Ocassional Thoughts of an Independent Progressive Atheistic Humanist
For the 2nd time, A Bernie Sanders rally was shut down by activists of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. This time it was a rally in the supposed progressive city of Seattle. Once again the BLM people made a statement that does need to be said but I sure would like to see them shut down Republican rallies or even Hillary Clinton rallies. If they want national attention then they should be an equal opportunity disruption.
Imagine if we took votes on what people could believe in, speak about, or who people could love? That doesn’t sound fair at all, right? People who support gay marriage know what I mean. That’s why when I read almost 250,000 people had signed a petition on the White House website to legally label the Westboro Baptist Church a hate group, I actually had a problem with the petition. While I agree with the point, Fred Phelps and his church are way off the crazy scale, just imagine if you were on the wrong side of popular opinion. As much as I dislike the Westboro Baptist Church, this petition shows why we shouldn’t let rights be put up for a popular vote – PERIOD.
Here is the text of the petition:
There was an organized protest of Walmart employees timed for the largest shopping day known as Black Friday. Some cheap labor Republicans complained about the protests saying it was an attack on job creators by Unions. One of my conservative friends said that people should be thankful to have a job. When I hear that excuse for poor treatment of workers it makes me mad. Walmart is one of the worse offenders and if we didn’t have laws against sweat shops they would probably do that too.
On FOX “news” Sunday, the panel decided that the Occupy movement was un-American and maybe even Marxist but during the Tea Party protests FOX “news” fell over itself to promote them. There is no difference between the Occupy movement and the Tea Party protests – in that they both were an exercise of their right to protest for what they believe in. To say one is “un-American” and the other isn’t betrays FOX’s bias toward the 1%.
Saturday was the big global protest day as part of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement and in Columbus hundreds showed up at the steps of the Ohio State House to join in the event. The top news station in town WBNS 10tv had a surprising objective report allowing for a good bit of face and sign time as well as mentioning the other locations of protest in the almost 4 minute report at the top of the 11 PM newscast.