It's The End Of The World As We Know It

And now, for the end of the world as some folks know it, we have a Supreme Court ruling that the Christian icon, the statue of the ten commandments at the state capital building in Oklahoma, must come down. There have been previous rulings in lower courts that the statue could stay, but only if joined by Baphomet. Since nasty and selfish religious folk in Oklahoma persisted in blocking this, it became evident that coming into compliance with the law is beyond certain individuals there, so we now have a ruling from the Supreme Court to remove all religious debris from government property.

This blogger would have preferred that the statue of Baphomet sit alongside the other statue, but that would have augured the end of the world as some folks see it.

Religious Freedom And Business As Usual

What's all this pomp and circumstance about Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act? It's all nothing special, just a renewed opportunity for the good, christian people of America, the Midwest in particular, to act with hatred and disdain for their neighbors. After all, what better of a way can there be to make a person whose ethnic background, language, religion, sexual orientation, or perceived disability feel badly about himself than to wait until he orders a pizza, books a wedding, requests medical care, or enrolls in school, than to begin the transaction or service, only to suddenly cease, pulling the rug out from under him, with the announcement that fulfillment of the contract or delivery of the service would, in the case of said client or customer, be abhorrant to God, and therefore not feasible, in any way. If a child is disappointed to the extent of tears, or on the verge of a dangerously high fever, so much the better. Harm to an unbeliever is an enormously effective manner of making the point that "we do not serve your kind in our establishmment", isn't it, dear christians?

Well, you know something, Jesus Freaks? The Satanic Temple of Detroit has an answer for you; it's called Discrimination Transparency. In order for the non-christian world to determine, at a glance, which establishments are in business to make money, rather than to make others unhappy, a petition has been circulated and signed, and will be presented to the representatives of the involved locales, to request that a rider be written into the RFRA laws, requiring businesses which choose to discriminate to warn the population at large, so as to avoid humiliating the targets of christian hate and wasting their time in fruitless endeavors. Anyone who will not serve a member of an ethnic group Jesus does not like will be required to warn everyone by placing a sign on the door or somewhere visible from  outside the establishment, stating the discriminatory intentions. The same will go for any business  intending to marginalize customers and clients who attend the "wrong" church, speak a language  that is unfamiliar, or are sexually oriented in  ways that are useless in basic, old fashioned, christian adultery. People who do not wish to patronize bigots will be able to make educated choices about where to spend their money.

A prototype of the required sign has also been graciously provided, as well. It is pictured below.

Disclaimer: It is understood by the writer that not all christians interpret religious and spiritual teachings as inclusive of hatred and bigotry. This post is only meant to describe those who have wrongly concluded that the world revolves around only themselves and their ilk.

The Last Turd In The Punch Bowl; Vermont Schools

Addison Rutland Supervisory Union, a Vermont school district, learned an important lesson last week about violating the civil rights of parents. A $147,000 lesson, to be exact. The school thought that a teacher who whined and complained about a concerned father was more important than the community, which included the father, so they barred him from attending any meetings about his child or any functions. They cited teacher fear as the reason, and the behavior they listed was simply the father's normal speaking voice, which apparently was not musically sweet enough for them, and his failure to achieve agreement with whatever silly-assed thingies had become all encompassing to the teachers and the school at the time. This is what a lot of public schools do when they perceive turds is their punch bowls......or, "koolaide" bowls, as the case may be!

A federal judge, on the other hand, determined that the school district was, (drum roll) wrong, and that the school had discriminated against Marcel Cyr. He was NOT required to belong to a protected minority, either; his rights as a member of the community and as a parent had been violated. His position as a parent was determined to be more important than a teachers desire for guaranteed and continued parental agreement. Since the ruling came from  federal judge, this is a bummer for public school teachers everywhere, not just in Vermont!

There was a principal in Northeast Kansas who tried something similar when a parent disagreed with one of his teachers. The parent, a mother this time, found herself in a state of disagreement with a teacher who dropped a female high school freshman off by herself on a highway and left her there; the only occupied house being the dwelling of a sex offender. When the parent discovered the latter, she dropped by the school to ask what protections are afforded children in the presence of sex offenders. She took a copy of the pertinent Kansas sex offender registry page with her. The principal, upon looking at the information, crumpled it, tossed it, and told her that the man was not really an offender! Seriously? The parent had only lived there for about a year, not long enough to peruse the criminal cases of individuals she had not even met, so she felt obliged to take the word of a Kansas jury or the plea of the defendant, himself, as the actual upshot, here. The principal ended his rant by leaning over the counter in the office, index finger extended, nearly taking a slice out of the mother's right eye! Not only did she disagree on many levels, she called the police.

Mr. Northeast Kansas principal ( also called Dean Dalinghaus) got a visit from an officer, who not only wanted to know why he had been so violent, but wanted to know what children were doing, unsupervised, so close to sex offenders and why a child had been lost for the better part of a day with no missing persons report. A whole slew of unanswered questions about school policy ensued, and it was perceived that there may be a "turd in the punch bowl". Since the koolaide previously served by the school to the community involved the lie that there was never any crime, nor any potential for the same, and no dangers that are not necessarily to crime: implementation of child safety standards used by the rest of the nation would never work out in this part of Kansas. So the mother was banned from school. But guess what? The principal's boss decided otherwise, he made the principal apologize! He not only cleaned out the punch bowl of the real turd, rather than the perceived turd, but he also dumped out as much of the koolaide as the local school board would allow. From the looks of things, he may have also saved USD 380 $147,000!

The superintendent of the school district in Vermont decided that if he could not discriminate against dissenting parents anymore, he would just have to take more money away from the children and education to hire an off-duty police officer to stand guard at meetings and other school events. Not only did he throw away the award of the lawsuit, he is willing to continue to throw away childrens' education dollars, over pettiness and perceived turds in the punch bowl.

In Case You Missed Church This Sunday

How very interesting. A pastor in Beebe, Arkansas got a permit to open his church, and then is told to close it because his god is not the god of his alderman, whose help the church has sought. As long as the city thought the church would be Christian, no one had a problem, but the minute the city discovered the church is Pagan, the unlawful discrimination and bigotry as usual started. The battle cry is that the church is not "zoned properly". But then, the church was "zoned properly" for Christianity....just not for any other religion. That's okay; now that the story has aired on KARK, there may be assistance from other Pagans who can help Beebe in it's quest for the Old Religion.

As for the alderman's "god" being the same as a Pagan god or goddess, of course it isn't.

Frankfort School's Deranged Priorities, Once Again

A couple of nights ago, I spoke with a child who attends Frankfort School, in Frankfort, Kansas. This is not unusual, since the (ahem cough cough ahem) school, and I do use the term loosely, here; is in the district that includes my residence. What is unusual is the fact that this child had heard bits and pieces of information by way of character assassination of an innocent man, along with some serious misinformation about his family, yet had heard nothing at all about the spouse of a teacher at the same school who is currently in federal prison; Carswell, in Texas, to be exact; for embezzling truckloads of money from her previous employers! I was stunned, because according to some of the older students, this woman had been allowed in and out of the school building regularly to see her husband, despite the dangers involved in allowing convicted felons access to schools and children, yet no notices explaining this decision had been sent to parents in order to enable qualified decisions about student safety and the children who knew about this had been told to "keep quiet" about the whole thing, in order to "preserve" the widdle feelins' of the thief's spouse!

This is a crock for several reasons. First of all, lies, false testimony, and confidential information has been spewed almost everywhere at Frankfort School about yours truly and family. My culture, family, and religion have also been denigrated by teachers and administration there, to the extent that all six of my children have come home in tears, partly because of the bullying efforts of the children of the aforementioned thief. Despite my complaints about all of it, and my requests that it stop, no one "working" at the school had any concerns about my feelings, or the feelings of my children. Why would the feelings of someone who "feels" that state and federal law only applies when convenient, or to other people, be more important than the feelings of law abiding citizens? Secondly, most schools do not employ federal criminals or their spouses. There are simply too many risks and problems connected to such individuals. Everything from a defendant possibly becoming a fugitive, or becoming perceived as a fugitive by authorities, to retaliation of unhappy victims can create an unsafe environment for others, and a convicted felon has lost the right to vote, and many of the other rights of citizenship, so the felon and those who protect the felon generally do not have as much to lose in terms of future opportunities as the rest of us. Parents have a right to know this is going on at Frankfort School, and the administration of Frankfort School has apparently denied that knowledge to parents. Third, it seems entirely possible, at this point, that the faculty at Frankfort School has an unrecognized, but very real, interest in covering up any dangers presented by criminal behavior on the parts of their "own". They work hard to turn everyone against anyone whose lifestyle, race, or religion is not the product of Frankfort Kansas unvaried genetic pool in order to smokescreen and hide their own crimes. All to keep their white elephant of a school open so that a few teachers and secretaries can collect unearned salaries until they retire. Perhaps Frankfort School should become a private school, so that no one's taxes are drawn upon to support this crap, and so that parents who love their children can send their children to a real school.

Just as there is no valid reason to harass the innocent, there is no valid reason to protect the guilty.

Michelle Obama Will Speak In Topeka

How lucky can this year's graduates of Kansas Unified School District 501 get? Michelle Obama will speak at their graduation! Usually, Topeka's high schools have their own graduations, but this year, there will be a joint ceremony for them on May 17. Michelle Obama will speak in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. the Board of Education in Topeka, the landmark court decision forcing schools in Kansas and the rest of the nation to stop racial segregation in schools and allow everyone to attend. 

Something all public school administrators and teachers in Kansas need to remember and discuss more efficiently with students is that the State of Kansas was in the wrong in that lawsuit. A black family decided to challenge the unlawful, racist lifestyle that made all those pink, fluffy, white Topekans very happy back in 1954 and challenge racial segregation in schools. No doubt, if Dean Dalinghaus, principal of Frankfort High School in Frankfort, Kansas had been the defendant, he would have told parents the same thing he told the parents of Frankfort High's valedictorian last year: "We do not encourage the children to learn very much about the Constitution because it's easier to run the school smoothly without teaching it". Yes, a public school principal in Kansas said that, as recently as last year. The comment was made by a pink, blue-eyed, bald, white high school principal, who encourages children to bully any child with a disability, and any child whose parents do not identify with mainstream christian whiteness as enjoined in the Midwest. 

Kansas has resisted a lot of the equality and progress enjoyed by other schools since Brown v. the Board of Education by refusing to consolidate it's public schools and make them all answerable to the State of Kansas, rather than to tiny school boards in "unified districts". The unified districts do not have to follow any state laws, and thumb their noses at federal laws as often as they can get away with it. If schools disbanded the unified districts and consolidated, they would be more organized, and students in Frankfort would have the same opportunities to take drama or a foreign language as students in Topeka. Children who are good writers could take honors English, which is not offered in many smaller Northeast Kansas high schools, instead of being blackballed as "dangerous" for writing  petitions and going door to door for signatures. (Marysville High School, in Kansas, after a student wrote a petition asking for a more challenging curriculum)

Kansas also needs to remember how very welcome Westboro Baptist Church has been over the years, conducting their picketing campaign. Many native Kansans do not think they have anything in common with Westboro Baptist Church, but other christian churches, in Kansas are almost identical, only lacking the publicity enjoyed by Westboro. New Hope Baptist Church in Seneca, Kansas, teaches that law enforcement should shoot anyone who identifies as gay. Teenage church members then attend local public schools and bully any gay child, with Reverend Curtis Knapp's blessing. Also, while discussing discrimination in Kansas, we must not forget that Republican congresspeople in Kansas recently wasted everyone's time passing House Bill 2453, a pathetic attempt to legalize unlawful discrimination. The Senate took one look at it and tossed it in the circular file, but if it had passed, it would have given businesses, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies the right to refuse service to anyone perceived as "different" in some way....using faith and adherence to the christian religion as the basis for the discrimination. A skin complexion or religion seeming somehow "unbiblical" to a Kansas emergency room nurse could grant her the right to turn away a sick child. A pharmacist could refuse to fill the sick child's prescription for antibiotics because the bible says to hate certain minorities. Schools would have the right to turn gay students, black students, and any other student failing to be pink, fluffy, white, and conformist away. So much for Brown v. the Board of Education in Topeka. Kansas is still looking for ways to break the law and stay as vile and prejudiced as it was in 1954.

I wonder what Michelle Obama is going to say....... 

Kansas Representatives Do Not Deserve To Be Thanked

As an addendum to last week's embarrassment by the Kansas legislature's attempt to send a bill to the Senate, legalizing unconstitutional and unlawful discrimination against minorities by business owners and government agencies, a nonsensical organization called the Kansas Family Council, based in Wichita, have decided to rub our noses in the stench of our moronic legislators' voting habits, rather than letting the matter ease it's way into the past. The Kansas Family Council has targeted those of us whose representatives voted in favor of Kansas House Bill 2453 for automated and candid phone calls, completely unsolicited, to thank our morons in Congress for their dereliction! Unfortunately, the district which included yours truly, is in a position to receive such phone calls, as Sharon Schwartz, who represents this district, voted in favor of "We Don't Serve Your Kind", or House Bill 2453.

Kansas Family Council is a non-profit group that publishes unconstitutional propaganda encouraging human beings to act in hate and contempt toward one another. They state that church and state should not be separate, schools should favor the Christian religion and force it on all children, and that all who are not Christian should be marginalized in Kansas and deprived of rights. Kansas Family Council even pushes it's way into adoption matters, putting the process of adoption in Kansas in danger of violating laws designed to outlaw human trafficking. The Senate in Kansas has already declared HB 2453 dead on arrival, should it arrive. It not only offends many people, it conflicts with federal law. There's no reason to enact legislation that conflicts with federal law, and leaves government agencies open to lawsuits. Why does the Kansas Family Council want to keep stoking up this insanity?

The best thank-you to a representative who voices a desire to label and mistreat Americans and plunge this country backwards in time to a day when civil rights were not afforded to all citizens equally is to spare the prejudiced lawmaker one's vote.

Mike Pompeo Preparing To Strike Again

Oh boy.....oh joy. Mike Pompeo, the proud republican proponent of lots of crazily worded legislation supporting fracking in Kansas, is running for Congress again in Wichita. This time his catch phrase has to do with Congress reducing the amount of "spending" two years in a row, and how that hasn't happened since WWII, and how it wouldn't happen if Nancy Pelosi were still Speaker of the House. He says he wants to "restore the American Dream". (where's the eye-rolley when I need it?)

Mike Pompeo's contributions to restoration of the "American Dream" really support the dreams of a couple of businessmen in the top financial one percent, namely, the Koch Brothers, rather than any dream that might be conjured by a mainstream American. He also fails to explain exactly what he means by "reduction of spending" by Congress for the first time in two years. If he means that Congress is failing to pay it's bills, or spend on education, or spend on the well-being of our military personnel, then failing to spend is actually counter productive, and will cost the American population a lot more in the long run. Refusal to make the proper investments in the middle class, or in what was once the middle class, is not a viable method of restoring the elusive American Dream. The Koch Brothers and their ilk actually don't need a thriving middle class anymore, but are threatened by it. Education reveals answers, and knowledgeable conclusions demand critical thinking. Unfortunately for the energy industry, answers and critical thinking have the potential to end the profitability of the oil industry, and interfere with the dreams of the Koch Brothers. Their Dream is not the American Dream, and runs contrary to the American Dream. They want to control almost all of the resources and money, while Americans only have the choice of working and living for them. And they have effectively bought and paid for the services of Mike Pompeo in Congress to protect their rape of Kansas.

The American Dream, such as it is or was, never truly existed. Before the partial repeal of the Banking Act of 1933, the American middle class was deemed a worthy investment by elected leaders and by the entrepreneurs among the population. Women, African Americans, and other minorities; however, experienced enough discrimination to effectively prohibit them from participating in the game, and when over fifty percent of all segments of a population is prohibited from playing, the game is tightly controlled. When we stopped discriminating against minorities and allowed a bigger volume of players in the game of American Dream, we changed the rules of the industries that control all the money. Those industries became internationally "too big to fail", and when they actually do fail, there is no remedy. Now, there are not anywhere near as many investments made in the population in general, and the American people suffer as a result. If Mike Pompeo truly wanted to restore the American Dream, he might enjoin a statewide or national discussion of banking laws from the end of the Great Depression until Today, and examine and reveal the support of his major campaign contributors, especially the Koch Brothers, to changes in banking law that have made the American Dream inaccessible to many Americans. Mike Pompeo uses smoke and mirrors instead of honest discussion. Refusal to invest in the middle class will not restore the American Dream.

Kris Kobach Cries The Blues

Last week, Sarah Kessinger, of the Marysville Advocate, wrote this editorial about our renowned Kansas Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, and his contributions to Arizona SB1070, which was signed into law by Governer Jan Brewer in 2010 in an ongoing effort to keep Arizona white. It is disguised as a law to curtail illegal immigration, but it assumes that all illegal immigrants are of darker skin complexion than the average Northern European and required that police officers everywhere in Arizona stop and harass anyone with dark skin or dark hair and demand to see a birth certificate or a passport. This law also sought to restrict voting. The problem in enacting this law had to do with the concept of "probable cause". Anyone whose descent happened to be African, Indian, Asian, Mediterranean, Native American, Middle Eastern, or Latin was naturally suspect. Because so many problems were created by the application of this law and the Kobachian hate with which it is associated, quite a bit of it either has been repealed, or is being repealed. Sarah Kessinger simply stated that Kris Kobach's work appears consistently to contain a racist and oppressive slant, intimidating legitimate voters. She certainly is not the only American to point that out.

In his rebuttal to Sarah's editorial, Kris Kobach denies his contributions to Arizona SB1070 and throws out obscure references to Arizona citizenship laws enacted in 2004, which are not the subject of this editorial. He also confuses the issue by complaining about the editorial's statement that Kris Kobach helped to "convince" lawmakers and the Governor in Arizona to "pass laws" by claiming that no one was actually "convinced" because not all of his ideas were passed into law! Seriously, Kobach? Arizona SB1070 most certainly DID get passed; the ACLU would never have involved itself if it didn't!

Another point Sarah Kessinger ponders in her editorial, which has been pondered before by one or two Kansans, is this: how does Kris Kobach have so much time, while doing the job of Secretary of State here in Kansas, to hire out as a legislative word twister for any state in this country wanting to bring back the days before the Civil Rights Act of 1964?  It seems in many ways to be a conflict of interest for someone in Kobach's position to be more concerned about side interests than the postion to which he is elected. Is representing Kansas simply not lucrative enough for him?
 

Is Anyone Else Offended By This?

I saw this story on Yahoo today. Along with the picture. I thought it was a picture from the 1950's, and wondered why the color of the photo looks so modern. Then I read the rest of the story; specifically; that the picture is actually from May of 2011, in Cincinnati, Ohio! It seems that Jamie Hein, the owner of an apartment complex in Cincinnati, discovered that one Black teenager was visiting family in one of the apartments over the summer, so she found an old sign, dating from 1931, and put it up at the pool! Her explanation for this was that she didn't want hair products to "make the water cloudy". Because of all of the hair products, soaps, and sunblock used by almost everyone, I must raise the BS flag here. She is also being sued by the girl's family. Not only is discrimination against federal law, but in Ohio, this violates the Ohio Civil Rights Act.

Quoting the above article, "Hein's attorney, who informed the commission by email Wednesday that Hein would not attend the hearing, did not return phone and email messages Wednesday and Thursday from The Associated Press. A recording on Thursday said Hein's voicemail was full and could not accept messages.

"I was trying to protect my assets," she told the commission's housing enforcement director in a Sept. 27 interview."...........That is truly outrageous; "protecting her assets". Now that Jamie Hein has a lawsuit pending against her, I wonder if she feels she did an adequate job of "protecting her assets"?

Maybe next summer, she will post a sign that says "No Hair Products", or the pool standard, "Shower Before Entering Pool".

Karen Spillman Vs. Banana Man

This is a GREAT story! A high school student, with lots of intelligence and a brilliant future, but also diagnosed with autism, (one wouldn't know it from his dialogue with news reporters, though) decides to don a Banana Man costume and run down the sidelines of his Stafford, Virginia high school during half time at a football game. An angry, heavy handed, authoritarian principal, Karen Spillman, gets on her high horse and suspends him for ten days! The average suspension for a fistfight in schools on the East Coast is three days....but I guess something as victimless as running in the sidelines in a costume is much more serious...........where's the eye-rolley when I need it?

Ok....making a long story short: the other children at Bryan Thompson's school thought this was assinine and completely wrong. So a large number of them got "Free Banana Man" shirts made, and wore them to school. But Free Banana Man is a terrible message for a young person to wear on a shirt, so these shirts were also banned, along with Banana Man. Enter the ACLU. The Free Banana Man shirts were reinstated as school appropriate apparel. But poor Mrs. Spillman just couldn't take any more. So she resigned. And Banana Man is back, his suspension cut short, because the heavyhandedness was finally deemed not fit for the situation. Here's the statement made by the superintendent:

"My staff, under my direction, has reviewed the recent actions at Colonial Forge High School relating to the wearing of yellow tee shirts and other activities in support of a student who had been recently disciplined. We have concluded that many of the actions that were taken by the school were inappropriate. We are sorry for any embarrassment or inconvenience incurred by the students who were appropriately exercising their freedom of speech and by the families of those students. This administration and the School Board fully support the First Amendment rights of our students."

And here's Bryan Thompson, in his unforgettable Banana Man get-up...

Just reading that a child diagnosed with autism has the self confidence and fun-loving sponteneity required to be such a great class clown is encouraging. Shame on Karen Spillman and anyone who supported her in her unkind, unteaching decision to punish this child for his commendable social skills. (yes; class clowning is a social skill) Anxiety often goes hand in hand with the different forms of autism, and Karen Spillman decided to compound this by calling the police and having this child handcuffed and thrown into a squad car after he did NOT commit a crime. This was reprehensible of her. I am so glad that none of those children have to see her every day, anymore.