Pain

It absolutely wrenches me that people can hate others because of their skin color.

Believe me, most people are the same -- loves and fears, anger and hope. I can't stand the idea that my friends with dark skin have been scorned, abused and pushed aside because they are dark brown. Most of them are such kind, decent people. I don't understand the wanton evil that is racism.

I still remember the first time someone ever voiced a racist idea to me. It was summer, and I was headed for fifth grade. We were going to have swimming lessons. I walked to the bus stop for the kids from our area. When I got on the bus, there was one kid in every seat, so I went back and sat with the girl with the nicest smile. She was great -- friendly and intelligent.

When we returned to the bus stop that day and got off to walk home, a boy asked me how I could stand to sit with her. I was just stupefied. I said "What is wrong with you? You are Jewish. She is Negro. But nice people are nice people." I suppose I was especially dumbfounded because almost all kids of the 1950's were aware of the anti-Semitism that was played out by Hitler. I just could not get that people felt that way about any group as a group.

Of course, I also think that people who hate blacks also tend to hate women. Racism and sexism seem to go together. Me, I hope Obama chooses Hillary so that the haters have to spread their attention, and so that they feel that they will be no better off if they play out their hatreds.

Little Stuff

I spent some time thinking about politics, and there are only a couple of leetle things that keep me from being wholeheartedly libertarian.

The first, and likely foremost of those is this: if libertarians would abolish the personhood of corporations and require personal, individual responsibility for corporate acts, perhaps I'd be more of a libertarian.

You see, escaping from consequences by hiding behind a corporate shield is anathema to me. Corporations kill people with impunity. There's no death sentence for them, even when they act with malice.

There are enough little flaws in a libertarian system that I could write a book. Augh! Mimus! See what you've done?

[crosspost @ The Medley]

Good

Barack Obama is being given Secret Service protection this week. I am glad that someone is being realistic.

I have heard many people remark that he would be a good president if he survives to hold office. The way people say this makes one understand just how many people fear that racists are plotting evil based on the color of someone's skin. It's an ugly reality.

Me, I'd like to see him survive, so I am glad he will have guards.

Molly Ivins

One of the most courageous columnists in the United States is gone. Molly Ivins spoke up about George Bush while most media denizens were slobbering all over his posturing posterior.

I will certainly miss her clear vision and straight talk. We could do worse than to follow the advice in her last column.

Enumerated Rights

It's just amazing how Mr. Bush seems to find appointees who never took basic US History as taught in high schools all over this nation. Take Mr. Gonzales, for example. Last Thursday, while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he stated that there was no right to Habeas Corpus in the Constitution.

AUGH!

It is for people like him that the states demanded a Bill of Rights when the Constitution was written -- just in case anyone dared to say that certain rights did not belong to the people. Amazing -- it's as if the colonials foresaw the pack of scoundrels appointed by Bush as a real possibility. The Bill of Rights belongs to that group of Constitutional items known as "enumerated rights" -- those written out explicitly so that no one could claim that they were *not* rights. I wish someone would tattoo that on Mr Gonzales's boy parts so he could hold onto principle with some regularity.

The Bush administration has many partisans and followers who are chewing away at the enumerated rights, and pretending that rights not assigned belong to them rather than to the people -- which is, of course, the thing that the Ninth Amendment forbids. Chewing away at the Ninth Amendment is one of their most common recreations. Most of them have enough room for a tattoo of the Ninth Amendment. It gives all rights to the people, or to the states, that are *not* enumerated rights.

Mr. Gonzales is condemned out of his own mouth, because if something is not in the Constitution, by its absence it is in the Ninth Amendment. This is the Catch-22 for Liberty and Individual Rights. Bless the paranoia of the colonials. A bas Abu Gonzales.