Birmingham Blues

Blues Reader Paul passed along this article from Ha’aretz. It certainly demonstrates that wingnuts in the US don’t have a monopoly on smearing certain groups of people for political gain.

The state prosecutor on Tuesday ordered police to open a criminal investigation into Rabbi David Batzri, a prominent sage preaching Jewish mysticism, who is suspected of racist incitement.

Police will also investigate Batzri’s son, Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri.

The prosecution’s order came in the wake of comments made by the suspects during a conference held some two months ago in Jerusalem’s Pat neighborhood.

According to suspicions, the Batzris allegedly made the racist comments at the conference which was held to rally support against the establishment of a bilingual school for Jewish and Arab students in the heart of the Pat neighborhood.

Rabbi David Batzri said, “the establishment of such a school is a despicable and sinful act. An Arab cannot contaminate what is pure. It is forbidden to blend darkness and light. The nation of Israel is pure and the Arabs are a nation of donkeys. They are an evil disaster, an evil devil, and a nasty affliction.”

Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri said, “The Arabs are donkeys and beasts. They want to take our girls. They are endowed with true filthiness. There is pure and there is impure and they are impure….”

…Batzri also said the outbreak of bird flu in Israel is God’s punishment for calls in election ads to legalize gay marriages.

“The Bible says that God punishes depravity first through plagues against animals and then in people,” Batzri said in a religious edict quoted by his son.

Batzri said he hoped the deaths of hundreds of thousands of turkeys and chickens would help atone for what he called the sins of left-wing political parties, Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri told Reuters a week before the Knesset election.

The bird flu outbreak stemmed from far-left political parties “strengthening and encouraging homosexuality,” Batzri’s son quoted him as saying.

So Arabs are donkeys who want to take “our girls”, and gays are to blame for bird flu. Rabbi Batzri sounds a lot like J. B. Stoner, an old-line racist who ran for Senate in Georgia and went on TV back in the early 70’s to rail about jungle bunnies who were after our white women. No, I’m not kidding. My brother and I used to see the ads while we watched “Star Trek” reruns after school. He sat at a big desk with a huge Confederate flag hanging behind him. The station management would come on afterwards and apologize.

If Rabbi Batzri lived in the US, he’d have the same right to free speech that Stoner exercised. It sounds like Israeli law doesn’t give him that much latitude, and I think that’s unfortunate. If he’s tried and convicted, he will just become a martyr to his twisted cause. I’d prefer that Rabbi Batzri be as marginal to Israeli society as J. B. was to ours.

W has admitted the reality that US troops will remain in Iraq for years, and he’s passing the buck to the next President to decide when to bring them home. No, George, I don’t think so. You broke it; you buy it. This is your legacy. Too bad it’s our soldiers and the Iraqi people who have to live with it.

* 1,056 as of 3/22/06 (thanks, Jamison!)

The New Hampshire House has overwhelmingly defeated a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-gender marriage. New Hampshire law does not permit gay marriage, but the wingnuts were screaming for some extra measure of “protection”. The House said no to a transparent attempt to fan the flames of homophobia. Good on them.

I guess the rumor mill is fairly convinced that Riley has the Republican nomination for governor sewn up. I hope it’s correct. Roy had to call a press conference to declare that he is a Republican and won’t leave his party.

“I am a Republican and I intend to become the next Republican governor of Alabama,” Moore said. The Republican primary is June 6.

Moore also said he has no intentions of switching to the race for chief justice. [Why bother, when he has his henchman Tom Parker running in his place?]

Asked about the origin of the rumors, Moore said: “They started for some reason. They definitely weren’t started to help me.”…

…Moore said he is staying in the GOP race for governor even though he believes the Alabama Republican Party has been openly supportive of Riley. [I can't imagine why.]

“I believe in a conservative government and Republican principles. I will not abandon the people of this state in the name of politics,” he said.

Oh, darn. I was hoping maybe he’d move on to becoming the US spokesman for morality.

This is heartbreaking, and I’m at a loss for any ideas that would improve the situation. There are days when I contemplate chartering the biggest jet I can find, flying to Africa, and filling it full of orphans. I’d bring them back here, take them to my church, and tell our members that here is our opportunity to practice what we preach. Then I consider the upheaval that would cause in the lives of children who have already lost so much, and I try to think of other ways to help.

AIDS in Africa is killing more that just individuals, although that’s bad enough. It’s wiping out entire families, villages, societal structures that supported at least a modicum of civilization. There are many factors that contribute to the pandemic: poverty that leads men to travel far from home to look for work (which leads to their frequenting prostitutes), strictures on women that keep them from demanding the use of condoms, silence and/or dissemination of misinformation by government officials, taboos that prevent individuals from seeking testing and treatment, shortage of affordable medications, and the list could go on and on. Clearly there is no simple solution.

What do you think, readers? How can we help?

In case you hadn’t noticed, Birmingham had no measurable snow this winter for the sixth year in a row. My children are not happy about this.

The city has now gone 6 years and 2 months since the last measured snow on Jan. 28, 2000, the longest time without snow ever recorded. The arrival of spring today nearly shuts the door on the chance of any snow chances this season.

“I’m not saying it can’t happen,” said Dave Wilfing, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Calera. “But the likelihood of it happening is getting slimmer each day.”

Records kept by the Alabama Office of the State Climatologist show only two snowfalls have hit Birmingham later than March 20. One was March 24, 1983, when 1½ inches fell. The other was the freak (and quickly melted) snowfall of 5 inches on April 3, 1987….

…Though there have been 27 days with a low in the 20s since last Nov. 17, the winter temperature never dropped into the teens in Birmingham. The coldest morning, Dec. 22, had a low of 20.

The warm weather was good news for those who struggle to pay their gas bills, and I’m glad for that. I just hope the few days of cold weather were enough to kill some of the bugs.

Of course, you know what they say about the weather in Alabama: if you don’t like it, wait a few minutes, and it will change.

We’re off to visit my parents for a few days, so posting will be light. No DSL there. If this is your spring break also, I hope you enjoy it!

“Right now, I wouldn’t vote Democratic if Jesus Christ was running.” Judy Deats, a Texas Republican, who is standing by Rep. Tom DeLay in his re-election bid despite the fact that his association with lobbyist Jack Abramoff has made him vulnerable to political opposition for the first time in more than 20 years

Well, alrighty then. Good to know Ms. Deats has her priorities in order.

Hat tip Jamison at Daffodil Lane.

May the road rise up to meet you,
May the wind be ever at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
And the rain fall softly on your fields;
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the hollow of his hand.

From Don at Dr. IQ comes the news that HB325, the initiative and referendum bill, died on the floor of the Alabama house yesterday. It was a victory of sorts for I&R supporters that the bill made it this far.

Speaker Seth Hammett, D-Andalusia, the House leader, said he doubted a citizens’ initiative bill had ever before advanced far enough for debate in the full 104-member House.

However, the commentary of some of our esteemed representatives made it clear they think our citizen activists are getting just a bit too uppity.

The opposition from lawmakers was clear. “We have a representative republic and not a direct democracy,” said Rep. Robert Bentley, R-Tuscaloosa.

Rep. James Buskey, D-Mobile, said people should run for the Legislature if they want to pass laws. “If people want to legislate, let them run,” he said.

I found Rep. Buskey’s comment particularly odious given that he has been in the Legislature since friggin’ 1976. He knows no one can take his seat away from him till he retires or kicks the bucket. I suggest we all email him and ask him to step aside so one of the “people [who] want to legislate” can have an opportunity to serve.

And, much to my surprise (NOT), lobbyists didn’t support the bill.

[Sponsor Mike] Ball said the bill died mainly because powerful lobby groups comfortable with killing or passing bills at the State House disliked the idea of letting voters pass laws that lobbyists couldn’t kill in the Legislature.

True confessions time: when I first heard about the I&R movement, I was afraid that any nut with a wild hair could collect 1,000 signatures and get a proposal on the ballot. Here in Alabama, that would mean we would spend our time voting on mandatory prayer in schools, placement of Roy’s Rock replicas in every shopping mall in the state, and the death penalty for homosexuals. But HB325 had some built-in safeguards that could weed out the frivolous junk.

And I am sick to death of legislators who are so tied to special interest groups that they can’t be bothered to respond to their constituents. Our 1901 constitution was designed to keep power in the Legislature and out of the hands of the citizens, and, short of a constitutional convention, I&R may be the only tool that will put some of that power back where it belongs.