Road trip

I drove to Dallas and back yesterday for my Uncle Kenneth’s funeral. He was 73 and had survived several previous bouts with cancer before finally succumbing this time. I don’t get to see that side of the family very often and it was nice to catch up with my cousins and see their families. But now I am back and I am still exhausted from the trip.
On the drive up I subjected myself to a little Hate Radio (Glenn Beck) until I was ready to bash the console in and finally gave up and put in a CD. It is infuriating that these people (Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, etc.) get hours of airtime everyday to spew their crap with absolutely no opportunity for anyone to counter, debate or correct what they say. It is no wonder that so many people today vote the way they do when their minds are filled with this garbage that constantly spews forth from their radios and TV sets (Fox Noise).
That is the only explanation I can come up with for a rather disturbing Op-Ed entitled “A Few Opinions for the Candidates” that ran in the Express-News last week (Jan. 5 and not online).
At first, I thought the author, a woman who says she has a master’s degree in education from Angelo State University, was joking when she said:

I want anyone who cannot show a government-issued identification sent home immediately. I am tired of weary people crawling upon my shores, dropping a baby and expecting the whole family to immediately become U.S. citizens, entitled to all manner of government assistance. I suggest a steady stream of buses lined up for the sole purpose of sending them home. Once.

Ha Ha! Imagine everyone having to have a government identification tatooed to their foreheads so they don’t forget and leave it home someday and end up being deported to Panama during a trip to the grocery store. Ha Ha Ha.
But wait! She’s not kidding, is she? She’s serious. And the Express-News is printing this crap?!?! I’m sure that politicos get these kind of letters everyday and most end up in the roundfile (unless you are Lamar Smith in which case they are framed and hung on the wall).
Then there is this comment about Iraq:

Just like everyone else, I can think of just as many good reasons to stay in Iraq as I can to get out.

Just like everyone else!?!? Clearly this deranged woman is like the woman in the Opus cartoon who “gets all of her news from Bill O’Reilly” if she thinks that this is how everyone else thinks. Vast majorities of Americans have been demanding that we get out for years now. Only the tiny faction that still supports George W. Bush thinks we should stay in Iraq.

We need to be there to watch them develop and to see that the same old evil does not crop up in a brand new dictator.

And just how does she think Saddam Hussein accumulated so much power in the first place? Remember the famous picture of a younger Donald Rumsfeld gladhanding Hussein back when he was Reagan and Bush the Elder’s favorite Middle Eastern dictator who we were funding to serve as a counter to the Ayatollah in Iran? We didn’t prevent the rise of Hussein, rather we facilitated it!

Then there is this on taxes:

I’m sick to death of all the special interest groups my taxes help fund. Build roads, build schools, protect my nation and give me back the change.

Roads, schools and military. That’s all she’s is willing to fund. Hmmmm. Well, at least that makes her somewhat more progressive that a lot of wingnuts I know who would not include the first two items on her list.
And this woman has a master’s degree in education. Pretty scary.