Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
K Gardner
K Gardner's Journal
K Gardner's Journal
January 30, 2012
On an interview that just aired on a local television channel, State Senator Stacey Campfield (R-TN) compared his ouster from a local Knoxville restaurant to segregation. He also says he told Ms. Boggs he was quoting statistics from the CDC in his recently aired controversial statements.
From the article:
"In the past, Tennessee had a past of segregating people at lunch by color. Now I guess we have to segregate people by their political ideology," Campfield said.
"The liberals are all for everybody having free speech until they realize that other people do actually have different points of view. Then they can't handle it," Campfield said. "They go bonkers. They don't know how to handle other people having different points of view. Unfortunately, they're closed minded people."
Instead of trying a return trip to the Bistro anytime soon, Sen. Campfield said, "I'll spend my money where people have open minds."
Senator Campfield recently stated AIDS was caused by man-on-monkey sex, and said there was virtually no danger of AIDS being passed between heterosexuals.
Campfield Compares Ouster from Bistro to "Segregation", calls Liberals "Closed-Minded People"
http://www.wate.com/story/16633376/knoxville-restaurant-owner-boots-sen-stacey-campfield-over-gay-stanceOn an interview that just aired on a local television channel, State Senator Stacey Campfield (R-TN) compared his ouster from a local Knoxville restaurant to segregation. He also says he told Ms. Boggs he was quoting statistics from the CDC in his recently aired controversial statements.
From the article:
"In the past, Tennessee had a past of segregating people at lunch by color. Now I guess we have to segregate people by their political ideology," Campfield said.
"The liberals are all for everybody having free speech until they realize that other people do actually have different points of view. Then they can't handle it," Campfield said. "They go bonkers. They don't know how to handle other people having different points of view. Unfortunately, they're closed minded people."
Instead of trying a return trip to the Bistro anytime soon, Sen. Campfield said, "I'll spend my money where people have open minds."
Senator Campfield recently stated AIDS was caused by man-on-monkey sex, and said there was virtually no danger of AIDS being passed between heterosexuals.
January 30, 2012
(Sorry, didn't realize a thread had already been posted. As a Knoxville resident, this is front page news today!
Martha Boggs, god love her soul, kicked State Senator Stacey Campfield out of one of our most popular downtown eateries on Sunday after his most recent horrible remarks on gays and AIDS.
"I don't want his hate in my restaurant", Ms. Boggs stated. And added, "He's gone from being stupid to dangerous".
Campfield made news again last week after blaming the AIDS virus on men having sex with monkeys and calling the disease "virtually impossible" to contract via heterosexual intercourse. Campfield is best known as the sponsor of the "Don't Say Gay Bill", which passed the Senate last year and awaits a vote in the house.
If only every enlightened restaurant owner would take this kind of stand, half the republican lawmakers would be starving.
KUDOS MARTHA BOGGS !
Knoxville Bistro Owner Boots&Bans State Senator after AIDS Remarks(PIC)
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/jan/30/bistro-at-the-bijou-owner-boots-bans-state-sen/(Sorry, didn't realize a thread had already been posted. As a Knoxville resident, this is front page news today!
Martha Boggs, god love her soul, kicked State Senator Stacey Campfield out of one of our most popular downtown eateries on Sunday after his most recent horrible remarks on gays and AIDS.
"I don't want his hate in my restaurant", Ms. Boggs stated. And added, "He's gone from being stupid to dangerous".
Campfield made news again last week after blaming the AIDS virus on men having sex with monkeys and calling the disease "virtually impossible" to contract via heterosexual intercourse. Campfield is best known as the sponsor of the "Don't Say Gay Bill", which passed the Senate last year and awaits a vote in the house.
If only every enlightened restaurant owner would take this kind of stand, half the republican lawmakers would be starving.
KUDOS MARTHA BOGGS !
January 21, 2012
To watch the GOP candidates for President this year, it would seem that is exactly what has happened. We pride ourselves on being a civilized nation. We look with disdain on ancient Rome, when blood lust turned people into cheering participants as men and women lost their lives in the brutal sands of the arena. When a man went down, cries of Habet, Hoc habet! (he's had it!), and shouts of Mitte! (let him go!) or Iugula! (kill him!) could be heard.
Roman society was a deeply divided, hierarchial and class-conscious society. They felt that undeserved rights could be rectified only by public degradation and death. In publicly witnessing such punishment, citizens were reassured that the proper social order had been restored. In this display, the games reaffirmed the moral and political order of things. In the arena, civilization triumphed over the wild and untamed, over the outlaw, the barbarian, the enemy. The threat outside society was overcome, the order of things was reasserted and death, itself, conquered.* – (James Grout, Essays on Rome,paraphrased)
We don’t need to put Gladiator into the Blu-Ray player or read essays on ancient Rome to be part of such carnage today. Just turn on any GOP Debate, watch and listen to any Republican crowd as they are thrown the red meat of racism, bigotry and intolerance. They don’t even bother with a low dog whistle this season. It is blatant. It is overt. It is in-your-face and it is tolerated, even cheered, by spectators in the audience who are thirsty for blood.
In ancient Rome, only Seneca protested the carnage of the arena.The other notables of the day advocated with their silence. Today, not one candidate for the highest office in the land objects to the vilification of the least, the poorest, the most helpless and victimized among us.
Just last week, a crowd cheered as Newt Gingrich demeaned a black journalist. “Juan”, Newt called out dismissively, and waited for the cheers of the crowd, which came right on cue. Later, a woman from South Carolina praised Newt’s action by thanking him for “putting him (Juan Williams) in his place”. Williams had the audacity to question the former speaker about repeated comments about the poor, saying poor children lack role models for work, and calling President Barack Obama a "food stamp president”. He has repeatedly said that poor children don’t know anyone who works and could be put to work in the schools as janitors.
"Will we be able to buy IPads like your granddaughter"?
In September, a Tea Party Express Audience at a CNN Debate cheered at the prospect of letting a healthy young man without health insurance die:
Blitzer: “What’s going to happen if he goes into a coma? Who pays for that”?
Ron Paul: “That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to prepare to take care of everybody…”
Blitzer: “Are you saying society should just let him die?”
The audience enthusiastically shouted “Yes! Yes”!
"Are you not entertained"?
At the Reagan Library on September 7, Brian Williams questioned Governor Rick Perry about the death penalty. Texas leads the country in wrongful death convictions. Perry has recently condoned U.S. troops urinating on the corpse of an enemy combatant even though the Geneva Convention forbids it.
Williams: Governor Perry, a question about Texas. Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times. Have you (the crowd begins applauding) struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?
Perry: No, sir. I’ve never struggled with that at all. <snip>
Williams: What do you make of…(continued applause) What do you make of that dynamic that just happened here, the mention of the execution of 234 people drew applause?
Perry: I think Americans understand justice. I think Americans are clearly, in the vast majority of cases, supportive of capital punishment. <snip>
"Kill him"!
Also in September, in Orando, a Republican crowd loudly booed a United States soldier, who is on active duty in Iraq, after the following question: “In 2010, when I was deployed to Iraq, I had to lie about who I was, because I’m a gay soldier, and I didn’t want to lose my job. My question is, under one of your presidencies, do you intend to circumvent the progress that’s been made for gay and lesbian soldiers in the military?”
“What we’re doing is playing social experimentation with our military right now. And that’s tragic. I would just say that, going forward, we would reinstitute that policy, if Rick Santorum was president, period. That policy could be reinstituted.”
The crowd in Orlando cheered wildly at Santorum’s answer.
“I will win the crowd. I will give them something they have never seen before”.
Newt Gingrich used the following line in this week’s debate: “As close to despicable as anything I can imagine”. Of course, Newt was talking about the media, and the crowd was on its feet.
The brutal display put on by this year’s crop of GOP candidates, is indeed, as despicable as anything I can imagine. In a country already torn by two wars, a recession, record unemployment and foreclosures, the gap between the “have’s” and the “have nots” grows wider every day. And yet the raw meat of human misery and suffering is tossed into the audience, and they go after the bloody bones of their fellow human beings like a pack of wild dogs. This is only the beginning. The bloodsport will grow ever more divisive for this country as we near the general election. The sacrificial lambs will be offered up to the waiting crowds.
One wonders how far, really, we have come from the days of Gladiators; when people roared in triumph over the spilling of blood, innocent or otherwise. These crowds, the supposed “Christian right” – do they ever ask themselves, would Jesus be cheering for poverty, bigotry, racism, death, torture, executions, illness, starvation, homelessness and inequality?
When the games in ancient Rome were finally banished, it was largely prompted by the death of a monk, Telemachus, who had entered the arena to try to stop the fight. He was stoned to death by the indignant crowd.
Many months remain between now and November. Let’s hope someone has the integrity and courage to step into this godless and bloody gladiatorial arena the Republican Primary has created and say “enough - have you no decency, Sir"?
Greater empires have fallen over less.
[font color="blue" size="2" face="Verdana"]There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish... it was so fragile. And I fear that it will not survive the winter. Let us whisper now, together, you and I.[/font]
(All quotes from Gladiator)
*James Grout –
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/circusmaximus/circusmaximus.html
On My Signal, Unleash Hell
"On My Signal, Unleash Hell"!To watch the GOP candidates for President this year, it would seem that is exactly what has happened. We pride ourselves on being a civilized nation. We look with disdain on ancient Rome, when blood lust turned people into cheering participants as men and women lost their lives in the brutal sands of the arena. When a man went down, cries of Habet, Hoc habet! (he's had it!), and shouts of Mitte! (let him go!) or Iugula! (kill him!) could be heard.
Roman society was a deeply divided, hierarchial and class-conscious society. They felt that undeserved rights could be rectified only by public degradation and death. In publicly witnessing such punishment, citizens were reassured that the proper social order had been restored. In this display, the games reaffirmed the moral and political order of things. In the arena, civilization triumphed over the wild and untamed, over the outlaw, the barbarian, the enemy. The threat outside society was overcome, the order of things was reasserted and death, itself, conquered.* – (James Grout, Essays on Rome,paraphrased)
We don’t need to put Gladiator into the Blu-Ray player or read essays on ancient Rome to be part of such carnage today. Just turn on any GOP Debate, watch and listen to any Republican crowd as they are thrown the red meat of racism, bigotry and intolerance. They don’t even bother with a low dog whistle this season. It is blatant. It is overt. It is in-your-face and it is tolerated, even cheered, by spectators in the audience who are thirsty for blood.
In ancient Rome, only Seneca protested the carnage of the arena.The other notables of the day advocated with their silence. Today, not one candidate for the highest office in the land objects to the vilification of the least, the poorest, the most helpless and victimized among us.
Just last week, a crowd cheered as Newt Gingrich demeaned a black journalist. “Juan”, Newt called out dismissively, and waited for the cheers of the crowd, which came right on cue. Later, a woman from South Carolina praised Newt’s action by thanking him for “putting him (Juan Williams) in his place”. Williams had the audacity to question the former speaker about repeated comments about the poor, saying poor children lack role models for work, and calling President Barack Obama a "food stamp president”. He has repeatedly said that poor children don’t know anyone who works and could be put to work in the schools as janitors.
"Will we be able to buy IPads like your granddaughter"?
In September, a Tea Party Express Audience at a CNN Debate cheered at the prospect of letting a healthy young man without health insurance die:
Blitzer: “What’s going to happen if he goes into a coma? Who pays for that”?
Ron Paul: “That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to prepare to take care of everybody…”
Blitzer: “Are you saying society should just let him die?”
The audience enthusiastically shouted “Yes! Yes”!
"Are you not entertained"?
At the Reagan Library on September 7, Brian Williams questioned Governor Rick Perry about the death penalty. Texas leads the country in wrongful death convictions. Perry has recently condoned U.S. troops urinating on the corpse of an enemy combatant even though the Geneva Convention forbids it.
Williams: Governor Perry, a question about Texas. Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times. Have you (the crowd begins applauding) struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?
Perry: No, sir. I’ve never struggled with that at all. <snip>
Williams: What do you make of…(continued applause) What do you make of that dynamic that just happened here, the mention of the execution of 234 people drew applause?
Perry: I think Americans understand justice. I think Americans are clearly, in the vast majority of cases, supportive of capital punishment. <snip>
"Kill him"!
Also in September, in Orando, a Republican crowd loudly booed a United States soldier, who is on active duty in Iraq, after the following question: “In 2010, when I was deployed to Iraq, I had to lie about who I was, because I’m a gay soldier, and I didn’t want to lose my job. My question is, under one of your presidencies, do you intend to circumvent the progress that’s been made for gay and lesbian soldiers in the military?”
“What we’re doing is playing social experimentation with our military right now. And that’s tragic. I would just say that, going forward, we would reinstitute that policy, if Rick Santorum was president, period. That policy could be reinstituted.”
The crowd in Orlando cheered wildly at Santorum’s answer.
“I will win the crowd. I will give them something they have never seen before”.
Newt Gingrich used the following line in this week’s debate: “As close to despicable as anything I can imagine”. Of course, Newt was talking about the media, and the crowd was on its feet.
The brutal display put on by this year’s crop of GOP candidates, is indeed, as despicable as anything I can imagine. In a country already torn by two wars, a recession, record unemployment and foreclosures, the gap between the “have’s” and the “have nots” grows wider every day. And yet the raw meat of human misery and suffering is tossed into the audience, and they go after the bloody bones of their fellow human beings like a pack of wild dogs. This is only the beginning. The bloodsport will grow ever more divisive for this country as we near the general election. The sacrificial lambs will be offered up to the waiting crowds.
One wonders how far, really, we have come from the days of Gladiators; when people roared in triumph over the spilling of blood, innocent or otherwise. These crowds, the supposed “Christian right” – do they ever ask themselves, would Jesus be cheering for poverty, bigotry, racism, death, torture, executions, illness, starvation, homelessness and inequality?
When the games in ancient Rome were finally banished, it was largely prompted by the death of a monk, Telemachus, who had entered the arena to try to stop the fight. He was stoned to death by the indignant crowd.
Many months remain between now and November. Let’s hope someone has the integrity and courage to step into this godless and bloody gladiatorial arena the Republican Primary has created and say “enough - have you no decency, Sir"?
Greater empires have fallen over less.
[font color="blue" size="2" face="Verdana"]There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish... it was so fragile. And I fear that it will not survive the winter. Let us whisper now, together, you and I.[/font]
(All quotes from Gladiator)
*James Grout –
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/circusmaximus/circusmaximus.html
Profile Information
Member since: Sat Nov 17, 2007, 11:02 AMNumber of posts: 14,933
