Taking out the Trash

There is a tradition in politics that stories you don’t want people to pay attention to are released on Friday. They call it taking out the trash. These stories are not necessarily important or even embarrassing; generally they are just items on which you don’t feel like commenting. The theory is most people read the Sunday paper, but almost no one reads the Saturday edition. Moreover, if you release it all at once, you are almost guaranteed that no one story will get a full write up, and all of the stories will be buried in the middle of the A section getting two to four column inches each. Since I don’t make news, (or report on it according to at least one comment we’ll be seeing shortly), taking out the trash in this context is basically every story I was interested in that fit the theme of this site but didn’t lend itself to a full post.

A while back, I posted about faux-outrage on the part of Pentecostal leaders and parishioners who were all wound up about a political cartoon. The cartoon actually painted the Republican Party in the position of “those who should be laughed at,” but reason has never been the religious right’s strong suit and they took offense anyway. In my attempt to show why it was absurd and unreasonable for them to be offended by a joke of such little importance, I offended at least one more of them, leading to the following comment¹:

You are an ignorant bigot who is probably going to hell. I say probably because as a CHRISTIAN (follower of Christ) I know only GOD knows whats in your heart. It is totally unfair for you to attack these MEN OF GOD for exercising their freedom of speech just because you hate that they are happy and secure in JESUS. And it is even worse because you don’t do it to their face. You do it BEHIND THEIR BACK so they can’t defend themselves. You should stop doing the devil’s work and come to GOD before its too late.

The odds of this being a troll are probably quite high, though something about the wording makes me think it was written by a female, a gender with a much lower troll to human ratio. Regardless, it should be said that this is exactly what I was talking about in those posts, and the commenter has made my point nicely. Epidemic in religious “debate” is this idea that whoever does not agree with the church is ignorant. This is even worse than the subjectivism that is rampant in our culture, because instead of arguing that all opinions are equally valid, or that “we will have to agree to disagree,” it argues that only one person’s opinion is valid while the other is apparently not an opinion at all.

As for the claim that I have done anything behind anyone’s back, I have to say I don’t know what evidence there is for such a claim, but want to assure the anonymous author that I linked to the religious fanatic’s blogs and left trackbacks. If they want to see what I said about them, they only have to click. The rest of the comment is inarguable because there isn’t any substance to it, but I would like to ask what the point of this random capitalization is². Also, it would be nice to know if the apostrophes have been left out accidentally, or if it is a stylistic choice. Either way, I appreciate the reader’s concern, and will seriously consider not doing the devil’s work anymore.

On to real news:

It seems that every day there is a new story of police corruption or misconduct occurring somewhere in this country, and I have long been an advocate for more oversight of those to whom we give great authority. However, this week brought along two law enforcement stories of a different nature. The first discusses a police officer who actually does his job, and upholds the law.

Sheriff Thomas J. Dart in Cook County Illinois has decreed that his department will not take part in any further eviction proceedings until the banking industry gets its act together. A growing problem across the country, many tenants who are paid up on their rent are being evicted because their landlords have fallen behind on mortgage payments:

“These poor people are seeing everything they own put out on the street. … They’ve paid their bills, paid them on time. Here we are with a battering ram at the front door going to throw them out. It’s gotten insane,” he said.

Mortgage companies are supposed to identify a building’s occupants before asking for an eviction, but sheriff’s deputies routinely find that the mortgage companies have not done so, Dart said.

“This is an example where the banking industry has not done any of the work they should do. It’s a piece of paper to them,” Dart said.

“These mortgage companies … don’t care who’s in the building,” Dart said Wednesday. “They simply want their money and don’t care who gets hurt along the way.

“On top of it all, they want taxpayers to fund their investigative work for them. We’re not going to do their jobs for them anymore. We’re just not going to evict innocent tenants. It stops today.”

Dart said he wants the courts or the state Legislature to establish protections for those most harmed by the mortgage crisis.

I applaud Sheriff Dart’s attitude and approach to this issue. It is about time we started protecting our citizens before our corporations. The legal issues involved here are more complicated than this approach can effectively deal with, but it is a start.

Momentarily sticking with the topic of landowners before returning to police, this week brought us a man who has a subdivision he cannot sell due to the economy tanking so magnificently, and is electing to take his anger out on one of the few people who actually bought one of his overpriced tract houses. John Trumbo reports on Chick Edwards, the developer of a 47 lot subdivision in Kennewick, WA who is attempting to take legal action against the owner of a home that does not have proper landscaping. The homeowner, Lt. Burke Jensen, is an “involuntarily mobilized reservist” currently overseas Kuwait and has apparently let his yard work slide:

“I really don’t give a [expletive] where he is or what his problem is . . . It doesn’t matter to me,” said Edwards, who insists Jensen has violated terms of the homeowners-association covenants requiring that landscaping be completed within one year after an occupancy permit is issued for a home.

“[Jensen] doesn’t have the right to walk away from his obligation,” said Edwards, who as the developer is the only member of the homeowners association. “I have most of the property still, so I am the homeowners association,” he said.

Being a reasonable man, Jensen has stated a desire to find a renter for the property to handle upkeep while he is gone. Likewise, his neighbors have stated they don’t mind the appearance of Jensen’s property. Edwards is unmoved:

Edwards said [renting] would be a commercial use not allowed by the homeowners association. “He’s not going to rent it,” said Edwards,. . .an attorney who has reviewed the covenants agrees.

“This is a contract. I don’t like the way his property looks. This clown gets to do what he wants, and I’m as mad as hell,” he said.

Apparently the prospect of becoming a “have not” has the “haves” a little upset these days. Or, Edwards may just be certifiably insane. While clearly irrational, I think the developer’s last quote is the most telling: “This clown gets to do what he wants, and I’m as mad as hell.” Yes, I’m sure Lt. Jensen, the involuntarily mobilized reservist, was dying to go live in a hostile wasteland.

The second law enforcement story that caught my eye this week centers on Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott who made headlines when he referred to the democratic candidate for President as Barack Hussein Obama at a Palin rally in Florida. It is hard to tell whether the Obama supporters are more upset about the Sheriff’s use of their guy’s middle name, or the fact that he was in uniform when he introduced the Republican VP hopeful. Half of them are shouting Hatch Act! While the rest scream Smear! The entire thing is beyond me.

I hate to break it to everyone, but Barack Obama’s middle name is Hussein. America already knows. Early in the campaign this might have been an issue, as certain conservatives used the name as a subtle attempt to tie terrorist ideals to the frontrunner, but does it really matter if the Sheriff uses Obama’s middle name, when Palin is going to open her speech by saying outright that he hates America and sympathizes with terrorists? Supporters on both sides have become increasingly sensitive to attacks as the campaigns wind down, and I think all of us have lost sight of what we’re really fighting about. Liberals: you don’t need to fight the name game anymore, that ship has sailed.

When she isn’t inciting conservatives to assault presidential candidates, Palin stays busy making rape victims pay for their own evidence collection kits, abusing her office’s authority, and advocating abstinence instead of actual sex education. I have previously stated my case that no one has ever been better protected from sexual consequences by having less information. This week brought us a fantastically entertaining example of this principle at work, 17 year old Jamie Lynn Spears, C-list television star and sister of former pop-star Britney, is once again pregnant. It seems Ms. Spears didn’t know you could get pregnant if you were breast feeding. Maybe we should have given her some of this basic anatomical information instead of telling her to “just say no” to sex.

On the bright side, despite being fired by Nickelodeon for her pregnancy
unspecified reasons, Ms. Spears may not be out of work. If PETA has their way, her breast milk will be a valuable commodity. In a move to clarify that they have lost their minds, the animal protection agency began advocating the use of human milk rather than cow milk in the production of ice cream. Apparently, keeping cows for milk is cruel, but keeping women is okay. Good to know white slaving is alive and well. Or did PETA not consider that the women who volunteered for this duty would have to be constantly monitored to ensure that they were not ingesting or injecting substances that would affect milk quality?

Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream was actually pretty sporting about the whole thing, saying “We applaud PETA’s novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother’s milk is best used for her child.” To which the udderly utterly humorless psychotics replied “Hey, guys, that’s our point: Cow’s milk is for baby cows.”

Wow. The only thing funnier than that is this old video of Bill O’Reilly losing his mind because he doesn’t understand colloquial English*:

That’s the trash. See you next week.

D.pH

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1 – Spelling and grammar has been left as it was in the original, which I deleted due to it being posted anonymously. I assure you that censorship was not my goal; rather, anonymous comments are tacky and have since been disabled – If you can’t bother to include an online identity, or first name and city (or state if you live in a small area), I can’t be bothered to give you a forum. However, it was my fault that the comment had to be taken down, so I am reprinting it in the trash and will reply posthaste.

2 – The capitalization does have an interesting and Freudian quality to it, when one considers the phrases and words chosen to be emphasized. CHRISTIAN, MEN OF GOD, JESUS, and GOD all appear in this format. They share the trait of being words unique to religion. Outside the context of Christianity, nearly all of them are meaningless, with the exception of god, (provided one uses a small “g”). At the same time a phrase primarily used to denote hypocrisy, BEHIND THEIR BACK, shows up in the same style. I’ll let everyone draw their own inferences.

* – Almost as funny is the Brokers with Hands on their Faces photo blog, but nothing measures up to O’Reilly.