Soupy Sales-like with humble pie. It's like I said: Don't call my bluff when I'm not bluffing.

Key among my innovative new efforts is mapping the local Tea Party presence - literally. This project moved slowly in May, because some of the data was unwieldy. But I found a data source that's much easier to use and much more up to date, so now things are cookin'!

The first item in this series is a map of Campbell County showing Tea Party power and support. This is measured by several different factors. The pink shaded areas have a higher Tea Party presence, and the darker the shade, the worse it gets...

http://www.bunkerblast.info/maps/rmcampbell.png

If it's any constipation, the worse areas usually have fewer people. Plus, Tea Party blight in Campbell County is nothing compared to Boone County these days. My preliminary observation is that parts of Boone County will be even darker pink than anything in Campbell County.

Why do I bring you this data? Because knowledge is power! If you're smart, you know what to do with this data. The Tea Party has to know we mean biz, and we can't be bullied. I think they know I can't, but can you?

Tougher intimidation laws needed

America has broad protections for offensive and even blasphemous speech - as it should. The Constitution quite rightly does not give us freedom from insult. This fine land also has wide safeguards for the right to bear arms - as it should. Weakening the First Amendment - or the Second - should be off the table forever.

But since when is it constitutionally protected to intimidate someone on the basis of their religion or ethnicity? When speech and actions cross the line into outright threats, how is it not a criminal matter?

As right-wing hatemonger Pamela Geller has stepped up her campaign against Muslims, it's gotten out of control in Phoenix, Arizona. Last week, a group of bikers held a rally against the Islamic Community Center in Phoenix. Two gunmen who attacked a Geller appearance in Texas had attended this mosque, but there's no evidence the mosque supported violence like this. Conducting a protest against the Islamic Community Center over that attack would be like if I had held a protest against a local church because a classmate who went to mass there assaulted me.

The more important point is this: The bikers were armed and appeared right outside the mosque at the same time the mosque was having worship services. If any of these conditions weren't met, they'd probably be in the clear legally, even though I disagreed with what they said. But they managed to select a precise combination of circumstances that was designed to openly threaten the mosque.

Some states have specific laws on religious and ethnic intimidation. If Arizona has such a law, how does this not violate it? It's hard to see how the event wouldn't put people in fear of actual injury. I think that was the intent of the event.

Make no mistake: If the Texas gunmen had survived, they should have been punished. But their actions do not excuse legislators and prosecutors who are soft at fighting against religious intimidation. There is no constitutional prohibition against toughening the intimidation laws. Indeed, America is obligated to pass and enforce laws against religious intimidation under international human rights law. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights obligates the United States to act. For America to act is mandatory - not voluntary.

Why should we value the "rights" of violent bigots like the bikers in this story over the rights of those who are threatened by them? Religious intimidation is actually a form of censorship. It threatens its victims into silence.

Insult and offense go with the territory in our constitutional system. Intimidation and violence should not.