Downward spiral of civil rights in the USA!

Do you remember Maggie Carranza and Emma Hernandez, her 71 year old mother? No?  Let me refresh your memory.  LA police are on a man hunt for Christopher Dorner driving a grey Nissan Titan.  Christopher Dorner is a 6 foot tall, 270 pound man with a shaved head.  They then fire over 100 rounds at a blue Toyota Tacoma with out even knowing who was in the vehicle.  Well good thing the LA police seem to be shit marksmen because of those 100+ bullets only 2 hit anyone in the truck.  Thankfully Emma survived being shot in the back twice by police that couldn't even attempt to clear a vehicle of 2 older women delivering newspapers.  I know Dorner killed one police officer and attempted to kill a few others but how does this give the police free rein to not only shoot up a vehicle that doesn't even match the make and model  or even brand of the suspect but also ram another vehicle off the road, also nothing like the suspects vehicle.

Just recently Boston gets put into lock down because of the hunt for Tsarnaev.  Houses searched with no warrants.  Now I imagine many people might have consented to the searches but what about those that believe in their 4th amendment rights? 

It seems a whole slew of people over at Fox support throwing out just about every constitutional amendment, minus the 2nd amendment.  God forbid the government should require back ground checks for people wishing to buy a fire arm but torturing people before they even get a trial...that's ok.  They even backed New York state senator Greg Ball's tweet that Tsarnaev should be tortured BEFORE any trial.  Not that torture after a trial would be any better.  Which for you following along means no 8th amendment.

Anne Coulter thinks that Katherine Tsarnaev should go to prison for wearing a Hijab. Really?  How does wearing a certain type of clothing constitute a felony?  Just because you don't like the religious display doesn't mean sweet fuck all.  I'm an atheist could I expect that any Jewish person wearing a kippah be incarcerated?  What if some Indian woman has a bindi?  Christians, should they get 60 days of hard labour for wearing a cross?

For Dzhokhar Tsarnaev many, but not all, at Fox News seem to want to completely throw out the 4th through 8th amendment.  This is because they are either complete morons or complete fuck tards.  My guess is a bit of both.  I don't care if Dzhokhar is guilty.  He still has all those rights.  Throwing them away doesn't really change what should happen to him, in a civil society, it changes us.

Now they, a few at Fox, are trying to back peddle a bit with their bigoted and idiotic statements.  But just as the Michigan democrat that called one of her colleagues an "arrogant nigger" then trying to claim her comment is ok because she has "eaten Thanksgiving dinner with black friends at their house.” The slight back peddle doesn't change their overall view.

They claim to be for smaller government unless it means that people they don't agree with might get rights they have, like the right for gay couples to get married.  They are for controlling the reproductive health of women. They are for restricting religious freedoms, as long as it isn't their religion being restricted.  They are for torture despite the fact it has been shown to be not effective in obtaining any useful information.  We can't just blame them though because they prey on the fears of many Americans and unfortunately many American's, like many people in other parts of the world, are narrow minded bigots that believe in the American way but only if you believe exactly like they do.

No matter how many people want Tsarnaev to face the death penalty doesn't change the fact that he deserves a fair trial.  The fair trial isn't just for him.  It is for us.  Not only so we can claim the moral high ground but so we don't need to be fearful of a government coming after us when we find ourselves in a time where our political views don't match someone elses.

It is a very slippery slope we find ourselves on.  Our civil rights being slowly taken away.  In the end, every time we give a bit more of our liberties up we give up a bit more of what it really means to be Americans.

You should know who the major supporters of your candidate are!

One of the biggest problems with a super pac is that it allows millions upon millions of dollars to be funnelled into the political process, which is bad enough on it's own, without a requirement of identifying where that money comes from.  This means a candidate can have "supporters" that have a HUGE amount of financial influence on the candidate and the American public will have no idea what type of people are influencing a candidates position.

It doesn't matter if you are pro-life or pro-choice, anti-gay or a LGBT supporter, pro-big business or pro-middle America, a corporation or a real life flesh and blood person.  If a candidate has supporters donating millions upon millions of dollars to a candidate or a super pac supporting that candidate then you have a right to know about that support because you would have to have a hole in the head the size of a base ball to think that those people don't have a unbelievably large amount of influence over the candidate's political stance.  If you are against gay marriage I'm sure you'd want to know if your "family values candidate" received large amounts of money from prominent gay activists.  If you say to yourself "No, I don't need to know about that because it won't influence my candidates position!" then please immediately proceed to a mirror and check your forehead for that hole right now.

Obama has led the way.  Picking what I would call the lesser of 2 evils which is accepting fund from super pac but requiring them to reveal their major donors.  In effect the super pac becomes less of a super pac and more of a normal political fund raising tool.  Obama gets funding to compete with the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent by the top 1% for the GOP candidates and still the American people get to see what type of "company" the candidate, running for the top political position of the USA, keeps.

It amazes me that right wing media like Fox News will use Obama accepting super pac donations as a negative position but have no problem with all of the GOP candidates using funds from super pacs.  It is just one more, in a long line of, tools that apparently the GOP candidates are allowed to use freely but if Obama uses them then it is some how Un-American.

I'm always torn because I want both parties to put forth a candidate that, at the end of the day, I could accept as president.  This time I'm really torn because, while I like some of the things that done under Mitt Romney's term as governor of MA, his stance on corporations and capital gains disgusts me along with his seeming disconnect from the average American.  He seems to be a stereo typical politician that will say anything, no matter how stupid, and isn't afraid to repeat said stupid comments.  How he can pander to the people of Michigan about how he loves American cars while he still defends his "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" stance is beyond me.

What is even more disturbing to me is how one of Mitt's major supporters is so actively, and successfully, killing people freedom of speech via use of a almost bottomless pit of money used to threaten people with legal action over legitimate free speech issues.

It disturbs me that many American's, and honestly many people's around the world, don't really know what "Freedom of Speech" actually means.  It doesn't mean that I can say something about my neighbour like "Joe bloggs likes to perform sexual acts with goats!" when there is no evidence to that fact.  But if you are a public figure the bar is a bit lower.  Not to say I can say things like "Richard Gere likes to use gerbils for personal pleasure".  But if a person makes a public stance against the LGBT community by putting up billboards all over the state it is not defamation to point out that that person is against LGBT rights.

Read a short article here on Frank VanderSloot  or a very good long article here and see how he repeatedly uses very questionable tactics to suppress other peoples 1st Amendment rights and understand that Mitt Romney is VERY close to this man.  I'm not part of the "liberal media". I'll let someone be a bigot if they are one but if you put yourself out there and become a public figure then try to suppress my 1st amendment rights to point out to the world your bigoted views that you've already made known in the public domain then you can take your billions of dollars and see if it gives you pleasure to use in a way that some people say Richard Gere uses gerbils.

Contact your politicians and let them know you support the Disclose Act and over turn the "Citizens United" which should have been named "Corporations United".  Corporations might be considered people but they don't have the rights of a full Citizen yet....tho I'd argue they have stronger rights then real people like you and me.