Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

In the News: Celebrating Insurrection!!!

Tags:

Found on the Internets …

~

Georgia Issues New Confederate Flag License Plate

In Georgia, the state Department of Revenue’s Motor Vehicle Division approved of a new specialty license plate design that features the Confederate battle flag. Under state law, all license plate proposals are submitted to the Motor Vehicle division to screen out insensitive or offensive license plate designs.

[The design], proposed by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, features a more prominent Confederate battle flag across the background, the emblem of the SOCV on the left side, and a dedication to the organization in a banner across the lower-center of the plate.

Maynard Eaton, spokesman for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, called the display “reprehensible” and added “we don’t have license plates saying ‘Black Power’.”

So I guess that glorifying a rebellion that led to the deaths of about a half a million Americans and honoring “confederate veterans” who fought to continue the enslavement of an entire race of human beings is not insensitive at all!!

Or perhaps it is only “insensitive” if you are a member of the race of human beings who were enslaved.

Of course, this honoring stuff is part of Georgia’s Southern heritage and has nothing at all to do with the actual war, why it was fought, and the racism that the flag has symbolized since the 1860s.

So if the “Sons of Nazi German Soldiers” wanted to have a license plate with a swastika, would that be okay? Surely those sons should have a chance to celebrate their heritage.

Or how about this: “Sons of the Guys Who Burned Atlanta” with an American flag and a logo showing screaming white people looking at their plantations on fire.

Stay classy, Georgia, and remove this license plate from your approved list.

~

Editor’s Note: Feel free to share other news items in the comment threads.


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 36 Comments

36 comments

  3. JanF

    Anti-gay laws passed in Kansas … their state senate tables it when businesses react unfavorably.

    Anti-gay laws passed in AZ … now the state senate president who voted for it said it was a mistake. “Why would people think our anti-gay law was anti-gay???”. Business had reacted unfavorably.

    Now Georgia wants to pass a Save Christianists From Selling Stuff to Gay People Law: “Protect Our Religious Freedom Act”.

    Who are these laws really being written for?

  5. JanF

    Poll: Christie’s Approval Dropped 15 Percent Since Scandal Broke

    Forty nine percent of registered voters approve of the job Christie is doing, while 46 percent disapprove.

    While overall approval of the governor is down, 77 percent of Republicans in the state still approve of Christie. However, 89 percent of Republicans approved of the job Christie was doing in January.

    Silly words alert!!!

    Monmouth University Polling Institute Director Patrick Murray attributed Christie’s fall to the bridge scandal and how it has overshadowed his accomplishments.

    “This hole is getting deeper. Christie’s image as the hero of Sandy is now just a fading memory,” he said.

    His “accomplishments”??? “Hero of Sandy”????? Christie’s every action has been exposed as being completely in the service of Chris Christie’s political career including how he doled out Sandy aid as patronage.

    Someone please get Patrick Murray a dictionary. “Hero”: “a person who is admired for great or brave acts or fine qualities”.

    Er, no.

  6. JanF

    Business groups urge veto

    The CEOs of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, Greater Phoenix Leadership and the Southern Arizona Leadership Council wrote to Brewer requesting a veto:

       After analyzing the bill, we are very concerned about the effect it could have on Arizona’s economy. As leaders in the business community, we cannot support measures that could expose our businesses to litigation, nor do we want to send a message that our state is anything but an open and attractive place for visitors and the top talent that will be the cornerstone of our continued economic growth.

       If specific Arizona issues related to religious liberty are identified, we would stand ready to work with anyone to ensure that any solution addresses those problems while also ensuring that all individuals feel welcome in our state and that business is not hurt.

    According to Kirstin Jarnagin, vice president of the Arizona Lodging and Tourism Assocation, people are already cancelling trips to Arizona because of the negative perception the bill has brought to the state.

    How about this for working with those who worry that their religious freedoms are being trampled by having to sell stuff to gay people? “Get over it … you cannot discriminate against people in the United States of America. It was not okay when it was black people, it is not okay when it is brown people, it is not okay when it is Muslim people and it is not okay when it is gay people. Period.”  

  7. Portlaw

    David Packer to 750,000. That, of course, does not include the amputees and other wounded, nor the suffering of orphans and widows, mothers and fathers. That plate mocks freedom and the suffering of that war as it celebrates hate and ignorance. I am disgusted,

  8. JanF

    Because slavery was on its way out!!! And Lincoln just wanted a murderous war!!!

    “Slavery was dying a natural death all over the Western world. Instead of allowing it to die or helping it to die or even purchasing the slaves and then freeing them, which would have cost a lot less money than the Civil War cost, Lincoln set about in the most murderous war in American history,” [Fox News Commentator “Judge” Andrew] Napolitano said.

    “Look, it’s not even all together clear slavery was the reason for secession, but largely the impetus for secession was tariffs.”

    From the Daily Show’s “Senior Black Correspondent” Larry Wilmore

    “These people think that Lincoln started the Civil War because the North was ready to kill to end slavery, when the truth was the South was ready to die to keep slavery,” he said.

    And this on Taxing as the worst thing in the world:

    “Yes, I get that you think it is wrong for government to reach into your pocket, take your money from your nice warm pocket and claim it as your property. Money that used to enjoy unfettered freedom … is now conscripted to do whatever its new owner tells it to. Now, I know this is a leap, but do you know that sadness and rage you feel about your money? Well, that’s the way some of us feel about people”.

    Thank you, The Daily Show … and Larry Wilmore.

  9. JanF

    “The only religion libruls care about is Muslim” … and this:

    If the bill does get signed into law, liberals will disregard it anyway, according to Limbaugh.

    “The nearest liberal judge will declare the law to be unconstitutional. If there’s one thing that we’ve learned by now, ladies and gentlemen, the left does not accept laws it doesn’t like. They just don’t,” he said.

    Quite unlike the right-wing!!! :::cough Affordable Care Act – voted to repeal 40+ times, sued in federal court to stop implementation :::cough  

  10. JanF

    From USA Today – Kirsten Powers

    The fight over right-to-discriminate laws just moved to Arizona. The legislature there passed a bill last week that would allow business owners and individuals to discriminate based on religious beliefs. The bill has been pushed by conservative Christians, but it would apply to all religious believers.

    This proposed law makes the bill defeated in Kansas last week look progressive.

    Unlike the Kansas bill – which applied only to marriage – the Arizona bill has no such limits. If signed into law by Gov. Jan Brewer, it would result in nothing less than chaos.

    According to the ACLU’s advocacy and policy counsel Eunice Rho, if this is implemented, it will be unprecedented. Says Rho, “The people who are supporting this law are very open about their intentions to use it against gay people. But it (additionally) undermines all sorts of civil rights laws in the state. The potential for discrimination is very broad.”

    Here are a few examples:

    Say the only pharmacy in town is owned by a conservative Muslim. He believes that women should be covered. A mother comes in to get antibiotics for her sick child. He refuses service unless she covers herself. Will the religious right defend this?

    What if an Army sergeant in full regalia is driving through a small town and his car breaks down and it’s too late to find a mechanic? There are two hotels in the town; both are owned by pacifist Christians. Do the backers of this bill really believe it should be legal for him to be refused a room and forced to sleep in his car?

    Or: A couple, white male and black female, enter a florist to order arrangements for their wedding. The owner – a Bob Jones University graduate circa 1985, when the college still officially banned interracial dating – feels that he cannot contribute to something he believes is morally wrong (mixed-race marriage) on biblical grounds. Should he be allowed to refuse service even if it violates a federal anti-discrimination statute?

    When Pandora’s Box is opened, you can’t choose the demons that are released … or ask the ones you don’t like to please go back into the box.  

  11. JanF

    From TPM: The ‘Religious Liberty’ Campaign May Be Backfiring For Conservatives

    In 2012, the conservative “campaign for religious liberty” looked like a smart and possibly winning strategic gambit. Aimed specifically at the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage mandate, nestled in a broader claim of institutional and individual exemptions from complex and sometimes unpopular laws and regulations, the campaign linked the Conference of U.S. Catholic Bishops with conservative evangelicals and both to the Republican politicians (including presidential candidate Mitt Romney) who made it a new front in both their anti-Obamacare and “family values” messaging. […]

    Two years later, the “religious liberty” crusade shows signs of backfiring. This very day, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer may veto a bill just passed by a legislature controlled by her own party that provides a broad exemption from discrimination laws to businesses and individuals claiming compliance violates their beliefs. And more generally, an argument that once distracted from the extremist nature of conservative Christian objections to gay rights and reproductive rights is drawing attention to them in a dangerous way.

    The extremist nature of conservative Christian’s objections to 2014 America is very much on display.

    Perhaps some non-sectarian Americans instinctively identify with “bakers of conscience” or wedding planners who consider themselves in danger of hellfire for booking hotel ballrooms for Sodomites. But like the fight for the freedom to treat IUDs as death machines, the fight to provide the conservative Christian elements of the wedding industry with plenary indulgences from obedience to the law tends to elicit less sympathy than ridicule from the non-aligned.

    As Ed Kilgore points out that the “anti-choicers are now finding themselves defending businesses who in open court argue that the dividing line between acceptable contraception and murderous abortion occurs moments after sexual intercourse – when women instantly transition from autonomous individuals to ‘hosts’ for a state-protected zygote.”

    I hope the backfire is loud enough to wake up a coalition of women (and men) unwilling to accept those extremist views and who will turn out of office those who are catering to them.

Comments are closed.