Whose Side Are They On?

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion


Imagine, if you will, the following scenario: Your neighbor has spilled toxic waste in your yard. You take him to court. Your lawyer stands up and tells the court the neighbor should clean up the mess he made in a “reasonable time.”

“I’ll do better,” His Honor says. “I’ll tell him to clean it up immediately.”

“Hooray!” you think. “I got more than I asked for!”

Then your lawyer announces he’s appealing the judge’s ruling. Immediately is too soon, he says. We want that nice, squishy “reasonable time” language.

You might be upset. You might wonder whose side your own lawyer is on. And you’d be right. But that’s pretty much what happened last week when our state Environmental Management Commission was in court over the problem of coal ash contamination by Duke Energy, aka Duke “Progress” Energy.

State regulators have known for years that coal ash is nasty stuff. It’s a byproduct of coal-fired power plants and contains poisons like arsenic, selenium and cadmium. It’s been piling up in wastewater ponds owned by Duke Energy for years.

But they’ve been sitting on their hands until a coalition of environmental groups sued last year under the Federal Clean Water Act. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources finally got off its butt and filed environmental violations against Duke’s coal ash pits, but only after meeting with Duke Energy’s chief lobbyist.

Then they immediately offered to settle with the $50 billion company for $99,112. Duke could probably pay that out of the change in the couch cushions at its headquarters.

After a stormwater pipe in one of the ponds sprang a leak, dumping as much as 39,000 tons of the ash into the Dan River, the public outcry caused DENR to back out of the sweetheart deal with Duke. So you might have thought that when the matter came to court, the EMC, which “oversees and adopts rules for several divisions” of DENR, might take a sterner line, especially after Gov. Pat McCrory suggested that his administration would get tougher with Duke.

You might have thought that, but you’d be wrong. The EMC argued that it didn’t have authority to order an “immediate” cleanup. When Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway said, “Actually, you do,” you might have thought that EMC might go, “Cool. We can do a better job defending North Carolina’s environment now.”

You might have thought that, but you’d be wrong again. EMC, apparently deciding that a toothless watchdog was a good thing to be, announced that it would be appealing the ruling to the N.C. Court of Appeals. Tell me again: Whose side are these guys supposed to be on?

I’m sure all this has nothing to do whatsoever with the fact that McCrory worked for Duke for more than 28 years. I’m sure the fact that Duke has provided more than $1.1 million in support to McCrory campaigns since 2008 has nothing at all to do with the fact that the people he tasked with protecting our environment are in court arguing for an easier ride for the people who are trashing it.

It’s true that the governor directly appointed eight of the commission’s 15 members (including one of Duke Energy’s former lawyers), and the remaining seven members were appointed by Republican House Speaker Thom Tillis and Republican Senate leader Phil Berger, both McCrory allies.

But I’m sure that has absolutely no influence over the way our so-called environmental regulators are bowing and scraping to McCrory’s former employer and biggest supporter and asking, “Sirs, we don’t want to bother you, sirs. How much time would you like to clean up the horrendous mess you made, sirs? … Until you’re doggone good and ready? That would be fine, sirs. Please excuse us, and feel free to kick us in our behinds on our way out.”

If you truly believe none of that is connected, I have some waterfront property to sell you on the Dan River. Cheap.

Oh, and by the way, shame on you, Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper, for your complicity in this farce. I actually had some hope for you for a while, but you’ve turned out to be just another remnant of the limp and weak Perdue administration, whose fecklessness and corruption made it possible for these oligarchs to take over and sell us out to the highest bidder while you drew up the sale papers.

Thanks to McCrory and his cronies, thanks to the people who voted for them, and thanks to the lame and wimpy Democrats who made it all possible, it’s Duke Energy’s state now. Their state, their water, their dumping ground.

They own it. We just live in it, unless we get off our own behinds and vote these rascals out.

The Parrots Squawk About Obamacare (with commentary from the usual gang of idiots)

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

As I entered the shop, a string of bells attached to the door jingled to announce my presence.

The place was small and cluttered, with narrow aisles between shelves crammed with pet foods, aquarium gear, and cat litter. The air had a slightly rank animal smell.

A little old man with a wrinkled face and a fringe of white hair around the top of his bald head came out from the back, wiping his hands on a rag. “Welcome to GOPets,” he said. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I saw the sign, and I was wondering about it.”

He straightened up, beaming with pride. “We sell only genuine Republican pets to right-thinking individuals.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “How can pets have political parties?”

“Come on back and see,” he said. He led me to a back room, where a line of parrots sat on perches. “Our latest shipment,” he said. “These parrots are specially trained by hours of watching Fox News to expose the problems of Obamacare.”

“Really,” I said. “And what problems would those be?”

“Check it out,” he said proudly. He pointed at the nearest bird, which spread its wings and squawked, “No one’s going to sign up for Obamacare! Everyone hates it! RAWK! It’ll fail! RAWK!”

“Guess this little guy hasn’t heard the news,” I said. “Despite the problems early in the rollout, looks like they hit the target, and then some — 7.1 million enrollees as of April 1. And that doesn’t count the young people who got coverage on their parents’ insurance till they’re 26 or the people who got coverage through Medicaid expansion.”

“Well, how about this one?” the old man said. He led me to an orange and yellow bird that crowed, “The people who signed up for Obamacare aren’t going to pay their premiums! RAWK! It’ll fail! RAWK!”

“Actually,” I said, “that’s pure speculation, since most of the people who signed up recently haven’t even gotten a bill yet. And the places that have reported in so far — California and Vermont — say 85 to 90 percent of the people who have gotten a bill are paying, which is plenty enough to sustain the program. What else you got?”

A green and yellow-striped bird called from a nearby perch. “People lost their coverage! Obama lied! RAWK!”

“Some people lost their old coverage because their plans were lousy and didn’t meet the minimum standards set by the ACA,” I said. “But Obama didn’t cancel them, the insurance companies did — and then most replaced them with new, compliant policies. And every single one of the ‘Obamascare’ news stories about people losing their coverage turned out to be bogus.

“When news organizations got off their butts and investigated rather than just repeating the scripts of attack ads, they found out that these fake ‘victims’ were ignoring the fact that they could have gotten cheaper, better insurance through the Exchanges, or that they were actually paying lower premiums and ignoring the cap on out-of-pocket costs. Fact is, millions more are now covered than were before.”

“Cooking the books! Cooking the books! RAWK!” a nearby blue-feathered bird piped up.

“Let me guess,” I said, “back during the election, this bird was squawking about ‘skewed polls,’ right?”

He looked stunned. “How did you know?”

“They’re nothing if not predictable. And how’d that work out for you?”

As I spoke, I spotted one grizzled old bird whose feathers were ragged and faded. As I approached, he looked at me balefully with an eye filmy with age.

“I’m not a parrot,” he said in a croaking, pitiful voice. “The Democrats are the parrots. They’ll never criticize Obama. Rawk.”

“Wow,” I said, “that’s an old one, all right. Delusional as well. … So is anybody buying any of this?”

“Not as many people as used to,” the old man said sadly. “If it wasn’t for the news media repeating everything the parrots say without challenging it, no one would know about them at all.”

He began to cry. “I’m ruined,” he said. “All the talking points my parrots have learned are useless.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” I said. “There’ll always be some who’ll listen to a lie over and over and believe in it even after it’s debunked.”

A mynah bird in the corner stretched its wings and threw back its head. “BENGHAAAAAZI!” it hollered. “OBAMA LIED, PEOPLE DIED! CAW!”

“See what I mean?” I said.

The old man smiled. “I feel better already.”

I sighed. “I wish I did.”

THE PARROTS SQUAWK BACK: 

Perennial anonymous coward fugitiveguy, commenting as he does every week on the Pilot website: 

Dusty would be right at home on a comedy central roast. Anyone who feels that the needless death of 4 brave Americans including the first ambassador killed in 3 decades is fodder for faux humor just to file a column would be in good company. I don't think it was just the string of bells that announced your presence.

This is a pretty frequent tactic of the wingnuts: make fun of their desperate attempts to create an Administration destroying scandal out of the Benghazi tragedy, and they cry all sort of crocodile tears about how you're mocking the dead. So let me make it clear: I'm not mocking the dead, dim-bulb, I'm mocking people like you. Hope this helps. 

Then there's my old pal Frank Staples aka "skylinefirepest", who posted this gem: 

Dusty, you're turning into a brazen liar trying to defend your idol's defenseless crapola. Your parents would not approve!

Frank's comments  constantly invoke my parents, because like most wingnuts, he's an asshole with no sense of boundaries. 

Actually, Frank, my mom tells me quite often how she likes my columns. She's told me she thinks you're a jerk, though. 

My favorite, though, is this one, from anonymous cowards "JK": 

Does anyone read Mr. Roades' [sic] columns.... certainly not me!

Gotta  love the idiots who spend time commenting on something they say they never read. 

The Well Truly Has No Bottom

You know, after my last column, I didn't think there was anyone who would be low enough to rise to defend the late Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church. When even the usual gang of haters fell silent (the ones who show up every week to tell me how uninteresting they find the column they read every week), I thought there would finally be someone so vile, even the wingnuttiest of the wingnuts wouldn't throw in their lot with them.

I was wrong.

Thank you, ******* **** of Carthage, NC for your letter (yes, an actual mailed letter) that proved to me there actually are people in my own town who will defend picketing the funerals of slain children, murder victims, and soldiers fallen in the service of their country, all in the name of hate and in the name of God. Thank you, ******* **** of Carthage, NC for proving that the well of hate, ignorance and abject stupidity truly has no bottom.

Dusty

PS: Thank you especially for attaching a copy of the column to your note, because I certainly would not have known what I'd written otherwise. Also thanks for attaching the obit from Time Magazine with the highlighted sentence that you think proves your point, but which actually does nothing of the sort. If you hadn't done that, I might not have realized I was dealing with a complete dimwit.

Yours in Christ, D

(Updated to remove the actual name, since this sort of idiot would use it to whine and play the martyr.)

Goodbye,Mr. Phelps. You Failed.

The Pilot Newspaper: Columns

On March 19, Fred Phelps, founder and pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church, passed away in a hospice in Kansas. You have to admit, he was an easy guy to hate.

Members of the WBC became famous in recent years, not just for their virulent anti-gay stance, but in the way they expressed it: by picketing funerals.

Phelps and his crew started off by picketing in parks in their hometown of Topeka, Kan., because said parks were supposedly sites for gay activity. Soon they were making headlines for protesting at the funerals of gay murder victims, such as Matthew Shepard, waving signs that said that Shepard was in hell and especially that “God Hates Fags,” a phrase which became the slogan most identified with the church.

Quickly, however, they decided to expand the group of people they were trying to offend to, well, just about everyone. They began picketing the funerals of American soldiers killed overseas in 2005, because, Phelps said, combat deaths were God’s punishment for America’s “tolerance” of homosexuals.

I must confess, when I saw a picture of a WBC sign that said “Thank God For Dead Soldiers,” I had to wonder if this wasn’t some bizarre piece of performance art meant to discredit the anti-gay rights movement. (They also once picketed a store for selling Swedish-made vacuum cleaners — because, I guess, Sweden was too gay for them).)

But no, it eventually became clear that these wackaloons were serious. They picketed the funerals of people killed in the Sago Mine disaster. They picketed the funeral of Mister Rogers. They picketed the funeral of the 9-year-old girl killed in the same shooting that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. They stomped on the American flag at the gates of Camp Lejeune after the murder of Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach (even though there was zero evidence that Lauterbach was gay).

Their philosophy could best be summed up by a song the church once recorded, a parody of “We Are the World” called “God Hates the World.” And everywhere they went, you saw Phelps grinning his ghastly death’s-head grin and looking like The Beast from “Poltergeist II.”

He was the living, hideous symbol of the worst hatred and bigotry in America, a man who made you grit your teeth whenever you admitted, as the Supreme Court ruled in one case brought against him, that freedom of speech extended even to the most egregiously offensive speech imaginable.

Now he’s gone. So how should we react to the death of someone so completely horrible? Quite a few tweets and Facebook comments called for either dancing or performing — shall we say — other functions upon Phelps’ grave. Others called for studiously ignoring the event.

My favorite suggestion, however, was from a former Baptist minister who came out a few years ago and now blogs under the title of “The Gay Christian”: “My final prayer is that people do show up to his funeral as a show of pageantry. I hope they show up with large, decorated signs and billboards. I hope they line the streets leading to the funeral home, and I hope that they make sure they are seen. Finally, I hope every one of those billboards and signs read, ‘We forgive you.’”

Now, I understand how that would be hard for some, and downright impossible for others. There’s no way anyone can judge a mother of a dead son or daughter targeted by Phelps if she can’t bring herself to forgive him and his followers for publicly insisting that her child’s death was God’s judgment or that the child was at that moment burning in hell.

But I had to smile when I saw the picture of a group of counter-demonstrators who showed up at the first WBC protest after Phelps’ death with a banner that simply said “Sorry for Your Loss.”

Fred Phelps once told an interviewer that if people hated him, he felt he was doing his job right. Maybe it’s time for people, every day, to show Fred Phelps, wherever he is, just how badly he failed, by not hating anyone, even him, the way he and his flock hated others.

Prince of Peace, Lord of War

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

It seems that God and guns have become inextricably intertwined in the minds of some Americans, to the point where “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” may be turning from a humorous World War II novelty tune into an actual hymn.

For example, a couple of churches have made the news recently for giving not alms to the poor, but arms to their parishioners. Grace Baptist Church in Troy, N.Y., even advertised its giveaway of a brand-new AR-15 with a quote from John 14:27: “My peace I give unto you.”

Fear not, however, that the arms may fall into the hands of the iniquitous. According to the story in The Albany Times Union, the winner would have to pass a background check before receiving his gun. One would think God’s approval shown to the winner of the drawing by having his ticket pulled would be better than a background check, but I guess they need to render unto Caesar and all that.

Meanwhile, down in Paducah, Ky., the Lone Oak First Baptist Church held a big steak dinner at which 25 guns were raffled off.

“I brought a gun with me tonight,” Pastor Chuck McAlister told the congregation. “I know that’s controversial.”

It also suggests a certain lack of trust in his flock, but whatever.

“This issue is not guns,” McAlister told Fox News Detroit’s Charlie McDuff. “The issue is men’s hearts. Men who have their hearts changed through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ will handle guns responsibly.”

Men, one supposes, like Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute. According to Ruse’s bio, he has briefed a variety of government officials, including “members of the U.S. House and Senate,” as well as “White House and National Security Council staff.” He has “appeared on a number of national cable network programs discussing U.N. and Catholic issues, including news programs on CNN, CBS News, MSNBC and Fox News.” His writing career has included publication in right-leaning magazines and “on sites such as the National Review Online, Weekly Standard, Human Events, Touchstone, as well as newspapers around the world.”

So last week, Ruse went on American Family Radio and had this to say about a story of the Duke student who revealed that she’s putting herself through college by appearing as an adult-film actress:

“My daughters go to a little private religious school, and we pay an arm and a leg for it precisely to keep them away from all of this kind of nonsense. I do hope that they go to a Christian college or university and to keep them so far away from the hard left, human-hating people that run modern universities, who should all be taken out and shot.”

Got that? This good Christian, this adviser to legislators and presidents, whose organization’s mission statement says its purpose is “to defend life and family,” says that people with whom he disagrees should be “taken out and shot.”

This is a version of Christ’s love with which I am not familiar. Aren’t you guys glad that this believer is probably well-armed?

In fact, it seems like this whole idea of Jesus as the Prince of Peace is a little too wimpy for a lot of the folks at the American Family Association, owner of the above-mentioned American Family Radio.

The AFA’s executive vice president, William (Jerry) Boykin, a former lieutenant general in the U.S. Army, recently told an audience at the Pro-Family Legislators Conference in Dallas that when Jesus returns in triumph, “that sword he’ll be carrying when he comes back is an AR-15.” As the crowd laughed, he reiterated: “The sword today is an AR-15. If you don’t have one, go get one. You’re supposed to have one. It’s biblical.”

Funny, one would think the Son of the God who “thunders with his majestic voice, and … does not restrain the lightnings when his voice is heard” (Job 37:4) wouldn’t need small arms. And it’s true that Jesus did say “all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword,” and something about “turning the other cheek,” but really, who is this biblical Jesus anyway that he can argue with a former lieutenant general who tells us that owning an assault rifle is a biblical imperative?

More and more, it looks like America’s gun aficionados are remaking God in their image, and that God of theirs sure does like guns. In a few years, will crossed rifles take their place on the altar beside the actual cross?

You might think it’ll never happen, but I never thought I’d see churches giving away guns, either.

Not Even Trying To Pretend They Have Any Principles

Ted Cruz on Syria: "No decision by an elected official is more serious than whether to send our armed forces into conflict. President Obama was right to seek Congress’s authorization to use military force against Syria. But having carefully considered the president’s substantive arguments, I am compelled to vote against the requested authorization."

 Ted Cruz on Ukraine: “You’d better believe that Putin sees that in Syria, Obama draws a red line and ignores the red line. You’d better believe that Putin sees all over the world.”

So the man who voted to tie the President's hands on Syria is now saying Obama's weakness on the "red line" is what brought on the Ukraine crisis. 

Jesus, they're not even trying to cover up the fact that they have no principles whatsoever, other than "Whatever Obama does is wrong."