Aqua Buddha: Rand Paul's False Idol

Since the November issue of Bazooka Magazine won't be out until after the election, the October issue was all about politics. As part of the political coverage, Bella asked me to do a story about Rand Paul's Aqua Buddha misadventures in college. I Googled the story and found a bunch of reports that were practically the same. Since straightforward coverage would mean that the Bazooka story would just be another repetition (albeit a snarky one), I decided to get creative. [Author's Note: The phrase "Aqua Buddha" is even more fun when sung to the tune of Kool & The Gang's "Jungle Boogie."]

Rand Paul Worships False Idols
by Reverend Jim Bob Spuckler
With a good, God-fearing woman like Sarah Palin supporting his campaign, I figured that Rand Paul was a good Christian, but it looks like I was wrong. A little while ago, a story came out that when Rand Paul was going to Baylor University, he belonged to a secret society called NoZe. As you know, all secret societies are part of the New World Order conspiracy to create a world government, and this one is even worse than most. According to the Baylor president at the time, NoZe was known for being “lewd, crude, and grossly sacrilegious.” One former member admitted that the group “aspired to blasphemy.” What kind of sicko wants to make the baby Jesus cry? A sicko like Rand Paul, apparently.

It gets worse from there. During one of his Illuminati club’s “pranks,” Rand Paul and another member of NoZe kidnapped a young woman, tied her up, and blindfolded her. Now, it’s one thing to tie up and blindfold a disobeying wife, but doing that to a woman that hasn’t been hitched to you in the eyes of God is almost as bad as fornicating with her. Rand Paul and his fellow deviant took this woman to their apartment, where they tried to make her smoke the demon reefer. When she refused, they took her to a creek, but they weren’t taking her down to the river to be washed in the blood of the lamb. Far from it. once they got her there, they made her bow down to some heathen deity named “Aqua Buddha.”

Now I’ve never heard of this Aqua Buddha before, but I think it’s safe to assume that it’s some kind of false idol worshipped by Hindoo Mexicans. That means that Rand Paul may just have a more sinister agenda than the secret Muslim that’s in the White House now. Since Jack Conway believes that it’s alright to kill babies and let the gays walk around like they’re people or something, the only choice for any good Christian in this election is to write-in a vote for Mr. Andy Griffith.

The whole world’s turning upside down, brothers and sisters, and the only thing we can do is stand strong in our faith. In order to fight off the forces of Satan that are taking over this country, the Southern Reformed First Primitive Church of Jesus the Savior (Eastern Reform Conference) will be holding an old-time revival this Sunday. There’ll be prayer meetings, sermons, hymns, book burnings, rides and cotton candy for the kids, and a musical performance by American hero Toby Keith. We’re located just off route 4, between the flea market and the Waffle House. A small donation is requested.

Jack Conway: Not As Bad As I Thought

As those of you who regularly read my irregular updates to this blog know, I’m a regular contribute to Bazooka Magazine, the local alternative newspaper here in western Kentucky. After a year and some change, it looks like we’ve finally convinced a few people that we’re legit, because Bella (Bazooka’s owner/editor/publisher) managed to snag some spots with the other press people up on the balcony for yesterday’s debates. Since I'm kind of the politics guy, she asked me to come along . So I got the morning off work, woke up even earlier than usual, borrowed the company laptop (one of the fringe benefits of being the IT guy), and, really wishing I’d bought those Spider Jerusalem glasses when I had the chance, headed for the Carson Center prepared to do some journalism. Or, more accurately, to make snarky comments about the debate on Bella’s Facebook page (you can read them here).

After what seemed like days of Paducah’s high and mighty congratulating one another and some whining about regulations from some dude from Paducah Bank (one of the sponsors of the debates), the first debate started. This one was between Independent Bob Leeper (incumbent) and Democrat Rex Smith, candidates for the District 2 (Ballard, McCracken, and Marshall counties) Kentucky State Senate seat. Republican candidate Mike East did not attend. I haven’t been following this race especially closely, but I don’t think I’ve missed a lot. The candidates' answers to most questions were nearly identical, and in both cases very conservative. Based on a quick look at his website, I gather that the GOP candidate may be a little farther to the right, but not by a whole lot. None of these candidates represent me and I can’t imagine that it will make much difference which one of them wins, so I can’t even bring myself to fall back on my “vote against the incumbent” rule here. This section of my ballot will remain blank or get a smart-ass write-in.

Once The Amazing Right-Leaning Moderate Twins had finished their act, it was time for the main event: Senate candidates Jack Conway and Rand Paul. Before the first question was asked, Conway was way ahead in the non-verbal department, and not just because of his apparently sexy, sexy eyes (though Bella may disagree). As they took the stage, Conway seemed confident but relaxed, giving the impression that he was ready for any question the moderators threw at him. Paul, on the other hand, was nervous-looking and fidgety, like he could make a run for it at any minute. The difference could come down to the fact that Conway is just more comfortable speaking in public, but Paul’s body language didn’t exactly inspire confidence. Or maybe I’ve just watched too much Lie To Me in the past week.

The questions and answers were all things we’ve heard before, though in some cases Rand Paul’s answers have changed (sometime several times) since the primaries. You can watch the debate yourself for all the details. Paul didn’t do anything to surprise me, but Conway’s general attitude throughout the debate (and in some cases the contrast between between the two candidates) impressed me. Specifically:

* Throughout the debate, Conway very subtly (I don’t think he ever came right out and said it) made it clear that he is a native Kentuckian and Rand Paul is not. He answered a lot of general policy questions in terms of how they specifically affect Kentuckians, name-dropped a few local officials, and generally showed that he knows what’s going on in our state. Rand Paul rarely mentioned anything specific to Kentucky that wasn’t required to answer one of the questions. While I realize that some of Conway’s Kentucky shout-outs were the equivalent of a singer working the name of the town he’s playing in into a song, overall he gave the impression that he really does care about Kentucky. Rand Paul, on the other hand, seemed more concerned with Rand Paul’s political career.
* Conway was much more aggressive in calling Rand Paul out on his flip-flops and more ludicrous positions than I expected. Since the Conway campaign has missed several golden opportunities (especially early in the campaign) to showcase what a dangerous lunatic Rand Paul is, this was a nice change of pace.
* Conway’s views regarding the interaction between business and government are actually a lot more in line with my own than I had expected. On several occasions, he made it very clear that there are big problems with the role that corporate interests play in government, and that these problems need to be solved. Admittedly these kinds of beliefs usually fall victim to Washington realities fairly quickly once a candidate gets elected, but at least he hasn’t completely sold out to campaign contributors just yet.
* Conway answered the questions. Rand Paul wasted no time in dovetailing into his standard talking points (either that, or into asserting that he never said he supported a Medicare deductible, despite the fact that he’s said exactly that numerous times--many of them on camera). While Conway definitely worked in his talking points wherever possible, in nearly all cases he actually answered the questions that were asked as well.
* After the debate, Conway stuck around and shook hands, posed for photos, and talked to people. After about half an hour I got the impression that he was anxious to move on, but at least he made some kind of effort. Once he left the stage, Rand Paul wasn’t seen again. It was almost like he’s afraid someone might ask him an unscripted question (or start chanting “Aqua Buddha” over and over again) or something.
* And, as you’ve probably heard, Conway had the best line of the debate when he said “As the attorney general of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, I’m always amused to get a lecture on constitutional law from a self-certified opthamologist.”

Going into the debate, Jack Conway was getting my vote, but it was 80% a Lesser of Two Evils vote against Rand Paul. After watching the debate, its’ more like 50/50 and I feel a lot better about voting for Conway. While his ideas for fixing some of the problems in our country differ quite a bit from my own, we at least seem to agree on what most of the big problems are. I know this is the part where I’m supposed to tell you that you that it’s important to vote in November, and that it doesn’t matter who you vote for as long as you vote. In this case, though, if you’re planning to vote for Rand Paul I’d really prefer that you stay home.

Ideology Vs. Practicality

Archangel M just posted a blog at the Hillbilly Report offering his suggestion for reforming the Democratic Party: Vote third party. He makes a good point: For quite a while now, the narrative has been about “swing voters” who won’t vote for candidates that are too liberal, which has led Democrats to move closer and closer to the right. If enough of the Democratic base abandoned them for left-wing third parties, maybe the party would get the message that voters are fed up with a Democratic party that is almost indistinguishable from the GOP.

This is not a novel idea. I’ve heard a lot of people say that they’re no longer going to vote for the lesser of two evils. Most of the people who say this now count members of either major party as “evil.” Barack Obama was the breaking point for many of us: he promised us real change during the campaign, but once he got elected it was business as usual.

I agree with Archangel’s sentiment, but I don’t think it’s a good idea across the board. Particularly, I think abandoning the party in the upcoming Kentucky Senate race is a very bad idea. If Jack Conway were running against Trey Grayson, I’d feel comfortable voting for a third party candidate--after all, the differences between a typical Democrat and a typical Republican these days are so minor that a GOP win wouldn’t be much more damaging to Kentucky or America than a win for the Democrats.

Of course, Conway isn’t running against a typical Republican, he’s running against the one man who may be more dangerous (and embarrassing) than Jim Bunning: faux Libertarian Rand Paul. Even if you ignore the fact that the degree of evil between Conway and Paul is huge, diverting votes to third parties and allowing Paul to win this election is bad because the whole country is watching this race. If Paul wins the election, no matter what the reasons, Kentucky voters will have legitimized the kind of ideologically inconsistent, uninformed, hate-mongering, and generally apeshit crazy politics that Aqua Buddha espouses, and that’s just not a good thing.

In a race between two candidates who are roughly on the same level of evil, I’m all casting a symbolic vote for a non-evil candidate just to send a message. However, when one candidate is a vanilla Democrat and the other is Lex Luthor without the charm, a symbolic vote Superman is less important than keeping Lex away from Washington.

Fear & Loathing In Graves County

This article appears in the current issue of Bazooka Magazine.

I’d originally planned to write an article about the First Amendment for this issue, since it’s been in the news a lot lately. I was going to talk about the sheer economy of language by which the founding fathers packed the most essential freedoms of our society into just 45 words. Then I would launch into a story of the Coke Zero Culinary School (better known, with equal inaccuracy, as the “Ground Zero Mosque,” properly called the Park 51 Community Center), giving some background on the project, pointing out that it’s not a mosque and it’s not located at Ground Zero, providing poll data that shows most of the people in Manhattan support the project, and maybe even putting forward my pet theory that the whole controversy is just a smokescreen to obscure the story about how the GOP (many of whom built their careers on 9/11) blocked passage of a bill that would provide health care to Ground Zero emergency workers suffering from respiratory diseases and other problems as a direct result of their work in New York nearly a decade ago.

From there I would go into the freedom of speech and assembly portions of the First Amendment and make the sickening admission that, much as I’d like to see Fred Phelps drown in a pool of his own blood, I have to agree with the judge who ruled that his hate-mongering is protected speech. I was going to include a quote from Larry Flynt and everything. It would have been great.

After I’d got a couple paragraphs into writing the piece, a story came across WPSD’s Facebook feed about a group of Somali immigrants in Mayfield who want to use a space as a mosque. Knowing that some redneck would start screaming about terrorists, I decided to include a paragraph or two about the Mayfield mosque to give the story a little local flavor. That was on Monday. By Wednesday night the story had grown considerably, with dozens of stories in the local media turning up new information and hundreds of people discussing the story (WPSD’s Facebook feed alone had around 1500 comments spread out over eight threads the last time I looked). The story even got some national coverage on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Obermann, briefly eclipsing Rand Paul as Kentucky’s greatest current national embarrassment. The old saying says that “if it bleeds, it leads,” and this story was hemorrhaging enough hate, fear, and ignorance that I was tempted to stage a gay military funeral in hopes of luring Fred Phelps in so I could drown him. Instead, I changed the focus of my story.

Before I can properly begin heaping scorn on the--and I believe this is the proper technical term--booger eatin’ morons of our community, I should probably present the known facts of the case as I have been able to piece them together from news coverage and comments from people from Mayfield and the surrounding area. Both WPSD and WKMS did surprisingly good jobs of covering the story, and numerous people who know who they are have provided valuable supplemental information, research, and analysis. Putting all of them together, the following story emerges:

Approximately Six Months Ago: A group of Somalis living in Mayfield rent a storefront on Broadway in downtown Mayfield. The space is originally intended as as combination store and community center, but at some point the Somali Muslim community begins using it as prayer space.
A Few Months Ago: Mayfield City Planner Brad Rodgers notices that the storefront is being used for prayer and informs the occupants that places of worship are required to get a use permit from the zoning board in order to comply with a city ordinance.
Early August: The Mayfield zoning board approves the use permit in a closed meeting.
The Day After That: Grumpy Old Man Dick Conner (now better known as the “Baptists know how to park” guy), who owns the flower shop next door, decides he doesn’t want these damned kids on his lawn and complains to the zoning board that the public should have been allowed to speak before the permit was granted. He threatens to stop paying his taxes and hold his breath until he turns blue if he doesn’t get his way. The permit is revoked and a public meeting is set for August 24.
August 24: A public meeting is held to determine whether the permit will be granted. The meeting is limited to 100 people (nearly all of them white, some carrying Bibles, and many wearing Christian-themed jewelry or clothing) due to space issues. Police prevent the Somali representative from attending the meeting because it is already full. After an hour of public comments that according to local news reports focuses almost exclusively on the religion, culture, and nationality of the petitioners, the zoning board unanimously votes to deny the permit based on concerns about parking.

In the days leading up to and immediately following the meeting, there was a lot of discussion about the Mayfield mosque. Not surprisingly, lots of people were against it. Let’s look at some of their well-reasoned arguments:



Parking
On the surface, this seems like a valid reason, but the timeline of events (which includes six months of prayers at the mosque with no parking issues), the fact that there is a municipal parking lot a block away, the small detail that no place of worship has ever been denied this type of permit, and the fact that most people don’t normally get all Jesused up and quote scripture at meetings about parking spots make this seem like a smokescreen. Perhaps the most damning evidence that parking isn’t really the issue comes from Brad Rodgers (from a story on WPSD’s website shortly before the meeting).

“‘We don't know if it's going to pass,’ Mayfield City Planner Brad Rodgers admitted.
Rodgers said permits in the past have not been a problem but this one might prove tricky.
‘I think it's more about the newness of having Muslims in this community. I think that's what people are concerned about.’”

Even if Somalis all lose their jobs at Pilgrim’s Pride start driving those welfare Cadillacs we’re always hearing about, parking might not be a valid excuse. According to one commenter on the WPSD boards, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act may protect them. I read over the act, but since I’m not a lawyer I can’t confirm that it applies here, but it would be very poetic if it does, since the law was the result of efforts by far-right wing (and probably not very Muslim-friendly) Christians of the James Dobson variety.

They’re Illegal Aliens
This also initially sounds like a valid argument, especially given Pilgrim’s Pride’s alleged history of hiring illegal aliens. My thoughts on immigration reform are a whole other article, so I’ll just say that we do, in fact, need to enforce immigration laws. Unfortunately for Mayfield’s racist community, that doesn’t matter. Even if allegations are true, that’s an INS problem that doesn’t affect their right to worship in any way. Our courts have ruled time and again that all people within the U.S.’s jurisdiction are protected by the Bill of Rights, even those who are here illegally. The subtle subtext of this reality is that everyone in the world is entitled to the same rights American citizens have, but our government can only legally extend those rights to people on American soil. It’s the kind of thing that almost makes America seem like the shining beacon of hope we’ve been told it’s supposed to be.

They Kill Albinos, Chop Them Up, and Use Their Body Parts for Magic!
Ok, only one person said this, and she was a complete idiot, but I’m not the kind of guy who passes on the chance to include albino mutilation in a story. Strange as it may sound, this does have some basis in reality, just nothing to do with Somalia or Muslims. According to a BBC story from August 17, a Kenyan (not Somali) was arrested in Tanzania (not Somalia) for human trafficking in albinos. The story goes on to say how witch doctors (not imams) in some parts of Africa (again, no specific mention of Somalia) value albino body parts for use in magic spells.

The thing is, even if the story was about Somalian Muslims, guilt by association is not a valid reason to deny anyone their freedom of religion. In fact, since we don’t punish thought crime in this country, it would be perfectly acceptable for the imam to talk about what great magical amulets you can make out of albino eyes. Until somebody attempts to slice up an albino, no crime has been committed. For the same reason, pricks like Fred Phelps and Bill O’Reilly can talk about how great it would be if someone would murder more abortion doctors without going to jail.

This Is a Christian Nation
Some of these intellectual super-heroes will even present cherry-picked out of context quotes from the founding fathers to back up their claim. Even if you don’t want to take the time to actually read the writings of Thomas Jefferson (though you should--he’s pretty awesome), simple logic should tell you that this isn’t true. I think we can all agree that the founders were pretty smart guys. Therefore, if they intended for America to be a Christian nation, why would they make the very first line of the Bill of Rights prohibit the government from establishing a state religion or prohibiting the free practice of religion? That’s like starting a basketball game by throwing away the ball. I’m pretty sure that if the founders wanted this to be a Christian nation, they’d have mentioned that somewhere in the Constitution.

You Wouldn’t Want A Satanic Church In Mayfield
First off, comparing a religion with 1.57 billion adherents all over the world and a millennium and a half of history that includes preserving vast amounts of human knowledge that otherwise would have been lost after the fall of Rome to the childish, reactionary religious equivalent of shock rock shows a weak grasp of Islam. Despite that, the Church of Satan is recognized as a valid religion, so they’re protected.

To be perfectly honest, I’d love to see Satanists in Mayfield, along with Jews, Discordians, Mormons, Pastafarians, Liberals, Repubicans, Hippies, Jedi, Hobos, Indians, Ninjas, Pirates, Scotsmen, Vikings, Pagans, Baptists, Punks, Yuppies, Sasquatches, and even Scientologists. The best way for us to move forward and address our real problems--unemployment, the environment, our broken education system, and everything else that’s holding us back--is for people to put aside all the stupid little differences that divide us and work together. In my experience, people who interact with each other day in and day out usually find common ground no matter how wide the cultural divide is between them.

They’re Terrorists Who Want To Destroy Us
As you’ve probably guessed, this was a popular justification and most people who argued this did so by bringing up 9/11. As one commenter said, anyone using this argument is judging nearly 1.6 BILLION followers of a religion based on the acts of 19 criminal extremists. If this is a valid argument, then from now on out we need to assume that all Christians are abortion doctor murdering, homophobic domestic terrorists, all Germans are Nazis, and all people from Mayfield are ignorant bigots. If that’s the way you want to see the world, the Westboro Baptist web site is www.godhatesfags.com. I’m sure they’ll be glad to have another member to help them protest homosexuality at the funerals of American heroes.

The story of the Mayfield mosque is not over. As soon as the story broke that the permit had been denied, numerous people stepped forward to see what they could do to help. As I type this, people throughout the region looking into ways to appeal the decision or file a court case, organizing protests, and trying to find ways to welcome the Somalis to our region and help them find a place to worship. I hope they’re successful. These people are thousands of miles from home in a completely foreign culture, working shitty jobs in a chicken plant. If practicing their religion makes life more bearable for them, I think they deserve a safe place to pray. The First Amendment, which I’d rate somewhere between ice cream and Lemmy on the awesome scale, should allow them this small comfort, and hopefully it will. If not, we’ve lost one of the ideals that makes America great.

Is the Ground Zero Mosque the GOP's Way of Gaming Google?

We all know that politicians love misdirection. If something comes out that isn't very flattering, the spin machine goes into overdrive to manufacture some kind of controversy or glurgy display of PATRIOTISM! to distract people from what's really going on. The political machine that Turd Blossom put together is especially good at this. On several occasions, though, I've noticed that the GOP regularly gets up in arms about something that is very closely related to the story they're trying to keep buried. I first noticed this kind of correlation during the previous administration when Dubya gave the soldiers in Iraq a big plastic turkey during the same week that his Republican allies in Congress voted to slash benefits for Veterans.

The current pointless battle filling time on cable news and clogging up my Google Reader is the mosque at Ground Zero. The story that's getting buried is the fact that last Thursday the Republicans blocked a bill to provide health care for the Ground Zero emergency workers. It occurred to me that maybe these correspondences between embarrassing and pointless but juicy stories may not be a total accident. With so many people getting their news online these days, maybe damage control includes making sure that Google and other search engines have plenty of nonsense to turn up before the story you want to keep quiet pops up.

To test my theory, I did a couple of Google searches. The first was for "Ground Zero." Here's what I got:

As you can see, every single link turned up has to do with the mosque that those dirty A-Rabs are going to build at Ground Zero, where they will no doubt give out free gay abortions to illegal immigrants thanks to socialist medicine. Well, maybe I wasn't being specific enough. Let's try "Ground Zero Workers:"
This one actually turns up a few stories about the bill that the GOP blocked, but the mosque still shows up. Let's try "Health Care Ground Zero:"

You'd think this would actually be the best search, but the top four are still about the Mosque. The hits that actually seem to relate to the GOP effort to deny health care to 9/11 heroes, only one seems to be to an actual news source.

Replacing "Ground Zero" with "9/11" turns up slightly better results, but not by much. Most of the links have nothing to do with either story. If the GOP are trying to game Google, it seems to be working.