Viet-Justice

It’s nice to see that the puritans in this country still love to impose a Sin tax.  Under the Dance Performer Registration Act, Felix Ortiz (D-Brooklyn) wants strippers to buy a permit to work and then make the clubs buy a permit to hire registered dancers.  This is just another tax in disguise. It’s really silly that you have to buy a permit to wait tables, be a bouncer, be a bartender, etc.  The free market should decide who gets to work and who shouldn’t.  If you can’t carry plates to a table then you lose your job.

The other issue here is that there is no system  can validate an ID.  If you have forged or stolen papers when you get the ID it’s going to turn up as a legitimate ID when they check it.  This is why those silly ID checks at the airport do not prevent terrorism.  Birth certificates are public record.  That’s all you need to get a State ID.  Find someone who has died that is close to your age.  Your obituary section can help you out.  Get their birth certificate and go to your local DMV and acquire an ID.  There are no controls in place to prevent this from happening, so much like security theater at the airport, this legislation is useless.

“I don’t really like it, you know what I mean,” Molly said. “When you’re a dancer you’re tax free, you’re not really registered — they’d have proof of your income.”

Another reason for dancers like Molly to support The Fair Tax.  The Fair Tax is a consumption tax.  You are taxed based on how much you spend, not how much you earn.  The government has absolutely zero business knowing how much money any of us make and The Fair Tax is a good way of keeping them from knowing.  Rich people tend to spend more money so it is a more realistic tax on the rich than the income tax.  The Prebate that comes with The Fair Tax supports the poor and middle class by making the necessities of life tax free.

Sorry Mr. Ortiz, I think we can clearly see you are a tax and spend kind of guy and a closet puritan as well.

You really have to appreciate our friends in the Middle East. There is a big nothing going on about how tourists dress, or don’t dress. It all started when a British woman forgot her bikini top, so she decided to go the beach without it.

Yes, some people were offended, but at least the people in charge are willing to let things slide.

According to the director of Dubai Municipality’s public parks and horticultural department, Ahmad Mohammad Abdul Karim, there are no plans at present to add dress code regulations.

According to the article Karim is well aware Dubai is an international city with many people from many countries and cultures. While cautioning that tourists should be sensitive to that fact, not just be sensitive to local culture.

On the other hand one local resident really shows us how overboard their sensitivity can be.

“I once saw a tourist during Ramadan crossing Jumeirah Beach Road wearing her bikini and eating an ice cream … It definitely is offensive to see such incidents here because it offends the local culture … I blame the tourists who have no consideration to learn about our culture.

So which is it, the bikini, the ice cream, or both? If tourists offend you, then don’t live in an area with tourists. Seems pretty simple to me. Local economies depend on tourism and if you ask any hard working business owner they would rather have a mass of rude French tourists running around spending money than not.  This really isn’t a cultural issue or an issue of sensitivity.  In my opinion people make such events out to be our culture vs. theirs; however, this is merely urban living vs. rural living.  People move to the country to get away from the city and be with like minded individuals.  On the other hand people move to the city to find better jobs, which may involve working with or working around people who are different.  We as a people need to get over our cultural sensitivities and get back to seeking economic success.  Poverty is something that drives ignorance and violence which is something we do not need in the 21st century.

Boston PD is in the news again for seeing terrorists in innocent objects. Aside from blowing up Cartoon Network advertising and blowing up their own highway department’s traffic counters they seem like a normal police department. Apparently it is illegal to wear stereo wires in Boston. 21-year old Joe Previtera was arrested by the Boston PD and charged with two felonies. He did not make any mention of a bomb, but for some silly reason they charged him with “false report of the location of explosives” and a “hoax device”. I have no idea what idiots are running the Boston PD, but they are the danger to America, not people like Previtera. Sure, he’s free to do all the anti-war protests or whatever he wants to and hopefully without harassment.

So if Previtera didn’t mention a bomb, what exactly constitutes a bomb threat? “It can be implied, with fingers and wires — especially in a heightened state of alert, as we are,” says Officer Michael McCarthy, Boston Police Department spokesman. And McCarthy thinks this is common knowledge, even if the wires are accessories to a costume.

“If he has any questions as to why people think he may’ve had a bomb, then he needs to maybe go back to Boston College to brush up on his public policy. Or at least common sense, but they can’t really teach that there.”

Officer McCarthy needs to get a dose of common sense. I have no idea of what heightened state of alert we are in. The terror alert is Yellow, not Orange or Red. It is always going to be yellow. It is never going to go down. What class do they teach this stuff in at Boston College? I never remember taking any class where we talked about public policy and bomb threats. This shows that Mr. McCarthy is not only an idiot and an ass, but he’s also useless. He could at least inform the public what class we need to take at Boston College to become part of the new world order.

I would never think that having wires as part of a costume would be an implied bomb threat. This is just an excuse to harass innocent citizens and easily throw felonies around as a deterrent if you step out of line. Does this mean that if the police see your iPod headphones you are making a bomb threat? Be afraid if you live in Boston or travel there.

Doing the honorable thing may sound nice in concept, but there is nothing scientific or mathematical about honor. Do we need it in modern society? Do honor killings fall into this category? I do not believe they do; however in some parts of the world they are common place. As seen in this video we can see a human rights violation in progress. This 17 year old girl of Kurdish origin was stoned to death for having relations with a Sunni Muslim boy. What drives a society to the point that it hates women? We are definitely at war, but maybe not so much at war with terrorism as we are with the principals of science and secular society versus religious zealotry. The issue of science and religion will be the defining issue of our time. Terrorism, racism, and other issues will not really be so great in the scheme of things. In our own country we have the religious right attempting to stop scientific progress because of George Bush’s “Culture of Life” and outside our country we have religious groups that want to take us back to the stone age. All of which are being veiled under the right thing to do or the honorable thing to do.

Comedians and shock jocks of the world, you had better watch out. The Vatican has said comedy is terrorism.

The Vatican’s official newspaper accused an Italian comedian on Wednesday of “terrorism” for criticizing the Pope and warned his rhetoric could fuel a return to 1970s-style political violence.

“This, too, is terrorism. It’s terrorism to launch attacks on the Church,” it said. “It’s terrorism to stoke blind and irrational rage against someone who always speaks in the name of love, love for life and love for man.”

It is official that making jokes about the Church is now being on the wrong side of the War on Terror. Apparently it isn’t safe to make jokes about anyone these days. Not only can you get fired or suspended from your day job at CBS, your soul will be condemned to hell, and “W” will launch a “regime change” against your household.

While we have kicked the JV & Elvis issue around quite a bit. Albert and I can agree that this is an artistic issue where taste in the literary form of Sarcasm is at issue. Some groups think it is funny while OCA and others find it offensive. I will now argue that the PC slippery slope does put the Constitution in danger. By being overly sensitive and getting our feelings hurt the terms discriminatory and stereotypical have been thrown around. To everyone’s credit nobody that I know of has foolishly used the term “hate speech”.

Now how does expressing your outrage over comedians and shock jocks endanger our freedom of speech? Aside from the slippery slope we have to worry about hate speech legislation. Not the stuff in the US, but the crazy legislation being drafted in the EU.

The proposed regulations would require E.U. governments to impose criminal sanctions against people or groups “publicly inciting violence or hatred . . . directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, color, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin.” Under the recommendations, conviction on those charges would carry jail terms of up to one year.

There is already criticism that such legislation could rewrite history because some groups may find either their own history or someone else’s offensive. Iran is denying the holocaust occurred. Now if enough people bitch that they find the holocaust offensive or if enough Jews decide they don’t want to remember then all historical record could be erased. The first step in letting history repeat itself is forgetting what has happened.

Tying this new proposed legislation into satire and sarcasm, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printed pictures of the Prophet Mohammad which touched off a fire storm of riots and threats by Muslim terrorists. The Muslims claimed that publishing the pictures of Mohammad by non-believers was an insult which of course gave them free license to riot and call for the execution of the editorial writers. As a show of solidarity many US publications and bloggers republished the pictures saying that freedom of speech trumps others being offended. At Viet-Justice we went farther to create our own blasphemy by tossing ridicule at the people rioting in the streets of Europe. I guarantee most Muslims would find it offensive, but this is artistic expression, and protected by the Constitution.

Great, Quan, we know Europe is messed up, but how does that affect us? This affects us through the implementation of Treaties. Treaties are agreements with other countries that do override our constitution. One example was a UN sponsored treaty to ban the ownership of guns by private citizens worldwide. If the US signed on with this treaty it would nullify our 2^nd Amendment. The 1^st Amendment can be just as easily nullified.

Normally a constitutional amendment is an involved process requiring lots of voting. To ratify a treaty it requires the President, and two-thirds of the Senate, totally bypassing the normal checks and balances put into place. Rumor has it President Bush recently bypassed the Senate in an attempt to setup a North American Union merging the US, Canada, and Mexico as seen in this CNN Video. Treaties can happen without our knowledge and we should be vigilant.

There are a lot of well meaning people out there that believe we as a country do not participate in world affairs to a great extent. One example is the International Criminal Court. Yes it makes sense to go after war criminals, but President Bush along with India’s leader have opposed the ICC since any citizen could be extradited and placed on trial for violating the laws of another country. Stop and think about that for a moment.

Think of the Internet and the telephone today. They break down barriers to communication. In addition they expose us to new things that go beyond what we would see in our local community. Obscenity and pornography easily come to mind here because the Internet does away with “community values” in favor of the least restrictive in the world. But what if you said something that was illegal in another country on the Internet? Today you are protected by the Constitution, unless you travel to that country. China is already trying to find out which of their expatriates are badmouthing the government and such people tend to be held in prison for a long time when they go back to china. The same goes for Iran.

What if tomorrow the US ratifies a treaty with the EU accepting their “hate crime” legislation and if the US is a member of the ICC, you could be snatched out of your home and sent to Europe to stand trial for saying something offensive. The US Government would have to send you away because of the treaty and you would be subject to the laws of that other country. Is that the world we really want to live in? Well that is the slippery slope we are riding on if go overboard with being offended by satire or sarcasm.  In Europe, Muslims are complaining that Winnie the Pooh and Piglet are offensive.  In England “The Three Little Pigs” was rewritten to “The Three Little Puppies” because Muslims don’t like Pigs.  Do you really want to live in that kind of world?  Globalization and carelessly accepting what is offensive and hateful will put us there.

You can be offended, that is your right and nobody is telling you that you can’t be offended or that you should keep your mouth shut. Just realize that crying “hate speech” puts all speech in danger since you never know if what you have to say is hateful somewhere else. All speech is hateful. All speech is not hateful. It depends on which side of the line you choose to stand on. There is never any one right answer to anything.

Another thing that bothered me from the Fallout Central podcast debate with Albert was his blatant disregard for the US Constitution. I made the point that I have not heard JV & Elvis or Rosie O’Donnell and I don’t need to hear them. He said that was like hiding your head in the sand and sitting idly by while the boogeyman is forming from some nebulous fog or a Stephen King novel. Not only should we watch what the boogeyman is doing, but putting a stop to that boogeyman is what this approach is all about. Pro-censorship approach? If it looks like pho noodle soup, and tastes like pho noodle soup, then it must be Pho!

In order to defend JV & Elvis, Rosie, or anyone else I do not need to hear what their speech is. If you have to hear what someone else has to say in order to validate it, then you do not believe in freedom of speech and sadly you do not believe in our country. You actually believe that some speech has more merit than other speech. I believe so much in our country and our Constitution that I do not need to hear what anyone says in order to support their right to say it. I may disagree with the points they are making, but we can all agree to disagree. This is the future folks. Be prepared to bow to your new Asian overlords and have your speech validated by the censors. Welcome to The United States of Asians.

I’ve had a few minutes to stew over the podcast debate with Fallout Central. I really didn’t get to make any hard hitting arguments in that 1 minute final rebuttal so this is my space to say what wasn’t said.

First the fact that the Asian community is getting their own set of Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons being a good thing. WTF? These guys were relevant in the 70’s, but really their time has come to pass the torch on to a new set of civil rights champions that can argue about modern issues. This will be a grim day when the Asian community has the same group of people making us look like a bunch of whiners to the rest of the country.

This new Asian power movement bothers me to the extreme. I had thought that we were above wallowing in some made up sorrow for ourselves and beginning to blame White and Black people for our problems. The problem is in the mirror, not with Whites or Blacks. I have heard the voice of fear mongering tonight and I do not think it is a pretty voice. The guys on Fallout Central seem convinced that something bad is coming. Something like racial oppression targeted at Asians or internment camps from WWII. They see Jeff Vandergrift and Dan Lay as being part of a small group of people that are going to lead us down a slippery slope. I read about how violence against Asians is on the rise, but I don’t see that in Atlanta, “The City Too Busy to Hate”. For some reason the fear and paranoia meter are off the scale with these guys.

What really bothers me is that Albert was convinced that bad things were coming and people like me who ignore it will go running back to them because somehow they will have all the answers. Run back to them; the yellow Jesse Jacksons of the world? I don’t think so. I can protect myself and nobody else has that duty While I hate it that other Asians have suffered from violence I must point out they are at fault for not defending themselves. In the US Supreme Court case DESHANEY v. WINNEBAGO CTY. SOC. SERVS. DEPT it was ruled that a government agency is not liable for not protecting you. This means that the police do not have an obligation to protect you. We know all too well that cops just write reports after you’ve been beaten and robbed. So the only one left to protect you is you. Learn martial arts, carry a knife, get a concealed weapons permit, and learn to shoot. If you want to stop racial violence, muggings, car jackings, etc. just bust a cap in the perpetrator and that will cause all criminals to think twice.

As Neal Boortz has said on his radio show hate crime legislation is thought crime legislation. Just because someone is yelling racial obscenities when they’re beating you does not justify adding 10 years on to their sentence. We already have laws against aggravated assault and strong arm robbery. The end result is the same, you were beaten. The motivation behind the assault doesn’t factor in to that equation, whether robbery or prejudice. Is it a good thing to add on to a prison sentence because of someone’s thoughts? I don’t think so. Today it is racial slurs, but tomorrow pro-choice speech could be considered hate speech because you are ok with the killing of defenseless babies. What if you say something bad about the Westboro Baptist Church and their God Hates Fags campaign? If you’re against Jesus you’re guilty of a hate crime, non-believer! This is a slippery slope that we should be really concerned with, not a couple of shock jocks or Rosie O’ Donnell.

Maybe I am wrong for being critical of Fallout Central. But I do not think sacrificing the Constitution is a good thing to do. That really bothers me, a fracking lot for them to think that all the Asians who didn’t listen to them will come running back and begin groveling for their help. I can see a civil race war coming in this country from all sides. The legal system is going to become bogged down and political correctness will run amok and Asians will be to blame. Is this the legacy we want to leave for the rest of the country? I have seen the face of evil today. It has yellow skin and slanty eyes. I know that when the race war comes I will not be fighting alongside Fallout Central and their special interest groups like The Asian American Justice Center. If being Asian is about towing their party line, then from this moment forward I am White or Latino.

John Edwards has revealed to the world that he is no friend of the constitution. He has come forward and condemned Jeff Vandergrift and Dan Lay (AKA JV & Elvis) of WFNY.

“The recent radio skit of these two hosts was beyond disgusting. As individuals and as a nation, we have to condemn this kind of language—there is just no place for it in our public dialogue.

No, Mr. Edwards, we should condemn you for saying there is no place for this kind of language in our public dialogue. If you object to this, what is next?

That was good clean fun with William and Albert over at Fallout Central.  Lots of good issues were discussed regarding JV & Elvis.  We did maintain that this is a literary issue and that it is up to the advertisers to make the decision.  Albert is of the opinion that the Jessie Jacksification of the Asian-American people is a good thing.  I must respectfully disagree.  We are not an abused race and we do not need to start acting like victims.  I do not see Asians being abused by the media.  Unfortunately I see a Yellow Panthers movement brewing where Albert stated (paraphrasing) Asians are tired of being pushed around and the anger is building.  I don’t see the pushing, but obviously this can’t be good for those of us that don’t want to be lumped in with the whiners.

Albert did mention that the Libertarian live and let live philosophy is the opposite of the PC slippery slope.  Again I must respectfully disagree.  All speech, including hate speech must be protected. I am not ready to throw the Constitution out the window because of fear.  As much as I dislike the Skinheads and Ku Klux Klan I would be in the streets marching for their right to say what they want to say.