Immigration, Cabbages, and Kings

El Almost Mexicano Mitt Romney Attacks Plan to Withdraw from Afghanistan

2012-02-02T12:36:00.001-07:00

Almost Mexican Mitt Romney strongly criticized President Obama's plan to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan. Romney called it "misguided" and "naive."

It is misguided to send our troops home. They are poor. I am not concerned about the poor. If they were rich like me, if their daddies were rich like me, they would not be fighting in a war.Rich people do not fight in wars. Rich people are doing well. It is naive to think that poor people matter in the grand scheme of things. Hey, I am unemployed and fearing a pink slip any moment so give me a darn break, will you, heck! Wanna make a small wager of, say, $10,000 on the Superbowl?

I am not sure if he really said that, but my almost Mexican curandero, Omar de la Puchinski, assures me that is what he saw in his latest tea leaf reading. Maybe Omar was smoking the leaves but what the hey.

Omar is available for readings, healings, quinceañeras, bar mitzvahs, pay day loans, and lock picking seven days a week.

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Cowardly Shenandoah Killers Seek Appeal

2012-01-15T14:21:00.004-07:00

Pic by Nick Meyer/Republican Herald
Piekarsky(left) and Donchak

The lawyers for convicted killers Brandon Piekarsky and Derrick Donchak are requesting an appeal of their clients' convictions.

Fetterhoff and Swetz alleged in their briefs to the 3rd Circuit that the federal trial violated their clients' right to be protected from double jeopardy - being tried twice for the same crime. Other errors alleged are that Senior U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo erred in interpreting the federal Fair Housing Act, the law under which Donchak and Piekarsky were convicted; in deciding that Ramirez's death was voluntary manslaughter instead of involuntary manslaughter; in barring any reference to the differences among race, ethnicity, national origin, alienage or immigration status; and in restricting cross-examination of prosecution witness Eileen Burke.

The killers of Luis Ramirez were sentenced to nine years in federal prison by Senior U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo after the pair were convicted in a federal trial in February of 2011. They were acquitted in 2010 of serious charges in state court by an all-white jury in their hometown of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania.

I wonder why they could not appeal to their vestigial sense of decency and humanity and not stomp on the head of a man who they had already beat unconscious with the help of four other drunken teens.

They now seek empathy from the judicial system while they displayed no empathy for Luis Ramirez.

LINKS:

Lawyers argue for new trial for Shenandoah men convicted of hate crime

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New Americans in the USA

2012-01-15T10:59:00.001-07:00

Click on post to enlarge

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On the eleventh day of Christmas: Spongebob?

2011-12-25T00:04:00.002-07:00

I send more time with my intelligent, precocious 7 year-old son than I do any other person on Earth since I home school him due to his incompatibility with the behavior modification of the public school system. This is his favorite Christmas song. Obviously, we influence each other, so I offer this as the eleventh song on the eleventh day of Christmas.

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On the tenth day of Christmas: Otis Redding, Merry Christmas Baby

2011-12-24T23:56:00.000-07:00

Otis Redding wraps a raspy sound around each note in his unique style that cannot be copied. For the tenth day of Christmas I offer to you the gift of this tenth song, his cover of "Merry Christmas Baby."

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On the ninth day of Christmas: Tom Waits,Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis

2011-12-24T23:49:00.000-07:00

Back in the 70s when I was a man-child trying to find myself on the wrong paths of Chicago, I loved listening to the non-linear work of Tom Waits. There are some younger folks who may know Waits mainly as the person who wrote the theme song "Way Down in the Hole" for the HBO cult hit "The Wire." Here Waits sings a different type of Christmas song for a live audience. I offer up this nontraditional song as the ninth Christmas song.

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On the eigth day of Christmas: Stevie Wonder, Some Day at Christmas

2011-12-24T23:29:00.000-07:00

On the eight day of Christmas I offer you this eight song of Christmas-Stevie Wonder.

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On the seventh day of Christmas: The Drifters "White Christmas"

2011-12-24T23:17:00.000-07:00

On the seventh day of Christmas I offer this seventh song, the best version of "White Christmas" as sung by Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters.

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On the sixth day of Christmas: Harry Connick Jr.

2011-12-24T18:02:00.000-07:00

Harry Connick Jr. personifies coolness. I give to you, as the sixth song of Christmas this classic holiday tune, It's Beginning to Look Like Christmas, sung by Harry Connick Jr.

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On the fifth day of Christmas: Wynton Marsalis

2011-12-24T17:13:00.000-07:00

Christmas Eve and it is time to relax with a cup of hot tea and a sampling of the great Wynton Marsalis jammin'some Christmas jazz. Here is my offering for gift of 12 songs of Christmas.

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On the fourth day of Christmas: Celtic Women-O Holy Night

2011-12-24T17:03:00.000-07:00

On the fourth day of Christmas I give to you Celtic Women singing "O Holy Night." So good that I get goose bumps listening to it.

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On the third day of Christmas: Aaron Neville

2011-12-24T16:47:00.001-07:00

On the third day of Christmas I offered this selection from the incomparable Aaron Neville. He is the smoothest of singers. If I could sound like any singer, it would be like Aaron Neville. He sings this song with such smooth mastery that it should be against the law for any other singer(s) to even attempt to sing it.

Also check out:

Tell It Like It Is by Aaron Neville, one of the best songs of the 60's

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On the second day of Chirstmas: The Chairman of the Board

2011-12-14T23:06:00.000-07:00

Sinatra could have sang about car wax and made it sound great. At his peak, no one sounded better than the Chairman of the Board. I grew up in the age of rock but Sinatra has always been one of my favorites. I rarely listen anymore to Led Zeppelin, but I still find the time for an old Sinatra classic.

On the my 2nd day of Christmas (I work off the Mayan calendar mixed in with a wicked sun dial I found in a thrift store)I offer to anyone who cares: Frank Sinatra.

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On my 1st Day of Christmas: Elvis Unplugged

2011-12-13T22:26:00.001-07:00

When I was a kid growing up in Pilsen during the 60s and early 70s there was an Elvis look-alike who sold soft ice cream from an ice cream truck. His son would help him, and he too looked like Elvis. They were the Mexican Elvi.

Their obsidian hair was slicked back, like Elvis, with sweet smelling grease bottled for and sold to the cools.

I expected them to swing their hips and convulse their lips in a slow rock and roll rhythm while they gave me my change for the twenty five cent cone that quickly melted from the stagnant July heat.

How is that for one long sentence?

It is funny how the mind remembers things that have rested in lost crevices of one's memories for decades. I thought about the Ice Cream Elvi while watching this video tonight.I am not a devoted fan of Elvis, still, I think he was one heck of a cool cat. He was a great performer.

So, on the 1st day of Christmas (I know, I know, it begins on the 25th, but I make my own rules) I give you the gift of another Elvi, the singing Elvis.

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Jordan School District Employee Extorts Money From Mom Worried About Deportation

2011-09-13T20:26:00.007-06:00

Pic from Salt Lake County Jail Booking via slcmugshots.com

Pictured above is a woman, Sonia Orozco, who was arrested for extorting an undocumented woman for over $7.000. The victim feared that her sons, who were in the juvenile system, could be deported.

Orozco allegedly made claims that she had the power to prevent the victim's undocumented sons from deportation.

Orozco admitted to investigators that she used portions of her ill-begotten gains to purchase meth. From her booking photo, she looks like a meth head, but no one looks good in those pics. So how is one to know when one is a meth head?

The Jordan School District had no clue. Orozco is a long time employee for the inept school district who has employed the extortion queen since 2004. She has not been fired pending an "investigation" by the inept school district. Orozco has confessed to her crimes.

The Jordan School District. located in the southwest suburbs of Salt Lake City, hired Orozco as a $44,000 per year "gang paraprofessional." The Deseret News reports that the Jordan School District states that Orozco worked with Latino youth in the juvenile system and their families to help transfer them out of the gang lifestyle. It was how she came into contact with the victim.

First, she asked for $4,000 to stop any deportations proceedings for her two sons. The she wanted another $1,000 for paperwork. She jacked up the ante another $1,500 for an "evaluation." The victim then paid another $800 for visas that never arrived. It was then when the victim went to the police.

Orozco took advantage of the fears of a vulnerable mother. Orozco extorted the money from a poor mother living from pay check to pay check. Orozco used the monies to pay for her meth.

Perhaps Orozco was running from a life time of demons. Maybe that was why she chose to use meth. But Orozco has great health insurance that would pay for counseling and psychotropic drugs. Orozco had no excuse for her criminal actions.

Orozco had many options for help that are not available to people like her victim.

Orozco also has admitted her crime.

So why does the Jordan School District keep her on the payroll pending an investigation?

This is the same school district who terminated bus service that transported school children across dangerous intersections due to lack of funds. The woman has admitted extorting the money and using some of it for meth. Yet, she is still paid? Are there no drug tests?

She is a thieving meth head!

Orozco works for Student Intervention Services. Its director is Brett Wilson. I once called Wilson and requested information that is mandated by the government to be made easily available to the public. Wilson acted paranoid and wondered who I was. He at first questioned whether the information I requested was actually meant to be made available to the public. Then he disparaged the Civil Rights Division and how they required the compilation of the information I was inquiring about. Eventually, Wilson told me to look up the information on the internet and he hung up on me.

I was compiling evidence of the disparity of how the Jordan School District disciplines its minority students.

Other departments of the Jordan School District have illegally refused to respond to GRAMA requests I have made.

This is typical behavior for a school district that hires meth heads to intervene with gang members.

It is also a racist school district. That is another story. This story is about a meth head who used her position as a state employee to extort money from a vulnerable woman. This is a story of an inept, racist school district who failed to recognize that one of their employees was an out of control drug addict who was ripping off the parents of their students to support her illegal drug habit.

LINKS:

School Employee Charged With Extorting Mom fearing Deportation

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Utah cops arrest African-Americans selling door-to-door without license; they give white co-worker a warning

2011-09-04T19:51:00.008-06:00

Nine door-to-door solicitors were working in the almost all-white Utah community of Jeremy Ranch. Eight were African-American, one was white. They were soliciting without the required business license. Law enforcement arrested the eight African-Americans and gave a verbal warning to the white co-worker.

The African-American population in Summit County, where the arrests occurred, is less than .5% of the county's population. Actually, according to the 2010 census, there are fewer than 30,000 African-Americans in the entire state of Utah. There are about 100 white people for every African-American in the state.

They would sure stand out to the Summit County law enforcement. They would stand out to the entire community, especially if a group of them are, gasp, going door-to-door.

Why was the white woman not arrested? Well, some defenders and apologists for the Summit County's Sheriff, are suggesting that the white woman is fabricating her story to make it appear that the sheriff's department is racist.

Somehow the sheriff's posse was able to run down sales people of color, but the white woman going door-to-door was somehow invisible to them? The local cops do not notice white people going door-to-door in their community.

Really?

I doubt it. I remember once stopping at a restaurant in Summit County. My boys were with me. No other customers were in the restaurant. The only visible employee of the restaurant refused to acknowledge our presence. We were sitting right in front of her. She had no intention of serving us. This was only about 10 years ago.

Sure there is no such thing as racism anymore. It has taken on new forms and new names. In Utah it does not exist. If a person of color even thinks that she/he has been a victim of racism then they are only playing the race card. After all, we now have a black President, so there is no more racism.

Sure just like the ending slavery put a finish to the racism in the South.

Take a few seconds to read the comments on the story on KSL-TV's web site. Not one person contributing their opinion thinks that it was racist that only the people of color were arrested. They almost all accuse the white woman of fabricating her story. Racism just is not an option.

"Heck, no, we ain't no racist rednecks 'round here.We like dem negro folks, especially when they come to play ball at our college."

Image: Andy Newson / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Undocumented Workers Lose Job; Rich Utah Oil Baron Who Hired Them Goes Unscathed

2011-08-31T23:34:00.007-06:00

During the mid-1990s Senator Orrin Hatch was pimping for the rich Utah oil baron Robert Earl Holding, by sneaking a bill past the Senate that gave Holding ownership to a much desired and expensive mountain property in exchange for undeveloped forest land that was not comparable in price. The taxpayers lost in that deal.

The expensive land was next to a local ski resort that Holding had purchased and was planning to turn into a luxury year-round resort in time for the 2002 Winter Olympics. This resort ended up hosting several of the prime skiing events during the winter games.

Without the land swap, none of these improvements at the local ski resort, Snowbasin, would have been possible.

Hatch should pass a bill where he trades land to the homeless in exchange for their dirty socks. It will be a bad deal for the tax payers, but it would serve society better than the uneven land swap he helped Holding receive over 15 years ago.

Hatch also once introduced a bill that would help children who were brought illegally into this country by their parents. This bill became widely known as The Dream Act. Of course Hatch has changed direction, due to pressure from the Tea Party, and is now strongly opposed to any bill that would help any undocumented immigrant.

The DREAMers are not a bunch of fat cats who can make Orrin's wrinkles smile. They are easily expendable by Hatch as he pursues his own dream act to stay in power.

Without the Tea Party support, Hatch will not even make it into a primary in Utah next year. He will suffer the same humiliating defeat as former Senator Bob Bennett, who failed to make it out of the stacked Republican state convention as a candidate in the primaries.

Hatch wants to ensure that he is elected once more to serve the people-the rich people who wantonly screw the the common tax payer.

Holding made out like a fat cat in a fish factory with the land swap. Now his luxury hotel in Salt Lake City, the Grand America, has been cited by an audit conducted by the feds which determined that "an unspecified number of employees at the Grand America hotel lack valid documentation to work in the United States."

The workers will lose their jobs. The owner of the hotel will not be punished. Not even a hand slap.

The part of illegal that I do not understand is the part of why it rarely applies to the super-rich.

Why do the rich have land handed to them by spineless unethical Senators?

Why are they exempt from laws that prohibit their hiring of illegal workers?

Why?

Because it is the real world we live in. Get used to it or change it. Since I am not a revolutionary with a gun, I choose to be a revolutionary with a vote. Unfortunately, Hatch will pull enough back room deals with the Tea Party people where he will be guaranteed the nomination and the automatic victory that comes with running as a Republican in one of the reddest of states.

But I am hoping that the Tea Party remembers who Orrin Hatch really represents, and it ain't them, baby!

Audit: Many Grand America employees lack documentation to work | Deseret News:

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Illegals from Europe Started Arizona Fires!

2011-08-25T11:34:00.005-06:00

Malboeuf is an European, non-Spanish Name

John McCain: Illegals started the Arizona fire!

John McCain blamed the costly Arizona wild fire on undocumented immigrants, although he referred to them by the preferred nativist label of "illegal aliens." It was only a matter of time before the largest wild fire would be blamed on the undocumented and the Mexicans, since they are the easiest scapegoats for all that ails our nation. It made sense that Johny McCain, the biggest pandering buffoon to hit the big time, would be the one that would make national headlines by blaming the illegals for the wild fire.

"There is substantial evidence that some of these fires have been caused by people who have crossed our border illegally. The answer to that part of the problem is to get a secure border."

Last year the Arizona Governor Jan Brewer made unsubstantiated claims that the undocumented were decapitating people in the Arizona desert. Now they are burning Arizona.

Good police work resulted in the arrest of two men, David Wayne Malboeuf, 24, of Tucson, and Caleb Joshua Malboeuf, 26, of Benson, for the setting of the wild fire. The men are reported to be cousins.

Malboeuf is an European name, so according to McCain, the Malboeuf cousins are illegal aliens from Europe. Most likely they are white illegals, so there is no comment from the brown-hating Sheriff Joe.

I was able to find a few pics of a person named Mandi Malboeuf who lives in Benson. But she looks white. So if she is a kinfolk of the alleged wild fire setting cousins, I reckon that David and Caleb are white as well.

A Malboeuf from Benson. Pic from Model Mayhem.

No word yet if the cousins are being held at a detention center. Strangely, there has been no call yet for the deportation of the Malboeuf illegal alien cousins. Hopefully our borders are soon secured to protect us from European wild fire setters and women who who think that if they pose in their underwear, it somehow makes them a model.

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RIP Jerry Leiber, one of the top song writers of the 50s and 60s

2011-08-24T22:49:00.022-06:00

Here are a few videos of the artists who recorded some of the top hits co-written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Leiber died Monday in a Los Angeles hospital. He was 78.

ORIGINAL HOUND DOG

ELVIS

STAND BY ME

JOHN LENNON: COVER STAND BY ME

Love Potion #9 - THE ORIGINAL VERSION

THE SEARCHERS COVER: LOVE POTION #9

KANSAS CITY: BEATLES COVER

Johnny Cash & June Carter - Jackson

Jackson was co-written with Billy Edd Wheeler.

The Drifters with Ben E. King - There Goes My Baby

Elvis Presley: Jailhouse Rock

Björk : Ruby baby (Drifters hit in 1955)

Elvis Presley - Treat Me Nice

links to other videos

Drifters: On Broadway

George Benson's Cover: On Broadway

The Coasters:Youngblood (1957)

Bad Company: Young Blood

The Coasters - Yakety Yak

The Coasters: Charlie Brown

Ben E King: Spanish Harlem

The Coasters: Searchin'

The Beatles: Searchin'

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Governor Brewer writes a book: My guess at how an excerpt may read

2011-08-23T10:23:00.002-06:00

Gubner Jan Brewer Just Wroted a Book

A Possible Excerpt From Jan Brewer's New Book "Profiles in Lunacy"

It was the bestest of times. It was the worstest times too. I done not know what to do. I known-ded that I had got to sign the bill, SB 1070, but I was concerned-ded that the pro-illeagles would boycotted-ded Arizona. But I had got to have got to be brave and sign the bill to stop all the brown people that are have been a pest in Arizona and force them to show there papers to the cops.

Wee could build new prisons to hold all the illeagles that will get catched by our brave Sheriff Joe in his campaign against the criminals who are chopping heads off in the desert. It is not good to chop a head off a living alive person. It is hard to live life without no head. Just look at me. It was a struggle to go by life without a head. I bearly made-ded it through high school to get a diploma. Now we gotten Messicans chopping heads off in the desert. We gots enuff brainless people in Arizona, we sure do don't need headless ones as well.

The tv cameras were all on me. The bright lights were shining down at I, me. I knew that as I put my crayon to the bill for my signature that all the country would be looking at my wrinkle-ded face and look up to me for inspiration in our common fight against the evil invaders from Messico. I felt-ded so good when I putted my signature on the bill. I could hear trumpets blowing, but then I remembered-ded that I ate cabbage for lunch.

The bill was now law. we could can now arrest all the brown sub-humans and sort them out and send most of them, legal or illeagle back to where they belong. I was aware of the signickficance of the moment and that one day I will be president of all america becuz of what I was didding right now. This was the first nail in the coffins of all the filthy illeagles.

Pretty soon me and Sheriff joe and I, we, us, will have, had, will got our own reality show that they want to call "Fat Ass and Wrinkly Face." Does this dress really make my ass look fat?

A couple of Brewer supporters excited about the book, which is mostly illustrations since most of Brewer's supporters can't read.

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Spanish speaking man subdues kidnapper of 6 year-old girl

2011-08-18T09:38:00.001-06:00

Diaz Chacon prevents the escape of a kidnapper

Antonio Diaz Chacon

Nothing is impossible for a Mexican.

I remember those words. I embraced them growing up in a world that had yet to grow up and was still entrapped in the immaturity of racial prejudice.

I thought about that phrase again when I read the news about a New Mexico man, Antonio Diaz Chacon, who heard a scream and looked over to see a man pull a 6 year-old neighbor girl into his van.

Chacon quickly pursued the van, first dropping his wife off to call the police. The kidnapper was unable to lose Chacon. The kidnapper then crashed into a pole and fled on foot. The little girl was able to escape at this time.

Most parents would have reacted the same way if they had seen their neighbor's child abducted. We are a very protective people. We are no different than any other group of people.

I remember when the notorious Night Stalker first had his identity revealed in the press. The very next day he was seen walking through a Mexican-American neighborhood in Los Angeles. He tried to steal a car, but instead he was chased and beaten by protective neighbors who were aware that they were in pursuit of the Night Stalker. They were not afraid. The bad guy tried to steal a car in the wrong neighborhood. There were no more victims of the Night Stalker. A group of Mexicans made sure of that.

There is one less victim to evil because of the actions of Diaz Chacon. He saw an evil man abduct a girl and Diaz Chacon went after him. Like any other American, he acted to protect an innocent child. He pursued the kidnapper until the girl was free. He is a hero.

There are many people who paint us with broad strokes of negative generalizations. We are all thieves, drug dealers, murderers, and rapists. Obviously these are false stereotypes, but these generalizations resonate strongly in the immigration debate. One of our biggest obstacles in reaching rational solutions for reform is the dehumanization of the undocumented. They are not worth caring for.

Yet, give us a chance to save a life and we are there without hesitation or fear. We are just like any other person. We respond. Diaz Chacon is like any other person. He responded.

When interviewed by the press, Diaz Chacon needed a translator. He spoke Spanish. Just a few days before he was just another one of those people who are accused by the English-only crowd of destroying the culture by being unwilling to adapt to the USA.

Today he is a hero.

Nothing is impossible for a Mexican.

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Going home should never be a felony

2011-07-29T10:57:00.000-06:00

Dreaming of going home

Sandra Lopez. Came to the USA when she was only three days old.

"I am home!" How often do we declare that to our loved ones when we come come from slaying dragons in cubicles? I am home, safe with the ones I love. I am home where it is safe to remove my public masks. I made it home, through the daily head ache of stop-and-go rush hour traffic. I am home. There is no place better to be. The friendly confines of home.

It is easy to take things for granted. We come home everyday. Our daily trip home is one of our recurrent adventures of life. We take it for granted that as long as we are safe and pay attention, that we will arrive home.

Coming home is as natural as flowers blossoming in Spring. To borrow from e.e. cummings, all the police in the world cannot stop that which is natural. There should be no law that would prohibit one from going home as long as they break no law.

But in our great country which we proudly proclaim as a land of freedom, there are children who cannot go home. There are children who were brought here from other countries. They were raised here. They were acculturated here. They grew up learning to be an American. But because their parents came here in a manner deemed illegal, the children become part of a less-than caste. They cannot drive, vote, enlist, or matriculate through life like their peers.

Youth who were brought here by their parents are arrested, detained, and deported to countries they do not know. They are sent to places where they have no home. Going home is no longer a natural thing to do.

Sandra Lopez is the latest youth caught in the quagmire of having a status that is illegal simply because her parents brought here here when she was too young to have a say in the matter. In fact, reports are that she was only three days old when she arrived in this country. Three days old!

Sandra Lopez does not know the land of her parents. She was raised here. She is no different than any of her peers she grew up with, other than the randomness of her birth place.

Sandra has already been deported to a country she did not know. Like anyone else, Sandra made the trip home. Except in her case it was a felony to go home. She was caught. She is being held in a detention center waiting for another deportation to Mexico. For Sandra, it is a felony to go home.

This is madness. It should never be a felony for anyone to go home, especially for someone who was raised here and for all purposes is an American except for those nine digits we use to legitimize those with the good fortune to be randomly born here.

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Music on Tuesday-Shining Soul

2011-07-26T21:06:00.002-06:00

From the blog: O'ODHAM SOLIDARITY ACROSS BORDERS COLLECTIVE

"The militarization of the U.S./Mexico border
has led only to cultural and environmental destruction
of the indigenous peoples whose land is on or near
the border, such as the O'odham, Yaqui
and Lipan Apache Nations.

Border Militarization brings death and terror
to indigenous peoples from other parts
of the continent migrating to this land.

The immigration struggle is also
an Indigenous struggle. '

NO BORDERS!
FREE MOVEMENT FOR ALL!"

FOR MORE INFO PLEASE CHECK THESE SITES:
http://oodhamsolidarity.blogspot.com/
http://www.solidarity-project.org/
http://survivalsolidarity.wordpress.com/
http://www.borderopposition.blogspot.com/
http://lipanapachecommunitydefense.blogspot.com/
http://chaparralrespectsnoborders.blogspot.com/
http://firesneverextinguished.blogspot.com/
http://sb1070resistance.blogspot.com/
http://www.taalahooghan.org/
http://dryriver.org/

About Shining Soul:

Straight outta occupied O'odham jewed in southern Arizona, Shining Soul is a grassroots duo based in Phoenix. Shining Soul's unique vintage means of beat production, and down to earth, empowering rhyme delivery is reminiscent of Hip-Hop's early days, when beats and rhymes took priority. Using Hip-Hop as a tool to get their voices out, Shining Soul pushes the margins by discussion issues that affect the communities they each originate from, while sharing and maintaining the essence of Hip-Hop culture that empowered them to take up arms via beats and rhymes.

HIP HOP IS RESISTANCE:
As life-long admirers and now participants, Shining Soul, have greatly benefited from Hip Hop culture. From first hearing Blackstar's “Respiration” to Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel's “The Message”, the seeds of Hip Hop were planted in our souls. We now want to share that essence and knowledge that inspired us to pick up the mic and sampler years ago.

In our journey, we use emceeing as a platform to speak about the struggles that our respective communities face. Border Militarization, the Criminalization of People of Color, Police Brutality and the Desecration of Sacred Places are our realities today.

In our efforts, we use Hip Hop as a tool to empower community, especially youth, by informing them of the issues via dope beats, dope rhymes, and by providing context of the struggles we face. We challenge them to take effective action in their communities using music and creativity as a weapon.

The element of rap allows us to speak. We hope our music, beat making projects and overall message that "Hip Hop is Resistance" inspires others to think critically of the world we live in, so we can challenge the imperialistic pillars that attack us everyday (Capitalism, Patriarchy, White Supremacy and Colonization), in hopes to appreciate and respect all the beauty and power that that originates from our dignified cultures.

This is why we are resisting.
That is why we fight.

So we can be who we are.

OUR existence is OUR resistance.

HIP HOP IS RESISTANCE

WEBSITE: http://shiningsoul-music.blogspot.com/
DOWNLOAD AT: http://shiningsoulmusic.bandcamp.com/
EMAIL: WORKWITHSHININGSOUL@GMAIL.COM

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Half of Texas' Students Have Been Suspended, Study Finds

2011-07-19T14:23:00.001-06:00

The July 19, 2009 edition of Education Week reports:

Using discipline records of nearly 1 million Texas middle and high school students that cover much of the last decade, researchers found that more than half of them were suspended or expelled at least once between 7th and 12th grades, that the punishments were applied unevenly among students of different races, abilities, and schools, and that students disciplined with these methods were more likely to repeat a grade or drop out of school than students who were not punished in the same way.

READ MORE HERE

RELATED LINKS:

Complexities Aside, Race is Still a Factor: How Racially Disparate Discipline is Discussed

Separate and Unequal:
The Disparate Impact of School-Based Referrals to Juvenile Court

School discipline tougher on African Americans

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Will There Be Minorities in Heaven?

2011-07-18T12:10:00.002-06:00

Vouchers for Schools?

This is messed up in so many ways.

Every picture tells a story. Hell, I can even hear dueling banjos when I look at this picture.

But this is more like "Every picture begs a thousand questions."

Was this from a religious-based home school science fair? I ask that question because their is a picture of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church, featured in the center display board. It was only a few decades ago that Mormon authorities would preach that "negroes" could achieve the ultimate kingdom if they were worthy, but only as servants to the whites.

LINK

Was this from a religious school that will one day be using our tax dollars if a voucher system bill is ever passed?

Was this picture from some white-supremacist school nestled somewhere in the Idaho mountains?

Is this guy the headmaster of the private school?

Headmaster Tommy Tan-weirdo

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Just Another Observation: It Has Always Been About Race When It Comes to Mexicans

2011-07-17T13:48:00.002-06:00

They were on a dirty floor, were being handled by dirty Mexicans

testimony from secret service agent (1918)

Mexican laborers circa 1917. Photo: Chicago Daily News Archives.

The negative stereotypes of Mexicans have existed throughout the shared history of Mexico and the United States. The hatred did not freshly emerge from an opposition to illegal immigration, it was always there. This continuum of racism feeds much of the frenzy that confuses the issues, divides our nation, and paralyzes political efforts to find much needed realistic solutions to immigration.

I mean what could be more sane, rational, and empathetic than passing the Dream Act? Yet, any effort to bring this needed act to life is short circuited by fearful politicians who are afraid of their voters who are strongly against the bill for emotional reasons. Their emotions are loud.

They will deny it is emotion that is driving their opposition to any immigration based bill. One only needs to listen to the rhetoric and it is easy to see the emotion behind it.

Innocent children are victimized by reasoning skewed by emotion and hate.

We are hard wired to care and protect children, but somehow this was short circuited for the Children of the Maize.

Children are children.

Genetically, there is only one race. My sons are part "Europe-in-a-blender." They are not hybrids, they are humans. A brown dad and a white mom did not create some sub species of mud people.

Children are children.

Some say things are better when it comes to racism. Obviously some things are better, laws made them better. Newer generations are not cultivated in the racist fields of our segregated past.

Still, children who came here and were raised here by undocumented parents are not allowed a path towards a legal status due to some irrational will to never grant amnesty to the illegals.

Forgiveness for a fellow human, especially a child? Heaven forbid.

Things are better? I cannot embrace that phrase.

Tell the survivors of those who died as a result of hate crimes that things are better. Tell Crystal Dillman that things are better when the father of her children was murdered by drunk, racist teen thugs on the depressed streets of the decaying town of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. Tell the survivors of Marcello Lucero, who was randomly killed by racist teen thugs who were "beaner hunting" in Long Island.

Until we are all safe from the racist inspired attacks, it is better for no one.

Institutional racism has slowly diminished, but racism has always been about individuals who buy into the warped philosophy that those who are different from the majority are subhuman and not worthy of the space, time, and resources afforded those of the superior class. There are still many who consider Mexicans less than white people. It is easy for them to dehumanize them, especially when they embrace the erroneous claims that legality makes them superior.

Undocumented does not make one inferior or perpetually illegal.

They attack us for not having the intelligence or the desire to learn their language. They make false claims that our presence is a conquest, and our goal is to transform the American culture into an inferior third-world culture.

This hate is nothing new. We are the permanent immigrants.

Sometimes I like to read the archives of newspapers using key words like "filthy Mexicans." It is not surprising that I actually get hits for the search phrase. I found a story this morning about a company selling tainted meat to the military. I found it in the archives of the defunct Salt Lake Herald (6-29-1918.) Old, rotten meat was supplied by Wilson and Co., according to government testimony. Some meat was so old that it was bloated and had worms. Yet, one of the government witnesses, J.C. Miller, a government secret service agent stationed in San Antonio blamed the Mexican laborers who handled some decaying chicken.

...investigated the chickens and found them in insanitary quarters They were on a dirty floor were being handled by dirty Mexicans...

I grew up thinking that dirty Mexican was who I was. It how how many of the white people in Pilsen described me when I was a child. Even the older Polish people and the Catholic nuns called us dirty Mexicans.

I grew up in Chicago in the 60s. My parents moved into the predominantly white Pilsen neighborhood in 1958 from the Taylor Street area. They returned to the Taylor Street area in 1960. We were forced to move in 1963 when Mayor Richard Daley destroyed one of the few integrated neighborhoods in Chicago to make room for the Circle Campus(now known as UIC.)

Pilsen has been a predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood for 40 years. I moved in when the dirty Mexicans were a minority. We were not well received.

The Polish people in the neighborhood, many of them immigrants, were often ostracized by other white people in Chicago. Many of the Poles did not speak English. They were considered too dumb to learn English. They had a different culture. Their music was strange. They drank too much. They were ridiculed for having several families living in the same apartment. They were the butt of many jokes.

Then along come the dirty Mexicans. Time to deflect and project the hate to a group that is even lower on the totem pole. Racism often works this way. Some of the most vocal defenders of segregation were poor white folk who needed to dehumanize the "colored" folks to feel good about themselves.

The Polish in Pilsen were good, hard-working people. They wanted a better life for their children. They had to put up with negative stereotypes from those already established in the USA. Ostracizing the dirty Mexicans was their feel-good medicine.

We are still the feel-good medicine for the folks who feel beat up and in need of a good scapegoat. We are here-the dirty Mexicans. Blame us and feel good about it. Blame us for forest fires, rapes, murders, drugs, and the collapse of the housing market. We did it all. Nothing is impossible for a Mexican.

Especially a dirty Mexican.

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Mayor and Police Chief of New Mexico Border Town in Bed with Drug Cartel

2011-07-13T10:09:00.000-06:00

Hundreds of guns allegedly smuggled to drug cartel?

Columbus, New Mexico
Photo: Wikipedia

Shades of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania! There is another town that seems to have a police department rotten to the core. The entire police department of Columbus, New Mexico was dissolved leaving the protection of its residents to the Luna County Sheriff. The move was reported to have been due to budget restraints, but who cuts an entire police department?

Maybe a town that had its Mayor, Eddie Espinoza, and its police chief, Angelo Vega, and 10 others arrested for their alleged involvement in helping a Mexican drug cartel smuggle hundreds of weapons into Mexico. The government is alleging that the individuals charged with the crimes aided in the purchasing of weapons that were later directed into the possession of a Mexican drug cartel. Weapons purchased by the defendants were allegedly found at the scenes of a murder, a kidnapping and a drug bust in Mexican border towns.

READ THE INDICTMENT

There are some who will link this to illegal immigration and the need for increased border security and enforcement only policies. A person walking through the desert in the hopes of finding a better life is in no way directed to the greed of a police chief who will sell out the lives of innocent people in Mexico for the monies of the drug cartel. Any law enforcement official who, knowingly and willingly, provides weapons to a murderous group of criminals deserves to spend the rest of his/her life in prison.

We can spend a billion dollars a day protecting the border. Drug smugglers will still try to find a way around it. A wall will only be a temporary detriment to a person who is desperate enough to risk walking through the desert in the hopes of finding a job.

A sane approach to this problem would extricate the issues of drug and gun smuggling from people migrating for survival. The issues cannot be entangled as one, they are not the same. We need to focus on the complex issues of creating a reasonable system where there is a fluidity of needed workers who can legally arrive into and depart from our country. Do away with the de facto policy of forcing workers into migrating through the death channels of the desert. Focus our resources on preventing the smuggling of drugs and guns.

LINKS TO STORIES:

Zetas may be smuggling weapons

Gun sellers say policy's aim more political than practical

El Paso prosecutors, not New Mexico prosecutors, to handle Columbus gun smuggling case

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Happy Fourth for Everyone

2011-07-04T13:07:00.012-06:00

Protesters from Ohio at the 1976 July 4th protest against racism.

I recall 35 years ago marching with tens of thousands of others on the Bicentennial Day in Philadelphia protesting the institutional exclusion of the many minimized and oppressed groups from the sharing of independence and the ability to equally nurture the realities of the elusive American Dream. For many, it was the American Wet Dream.

Thirty five years ago, Blacks could get killed if they walked into the wrong neighborhoods in our large urban areas like Chicago's Marquette Park and Brooklyn's Howard Beach.

Thirty five years ago, cops could beat gays at demonstrations without fear of retribution or legal consequence. People are still getting beat because of their sexual orientation.

Thirty five years ago, people of color were still struggling with segregation. Women and people of color were still fighting for equal access to opportunity. There are still huge disparities for people of color in education, health care, housing, and justice. Comedians disparage women by calling them "cunts" simply because they have a different political viewpoint. Progress comes slowly.

An analyst for MSNBC was suspended for calling President Obama a "dick." Nothing happened to Bill Mahr for disparaging Palin with that offensive term.

Double standard?

No, I am not a Palin supporter. I would rather eat earth worms than listen to a Palin speech.

Less than thirty five years ago, five protesters were killed on the streets of Wilmington, North Carolina by the KKK and Nazis. All white juries acquitted those who were charged with the murders, despite video of the killings.Not one person served jail time for the murder of five people on the southern streets of the good ol' USA.

Things may be better, but they are far from how they need to be.The present influences and/or legislative and legal powers of Russell Pearce, Arpaio, Brewer, Tancredo and other racists are proof that we still have a way to go before we all have equal inclusion in this club called the USA. We cannot be content with our individual progress and stop fighting for justice for all.

People of color are still killed by racist "Beaner hunters" in Long Island and by drunken racist teen thugs in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. Arizona and other states want to make Brown people carry papers of their worthiness to walk the "free" streets of the USA.

235 years after and we are still struggling to gain full inclusion in this dream of independence.

There are some who question our patriotism when we criticize the government for not protecting all rights. Real patriots protest against unjust laws.

There are some who accuse us of playing a race card whenever we point out the realities of racism in America.

Race card?

As if somehow a marginalized people can somehow obtain a nuclear card that trumps all other cards? Hell, most of us come into the game shortchanged of all the face cards. We lack the power and influence where we can alter injustice simply by pointing out racism.

There is no special benefit we receive from pointing out racism. It is only equal access and opportunity we seek.

"All men are created equal." Jefferson did not add "except for illegals, gays, communists, and Muslims."

Where were we? Oh, yes-Playing the race card.

Over 11 million demonized people are not even allowed into the card game. Yet, they suffer the worst attack from the racist. They have no cards to play. They have no power to tell their story as a human. There is no empathy. They are demonized illegals.Illegal is illegal. What part of illegal do you not understand?

Fucking beaners.

Oh. wait, they are talking about me. Never mind. We are interchangeable with the undocumented-we are the permanent immigrant.

There is no race card, there is just the denial that racism exists. Certainly things are better. But to suggest that because some Mexican is BFF with some Asian is somehow proof of the death of racism is like saying that because Homer down the street is sweet to his wife, that there is no such thing as domestic violence.

Throw your anecdotal evidence out the window. It is meaningless, it lacks power.

What has power are racists like Russell Pearce who push laws that compromise the rights and liberties of American citizen. I should never have to prove to a cop that I am legal if all I am doing is walking down the street or standing in a parking lot of a Home Depot.

We, too, are America. The Red, White, and Brown. We are not accessorized with some damn mythical race card. We do come with a endless determination to fight against racism and injustice.

America was born with these words:

"... all men are created equal...with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..."

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Caveman/Fake ICE Agent Follows Brazillian BYU Student

2011-06-17T22:08:00.001-06:00

"He was of ethnicity."


The Missing Link: Bigot and Fake ICE/Cop

Balding and looking like he was in dire need of soap and water, Mark Vreeland of Orem,Utah was arrested and charged with impersonating an officer after he confronted a BYU student who is here legally with a student visa. Vreeland followed the student, Alcides Souza, for several miles until the student, concerned about the crazed person following him stopped and confronted the fake cop/ICE agent.

Vreeland put on an ICE baseball cap with the word "Police" stenciled above the ICE(a free gift for joining FAIR?) when he was approached by Souza. The armed Vreeland claims that he followed Souza because the BYU student ran a stop sign. The two argued and Souza demanded to know what was Souza's immigration status.

Luckily, two real Orem cops approached the two men and when the sorted the situation out, arrested the fake cop/ice agent. Vreeland claimed that when he said he was a cop he meant "citizen on patrol."

Vreeland is a self-described activist who brags about going out armed with a fire arm, mace, a stun gun, and hand cuffs. Sadly, he leaves all common sense at home.

So in the small peanut-size brain of Vreeland, it is perfectly fine to harass people because, in his words, "he had ethnicity." In his peanut-size brain, it is fine to break the law to chase after brown people who are here legally.

What part of idiot does this caveman not understand?

LINK TO SALT LAKE TRIBUNE STORY

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Romney, the originator of Obamacare, now flip flopping on it

2011-05-10T12:31:00.004-06:00

Romney announces details of his newest plan

Carlos Osorio/Associated Press

Mitt Romney, the ultimate "which way is the wind blowing" political hack is chasing after the anti-Obama vote with his denouncement of his own health care plan. He plans to replace it with a new plan.

Romney said

If elected President I will repeal health care and I will reveal to America what I use on my hair to make it look so stiff.

Romney's campaign "Flip Flops R-Us" released the key points to his proposed new health care plan.

• Restore to the states the responsibility and resources to care for their poor, uninsured, and chronically ill.

Which means let the poor people die.

• Give a tax deduction to those who buy their own health insurance, just like those who buy it through their employers.

Which means since the poor cannot afford to buy their own insurance-let them die!

• Streamline the federal regulation of healthcare.

Which means no regulation for the health insurance industry.

• Reduce the influence of lawsuits on medical practice and costs.

Which means that if a poor person dies as a result of a doctor's error, so what they are dead and it does not matter anymore.

• Make healthcare more like a consumer market and less like a government program.
Which means that greed and profit comes first.

Romney cares more about people like Ed Hanway, who received a $73 million golden parachute from Cigna, than he does for ordinary people like Natalie Sarkisyan,
who died while her parents fought Cigna to cover the cost for her needed liver transplant. Cigna finally agreed to cover the costs AFTER Sarkisyan died.

Ed Hanway CEO and pimp of death from Cigna.

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Obama in 2012

2011-05-06T09:18:00.006-06:00

Immigration is not the only issue

Politicians wear masks. It is difficult, if not impossible, to gauge the real person behind the calculated sound bites. I was supportive of the masks worn by John McCain in 1990 as he ran a campaign against George the Younger. I was for the moderate mask that was able to reach across the partisan aisle and support immigration reform and the Dream Act. But it was just acting. As the winds viciously changed and transformed the Republican party far to the right, the masks now worn by McCain are masks reeking of extreme rancid tea.

The McCain of 1990 and the McCain of today are two polar opposites. Such is the reality of politics. Masks are changed to respond to the voters who keep the masqueraders in power.Orrin Hatch helped introduce the Dream Act about a decade ago. Now Hatch is fervently against the Dream Act as a response to the political process in Utah where delegates are chosen in neighborhood meetings controlled by the most radical right. These delegates then vote on the candidates in a state wide convention. Hatch must wear the mask of anti-Dream Act if he is to maintain his power as a U.S. Senator.

There is no truth in politics, only masks.

This is why I am hesitant to believe the immigration reform mask worn by President Obama. Does he say things only to appease the Latino voter or does he believe in principles that would allow a legalized path for a demonized, vulnerable group that remains powerless and voiceless in America?

It is hard to see through the masks.

I cannot help but ask myself why a congress controlled by the Democrats were unable to pass a Dream Act? Why were they unable to at least start a process of introducing bills for immigration reform? I realize that immigration reform is highly controversial. So was health care reform.

Many Democrats need to wear an anti-undocumented migrant mask to appease their voters. Rather than lead, they entertain with a soft shoe dance. Our elected officials, for the most part, are not strong leaders. Many are spineless power brokers focused on wearing whatever mask that will help keep them in power.

I want to believe that Obama is that person who has principles that are congruent with the masks he wore to gain our support. I need to believe in that mask of hope that he wore. I need to trust in that mask of change, we do changes.

I have my doubts about any politician. I understand the nature of the beast of politics. It is a complex game controlled by power brokers that exclude most of us voters. Yet, they need our votes to stay in the game.

In 2012 I will vote to keep Obama in the game. Do I have any other realistic option?

Immigration reform will be pulled off life support with a Republican President and a Republican controlled House and Senate. Health care reform will be over turned. More conservative activist federal judges will be appointed. Heaven help us if the Republicans pick the next Supreme Court justice. The rights of workers, women, gays, and people of color will further erode. We cannot afford to let the current frenzy of right-wing lunacy have control of our nation.

It is lunacy to not to vote because of Obama's inability to produce the Dream Act or immigration reform. I to am angered by the policies that have resulted in increased deportations of non-criminal workers. I am angered at the continued break up of families. I am incensed at the empty promises given by the masks worn by the candidate Obama in 2008. Yet, we cannot boycott the 2012 presidential election. we would suffer long-lasting serious injuries to social justice if we sit out the election.

Obama needs to do something between now and the election to show us that he is serious about the undocumented. He needs to ease up on breaking up of families. He needs to help define the real issues of the debate and clear the cloudiness caused by the nativists groups that control the current debate.

Obama, put on the mask of the reformer who will fight for the Dream Act and immigration reform before many leave your corner.

Esperanza mask by Reece Ward

Free Digital Photos

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Jan Brewer Signs Bill Making Lunacy the Official State of Mind

2011-05-03T12:22:00.001-06:00

Bill Aimed at Appeasing her Sandbilly Base of Power

Russell Pearce's ancestors, Jethro and LaFranklin Sue Bob
Pearce honored for helping to spread the lunacy genes.

Yesterday afternoon at the double-wide of one of her fervent supporters, Jan Brewer signed HB 666 into law. HB 666 makes lunacy the official Arizona state of mind.
This was an obvious attempt to solidify her popularity with the wing-nut sandbillies who still demand a government investigation into the alien abduction of Elvis.

Brewer:

We need to honor our legacy and heritage. Ever since we came here during the Dust Bowl and continually inter-married we have been a strong and loud voice In Arizona politics. I only wish (Evan) Meacham were here today to see his folks honored in this way. Meacham was not afraid to call a colored kid a 'pickaninny'just like I am not afraid to call all the Messicans drug dealers and decapitators."

Estimates of over 15 people gathered in the dust-filled yard of the double wide to offer their support to their beloved governor. Arivaca native Crawford J. said "It is a good day fer us common folk who represent what Arizona is all about. My wife and sister over there feels the same way."

When a confused reporter told him that there was only one woman over there, Crawford gave him a confused look. "She is my wife and my sister. Damn Messicans took her job away. She was working as a trustee in the shurf joe jail but she got released due to overcrowding cuz all the messicans are in the jail."

Russell Pearce was in the audience and gave a sort speech afterward.

We owe all our recent success to you guys. if not for lunacy, Arizona would be lost without a compass. Heck, we know so well where we stand that we must have our heads up our compass."

I love Messicans so much I'm gonna eat this family for lunch.

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Obama says he will keep pushing immigration reform

2011-04-30T12:06:00.004-06:00

"I strongly believe we should fix our broken immigration system. Fix it so it meets our 21st century economic and security needs,"

Obama told a Miami Dade College graduation ceremony that he will keep pushing for immigration reform.

Meanwhile in real news today:

A man in a nightclub promised a complete stranger that he would respect her and call her in the morning if she had sex with him in the janitor's closet of the club.

trust me, baby

A car salesmen promised that the extended full warranty would cover any problem the car could encounter in the next five years.

Warranty? There ain't no such thing as a full warranty! Ha ha ha

An exercise machine offered on television promises you can gets abs and buns of steel in only ten days.

Look like me in only ten days or your money back

Image: photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Obama says will keep pushing immigration reform

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Superman Forced to Relinguish Citizenship by Birthers!

2011-04-29T01:37:00.001-06:00

Superman renounces citizenship after mad birther demands birth certificate

The Man of Steel renounced his American citizenship last night at a press conference held at the United Nations in New York.. While Superman gave other reasons for the renouncement, his closet friends claim that Superman was tired of the endless harassment from Oily Taitz and her incessant demands that Superman produce a birth certificate.

As we all know Superman was born on the planet Krypton and was rocketed to earth by his father right before his planet was destroyed.

Oily Taitz refutes the story of the origins of Superman and claims that he was really created in a laboratory by Muslim scientists who hold allegiance to a secret radical sect of Islam. It is so secret Taitz said that the government does not know about it yet.

The "S" on his chest stands for secret. Superman has a secret that he does not want us to know-that he was created from an experiment gone awry.

A spokesperson for Superman, Jimmy Jam Olsen, strogly stated that Oily Taitz had nothing to do with Superman's decision. Olsen stated that Superman was a hero of the world and did not want his actions construed as reflecting the policy of the American government.

Superman's former girlfriend, Jessica Alba, said that Superman has always felt ashamed about his real roots but she would not confirm that Superman came from a test tube. Alba said "Allegations about the origins of Superman are mean-spirited and are lacking any merit. Superman and I remain friends, and my husband and I intend for him to be the Godfather of our child."

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Trump Claims Obama is a Woman

2011-04-28T11:57:00.009-06:00

Pull Down Your Pants and Prove it!

Donald Trump, the reality show host who wears a dead raccoon on his head in lieu of hair, claimed yesterday during the National Tin Foil and Tea Bagger Convention, that President Obama is really a woman. Trump, the surprise main speaker at the convention, said that Obama did not want to run against Hillary Clinton as a black woman so he has pretended to be male since he was three years old, when he lived in the Muslim country of Kenya, as anticipation for his run for the White House.

His real name is Mary, not Barry. He is a dame. Why hasn't anyone ever seen him use an urinal?

When pressed for evidence by reporters, Trump answered that it is obvious that he (Obama) is a woman. "You ever see how he holds her cigarette? Come on now.." Trump continued, "If Obama has nothing to hide she should just pull down her pants and pull it out to prove to America that he is not lying. America has a right to know if he is really our President or our First Lady. Come on and quit playing games with America. He has spent three million dollars trying to dodge this issue."

Smedley Mortimer, boring journalist contributor for MSNBC, asked what evidence does Trump have that Obama has spent money trying to dodge this issue. Trump angrily responded "Quit asking me stupid questions. You are fired!"

Trump was a surprise fill in for the main speaker Sarah Palin, who canceled at the last minute after she heard on her Facebook account that Netflix announced that it had made the first three seasons of The Beverly Hillbillies available for streaming.

Sarah Palin:

Darn that Granny is funny, and that Jethro is so darn smart...I would do Uncle Jed in a heart beat if I could just get Todd out of the house.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For the best tin foil hats, buy Reynolds Wrap!

CRAZY BIRTHER NUTCAKE

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Utah Congressman Lies During Hearing About the Border

2011-04-15T21:32:00.002-06:00

Chaffetz Shows Murder Victims in Mexico to Argue Why Environmental Laws Must Be Bypassed to Secure the Border

Congressman Jason Chaffetz displayed pictures of headless bodies and other murder victims during a congressional hearing exploring whether to bypass environmental laws in order to secure the U.S./Mexico border.

Chaffezt was angered by a claim by a Border Patrol representative who testified that they were experiencing "great success" on a specific part of the border. Chaffetz, called "CotMan" by many in Utah because of his insistence to sleep on a cot in his congressional office, then offered the pictures taken in Mexico as evidence.

Chaffetz lies were interrupted by Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., when he asked "CotMan" if he expected the border patrol to also enforce laws in Mexico, where the pictures were taken.

Why let the truth or facts get in the way of some good old, emotional testimony of headless bodies in the Arizona desert? It worked for Jan Brewer when she was running for Governor of Arizona. Chaffetz, the darling of the John Birch movement (now called the Tea Party) wants to challenge Orrin Hatch for his Senate seat which goes up for re-election next year.

If lies about headless bodies worked for Brewer, CotMan must wonder why it cannot work for him.

READ MORE

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Harvard educated Navajo explores run for US Congress in Arizona - Three Sonorans

2011-04-07T09:05:00.001-06:00

Photo from Tucson Citizen.com

Wenona Benally Baldenegro explores a run for US Congress and to be the first American Indian women ever in US Congress, and the first American Indian from Arizona.

READ MORE:Harvard educated Navajo explores run for US Congress in Arizona - Three Sonorans

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Glenn Beck Starts His Own Network

2011-04-06T12:09:00.000-06:00

Glenn Beck Leaves Fox to Start TFHN

Glenn Beck, the village idiot of Fox Spews, announced today that he will be leaving Fox at the end of the year. He plans to start his own network, the Tin Foil Hat Network, or TFHN. Beck will film all programs from his bunker residence in Dutch John, Utah. There is a rumor that Sarah Palin may also leave Fox and join Beck as a co-producer and sister wife.

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What Part of Legal Do You Not Understand?

2011-04-06T05:25:00.000-06:00

Illegal is illegal. Say no to amnesty!

Thus, legal is legal. Does "legal" say yes to amnesty?

Hmmm. Lets take a look.

I suggest that illegal immigrants who have not committed any other crime other than cross once across the border should have the opportunity to be reviewed for a chance to remain here. If it is citizenship that is the hang up, then let them stay here as permanent residents. Do not give them citizenship. If they commit a serious crime after that, then deport them.

I know "illegal is illegal, and say no to amnesty." I got it all down.

But legal is legal too.

So the illegal immigrant who is only guilty of the civil offense of illegally entering the U.S. is now arrested. She/he is charged with their crime. Time for the judge.

Remember that legal is legal.

We have a legal system to ensure that legal is legal.

The illegal immigrant shows up for court with references from his neighbors, her church, and from their employer. The judge peruses all of it and decides the penalty.

The penalty for almost all first time civil offenses is a fine and probation. So if most who commit a civil offense receive a sentence and a fine, is that amnesty or a just sentence?

A fine is a penalty. There is nothing free there.

But amnesty is amnesty.

We cannot forgive the illegals?

Really?

Many first time offenders receive an plea in abeyance. Just a few days ago Judge Barrett gave a man a plea in abeyance for stealing $42,000. He was charged with a second degree felony. We can give people charged with felonies a plea of abeyance-which is a forgiveness. The charge is dropped after a set amount of time if the defendant meets certain conditions. An abeyance is part of our legal system. Forgiveness is part of our legal system. Amnesty is part of our legal system.

Legal is legal.

But that is not amnesty you say. How about the process of expungement? The man who received the plea in abeyance can expunge his arrest after he completes his sentence. The arrest will be erased. It will be forgiven. It is a true amnesty. It is part of our legal system.

So why is it not possible to arrest, charge, fine, and forgive worthy illegal immigrants? Amnesty is part of our legal system. It is available for those who are worthy. Legal is legal. The law is the law. The law allows for forgiveness.

What part of legal do you not understand?

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Crazy Racist Arizona State Senator Claims on Record that Mexican Students Want to be Gangsters!

2011-03-19T12:53:00.004-06:00

"...most of the Hispanic students do not want to be educated but rather be gang members and gangsters.”

Crazy White Racist Woman-Lori Klein (R) Anthem, Az.

Arizona is the lightning rod for crazy racist politics in the 21st century. If one spews crazy racist rhetoric about Mexicans, one is almost assured political success in the land where the sandbillies somehow gained control of the political process in the state. Russell Pearce, a racist who falsely thinks he is hiding his extreme racist beliefs in his closet, has reached high political stature in Sandland for saying things that should have earned him shame. Instead, the racist Pearce has found a perch high on top of the Arizona political scene by using the wedge issue of immigration to express his extreme beliefs. Pearce is not alone using this winning formula of finding a racist base to push him to political heights.

Jan Brewer uses the same tactics as she aligns herself with private for-profit prisons and signs a bill making it illegal to be Brown in Arizona. Inmates are needed to make these prisons thrive so why not fill them with the undocumented?

Brewer wins an election for governor based on her only trick, which is to bash Mexicans. It did not matter if she made outrageous claims that could never be verified. How about her sensational lies about headless corpses left in the American desert? Spewing crazy is the ticket to political success in the land of the New Deliverance.

Dueling banjos please.

Anthem, Az. Republican Lori Klein has rushed into the act when she introduced an anonymous letter supposedly written by a substitute teacher. This letter was her argument for passing a bill that was under consideration by Arizona legislators. The letter was not based on any facts. There was no substantiated data to lend credibility to the letter. The letter was basically a racist rant by someone who is not even a real teacher. The letter basically claimed that all Mexican students are unpatriotic thugs who are willingly are on the path to become gangsters.

What is most disturbing is that a politician would dare introduce an anonymous racist letter that uses almost every negative stereotype about Mexicans as a credible argument in support of a proposed bill. Since when should state law be implemented based upon a reading of an anonymous racist letter? I guess since some crazy politicians in Arizona are fine with it.

Only in Arizona...this is getting tiresome, and scary.

My applause to the tens of thousands of good people in Arizona for their courageous fight against Pearce, Brewer and the rest of the crazies who are upwardly propelling their political careers by selling hate against the undocumented and perpetuating division amongst the working class.

VIDEO FROM ABC-15

Letter written by a Valley teacher is stirring a heated debate about racism and immigration

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Jesuits Refuse to fire Archeology Professor Who Looted Ancient Indian Sites

2011-03-01T22:52:00.007-07:00

Daniel Amick, a Loyola University archaeology professor and looter of artifacts from an ancient Indian site.

The Catholic Church has a horrendous history for their treatment of the indigenous people of the Americas. They wrote a new chapter of this continual horrendous treatment when they refused to fire an archeology professor, Daniel Amick, of Loyola University(Chicago) after he had his wrists slapped with a sentence of one-year probation for stealing ancient Indian artifacts from federal land.

He is a professor of archeology for goodness sakes! He should have known better. I seriously doubt that a man in his position would not know that his theft was illegal and unethical. Yet, he remains in the employment of the Jesuits.

Well, it is only the 21st century. Maybe in a few hundred years the Catholic Church will come around and treat us with a little dignity and respect. Until then they will have none of mine.

READ STORY IN CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

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Piekarsky and Donchak Sentenced to 9 Years for Hate Crime

2011-02-24T11:44:00.004-07:00

"This is serious business in America," Senior U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo

The two cowardly thugs who murdered Luis Ramirez, Derrick Donchak and Brandon Piekarksy, and who were later acquitted of the most serious charges in the beating death, were both sentenced by Judge A. Richard Caputo to serve nine years in a federal prison.

Piekarsky and Donchak were acquitted in a state court by a friendly local all-white jury that heard evidence from local cops who were later charged with obstruction of justice in the same murder case. Piekarsky was acquitted of third-degree murder and ethnic intimidation, while Donchak was acquitted of aggravated assault and ethnic intimidation. Both were convicted of the lesser charge of simple assault.

Donchak, Piekarsky, and several of their friends attacked Luis Ramirez on a July, 2009 evening in Shenandoah, Pa. Racial slurs were yelled during the attack according to witnesses who heard the attack from their homes. As Ramirez lay dying on the street, one of the cowardly thugs kicked Ramirez in the head. Rather than question the suspected killers, the local police counseled the thugs to get their stories straight. One cop called the parents of one of the thugs and urged them to get rid of a pair of shoes that could implicate the thug in the killing.

Piekarsky and Donchak received a light sentence for the conviction for simple assault. They were eventually charged with a hate crime in federal court.

Justice at last!

While these thugs and their supporters still rationalize wrongly that the murder of Ramirez was only a fight gone astray, the thugs will finally have to pay for their crime with serving time in federal prison. There is no parole. They could have 16 months shaved off their sentence for good behavior.

A fight gone astray? Since when is 6 thugs against one man ever a fight? It is a mugging. It is a criminal assault. It is never a fight.

Time for these cowardly thugs to go to prison.

LINKS:

Piekarsky, Donchak Sentenced to Nine Years for Hate Crime
Two get 9 years in Shenandoah immigrant killing

Derrick Donchak and Brandon Piekarsky, convicted in immigrant's death, each sentenced to nine years in prison

Shenandoah men sentenced to serve 9 years in prison for hate crime

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ICE Raid Apartments Pretending to Sell Avon and Pizzas

2011-02-24T09:31:00.001-07:00

"I feel like I'm in a bad World War II movie, where they hide the Jews - only now they're hiding Hispanics," Rev. Jerry Tobin of St. Anne Catholic Church in Carthage

Karina Solano Herrero (left) is overcome with emotion while telling of friends allegedly harassed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. / Vickie D. King/The Clarion-Ledger

ICE arrested 58 people after a weekend raid of apartments, trailers, and homes in the greater Jackson, Mississippi area. Witnesses claim that many of the arrests came as a result of warrantless searches when ICE agents would enter an open door and arrest those who were determined to have been undocumented migrants.

Temple Black, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New Orleans, responded that immigration law is administrative law. "You don't need warrants to go in," he said. "If you go to the house and people don't answer, agents have to leave."

But once the door is opened for agents to arrest one person, others determined to be illegal immigrants were arrested, too...

Glenda Arevalo of Pearl, Mississippi is quoted in the Clarion Ledger as claiming that ICE agents were knocking on doors saying that they were selling Avon or delivering Domino's pizzas. They were using tricks to get people to open their doors. As soon as the doors were open, it was open-season on anyone inside the residence. Arevalo states that some who claimed to be legal were taken into custody.She said that the ICE agents responded "I do not care" when people claimed to be here legally.

Angella Rector witnessed an ICE agent put a gun against the head of one Hispanic man, threatening him if he moved.

ICE claims that they were targeting known criminals. Instead, they terrorized an entire community.

Story in the Clarion Ledger

Fifty-eight people were arrested.

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Should Arizona Execute Minuteman Murderer Shawna Forde?

2011-02-18T09:14:00.003-07:00

Please, don't shoot me!

Little 9-year-old Brisenia Flores pleaded for her life. Her father lay dead near her. Her mother was shot and played dead. The terrorized child, alone with her nightmares of fear, begged the gunman not to shoot her, not to kill her. The cowardly gunman coldly pointed his gun at her head and pulled the trigger. She was executed by a cold-blooded group who wanted to leave no witnesses behind.

Shawna Forde, the ring leader of the group that invaded the Flores' home on May 29, 2009, was convicted of murder on February 14, 2011. Now the sentencing phase is underway to determine her sentence. The 43-year-old former prostitute, shop-lifter, and Minutemen Leader now finds herself in the role of the one begging for her life.

Are we supposed to so refined and empathetic to be able to listen to the plea of a convicted murdered when her associate was unable to listen to the plea of a 9-year-old child? Is the testimony of her son's love for his murderous mother enough to sway those who control the ultimate fate of Forde? Will the testimony that claims that Forde was an abused child reverberate with compassion in the hearts of the jurors? Most survivors of child sex abuse have never killed. So is the claim that Forde was a victim of abuse even a reason to consider in her sentencing?

I am a survivor of a long systematic child sex abuse by a parish priest. If anything, the abuse and my efforts to heal from it has transformed me into a person of empathy. It did not make me a cold-blooded killer. But that is just my individual experience. Every individual experiences their life events in their own unique way.

Maybe there were things in Forde's life that turned her into a cold blooded murderer.Or maybe she just has a personality disorder (most likely). But are these mitigating circumstances that will spare Forde's life?

Personally, I am against the death penalty. I find it barbaric revenge disguised as justice. My main reason for opposing it is the disparity of its application against the poor and against people of color. Too many poor disenfranchised people are sitting on death row. Killing all of them will not deter murder. Killing all of them will not bring one victim back to life. Killing all of them will satisfy those who equate death with justice.

Will killing Forde be justice? Nothing will bring Brisenia back to life? Killing Forde will not deter a single murder. Will it bring justice? Personally, I think she should have to suffer from the ultimate punishment for her crime. I cannot find mercy for the murderer of a child. Maybe others can. Shawna Forde has a chance for sane, reasonable people to listen to her plea of "Please, do not kill me." Forde has the benefit of her pleas to be heard by sane and reasonable people.

Sadly. Brisenia's pleas fell upon the ears of pathological, cold-blooded killers.

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Shawna Who Convicted of Murder

2011-02-14T17:31:00.001-07:00

Psychopathic Minuteman Leader Convicted of Murder

Shawna who? The trial for the leader of the Minuteman group who killed a 9-year-old girl, Brisenia Flores, and her father failed to attract any national attention. It was never mentioned in the major locals where I live. Shawna Forde, who craved the spotlight, failed to receive it for the heinous act of murdering a child. People around the nation will say Shawna who? when they hear about the conviction.

Shawna the cold blooded murderer. That is her name. Her full name is Shawna the fucking sick, depraved cold blooded murderer of children.

Harsh? Angry? Hell, yes! Would you not be angry about a child getting murdered by crazy racist Minutemen? Would you not be angry that the murder and the trial failed to attract any national attention from the mainstream media. It seems that every time an undocumented is involved in a death it finds its way into the limelight. Of course there is a reason for that.

Fear sells. Dark illegal killers are scary and easy to hate. White people killing dark people, even if they are kids is nothing to fear. It is not news. Nothing to see here folks. Keep walking. Its just a dead dark person. When someone of importance dies we will immediately report it on Fox.

White ranchers who are murdered by unknown assailants in Arizona is national news. Brown children killed by depraved Minutemen in Arizona is not newsworthy at all. Not every a tidbit.

Sadly, that is reality.

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Fox News Mentions Crime Committed by Undocumented; No Mention of Minuteman Leader on Trial for Murder!

2011-01-30T14:36:00.006-07:00

Fox News Mentions "Three Illegal Immigrants Accused in Death of American Teen Surrender in Arizona" But not a single word about the Minuteman Leader's trial for murdering 9 year-old girl and her father in home invasion!

compiled from Tucson Police Department Photos

Christian Betza Juan Carlos Leon Orel S. Vasquez

This is a tale of Two Stories. They are the same. They are different.

The similarities:

They both involved young girls, Brenda Arenas,15; and Briana Flores, 9; who were shot point-blank in the head and died within feet of their mothers.
Both murders happened in Arizona. Arenas was murdered in Tucson in August of 2009. Flores was murdered in June, 2009 in Arivaca- about 60 miles from Tucson.
In both cases, the alleged murderers had just botched a home invasion.
Both murders involved three suspects.
Both had an element of illegal immigration.

The three alleged murderers of the Tucson girl, Brenda Arenas, recently surrendered and the story was given national attention by Fox News.

A few days preceding the surrender of the three Tucson murder suspects, one of the three suspected Arivaca murderers, Shawna Forde, went on trial. Despite the many similarities in the two murder cases, there was not a single word of the Arivaca murder trail mentioned by Fox News.

Two stories with many similarities. Only one is worthy of mention by the fair and balanced news network.

The one glaring difference is that the Tucson murder was allegedly committed by three Mexican illegal aliens. Fox News featured that fact in its on-line headline-Three Illegal Immigrants Accused in Death of American Teen Surrender in Arizona. The Arivaca murders, Briana's father was also murdered, was committed by a white trio who were self-proclaimed Minutemen. The leader was a well-known self-proclaimed leader for her Minuteman group.

The Tucson Murder

Brenda Arenas was riding in the passenger seat with her three year-old sister in the rear when a group of men ran towards the car driven by Brenda's mother. The men were running away from a botched home invasion where they were hoping to steal drugs and money. The Tucson police believe Orel Vasquez knocked on the passenger-side window with his gun, and the weapon went off, hitting young Brenda in the head. She died in the presence of her mother and younger sister. Brenda was eagerly awaiting her quinceañera. She would have started her sophomore year in a few more weeks.

This story is newsworthy. It was a senseless random murder committed by criminal thugs. Apparently for Fox News it is worthy of national attention. But it is not Fox newsworthy because the victim was 15 years-old. It is not Fox newsworthy because a girl died in her mother's arms in the presence of her three year-old sister. It is Fox newsworthy because the suspects are illegal Mexican nationals.Their headline is meant to sensationalize and demonize.

Fox does not care to separate the thugs from the honest hard-working people who come here in search for a better life. For Fox News there is no difference between an illegal alien murderer and someone who entered the U.S. illegally to pursue a chance to earn money by selling their labor.

Certainly the undocumented break a civil law when they enter the U.S., but they should not be clumped together with worthless thugs who kill kids in an attempt to escape from a botched home invasion.

While Fox considers the Tucson case to be worthy of national attention, they fail to give any attention to the current Arivaca murder trial of self-proclaimed Minuteman Leader Shawna Forde for the murder of a nine year-old girl, Briana Flores, and her father, Raul Flores.

The Arivaca Murders

Shawna Forde* Gunny Bush* Albert Gaxiola

Arivaca Murder Suspects

Briana Flores and her father were also killed by thugs who botched a home invasion. They invaded the Flores' home in hopes of obtaining drugs and money to finance their vigilante efforts against the undocumented.They rushed into the home in the middle of the night pretending to be law enforcement searching for a suspect.

They were actually looking for drugs and money to finance their vigilante minutemen ambitions of catching illegals in the desert.

Like Brenda Arenas, Briana was shot point blank in the head. But Briana was killed because she had witnessed the murder of her father. She also witnessed her mother, Gina Marie Gonzalez, shot. Her mother pretended to be dead.

Briana pleaded for her life, according to the statements made by her mother, but the cold-blooded Minuteman killer pointed his gun at the child and killed her.

Excerpt text from actual 911 call from the mother:

Gonzalez: "They shot me and I pretended like I was dead. My daughter was crying. They shot her, too.

Operator: "Are they still there, the people who, that shot them?"

Gonzalez: "They're coming back in! They're coming back in!" (Gunfire.)

Gonzalez was armed and able to fire back at the home invaders. She was able to force the home invaders to flee.

Visualize the horrific event. A nine year-old awoke to two men and a fat woman invading their home. They claimed at first to be cops. Within minutes she witnessed the invaders kill her father. They also shot her mother who played dead. Imagine the terror running through her head. Now one of the killers approaches the little girl. According to her mother, Briana begged the man not to shoot her. She saw the gun raise in his hands. She saw the gun pointed at her head.

Imagine the horror.

Then the last sound she ever heard was the explosion from the gun. A terrified young girl was sentenced to die from a cold-blooded Minuteman killer.A young girl just finishing the third grade.

Some will be more upset that I inserted the word "Minuteman" in the last sentence than they will be upset about the cold-blooded killing of the 9 year-old child.

A nine year-old girl. A Mexican-American girl. Shot in the head by white minutemen.

And this is not national news?

The only difference I see between the two murders is that the Arivaca killers are white. They were Minutemen. One cannot hide that fact. Other Minutemen groups could try to distance themselves from Forde and her murderous horde but it does not change the fact that they are Minutemen.

The fact that Forde and her invading horde are only "self-proclaimed" Minutemen does not matter. Most of them are self-proclaimed. There is no national election. All one needs to do to become a Minuteman is to proclaim it.

Is it fair to judge all the Minutemen by the actions of Forde? Of course not, just like it is not fair for Fox News to give national attention only to the murder of Brenda Arenas by three illegal thugs and not give one word about the murder of Briana Flores by three white Minuteman thugs.

But FAIR does not exist except as a group that, like Fox News, demonizes the undocumented.

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Split Decision for Shenandoah Cops

2011-01-27T16:08:00.002-07:00

Jason Hayes, boyfriend of murderer's mom, Acquitted on Both Counts!!!!

Jason Hayes, Tammy Piekarsky, cowardly thug Brandon Piekarsky

Three former Shenandoah cops received their verdicts minutes ago.

Jason "Jelly Doughnuts" Hayes was found not guilty on the two charges he faced. He was the cop who called his girlfriend, the mother of one of the convicted murderers of Luis Ramirez, minutes after the murder, rather than interrogating the six local kids who were involved in the fatal beating. Hayes stated that he plans on seeking reinstatement with the Shenandoah police force.

Former police chief Matt Nestor was found guilty of falsifying records, hindering a federal investigation. He was found not guilty of conspiracy. Nestor faces additional felony charges in federal court. He also is facing a civil trial for the death of David Vega who was found dead hanging in his cell. Vega's father alleges that Nestor was involved in a fatal beating of the younger Vega and that Nestor staged a fake suicide.

Former police Lt. William Moyer was found guilty of making false statements, but acquitted on four other counts. Witnesses testified that Moyer warned them to discard of a pair of shoes that a witness claimed were the same color and brand that the person who kicked Luis Ramirez as he lie unconscious and dying on the street.

Nestor and Moyer will be sentenced April 29. Nestor faces 20 years in prison for his conviction of falsifying records.

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Justice in Shenandoah: Corrupt Cops Face Verdict

2011-01-27T11:03:00.013-07:00

Former Shenandoah police chief, Matt Nestor. He is also facing a civil trial for the death of another Latino man who died in custody.

Justice often begins with good, honest police work. How investigating law enforcement personnel define and interpret a crime will determine what goes in a police report. It will determine the course of the investigation. It some cases it will determine the outcome of any ensuing legal trail. In Shenandoah, Pa., there was not a shred of decency, honesty, or integrity from the local cops after Mexican immigrant Luis Ramirez was fatally beaten to death by a group of local white teen drunks.

Mattie Nestor, William Moyer and Jason "Jelly Doughnuts" Hayes were not concerned about the man who died on the dead-end streets of the depressed town they were sworn to serve and protect. They were concerned about the kids who committed the crime. They saw Ramirez as an illegal alien unworthy of justice. The local cops did not interrogate the kids who beat Ramirez. Instead, the cops coached the kids to get their stories straight. Moyer suggested to Julie and Ronald Mickalowski, the mother and stepfather of Brian Scully, one of the youths who helped beat Ramirez, to throw away a pair of sneakers that an eye witness named as the shoes that kicked the already unconscious Ramirez in the head.

They created the cover-up.

The local cops maintained their lies. The lies were used in court to help acquit the cowardly murderous thugs, Brandon Piekarsky and Derrick Donchak.

Pierkarsky's mom was sleeping with one of the local cops, "Jelly Doughnuts" Hayes. Rather than interrogate the murder, Hayes called his love interest at the bar where she worked at the time to inform her that her son may be in trouble.

Justice often begins with good, honest police work. There was no good, honest police work performed on the night Ramirez died. There was never any good, honest police work performed throughout the "investigation" because the investigation was tainted by corruption, racism (Hayes had at least racist poster advocating the death of illegal immigrants hanging in the Piekarsky home),cover-ups, and tampering with evidence.

A jury will soon decide the fate of these three rejects. Let us hope that justice is now on a roll in the sleepy corrupted town of Shenandoah. Defendant and former Shenandoah cop Jamie Moyer is already talking about seeking reinstatement when he is acquitted.

LINKS:

Federal Jury Continues to Deliberate

No Verdict Yet in Trial of Corrupt Cops

Local News Video

FBI Agent: Shenandoah Cop Lied!

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Illegal Immigration:The law is the law

2011-01-21T10:57:00.009-07:00

The law is the law. So let us treat everyone the same. Show empathy for first-time offenders. Offer an avenue of forgiveness as we do to those who break the law and never get in trouble again. Allow good hard working people a chance to pay a price for their crime of illegal entry...

proud father and son at immigration rally in Salt Lake. May 2009.

The law is the law. I hear that short phrase used often to argue for the enforcement against the workers in this country who entered illegally. I agree-the law is the law and popcorn is popcorn and purple dinosaurs are purple dinosaurs. None of these phrases actually mean a thing in any intelligent conversation.

I know that the meaning of the phrase is supposed to mean that it is against the law to enter, reside, and work in the U.S. Point noted. The phrase also is meant to convey the message that the law calls for the deportation of the workers who are here illegally. Again, the point is taken. But the phrase is still meaningless.

“No nation can exist without laws.” I hear this phrase often repeated by those passionately fighting for the deportation of all illegal immigrants. But no one is arguing for the nation to exist without laws. But the presence and functionality of illegal immigration strongly suggest that current laws do not work. We have evolved into a nation of bad laws that we stubbornly cling on to in order to maintain a facade of being tough on crime, when in reality we create the status of crime when and where there is no crime.

We do not need to create criminals out of workers simply from our lack of sound immigration policy and law.

Some things should obviously be crimes. Thou shall not murder. Without saying, it helps to maintain societal order if people are not ruthlessly killing each other. Ironically, our bad drug laws plays a major part on the rate of murder in our country. By criminalizing the street drugs that we keep illegal, we surrender both the regulation of commerce and the distribution of a product that is as every part of our reality as stocks, sports, and drive-through restaurants. Our bad laws surrender this regulation and distribution to ruthless thugs.

One can argue that our bad laws that fail to regulate Wall Street also surrender that regulation to ruthless thugs in pin-striped suits.

But these are other arguments for other times.

Immigration. Illegal immigration.

Cheap, inexpensive labor is historically part of the American way. The illegal immigrant is the latest group to become exploited by the need of capitalists to maximize profits.

Defenders of our system argue that capitalism and profits are good things. The most conservative of these defenders will also stress that regulation suppresses the ability of free markets to flourish. Illegal immigration is a symptom of that free market playing out. Thus we have a reality in conflict with our laws. Businesses want the inexpensive illegal laborer. The law against hiring illegal workers is then ignored.

When I was a kid growing up in Chicago, I would often hear the phrase “nothing is illegal if you do not get caught.” If there was no one to see you drive through the red light at 3am then it is not illegal. If the government does not punish employers for hiring illegal workers, then it is not illegal for employers to hire illegal workers. But the illegal worker does not get the same pass.

No one gets caught and nothing is illegal. For some unethical people in power it is the American way. For business owners who hire illegal laborers it is the latest example of the “nothing is illegal if you do not get caught” mentality.

If powerful people can break a law with no consequence while the vulnerable and exploited worker are punished for participating in the same crime, then something is wrong with the law or the enforcement of the law.

The law is uneven when it comes to enforcement. The law is only meant for the voiceless poor.

The government does not want to punish and stifle commerce. So it goes after the worker in planned and publicized events meant to showcase their desire to enforce the law.

Turning the other way creates a de facto immigration policy when it comes to employing illegal workers and enforcing current laws against employers. The law seems to apply more for the exploited that it is for the exploiter.

The law is never just the law. Justice is not blind; it winks at those it gives a pass to. Unethical employers who break laws to maximize profits go unscathed. Workers who only want to earn money by selling their labor should not be casted as criminals simply because we are unable to provide sensible laws that allow for reality to become legal.

With the breaking of the law comes varied legal consequences. The supporters of the “law is the law” do not want to enter this realm of legal reality. They want deportation as the only option for the breaking of immigration law. But no laws are adjudicated in the same manner to those who break the same law. There is no “one punishment fits all” sentence for every law breaker. There are different consequences for breaking laws. Then people get on with life. See Michael Vick run.

Deportation is not the only option for entering the country illegally. Precedent has been set in many cases when factors are weighed in to allow someone to remain here. Then there are laws that allow for some to remain here legally such as victims of domestic violence and victims of human trafficking.

When someone breaks a law and is found guilty, there are factors that are taken into consideration. A judge may offer a plea in abeyance to first time offenders of a non-violent crime. A plea in abeyance basically is a plea where the defendant pleads guilty to a crime and if he/she does not re-offend in a set time, then the conviction is tossed out. It is as if it never happened.

Probation is almost a sure thing for first-time offenders of non-violent crimes. First time big time swindlers in suits have benefitted from no jail time. But we cannot offer probation to a college student who lacks nine-digits?

Putting up dry wall at minimum wage without papers is a non-violent offense. If a person has been here for years and has never been in trouble with the law, then why can they not be afforded the same options as other first-time offenders? After all the law is the law.

Empathy is part of the law-it is part of how our judicial system plays out in its daily arenas.

The same people yelling “the law is the law” also demand that there is never an amnesty for illegal immigrants. But our laws offer amnesty to many that violate the law. Not only do first-time offenders receive probation or a plea in abeyance, they usually have an opportunity to expunge the arrest and conviction from their record if they prove worthy. It is an act of forgiveness.

Many undocumented workers have proven themselves worthy of this same type of forgiveness that is a part of our legal system. If we are to use “the law is the law” rhetoric as the main point of an argument against the undocumented worker, then we should go beyond the surface of that statement and allow the full application of the law in dealing with the undocumented. Mercy and forgiveness are without a doubt part of our legal system.

I am all for deporting the dangerous criminals who enter illegally. But those who work and contribute are not criminals. They are not the drug runners and/or human smugglers. They come here to work. Our inability to repair our immigration policy surrenders the regulating of the employment of the undocumented over to the employers who choose to break the law. They know they can get away with it.

When we surrender the regulation of employment of these workers, we allow for a system of cheap wages, lack of benefits, fake social security numbers, and unsafe working conditions to flourish. The workers no longer are the mainstays of only the agricultural industry. Greedy employers from all industries are now dipping into this pool of cheap labor. All American workers are hurt when greedy employers exploit workers.

Immigration reform that protects and regulates the fair wages and safety of all work places benefits all workers.

The law is the law. So let us treat everyone the same. Show empathy for first-time offenders. Offer an avenue of forgiveness as we do to those who break the law and never get in trouble again. Allow good hard working people a chance to pay a price for their crime of illegal entry into the country. Then, if they are worthy, allow them the dignity to have their case heard on its individual merits. Punish them as we would others in the same situation. The law is, after all, the law. If they are worthy of probation and eventual forgiveness, then allow them that legal consequence.

Then let us get on with life.If Michael Vick can receive forgiveness and another chance, then why can't a worker whose only crime was sneaking into this country to work not receive the same forgiveness and a chance to shed the demonizing and perpetual status of being illegal?

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Delusions of a mad man wounds America

2011-01-08T17:38:00.002-07:00

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it

Civility. Maturity. Reason. They seem to have been amputated from the body of political discussion. Irrationality, immaturity, and lack of civility have replaced the parts that once was vital to our political discourse. Our influences are no longer statesmen offering wisdom during dire times, they are now political entertainers tossing immature insults into the wind and caring less of its consequences.

Once we had great statesmen who assured us that there was nothing to fear but fear itself. Now we have everything to fear because fears sells.

Fear.

Did the fear get mired in the delusions of a deeply disturbed man?

Fear...and bullets. Bullets that tore through the Tucson air into the bodies of congresswomen Gabrielle Gifford, U.S. District Judge John Roll, and many others by a shooter who apparently lost his grasp on reality. Rather than defend to the death the rights of others who differ from him, he wanted only to create death.

I can only hope that this is not a sign of things to come, and that it will rather be a wake-up call for America to find the path towards civility.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Strange video from mass murderer suspect Jared Loughner

2011-01-08T15:41:00.001-07:00

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Utah: Steve Sandstrom's Enforcement Bill is Dead on Arrival?

2011-01-08T14:28:00.009-07:00

Utah Republican state legislator Steve Sandstrom hoped to further his standing among the ultra-conservatives in Utah with his proposal of an Arizona-lite version of SB1070. With Utah receiving a new 4th seat in congress, there is much posturing among the ultra-conservatives to prove that they are the truest champion and patriot of the tea party movement and deserving of the new congressional seat. But Sandstrom may have put all of his hopes in the wrong basket with his enforcement only proposal which is already being downplayed by the Republican power brokers as the annual Utah legislative sessions are set to begin in a little more than a week.

Sandstrom's "The Utah Illegal Immigration Enforcement Act" would include provisions that:

would require that an officer verify the immigration status of a detained or arrested person upon reasonable suspicion the person is an illegal alien,
state or local agency may not limit, by any means, the authority of any law enforcement or other governmental agency to assist the federal government in the enforcement of any federal immigration law, including the federal requirement to register as an alien or possess an alien registration document;
provides that a legal resident may bring action against an agency that limits enforcement of federal immigration laws and imposes financial penalties for violation.
amends the current state law prohibiting transporting or harboring illegal aliens by removing the limitation to transportation of the alien for a distance greater than 100 miles;

Although there is a provision that consideration of race, color, or national
origin except as permitted by Utah and United States constitutions cannot be used by law enforcement to determine reasonable suspicion. In reality, how else will the police make the determination? Will a carload of white kids ever be stopped for suspicion of illegal immigration status?

Local police departments are forced into compliance. Thus, they are forced to expend dwindling resources into a new focus on making immigration enforcement a priority in their communities. Police in large municipalities like Salt Lake can be tied up as officers spend much of the day processing immigration violators in the Salt Lake County Metro Jail. Other more serious crimes will have to take a back seat to the forced compliance with this bill.

This bill will make the undocumented community highly vulnerable to crime. They will not risk reporting when they are victimized by crime for fear of deportation. They also will not come forward as witnesses to a crime when they know that the police are forced to detain them. Crime will become unreported, unsolved and increase in these communities.

This bill gives citizens the right to file suit against any agency that is not in compliance with the bill. Thus, agencies will be forced to use dwindling resources to defend themselves from every crackpot who thinks that an agency is not cracking down hard enough on the undocumented.

The bill will make it a crime if I took my undocumented neighbor to the store or if I drove them to the doctor.

This bill faced immediate resistance. When Sandstrom introduced his plans at a press conference at the state capitol last year, he was met only by protesters. There were no supporters. Somehow the not too bright Sandstrom forgot to tell his supporters to show up, and he was faced only with a loud, vocal group of about 50 protesting his proposed bill. Daniel Arqueta, leader of the local Brown Berets, was present at the demonstration as was Greg Lucero of the Revolutionary Students Union.

Lucero and his group surprised a tea party event last summer at a county park and protested the tea party stance on immigration reform. They bravely went into the lion's den to confront some of the most ultra-conservative forces in the state.

Obviously Sandstrom's bill would place a great financial restraint on every community in Utah, and it endangers every state agency with the possibility of having to protect themselves from frivolous lawsuits whenever someone gets upset that brown people are getting services instead of getting deported.

Within weeks religious, civic, business, and political leaders from Utah introduced the Utah Compact. Basically the Utah Compact states that immigration is a federal issue; local law enforcement should focus on serious crimes and not civil violations of federal law; it champions policies that support families; it recognizes the contributions of the immigrants; and it urges a more humane way to resolve the reality of the integration of immigrants into our society.

Sandstrom did not let the Utah Compact deter his plans at tea party greatness and he did not waver from his plan to introduce his Arizona-Lite in 2011.

Now incoming Republican Utah House Speaker Becky Lockhart announced that there is a growing momentum towards merging the 25 or so proposed immigration bills that are planned to be introduced this legislative session. Lockhart said it “would be beneficial to the process.” She also said that she thought the Senate was moving in a positive direction toward that goal.

Sandstrom will not budge. This is his ticket to congress, or so he thinks.

“I’d be unwilling to roll my bill into any kind of omnibus bill,” Sandstrom said. “It has widespread support.”

Fortunately, it does not have the apparent support it needs to get through the legislature, and that is support from his fellow Republicans who are now talking about bills that deal with more than just enforcement. One of the bills proposed by Democrat Luz Robles has been mentioned as a model for immigration reform.

In the reddest of states there may be sanity after all. Politics is indeed a strange game.

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Cool Christmas Songs

2010-12-24T16:02:00.000-07:00

ANGELIC

CONNICK IS ALWAYS COOL

ELLA WAS THE QUEEN OF SMOOTH

NEVILLE OWNS THIS SONG

FROM THE INFLUENCE OF A SIX YEAR-OLD

SINATRA MAKES ANY SONG COOL

I AM NOT AN ELVIS FAN BUT ANY LIST OF COOL NEEDS TO INCLUDE THE COOLEST MAN OF ROCK

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Fake Cops Rob Migrant Farm Workers

2010-12-18T08:40:00.001-07:00

Kentucky Slow to Investigate Crime Committed Against Mexican Migrant Workers?

Many anti-immigration advocates quickly claim that immigrants from Mexico and parts south bring crime into the country. The reality is that most come here to work. Sometimes some are victimized by criminals who see them as easy marks. Mexican farm workers in Christian and Todd counties in Kentucky have been victimized at least three times in August and September by a person impersonating a law enforcement officer. The phony cop pulls over the workers and then steals their wallets.

Kentucky State Police spokesman Stu Recke told local media that the suspect is either black or biracial, about 5 feet 8 inches to 6 feet tall. Troopers say in two incidents he wore a "brownish-gray" T-shirt, dark cargo pants and a dark baseball cap with the word "police" in fine print on the front. In the third incident the suspect reportedly wore a long-sleeve button-up shirt and a hat like the one Smokey Bear wears.

The investigation began in September, when three Christian County farmers reported to the Christian County Sheriff's Department that a trooper had robbed their Mexican migrant workers during separate traffic stops. The trooper would ask to see identification, then say the worker's Mexican license wasn't good enough and grab his wallet, the farmers said.

The trooper retreated to his cruiser, then returned the worker's wallet after removing most of the cash inside, the farmers said.

None of the workers received a citation.

"When my boy got robbed, he came to me and said, 'Well maybe this is the same as Mexico,'" said Roy Jenkins, a farmer whose worker was among those robbed. "That's pretty sad."

One worker said he didn't notice the trooper wearing any "brass or uniform decoration," Recke told the New Era. During an interview with the farmers' attorney, Bill Deatherage, the worker said the trooper covered his nametag with his hand.

The suspect wore a star-shaped badge with red lettering, according to the release. KSP badges are oval-shaped, and Recke said none have red lettering. Troopers say the robber drove a gray police car with markings on both sides.

Three months later and there is no progress in the case. The Kentucky New Era reports that state Sen. Joey Hopkins plans to push for a report on how the probe is progressing. Pendleton, D-Hopkinsville, is pushing for a progress report from troopers, a week after asking the agency to get outside help in handling the probe.

"I think they've had sufficient time since this thing first started," Pendleton said. "It appears to me that we're getting close to the end of that time frame."

Hopkinsville-Christian County Crime Stoppers is offering cash rewards for anyone who can help Kentucky State Police find the person who robbed several migrant workers in the fall.

READ MORE

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More Immigration News

2010-12-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

Cleveland mayor signs on in support of comprehensive immigration reform

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson has added his name to a select group of big-city mayors and corporate CEOs calling for comprehensive immigration reform.

He is the first Midwest mayor to endorse the Partnership for a New American Economy, a crusade launched in June by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch.

Describing immigrants as economic catalysts, the coalition of mayors and business leaders calls for reforms that would offer earned citizenship to illegal immigrants and extend a wider welcome to job-creating, high-skill immigrants.

READ MORE: Cleveland.Com

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Deportation Nation: Timeline of Immigrant Criminalization

from the Deportation Nation web site:

This timeline looks back at how the U.S. immigration system came to focus on enforcement and criminalization.

Click through to learn how the Founding Fathers allotted power to decide who can enter, and who will be deported. Context is key to understanding the “deportation delirium” that has led to a record number of removals under the Obama administration.

Attribution: Feel free to share or distribute this work, however please attribute to "DeportationNation.org"

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GOP Opposition to DREAM ACT Is About Race

Glenn Beck... announced that the DREAM Act would mean, "...if you're white or you're an American citizen or a white American citizen, you're pretty much toast. "

Just like the Arizona law. Just like Sharron Angle putting Latino gang bangers in her political ads. Just like the manufactured debate about the 14th Amendment. What they all meant was very plain. We don't want brown people here. They aren't welcome. This country is for white people. This is about race. Nothing else. Race.

READ MORE: Huffington Post

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Herta Llusho speaks at DREAM Act Senate briefing

2010-12-14T14:37:00.002-07:00

from matiasucla

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Dancing with the Stars

2010-11-16T11:44:00.007-07:00

Immigration reform is a chaotic dance with no agreed upon steps, and danced to multiple bands simultaneously playing different styles of music.Only rhythmic setting noise prevails.

One-step forward, two-steps back...

The California Supreme Court Band joined in and played a tune that allowed the dancers to move one step forward for those seeking to dance the justice dance. The high court ruled that undocumented students in California had a right to pay in-state tuition rates rather than higher out-of-state tuition rates.

The ruling upheld a prior California law that allowed all, regardless of immigration status, to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities if they attended a California high school for at least three years before graduating.

The state highest court ruled that the law was not based upon residency, but on high school attendance. Thus, it also applies to those who may have graduated from California high schools and moved away for several years and returned to attend higher education in the state.

Strangely, the suit that challenged the original 2002 law was filed by people who lived outside California. Why would some people be filled with such a mean-spirit that they become obsessed with some young person in another state who is trying to pursue higher education? I am pleased whenever young people pursue college and beyond. We all benefit when our youth become well-educated, higher tax-paying, high-wage earners.

Not every undocumented student has the same story. But many were brought here when they were much too young to have a say to where they wanted to live. They went to school here. They became acculturated to our way of life. They know our language and our culture. They are American in every way other than because of where they were born they cannot procure the nine-digit identity that makes them "acceptable" to the masses who are so angry at their presence that they become motivated by a mean-spirit to file a law suit against their attempts to earn a college degree.

Sounds remarkably cruel.

Because of where the young students were born (like if they had a say in it) some hate them and the haters will fight their attempts to unravel the tangled mess our immigration policies have made of their young innocent life.

Incredible.

Lets step back at look at the slow-motion replay. Grab the DVR remote.

Young child is brought into the country by parents seeking a better life. Unlike the earlier European immigrants who only had to board a ship to become Americans, these parents had to over-stay a visa if they were lucky, or perilously walk through a desert if they were not.

Young child attends school and learns a new language on the playgrounds and the streets-the same way as European immigrants who came here in the late 19th and early 20th century. We all eventually learn how to speak the confusing language of English.

Young child grows up in the only country they know. The USA becomes their tenuous home. Someday they will have the truth of the instability of their being "American."

Young child graduates from high school in a system taught in a language different from their native tongue. Most likely their parents were unable to help them with their homework, taught in a language their minimal-wage earning parents have yet to master, mainly from having little free time. The students make no excuses and they graduate.

The young child decides to make a better future for themselves and their future families by attending college.

The young student learns that they are not eligible for federal grants or loans for schools. They have to work, usually at a low-paying job because of their status, and pay for their tuition.

Law is passed that treats these young students in the SAME EXACT manner as other students who attended California high schools. They become eligible for the lower rate of in-state tuition.

Carnival huckster and political opportunist, Kris Kobach, and other people with no ties to California are unable to sleep at night because some undocumented high school grad from Fresno is suddenly eligible for in-state tuition.

Unable to sleep nights, and with even viagra unable to revitalize their loss of libido, Kobach and his cohorts decide to bring harmony to their twisted universe by filing suit against the kid from Fresno and his peers.

Supreme Court furthers the angst of Kobach and his mean-spirited followers by ruling against their efforts to make it more difficult for the young students to make a better life.

Ok. What part does Kobach not understand? Oh, the truth is that it does not matter what is right of wrong for Kobach. He is a grandstanding carnival huckster who is gaining wealth and fame in his attacks on the most vulnerable segment of our culture.

He wants to go after youth who dedicate themselves to working hard at a job to pay their own way through college?

Really?

I admire the work ethic of anyone who is working hard to pay their way through college. I applaud anyone who does not let endless obstacles put an end to their dreams.

Dreams. During my youth I saw news clips of police dogs biting peaceful protesters who were marching for what the law of the land promised them.

Today the law in California promised that if students met a specified set of criteria of high school attendance in California then they could receive in-state tuition. But the new dogs of the 21st century, Kris Kobach included, are attacking these young students because they peacefully pursue what California law promises.

The New Dogs: Joe Arpaio; Jan Brewer; Tom Tancredo; Kris Kobach; and Russell Pearce, are all attacking people who are pursuing the same American Dream that I was taught to believe in. Unfortunately, I lived during a not-so-long-ago time where kids in Chicago could not walk in certain neighborhoods without receiving a vicious beating. I lived in a time where my family was limited to where they could live in Chicago simply because they were Americans of Mexican descent. The American Dream to me back then was the American Wet Dream.

We lose when we cannot dream. Kobach and his New Dogs cannot stop us from dreaming. They cannot stop young and old from pursuing the same American Dream that the European immigrants had when they sailed to America 100 years ago. The Italians, the Irish, and other groups all had Kris Kobach types attacking them like mad dogs. There has always been opportunists who have benefited from exploiting the fears of the unknown.

This is no different.

While I do not watch much network television I am well aware of a show that I have never watched, even for one second, called "Dancing with the Stars." When I went on-line this morning to read the news of the day, I was inundated with links to Bristol Palin and her participation in this year's show. Apparently she is one of the few "dancers" remaining on the reality show.

I have no idea if the daughter of Sarah Palin can dance. I would rather attend a minute man rally than watch reality tv. But I am amused and intrigued by the "fame" of the younger Palin. We first knew her as the unwed pregnant teen daughter of the evangelical Republican Vice-Presidential candidate who screeched "abstinence only" as a rallying cry to solidify her standing with the far-right wing base of her party.

I make no issue with Bristol Palin's unwed teen-aged pregnancy. Things happen. Just because a parent says "abstinence" or "no drinking" does not mean that a teen will make good choices. Life is a learning experience.

Anyway.

One of the links to a story about Bristol and the reality show stated that the judges scored her low but the audience kept her in the competition.

So, apparently Bristol's dancing is not up to the level of what the judges are looking for, but the viewers are strongly supporting her.

That does not surprise me. After all, who in the heck watches reality shows?

"Honey, we gotta record Glenn Beck on da dvr cuz Bristol is dancin' tonight"

hmmmmm.....it is all about the ratings. P.T. Barnum would have said that had televison been around in his day. Instead, he said there is a sucker born every minute. That makes for a lot of suckers. Suckers who end up believing the rhetoric of the New Dogs.

I have never read anything about Bristol attending college or if she works at a regular job. I guess in today's age, being famous is a job. Thus, if I said that Bristol is uneducated, it would not be an attack on her. It would only reflect her lack of higher education.

One one hand we have the demonized undocumented students working hard to pay their own way through college to create a better life. Then we have the beloved, uneducated and unemployed, Bristol Palin.

At the risk of making an assumption, I would bet that the majority of viewers who call the reality hot line to vote for Bristol Palin is against these hard-working educated kids. The viewers sit on a sofa in a fantasy world of dancing with "stars" and embedding their hopes and lives with Bristol's pursuit of fame.

Bristol does not have to work at some low-paying job to pay her way through six colleges like her mother did. No, she pursues fame riding the coat tails of her tea party grizzly bear mother.

So America loves an uneducated, unwed, unemployed teen mom who exploits her mother's fame; but many of these same people are against dedicated, hard-working educated youth who are dedicated to creating their own path for a better life.

Maybe it is still the American Wet Dream for some who are not fortunate enough be born in the most famous circus family of our times.

After all, it is all about meritocracy in America?

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Immigration News

2010-11-11T09:20:00.000-07:00

Tennessee lawmaker likens illegal immigrants to 'rats'

Curry Todd, El Ratero

A Republican lawmaker likened illegal immigrant births to rats multiplying while he was questioning state officials at a committee hearing.

Rep. Curry Todd had been asking Tuesday if the state-funded Cover Kids program checked citizenship before paying for health care. He was told that the federal government didn’t allow it for prenatal care because any child born in the U.S. is a citizen.

Todd said that means the immigrants can “go out there like rats and multiply.”

What next?

Will Todd argue that rats were not meant to be included in the 14th Amendment?

READ MORE in the commercialappeal.com

Woman who was shackled during labor to be deported

Juana Villegas is one of the people in the aforementioned story who is considered a "rat" by Tennessee politician Curry "El Ratero" Todd.

Villeagas was nine months pregnant when she was stopped by the police and arrested for driving without a license. She had her child while in custody. She was shackled to her bed during part of her labor. Apparently the cops and the hospital was afraid she would try the impossible and escape on foot while delivering her child?

I guess nothing is impossible for a Mexican. If we can walk for days in 115 degree heat to apply for a low-paying job without benefits while being hunted by the Border Patrol and drunk, toothless Minute Men; we can do anything.

A similar incident also happened in the "Land Of Arpaio" when Alma Chacon, an undocumented woman, was detained while she was none months pregnant and shackled when she delivered her child.

The U.S. 6th District Court of Appeals refused to review Villeaga's deportation order and ruled that her claims failed on the merits in an opinion released Monday.

READ MORE in the Tennessean.com

Four arrested protesting decision to bar DREAMers from Georgia colleges

Four pro-immigrant protesters were arrested Wednesday morning outside the monthly meeting of the University System of Georgia's Board of Regents.

They were part of a group of 15 or so chanting and waving homemade signs protesting the regents' decision last month to bar students who cannot prove their citizenship from the state's most competitive schools.

READ MORE in the onlineathens.com

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Baylor Basketball Coach Threatens Columbian Recruit with Deportation if He Does Not Go to Baylor

2010-10-21T17:41:00.005-06:00

Hanner Perea

6-foot-9 Hanner Perea is an amazingly gifted basketball player (he has been measured to be able to touch two feet and two inches above the rim) from Colombia who transferred to LaLumiere High School in Indiana for the opportunity to play ball. Currently the power forward is ranked by some scouts as a raw four-star prospect with much upside. He is only a Jr. in school.

Little did Perea know about the shark infested waters that big-time college recruiting is. There are some scandalous recruiters who will stoop to anything to lure a big-time prospect to their campus.

One recruiter, an assistant coach from Baylor, apparently watched too many Border Patrol shows on cable.

Baylor assistant coach Mark Morefield is allegedly one of these scandalous characters willing to try anything to lure Perea to Baylor. Not only did Morefield illegally send Perea dozens of text messages (confirmed by multiple sources)to Perea's high school and AAU coaches, Morefield also implied a threat of deportation in one of his messages.

Morefield texted LaLUmiere basketball coach Alan Huss threatening that if Perea did not attend Baylor, he would not be in the United States.

"I guarantee u if he does [commit to another school] he will be in Colombia for the spring and summer and next year. Don’t forget it,” the text said.

Threatening a high school kid with deportation should be a crime.

Mark Morefield.

Hopefully this scumbag coach gets what he deserves. Morefield deserves to be fired. Baylor head coach Scott Drew also deserves to be fired. Drew and Morefield are old friends who go back to the mid-90s, when they both played college ball for Valparaiso.

Who ever plays Baylor's men basketball team this year has become one of my favorite teams to cheer for.

READ MORE FROM THE NY TIMES
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VIDEO OF HANNER PEREA

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If Only One of the Shenandoah Cowards had an Ounce of Independent Thought and Decency

2010-10-20T23:17:00.003-06:00

I am reprinting a blog I wrote two years ago. It was inspired by the fatal beating in Shenandoah. I thought about an incident which occurred over 35 years ago, when one of my friends, an angry, violent Croatian kid named Dan Miholtz chased an African-American man with the desire to beat him badly. I intervened and the man went on his way unharmed.

I had not thought about that night in probably 30 years. I had never thought of it as anything special. But looking back on it, I had a chance to do a decent thing and I did. I stopped a senseless beating.

If only one of these kids could have had the insight, the empathy, the lack of prejudice, and the courage to have stepped between Ramirez and his buddies and said "Stop!"

But there were no independent thinkers that night. It was a mob mentality. There was no empathy that night. There was anger and a hatred for Mexicans. Not one of the six Shenandoah teens were able to formulate the independent thought that a 6-on-1 beating was wrong.

There was also no decency that night. Any one of those kids could have stopped a fatal beating. They all need to share the blame for the death of Luis Ramirez that July night. But no one stepped up when they were called upon to save a life. For that they are the Shenandoah Cowards.

If any of them are capable of any insight (and I seriously doubt that the seemingly dim-witted pair of Brandon Piekarsky and Derrick Donchak have that ability)they will have to ponder the cold reality that they had a chance to prevent a death, but instead they participated in a fatal beating.

These cowards will most likely develop defense mechanisms mired in racism to live with the ugliness they created that fateful night in July, 2008. The excuses and the rationalizations that they create only make them more pathetic.

The viaduct that separated the Blacks and the Browns 30 years ago.

It was a late summer night. Miholtz and I were sitting on "The Stairs," the popular hang out spot in front of the building where I lived during my teen-aged years in Pilsen. Miholtz and I were whittling the time away, awaiting until the night was reduced to nothing.

There was some kind of honor to be the last one standing every night.

One never knew what kind of action might explode during the playing out of the theater that is the subterranean night life of inner-city Chicago . There was a rush to be part of this surreal existence where the craziest things often happen long after dark. For a 16 year-old kid this was the first taste of adulthood; the first step into the real world of pirates, hustlers, and junkies.

From the seams of the side streets appeared a Black man in his 20's. Not many Black people walked through this neighborhood, especially at night. The fortress like viaduct a few blocks north was an impenetrable wall of segregation keeping the Blacks on one side and the Browns on the other. Other than when the brothers came to Harrison Park to play ball or when the old people came to do their laundry or buy groceries, there was not a permissible time for Blacks to enter into our neighborhood, nor could we walk into their hood.

The crazy thing was that folks on both sides had friends from both sides. I played sports with the people from the "other side." I went to school with them. But some unwritten code at the time said that they could not walk alone in our neighborhood.

Miholtz spotted the man like how a dog would recognize a cat on the street. Miholtz yelled "get him" while already a few strides into his wild man pursuit towards the Black man. The Black man immediately recognized what was going down and broke into a mad dash to quickly put distance between himself and the mad Croatian kid chasing him.

I was not sure why Miholtz was chasing him. Who was this man and why were we chasing him? I yelled at Miholtz "Why are we running after this guy?" and he replied "I dont want niggers in my neighborhood."

What? I never subscribed to the racist bull. I can remember actually walking under the viaduct of segregation and bravely venturing into the Black neighborhood when I was 14. It was mid-day in the winter. I walked down 14th Street in the forbidden city and nothing happened to me. It was a different experience from what I expected. It looked like a scene from a war movie with boarded up buildings and a large empty lot where several men huddled near a garbage can that emitted flames. They did not pay me any attention. I saw no one else. I walked down negro streets at noon and did not get jumped.

Friends treated me like a returning hero. I did not see what the big thing was about walking into the other side. Nothing happened. There were just old bums (we did not have the term 'homeless' yet) there trying to keep warm by a fire in a garbage can. I was moved by that short glimpse into that unique scene of poverty that made the poverty on our side look like luxury.

I was never taught to hate African-Americans. My mother belonged to an organization called WSO (West Side Organization.) It was a civil rights group. My mother may have been its only Mexican-American member. I can remember the night my mother came home and told us that she had played pool with the famous Martin Luther King. She made mention of what a flirt he was.

I remember one day when I was about 7 or 8 years old and we had nothing to eat, which was about everyday, and a group of African-American men carried a large cardboard box bursting with left-over sandwiches from one of their meetings into our little two bedroom basement apartment where my mother was raising 7 kids.

The sandwiches I ate that day are still some of the best tasting memories I have. We were rich with food. We did not have to ration arroz con leche for dinner that evening.

Those men were heroes to me. They fed us for one lucky day.

They also left a set of a children's encyclopedias. I read them back and forth and escaped to every corner of the world while I immersed myself with the books.

When much of America was growing up with fear of the Black man I was growing up with an awe for the Black man. The only ones I knew were nice people who fed me and opened up the world to me. They were also brave men who marched for justice despite the risk of getting bricks bounced off their heads.

Now I was running alongside a crazed Croatian who wanted to beat a man up simply because of his skin color. I could not let that happen. Yet, words of logic do not work well in this situation.

Logic has no room in crazy.

I was the self-proclaimed fastest runner in my neighborhood. I took off after the man. I caught up to the exhausted man after about two blocks of pursuit down Wood Street and told him that it was dangerous to walk through here at night. he was relieved that I meant no harm. Luckily the Blue Island bus was rolling slowly down the street during its night owl schedule and I flagged it down and put the man on the bus. Miholtz slowly jogged up out of breath while the bus was pulling away.

Miholtz expressed his disappointment that I let him get away. Hell, I would not have chased him if I knew why Miholtz was trying to catch him. I had hate; I did not have his strain of hate.

Miholtz was raised by a single dad who was habitually drunk. He was a racist red-neck who took out his frustrations by beating his sons with extension cords and wooden canes. Many kids in my neighborhood had similar stories. I was nurtured in a permeable bubble of violence. Although my violence was not fed by an ignorant prejudice of those of different skin color. It had different sources and, sadly and regrettably, victims.

But "hate crimes" have been around as long as there has been a United States of America. We folk of color historically have been the target of many ignorant, hateful thugs for a few centuries. Others are just noticing it now as "hey, that's a f*cked up thing to do."

There are still millions of Miholtz's in our midst, products of the divisions that have kept working class people divided.

We are all working people trying to build a better life. If we take the time to just talk to one another we could see just how much alike we are.

There is a current fire of hate that is being fueled by the Talking Empty Heads on Hate radio, Hate Cable TV and Cyber Hate. Just as African-Americans were demonized during my youth as being criminals, rapists, drug dealers, lazy welfare scum, uneducated and unable to learn the "White" culture and live like civilized people, we are hearing the same exact thing now about the undocumented immigrant.

Ratings are more important than truth.

The young White males who killed Luis Eduardo Ramirez Zavala in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania on July 12, 2008 did not just wake the morning of the murder with a murderous hate. They had to learn it somewhere. They learned it in their homes, their schools, their playgrounds.

The thugs who bashed in the brains of Jose Sucuzhanay in New York did not personally invent the racist anti-Latino slurs that they hurled at Sucuzhanay as he lay dying from the blows of the metal baseball bat.

The seven Long Island high school cowards who beat Marcello Lucero to death had to grow up in a cultural environment where "hunting beaners" was an acceptable thing to do. No one is born a "hate criminal."Hatred is ALWAYS a learned thing.

Hate is a learned thing best taught to the misinformed and ignorant. It does not matter if some of the attackers in Shenandoah or Long Island are honor students. Their collective ignorance was a fertile petri dish for the culture of hate to grow up ugly and unfettered from our common senses of decency.

The hatred behind the recent hate crimes have many different complex issues behind every individual involved. But they all have a common denominator-the hatred of the immigrant.

The anti-immigrant hate speech produced by the Talking Heads on Hate Radio, TV and the internet helps to fuel the acts of violence against people who look like an immigrant.

We must fight the source that fuels the ignorance.

We must do our best to redefine the message from one of hate to one of civil resolution.

I believe that the majority of the American people are decent people willing to recognize and chose the better option between civility and hate.

Hate will lose. We cannot afford to believe otherwise. Behavior is motivated by thought. We must think and believe that we can overcome the hate that is turning our youth into cold blooded killers.

The morgue and the prison is not where our huddled masses belong.

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Piekarsky and Donchak are found guilty of all charges! Justice finally prevails!

2010-10-14T16:42:00.006-06:00

Donchak, 20, sobbed as the verdict was read. Piekarsky, 18, put his head in his hands. Both were led away in handcuffs and ordered held behind bars pending their Jan. 24 sentencing. They could be sentenced to life in prison.

AP File Photo

Brandon J. Piekarsky, 18, of Shenandoah Heights, left, and Derrick M. Donchak, 20, of Shenandoah, return to the William J. Nealon Federal Building and United States Courthouse in Scranton, Pa.

Hatred is founded on ignorance gone unchecked. The ignorance that permeated the young lives of Brandon Piekarsky and Derrick Donchak has placed these young men on a journey that most likely will lead to their spending their young adult years locked up in a federal prison. It was ignorance that lead to the six-on-one fatal beating of Luis Ramirez in July of 2008. It was ignorance that fueled the racism that deleted any sense of empathy in these boys when they chose to kick a man who was badly beaten and laying unconscious on a dreamless Shenandoah street.

There was no shortage of indifference for the Mexican national who lay dying on the street. The Shenandoah teens beat him, stomped on his chest and head, and then ran away to avoid any consequences. The fact that a man lay dying from their actions did not matter.

The local police were indifferent to the grave plight of Ramirez. Shenandoah Officer Jason Hayes chose to call his girlfriend at the bar where she worked. His girlfriend, Tammy Piekarsky, is the mother of the teen who was pointed out by his friends as delivering kicks to the head of Ramirez.

Hayes was more concerned about informing Ms. Piekarsky than he was about investigating a brutal beating. Rather than investigate, the cops drove the thugs home. The cops advised them to get their stories striaght. Officer Jamie Moyer called some of the homes of the thugs advising them to dispose of potential incriminating evidence.

Eventually three cops were indicted for their roles in covering up the murder of Luis Ramirez.

At the time of the murder, Hayes owned a poster that read; "Speak English or DIE!"

Ramirez was doing exactly that-dying.

There is no protection for Ramirez. He was a only a wetback spic to those involved in the murder and cover-up. He was in a town where even the cops embraced a mantra of "Speak English or die."

Ignorance.

Where did they learn to hate? How did racist hate so strongly infest this burg nestled in the Appalachians? There are many good people in Shenandoah. There are also many ignorant racists.

Piekarky and Donchak chose to be among the ignorant.

"They showed no remorse that night ... no sense of responsibility for having beaten a man to the point of death," Justice Department prosecutor Myesha Braden told jurors today in her closing argument.

Now their ignorance may result in their spending their young adult life behind bars. The parents cry. If they had not embraced racism in the home there would not be tears.

If Ms. Pieakrsky had rejected the rhetoric of "Speak English or Die!" brought into the home of her thug cop boyfriend, she could have provided a role model that may have influenced her son to make better choices. Maybe Piekarksy could have stopped the fight before it ever began? If Ms. Pieakarsky was a good and decent parent she would have rejected the evil meassge of Hayes' poster. Instead Ms. Piekarsky nurtured the hate that will lead to her son living in the most hostile environment in America-our prison system.

Ms. Piekarsky and Hayes were with the spirit of hate when Brandon kicked Ramirez. Tammy and Jason were there with every kick to the head.

They helped to create the monster.

There were six teen monsters present that fatal night.

Any good person would have stopped the one-sided beating. Of the six kids, there was not one who had the character instilled in them to stop the fight.

They were all losers. They were all cowards. None were brave enough to say" Hey, this is not right, leave him alone."

They allowed the racist slurs and kicks to continue.

It is beyond sad that Piekarksy lived with racist hate. Donchak did too. Donchak peppered his limited vocabulary with racist slurs. Donchak had a history of harassing the people of color in Shenandoah. Donchak was so callous as to proudly wear a Border Patrol t-shirt AFTER he participated in the cold blooded murder of Luis Ramirez.

Ignorance.

Perhaps the two murderers thought it was funny to yell racist slurs. Maybe it was just entertainment for these drunken teens to beat up a spic. Ramirez was not human. He was a spic. Piekarsky and Donchak did not have to stop and think about their actions or its consequences. Ramirez was just a spic.

Ramirez had no value in a town where the cops wish them dead. Spics have no value where spineless prosecutors and biased all-white juries preside over fake and biased justice.

There was no justice in Shenandoah until now.

Reality hits hard when the jury says guilty in a case worthy of a sentence of life. LIFE.

Life is a more fair sentence than these cowards gave to a fellow human being-Luis Ramirez.

Justice finally came to town.

LINKS: Pieakrsky and Donchak found guilty in federal court

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Piekarsky-Donchak defense team rests

2010-10-13T10:55:00.003-06:00

The defense team of the Shenandoah thugs who killed Luis Ramirez in a cowardly 6-on-1 beating rested their case.

Robert Senape testified for the defense today. He was the first cop on the scene despite being from another town. But he is from a town close enough to have known the Shenandoah cops during this time frame-over half the force who were active at the time of the fatal beating were indicted last year by the Department of Justice. It is not much of a leap of logic to think that Senape knew Jason Hayes, a step-father figure to one of the defendants-Brandon Piekarsky.

Senape testified that one of the witnesses, Arielle Garcia, told him that Brian Scully was the person who had kicked Luis Ramirez in the head while he lie in the street. Senape testified that Garcia had told him that she grabbed Scully and had asked him why he kicked Ramirez. This contrasts with prior testimony from some of Piekarsky's drinking buddies that fatal night, who testified that Piekarsky was the kicker.

During the state trial of Piekarsky and Donchak, the defense team used faulty and tainted police statements to discredit the credibility of Arielle's testimony. I have to be leery of the defense using the same tactic.

Even if the testimony is true, it is likely that a witness of a traumatic event may not be accurate in all the details of the event. But Piekarsky's buddies know him well. They drink with Brandon. They attend the local high school together. Some of them play football together. I doubt if they would get confused as to who was doing the kicking.

One of Piekarsky's buddies, Colin Walsh, said that Brandon told him that he had kicked Ramirez in the head so hard that his shoe came off. Two other of Piekarsky's buddies, Joshua Redmond and Joseph Benjamin Lawson, testified that Piekarsky had admitted to them that he had kicked Ramirez.

The scary aspect is the jury is there is an all-white once again. Once again, there is police testimony meant to discredit the testimony of eyewitnesses. The testifying cops were not there, yet they offer the only testimony that contradicts the testimony that Piekarsky kicked Ramirez.

There was not one mention of Arielle naming Scully as the kicker in any report originally filed by the Shenandoah police. Yet, the out of town cops testify that Arielle named Scully as the kicker?

Sounds like a deviation from truth-again-by local cop.

Pieakarsky's and Ramirez' friends, all eyewitnesses, testified to Piekarsky kicking Ramirez.They were all there. They all agree that Piekarsky kicked Ramirez.

Yet, the police testify otherwise?

So will the all-white jury ignore the testimony of eyewitnesses and acquit Piekarsky and Donchak?

Has the 21st century and its sense of justice for all forgot to visit Appalachia Pennsylvania?

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Justice in Shenandoah: Bull Connor Style

2010-10-12T13:09:00.009-06:00

Local boys, helped by police cover-up, now on trial in federal court.

Opening line in Look magazine's story of the murder of Emmett Till.

In the long history of man's inhumanity to man, racial conflict has produced some of the most horrible examples of brutality.

Ugly, raw, racist rage pumped the six teens, most of them drunk, with adrenalin as they viciously attacked their sole victim. Some of these teens were football players for the local Shenandoah high school. Although, they were bigger and stronger than their victim, they chose like cowards to attack him as a mad, uncontrolled pack driven by their racial hatred.

Ramirez was eventually beaten by the mob to the pavement of one of the many dreamless streets of Shenandoah. Hatred blinded the teens from realizing that the mugging was over. They needed to punctuate their cowardly attack with a curtain call of kicks to the head of Ramirez.

While Mr. Ramirez was on the ground, motionless, one of the drunken teens, Colin Walsh said, "I saw Brandon kick him in the side of the head." Walsh said after the beating Brandon Piekarsky told him that "he kicked the guy so hard his shoes flew off."

There are cold, dark chapters in American history when an entire group of people were denied justice based upon the color of their skin. African-Americans were brutalized by a legally -sanctioned apartheid in the South. They had no voice when they were victimized by white criminals. There was no truth in court proceedings whenever they went on trial. Many times there was only a street justice motivated by extreme ignorance and hatred that resulted in the lynching of a targeted individual(s).

Police stood by while whites tortured, mutilated, and killed African-Americans. At times, the police joined in.

Justice was non-existent for many African-Americans for over 400 years in our nation. The chapter of justice for all people of color is one that is being freshly written. It is one that has made great strides based upon rights found in the constitution that ultimately opened the eyes of its interpreters and guaranteed rights to all. But it is a chapter that sometimes struggles and relapses to a return to the good old boy way of adjudicating a lack of justice to people of color.

Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, a poor, depressed burg nestled in the Appalachians, wrote one of these stories of America's relapse into racial violence and injustice recently. In this poor, depressed, under educated town, the dark chapters of our racist past permeated into a permitted murder.

Luis Ramirez was beaten to death in a 6-on-1 beating in Shenandoah in July of 2008. The undocumented Mexican migrant was kicked in the head by angry, drunk white teen thugs who yelled racist slurs while they were lost in the lunacy of their racist violence. Ramirez died as a result of these kicks to the head.

Witnesses told the police about the racist slurs. They told the police about the kicks to the head. They told the police about the mob of drunken punks who beat an individual to death.The police chose to help the criminals based upon personal relationships and skin color.

The victim was only a wetback. One of the local cops, Jason Hayes,the boyfriend of the mother of the thug accused of thrusting the fatal kick, owned a poster that had the message "SPEAK ENGLISH OR DIE."

Ramirez was dying in fulfillment of the poster belonging to the disgraced former cop, Hayes-pictured below walking with the barmaid mother, Tammy Piekarsy and the cowardly thug Brandon Piekarsky.

In America we hire police to uphold the law and to serve and protect the community.

In Shenandoah, it is apparent that the undocumented are not considered part of the community. At least not the part that deserves protection and service from our public servants. In Shenandoah, it is not a priority to uphold the law if the law breaker is white and the victim is of color.

Rather than chase after the murderers, the cops called the mother of one of the cowardly thugs, Tammy Piekarsky, and informed her of the situation. One of the cops, according to a witness, accused the unconscious and dying Ramirez of faking it. According to the same witness, the cop made a motion with his foot as if to add another kick to the head of the dying Ramirez.

A white cop ready and willing to kick a dying man of color who was the victim of a brutal beating.

The cops did talk to the drunken teens who were seen kicking Ramirez in the head by numerous witnesses. But the teens were not taken to the police station for questioning. They were not interrogated about the murder. Instead, they were advised on how to avoid any legal consequence to the murderous act they had committed on the streets the cops were supposed to protect.

One cop told the drunken teens to get their stories straight. Another cop, after hearing a witness describe the color of the shoes worn by one of the cowardly attackers, advised the drunken teens to get rid of their shoes.

The mother of one of the teens testified at the federal trial that one of the cops called her and said:

"'If Brian has a pair of Columbia blue and gray sneakers, he should get rid of them,'" is what Officer Jamie Moyer said in a telephone conversation with her, Julie Mickalowski, the mother of Brian Scully, testified.

The cops then lied about the shoes and used their positions of authority to discredit the witnesses. One of the cops threatened one of the witnesses to remain quiet or face jail. Arielle Garcia has testified in the federal trial that Hayes threatened to arrest her husband, a Mexican native, if he did not remain quiet.

Ramirez had spent the day at the Garcia's. He called Mr. Garcia on his cell phone asking for help because he was in a fight against six attackers. Mr. Garcia tried to stop the fight. He and his wife witnessed the fatal kicks to the head.

In Shenandoah, a cop tells a witness to a murder to shut up or face jail. He later gives the murderers a ride home, and advises them to get their stories straight.

Town residents quickly took sides. Some instantly revealed their ignorance and hatred for the undocumented. Several town residents proudly proclaimed that if Ramirez had not been here illegally he would not have been killed.

The causes of death was not lack of papers. The cause was from the fatal beating from drunken, good-for-nothing, racists, dead-end Shenandoah teens.

There were town residents and other supporters of Piekarsky and Donchak who focused on Ramirez' relationship with a local teen girl. These people rationalized that If the adult Ramirez was having sex with a teen that somehow his murder was understandable and permissible. Since the death of Ramirez there have been several arrests of white adults in the Shenandoah area for having sex with teens. Not once did any town residents march with pitchforks and torches to the jail and demand to kill the suspects.

The alleged statutory rape was just an excuse to allow the local bigots to embrace the murder of an undocumented person of color.

Bigots were rushing to rationalize, minimize, and make excuses for the local teens charged with the murder of Ramirez. This was no different than the response to Look magazine's story about Emmett Till some 55 years ago.

A letter to Look's editors:

...To publish this story, of which no one is proud, but which was certainly justified, smacks loudy (loudly) of circulation hunting. Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam did what had to be done, and their courage in taking the course they did is to be commended. To have followed any other course would have been unrealistic, cowardly and not in the best interest of their family or country.

Richard Lauchli
Collinsville, Illinois

Many residents and supporters rationalized that Ramirez was illegal. If he were not here he would not be dead. Others minimized the murder as a fight gone astray, as if a 6-on-1 beating could ever be described as a fight.

...and in the far corner, we have a half-dozen challengers weighing in at a combined weight of 1,115 pounds...

It was never a fight. I have yet to see a boxer take on a basketball team and its sixth man-at the same time!

It was a deadly mugging covered-up by the local racist, corrupt cops.

Justice had no chance in the judicial system of Shenandoah. Corrupt cops and spineless prosecution resulted in an all-white jury acquitting the thugs of the most serious charges that the defendants had faced. They were convicted of minor charges and they served only a couple of months-for murder.

But unlike the deep South of 55 years ago, there has been progress in our pursuits of justice. Sometimes we get it right, and Piekarsky, Donchak, and the cops were indicted by the feds on various charges relating to the murder and cover-up.

Federal prosecutors rested their case against Piekarsky and Donchak today after final testimony that included Jesse Gomez' account of Donchak once beating Gomez' SUV with a metal pipe. Gomez is a Mexican native. Gomez also testified that Donchak warned that any retaliation from the local Hispanic community against him would be met with a "civil war."

Prior testimony about Donchak included his playing of racist music, his wearing of a Border Patrol t-shirt after the murder, and his dislike of Hispanics.

No one knows what this jury will decide. But unlike the trial in Shenandoah, this trial is not tainted with the lies of the local police. This trial is the first true chance for justice for Luis Ramirez.

The killers of Emmet Till were never convicted of any crime in the murder of Till. Lets hope that America has matured to the point where racist murderers are not allowed to go free because the victim is so demonized to the point where they are not considered human and worthy of real justice.

THREE OF A KIND

LINKS:

Donchak threatens Shenandoah Hispanics with civil war

Chief of Shenandoah Police sued for allegedly killing Latino youth in custody

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Lou Dobbs Hires Undocumented Workers?

2010-10-07T16:46:00.002-06:00

Lou Dobbs has lied before. Actually, anytime he opens his mouth he is about to lie. Dobbs is a carnival huckster who revived a dying career by exploiting the fears of uninformed Americans with sensationalistic lies about undocumented migrants. Remember the lies about Mexicans importing thousands of cases of leprosy over the border? How about the lie that someone shot at his home in New Jersey?

Dobbs tried to claim that what was most likely a single stray bullet from a weapon of a hunter was a personal attack on Dobbs due to his outspoken political beliefs.

Now, several undocumented workers have come forward accusing Dobbs of hiring them to maintain his homes. From one side of his mouth, Dobbs was ringing up his cash register by demonizing the undocumented. From the other side of his lying mouth Dobbs was saving money by hiring the undocumented.

Do not do as I say, nor do not do as I do, just close your eyes and shut down your brain and listen to me, the Great Wizard of Dobbs.

"There is no place like Dobbs..."

Of course, Dobbs is quick to defend himself with his hot-air logic. Dobbs claims that the reports are a "political attack." Just like the errant shot from a hunter was an attack on his home? What a drama schmuck.

Reports that Dobbs found the undocumented workers on Meg Whitman's E-Bay has not been verified.

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Monday Music

2010-10-05T23:29:00.000-06:00

Josh White: The House of the Rising Sun

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Dumb racist letter of the day from one with a minuteman mentality

2010-10-05T11:08:00.004-06:00

Few people are for illegal immigration. Granted, there are some who advocate for a free flow of workers across the border, there are many more who recognize the political reality of needing to have some control over the border crossings. The current way of doing things is insane. Most of our efforts are used chasing and detaining people who want only want a chance to work. Those who are fortunate enough to avoid detection in the deadly desert are rewarded with some type of employment, usually from an unscrupulous employer who will take financial advantage over a vulnerable and desperate worker.

There are some Americans who will not get off their sofas to get an application, and yet people who will walk through the deadly desert for a chance to work are demonized?

Immigration reform that attends to the fluctuating labor demands of the employer while protecting the laborer should be mandatory components of any reform bill presented to congress. Resources can then be redirected towards increased border security against drug and human smugglers. People looking for work should never have to be funneled into the Sonora Desert, walking for days in 115 degree brutal heat, in an absurd game of broken immigration policy.

There are some who will claim that our immigration policies are not broken, that they just need to be enforced. "We are a nation of laws" is one of their battle cries. But laws are made by people, and people are imperfect. Imperfect laws break. If something does not work, it probably is broken.

If my car does not start, I know enough to take it to the mechanic. He/she can diagnose the problem and find the solution. I do not throw away the car unless it is beyond repair. Usually it is a new part and some labor performed by a competent mechanic.

Then I am off and running again.

We need some new parts in our immigration system so it can run smoothly.

But immigration reform is not that simple. It is complex. We can recognize the symptoms, although we may disagree on our perceptions of what these symptoms are.

A doctor does not treat symptoms, he finds the root cause of the illness. Build a wall, arrest, detain, and deport are merely treating the symptoms. Ignoring the root causes will only bring the symptoms back.

How do we address the root causes? Mass deportations of 11 million people will result in the mass reentry of 11 million people. Maybe not the same people, and certainly not in the same day, but others seeking to fill the vacuum created by the mass deportation will come to take the place of the deported. That is what happens when an "enforcement only" mentality is the only course of action for a problem. Declare a war on drugs and arrest the drug dealers, and new ones reappear as quickly as the old ones are hauled off to be processed through the justice system.

It happens everyday across America.

"Enforcement only" policies with drugs has created an entire multi-billion dollar industry that cannot be changed, too many are now dependent on "drugs." Judges, prosecutors, jails, public and for-profit prisons, rehab centers, drug-testing centers, substance abuse counselors, and probation officers all thrive on the business created by our "enforcement only" mentality on drugs.

Do you also like how the "enforcement only" mentality has cleaned our communities of street gangs?

The same will happen for illegal immigration. It will not work.

Pulling a weed does not eradicate the weed. Pulling its root out does. Enforcing a law punishes the law breaker-it does not eradicate the law breakers. So instead of turning the undocumented into law breakers, lets reform the laws and policies of immigration. But without pulling out the roots, we are doomed to repeat the process again and again and again.

Realistically, trade agreements are not going to be modified to favor the unskilled and powerless worker-not voluntarily. Corporate greed is not going to suddenly find a heart and agree not to enact polices that hurt the American and Mexican worker-not voluntarily. Our drug laws that turn addicts into criminals, and elevate "illegal" drugs into a lucrative trade controlled by bloody, ruthless violence will not change-not voluntarily.

The wealthy are not negatively impacted by illegal immigration. They will never wait with dozens of other uninsured people in an emergency room for a non-emergency medical problem. Their wages are not depressed by an illegal corporate chieftain. But their lawns are manicured, and their children cared for by the undocumented. Just look at Meg Whitman-a strong advocate for "enforcement only," when most likely she knowingly employed a worker without papers.

It is complex. There are no easy solutions. The most frustrating thing is that the opposition is fueled by ignorance, negative stereotypes, uninformed opinion, make-believe facts, and a manipulation of fear by politicians who have no other platform other than the demonizing of the migrants for political gain. Jan Brewer, Joe Arpaio, Russell Pearce, Tom Tancredo, and Kris Kobach are the more well-known hucksters who peddle lies to elicit fear to gain political capital.

The following is a letter to the editor reflecting someone who would buy into the rhetoric of the aforementioned politicians.

JanSan | 5:21 p.m. Oct. 2, 2010
Pocatello, ID from the Deseret News

In a perfect world, things would work out perfectly. But, it is an imperfect world that we now live in.

"...imperfect world that we now live in." So the commenter believes that we once lived in a perfect world where things just magically worked out perfectly? Is there a complexion, a color, to the commentator's perception of this perfection?

There are MANY good Mexican immagrants -(immigrants) legal and illeagal -(illegal) nice people.. for the most part wanting what is good for their families. But, getting what is good for their families comes with a cost.. a cost that the US citizens are having to pay for.

All workers pay taxes!

The borders need to be made safe! Then we can deal with the illeagals (Whew, illegal)already here, but until the borders are sealed up tighter it dosen't (doesn't) matter how many we send away because there will be more coming on a daily bases. (Bases? Who is on first?)

Border security is only one aspect of the problem. Almost half of the undocumented remain on expired visas. Some minuteman types tend to look at immigration on simplistic terms. It is a complex problem. We need to explore the root causes of illegal immigration and develop strategies based upon its economic and political realities.

The terroist Muslims

(Mixing immigration with terrorism)

are making great inroads in converting the Mexican/Latin American people (News to me. Do they wear name suits with name tags and ride bikes?) and we as Americans have a right to defend ourselves

(From Muslim missionaries?)

and expect our Federal Goverment to protect us from terroist entering this country through these borders,

(Spreading the lie that Muslim terrorist enter through the Mexican-USA border)

then their (there) are the Mexican drug cartel people. We have enough of these kind of people already to deal with..

(I know many people. I do not know one Muslim terrorist or anyone from a Mexican drug cartel-yet we have too many of these kind of people? I agree that one terrorist or one drug cartel kingpin is too many, but what does this have to do with immigration reform? )

we DO NOT need to hang out a welcome mat for the Mexican drug trade.

(No reasonable person advocates for welcoming the drug trade. But the welcome mat has been out for a long time. Our drug laws and our addictions to drugs guarantee the welcome mat.)

And then there is the SS#'s being stolen from our children

(Immigration reform will instantly end all ID theft currently caused by desperate workers. But the majority of ID theft is not caused by the undocumented.)

and welfare costs etc..

(Ironically, the writer is obviously uneducated. Uneducated people typically earn less. Those that earn less may find themselves in need for social services. Is the writer's hatred for the undocumented really a form of self-hate? Is the writer really just another uneducated, poor, frustrated worker misdirecting their anger at fellow workers and not at those who exploit the poor? It is easier to find a scapegoat than to do the hard work of changing one's life.)

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Meg Whitman: Jose Can't You See-The Spot That You Forgot to Clean?

2010-09-30T13:15:00.004-06:00

Meg Whitman, the super-rich Republican trying to buy the position of Governor of California with her billions, is apparently a liar. I know, stop the presses, a politician who lies.

Meg Whitman, apparently, employed an undocumented worker for over 8 years. Whetman has campaigned as a tough on immigration candidate. She states in the following video that we have to prosecute all illegal aliens...in every city. Yet, She had an undocumented worker on the payroll.

The undocumented worker, Nicky Diaz, came forward and also alleged that Whitman treated her poorly.

Diaz claims that Whitman fired her after she approached Whitman for help in obtaining legal status.

Whitman denies the allegations and credits the timing of the allegation as political dirty tricks by the Jerry Brown campaign.

But according to media-famous attorney Gloria Allred, Whitman had received countless notices that Diaz had a discrepancy in her social security number.

The Whitman campaign released a U.S. Immigration and Naturalization employment eligibility verification form signed by Diaz when she was hired by Whitman in which she asserts under penalty of perjury that she is a lawful permanent resident.

The campaign also released copies of the Social Security Card and California driver's license supplied by Diaz at the time she was hired, and an employment questionnaire in which she checked a box saying that she could legally accept employment.

It is not yet been verified if Whitman also released the posters of Justin Bieber that Diaz allegedly had on her bedroom wall along with a statement saying that Diaz was on Team Jacob.

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Anonymous man from Lancaster Pa. writes to me: "Your Fucking Retarded Shut Up."

2010-09-29T19:46:00.003-06:00

The internet offers a semblance of anonymity that pumps a false sense of courage into folks who usually stutter there way through a pathetic existence. I often receive anonymous messages with some sophomoric insult. I find it amusing that someone would take the time and energy to bring attention to their ignorance.

Anonymous from Lancaster is a perfect example of someone who needs to cyber-hurl an insult my way, but they fail miserably due to their lack of wit, intelligence, and originality.

"Fucking retarded"

That was your best cheap shot? In a street fight do you sucker punch someone with your knitted purse?

"Shut Up."

That might work with your kids and sadly with your abused mate(s) but how did you expect me to react to that?

Ok. I will shut up now since you say so.

But back to your brilliance.

"Your fucking retarded."

Y-o-u-r.

Definition of "YOUR"

–pronoun
1.
(a form of the possessive case of you used as an attributive adjective): Your jacket is in that closet. I like your idea. Compare yours.
2.
one's (used to indicate that one belonging to oneself or to any person): The consulate is your best source of information. As you go down the hill, the library is on your left.
3.
(used informally to indicate all members of a group, occupation, etc., or things of a particular type): Take your factory worker, for instance. Your power brakes don't need that much servicing.

Hmmm. Your car. Your boat. Your bike. Your momma. Your fucking retarded.

Which of these things belong together...please, sing along.

Yep. Three of these things you can possess. Unless Fucking Retarded is your name, inferring that I possess you. But I am not into slavery. But if I was into it, I would not tell you to shut up, I would hope that if you incessantly ran your mouth, that you may eventually say something sounding intelligent.

I know, a big hope. It is good to dream big.

I know. I know. Watching anything Sesame Street makes you want to see her tickle Elmo.

"Your fucking retarded."

maybe you meant "You're."

As in "You are fucking retarded shut up."

You are beating Steve.

You are teasing Phyllis.

You are fucking retarded.

Is your name "Retarded?"

Come on man, have more esteem. Do not be so hard on yourself. (not to be confused with "you're self")

Besides, did you not hear what your (not you're) Queen of the Tea Party said about the "R" word?

Sister Sarah Palin wanted Rahm Emmanuel fired for using the word! Maybe you forgot to read about it. I know that you most likely do not read any material more challenging than a comic book.

Read here:Sarah Palin wants Emanuel fired for using the word "retarded."

So stop calling yourself "retarded." And if we ever did the sweaty body slap, it would not be "fucking." Oh, it would not be love making either.

It would be one hell of a drunken night and I would hope that no one would remember a thing tomorrow.

...for that I would certainly shut up.

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Cowardly Teen Thug Brandon Piekarsky Still Trying to Manipulate the Evidence

2010-09-28T10:26:00.001-06:00

The indicted cop Jason Hayes; Piekarsky's mom; and Piekarsky

When Brandon Piekarsky and his fellow drunken friends decided to fatally beat a man in a 6-on-1 mugging, he had an advantage that most criminal thugs lack-a corrupt cop who is having sex with his barmaid mother.

Jason Hayes, Piekarsky's mother's partner, was a Shenandoah cop who quickly helped to manipulate the evidence in the deadly beating committed by the drunken teen thugs.

Rather than interrogating the drunken teen thugs in a deadly beating, the local cops gave the suspects a ride home and advised them to get their story straight.

Much of the evidence in the trial was tainted by corrupt police investigation. It was enough for a local all-white jury to find the two suspects, Piekarsky and Derrick Donchak, "not guilty" of the most severe charges in the case.

Three Shenandoah cops were later indicted by the Department of Justice for their part in obstructing justice in this case. They now await a federal trial on the charges.

Piekarsky is still trying to manipulate what evidence is presented in the trial. His lawyers are trying to bar a photo of a poster owned by his mother's partner that read "Speak English or Die." The fact that one of the investigating cops is an obvious racist against immigrants is important in this upcoming trial. Piekarsky's lawyers are also trying to bar a photo of the arrogant Donchak wearing a "Border Patrol" t-shirt months after they killed Ramirez.

Not much remorse shown by the cowardly thugs.

But things are different. It is not the local corrupt cops and inept prosecutors manipulating the evidence. A federal judge will make the decision of what evidence to allow and bar from trial.

Evidence will stand on its merits and not barred because of its potential to convict cowardly thugs.

Justice is a hard thing to handle when thugs realize that a few months in jail for killing a man is not justice, and now the feds are in town to administer real justice-unobstructed from local bias and corruption.

Justice now awaits Piekarsky, a martyr for stupidity and hate.

LINKS:

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Megachurch Hypocrite Accused of Luring Legal Teens Into Sex Acts

2010-09-28T09:29:00.004-06:00

Another homophobic megachurch pastor has been accused of sexual improprieties. Four young men,in their late teens at the time of the alleged sex acts, have come forward to allege that Fast Eddie Long, known to his congregation as Bishop Eddie Long, lured them into sexual relationships.

Lithonia, Ga.
By ERRIN HAINES

The Associated Press

Casting himself as the Bible’s ultimate underdog, Bishop Eddie Long went before thousands of faithful supporters at his megachurch Sunday and promised to fight accusations that he lured four young men into sexual relationships.

“I feel like David against Goliath. But I got five rocks, and I haven’t thrown one yet,” Long said in his first public remarks since his accusers filed lawsuits last week claiming he abused his “spiritual authority.” He stopped short of denying the allegations but implied he was wronged by them.

David versus Goliath?

Really?

You claim you have five rocks?

Kinda hard to find a jock strap that fits, huh?

I could not help with that cheap, sleazy joke for a cheap, sleazy joke.

For once I would love to see these "men of the cloth" tell the truth when they get caught. I would love for them to come forward and say: "Yes, I have been hiding behind religion and using it to make myself wealthy. I also attack homosexuality, yet I pressure young men into engaging in homosexual acts with me. I am a liar. I am a hypocrite. I will make no excuses. I will not try to spin this as 'Satan attacking a good man of God' nor will I try to target the focus upon the people who are making the accusations.I take full responsibility for my actions."

I will not hold my breath waiting for this to happen.

Be a man "Five Rocks". Tell us the truth. Do not compare yourself to biblical characters. Stop being a narcissist.

Or are those rocks in your damn head?

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Shenandoah Priest Removed for Sexual Abuse of Children

2010-09-27T11:15:00.001-06:00

Monsignor Bernard Flanagan, 54, abused children as long as 25 years ago!

Allentown Diocesan Review Board found allegations of sexual abuse of minors to be credible.

Last year I blogged about some people in Shenandoah who were minimizing or denying the existence of the hard, cold truth of racism that exists in their town of Shenandoah-the town where Luis Ramirez was killed by drunk, cowardly teens who had then had the help of the local corrupt, racist cops in obstructing justice in covering up the deadly beating.

Racism exists in every community in America. Shenandoah is no different in that regard. But not every community has had drunken teens beat to death an undocumented immigrant and then have the help of the local cops to cover up the crime.

Cops usually arrest criminals, not make excuses for local teens who kill the "undesired" of the community.

Obviously there is going to be national attention on this apparent small town injustice of protecting their good old boys from facing the legal consequences of their actions. The fact that the teens were white and that some of them hurled racist slurs at the victim and the couple who tried to intervene in the attack adds to the belief that racism was a factor in the deadly mugging of Luis Ramirez.

Many of the town folk were minimizing the murderous actions of Brandon Piekarsky and his partner in the cowardly deadly mugging, Derrick Donchak. Some tried to focus on the relationship between Ramirez and a local White teen as if to say that because Ramirez was involved sexually with a teen that it was appropriate for White local teens to have killed him.

Others tried to rationalize, with their brains compromised by hate, that if Ramirez had not been in Shenandoah illegally that he would not have been killed.

So it is open season on the undocumented in Shenandoah?

My blog included a quote by Monsignor Flanagan

"The less media attention this gets, the better," Monsignor Bernard A. Flanagan, pastor of Annunciation Church, 218 W. Cherry St., said last week. "It's causing more problems for us. Shenandoah is never mentioned at all without something bad being attached to it. Shenandoah is getting a bad name, and it's all false."

I responded:

It is all false? All of it? Really monsignor? Get real Flanagan. So you want us to believe that there is not one racist in the entire town? Where in the hell did the 6 thugs learn their racism? Did they get it from a can of beer? No, they learned it at home and from their good old boy buddies. They learned it in Shenandoah.

There are good people in Shenandoah. There are also racists in Shenandoah. But as long as there are people like Flanagan, who are going to be in denial of that fact, the disease that resulted in a fatal mugging on their streets is going to continue to infect their town.

You do not fight hate with denial, not even if you are a man of the cloth.

Now, amidst the Catholic Church's statement that sexual abuse allegations against Flanagan are credible, it is understandable why Flanagan had a mind set of not wanting media attention for racism in Shenandoah. Flanagan was accustomed to keeping ugliness hidden in the darken corners of secrecy.

Make no mistake that there are plenty of good people residing in Shenandoah. There are also many who choose to live in the ignorance that fuels racism.

Sadly, there was a man in a position of authority who was as cowardly as the murderous thugs of Shenandoah. Maybe he was worse. Racism is a result of ignorance. Sexual predators of children are not a result of ignorance; they are self-indulged adults who care nothing of their victims. They will easily destroy lives for the narcissistic pursuit of their sexual gratification.

Flanagan is more evil than any drunken groups of teens in America lurking to beat a Mexican.

Making the evil choice to carry out thoughts derelict of any semblance of their religious vows is a reflection of a darken soul hiding behind and taking advantage of the blind respect a community bestows upon its religious leaders.

Such a betrayal of trust should not go unpunished. But because of the passage of time, most Priests never are arrested for committing heinous sexual crimes against children.

Statutes of limitations wrongly protect some of the most evil men who lurk in our society. The Catholic Church's refusal to severely punish these evil predators of our children adds more hurtful insult to justice.

The church will issue a statement that the allegations are credible. In many cases that is the extent of justice. Hopefully, there will be more justice for the victims of the evil Flanagan.

I speak from experience. When I was a child I was groomed by Father George Dyer of the Dominican Order for sexual abuse. I was only 12. It was over 40 years ago. Father Dyer manipulated me into providing him dozens of other victims.

Six years ago I found the courage to turn him in. Because of statute of limitations there was no legal recourse against the serial child sex abuser. The Dominicans did nothing more than call back Father Dyer from Belgium, where was was assigned.

Dyer is still a Priest. I received information from a source that he is living out his life in a parish in Alabama.

The Dominicans first claimed that there was never any other accusation against George Dyer. But a man so out of control could never change without some intervention. As someone with a graduate degree for a field that prepared me for mental health counseling, I can say that with a degree of credibility.

Dyer would not have changed without intervention. If he never changed, then did he molest children for the next 30 years?

How did priest like Dyer and Flanagan go decades without anyone noticing anything bizarre about their behavior. The allegations against Flanagan date back approximately 25 years at Reading (Pa.)Central Catholic High School. Dyer was molesting boys in Chicago in 1969.

How did they get away with it?

In George Dyer's case, he was always around young boys. He often took young boys alone on outings.

Not one of his peers saw that as odd? Why? How?...especially considering, what we know now about the volume of sexual abuse that was happening in the church by pedophile priests.

The Dominicans sent me a Fed-Ex letter informing me that my allegations were credible. As a final insult they sent it to the wrong address.

I hope that the victims of Flanagan receive more justice than the victims of many other predator priests. The good people of Shenandoah deserve justice.

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Monday Music: Blues from Maxwell Street

2010-09-27T07:12:00.001-06:00

Robert Nighthawk

Maxwell Street was a big open market located in the heart of inner-city Chicago where one could find most anything. It spread several blocks in each direction, with merchants set up almost shoulder-to-shoulder peddling their wares. Aromas from sizzling foods and sounds from street musicians filled the daily air.

It is now a gentrified area with bland cookie cutter condos where one sits at outdoor cafes while down the street sissified men played slow pitch, underhand softball-still wearing uniforms as if they had not yet outgrown Little League.

I was born at home just blocks from this once vibrant open market. Some of my earlier memories are of walking through the market and listening to Black musicians plugged into boxes making an electrified sound of rhythm and singing the Blues.

This was the real Blues. These were the real Blues musicians.

Robert Nighthawk was one of these musicians.

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Ugly Racist Billboard in Arizona

2010-09-23T09:53:00.004-06:00

Sheriff Paul Babeau's office is claiming not to know anything about this billboard.

photo by Justine Garcia.

How can a picture of a family: with mom holding her young son; with dad standing proudly next to his wife and kids; and with a smiling happy daughter; ever be considered to be a negative thing?

Why is there a negative value put upon on the complexion of one's skin? And some say that racism is a thing of the past.

Make this a white family and this billboard would make no sense to anyone. Make it a Brown family and it unites both sides-one side fighting racist stereotypes and the other side reinforcing their ignorance.

Oh, and the quote on the billboard is an actual quote from the good old boy "Shurf Paul." He publicly made the comment after a judge ruled against portions of SB 1070.

...Babeau: "It's a sad day in America when our own president has directed his attorney general to provide terrorist Miranda rights, yet fights to deny law enforcement the very tools needed to determine if an illegal is in America legally. Why has the President not come to Arizona to personally inspect the threat that our citizens face?

This is our most serious public safety issue and a national security threat to America..."

LINKS: Sheriff Babeau calls billboard offensive.
UPDATE:
The Truth Behind the Billboard

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Publish Post

Utah Senator Orrin Hatch is a Coward

2010-09-23T09:10:00.002-06:00

Let us hope that Orrin Hatch was not sticking voodoo pins in the paper doll. But is that not what he did to the youth he hurt but not voting for a bill he originally proposed several years ago?

It takes character to do the right thing when the winds of opposition blow strongly against you. It also easier to abandon the task of doing the right thing when failing to do so promises a reward-like the political support of those who are against you doing the right thing. Utah Senator Orrin Hatch was in such a dilemma.

Hatch is one of the original supporters of the Dream Act. Before there were DREAMers united across the nation fighting for their dream to come out of the long, dark shadows cast when one lacks nine digits, there was Hatch designing a bill to bring these youth out of the dark shadows. Hatch was once the champion for doing the right thing for the children of undocumented parents who brought along their children to this nation.

Here is what Hatch wrote and presented to the United States Senate in July of 2003.

Thank you, Mr. President. I rise today to introduce legislation that will help make the American dream a reality for many young people. “The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act,” or “The DREAM Act,” resolves immigration status problems that plague undocumented immigrants who came to our country as youths. It also removes barriers to education so that they are better equipped to succeed in our society.

Each year, about fifty thousand young undocumented immigrants graduate from high school in the United States. Most of them came to this country with their parents as small children and have been raised here just like their U.S. citizen classmates. They view themselves as Americans, and are loyal to our country. Some may not even realize that they are here in violation of our immigration laws. They grow up to become honest and hardworking adolescents and young adults, and strive for academic as well as professional excellence.

Many of these youngsters find themselves caught in a catch-22 situation. As illegal immigrants, they cannot work legally. Moreover, they are effectively barred from developing academically beyond high school because of the high cost of pursuing higher education. Private colleges and universities are very expensive, and under current federal law, state institutions cannot grant in-state tuition to illegal immigrants, regardless of how long they have resided in that state. To make matters worse, as illegal immigrants, these young people are ineligible for federal tuition assistance. Moreover, these young people have no independent way of becoming legal residents of the United States.

In short, though these children have built their lives here, they have no possibility of achieving and living the American dream. What a tremendous loss to our society.

It was the right thing to do in 2003. It is the right thing to do today. Somehow, Hatch lost the right path. In 2003 he had the courage to go against the grain of conservative thought to support a bill that would rightfully benefit the youth negatively impacted by the acts of their undocumented parents.

Now, Hatch has acquiesced his vision and courage in hopes of gaining the support of the tea party people and their fellow extreme right Republicans in Utah. Somehow maintaining the job he has held in 5 different decades has trumped doing the right thing.

Sadly, that is politics-when the lives and dreams of hundreds of thousands of deserving youth are cast aside for the political aspirations of one man with a short memory.

Shame on you Orrin!

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Monday Music: Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe-"When the Levee Breaks"

2010-09-13T14:46:00.002-06:00

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Utah State Fair Board Afraid of Black People?

2010-09-10T17:17:00.014-06:00

Videos created by "Napoleon Dynamite" filmmaker featuring an African-American are pulled by Utah State Fair because they "represent the wrong demographics!

Jared Hess, the filmmaker of "Napoleon" Dynamite, thinks that racism may be behind the decision to not air two videos and to also remove them from the Utah State Fair's web site.

The chairman of the Utah State Fair, Lorin Moench, said “We felt that the ads didn’t meet the demographics that we felt need to happen"

What?

Visually they did not "meet the demographics" but giving radio time to the exact audio from the video aimed at the same demographic was not a problem.

“They’re identical, but you can’t see the actor. You do the math,Hess.

It seems that the real "problem" for the state fair board was that a Black man was featured in the videos. Some small town Utah folk like to think that all of America is like the little isolated box they reside in. It is scary when these bozos get a bit of power and are able to remove videos because they have an African-American in it.

Is this still the damn '50s? In some parts of Utah, apparently some rednecks still live in the 50s.

At least they do not have to protest to bring back America. America has not changed for these neanderthals!

The videos pulled by the Utah State Fair because, according to State Fair board chairman Lorin Moench, they did not reach the desired demographics.

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