Fear Not Taboo, Government Is Here

Saturday, I regurgitated a story about a young man who ran into traffic while being chased by loss prevention. The latest news says he was running from a store on the opposite side of the street than what was originally reported. The man died. He was a homeless person. The comments about the incident posted on the Citizen-Times web site are amazing. Some are hopefully sarcastic.

Nobody Could Logically Love Logic

A study performed by polling 4500 Tennessee and North Carolina voters concluded Tea Partiers:

• “ fear change.”
• “are more likely to . . . harbor negative attitudes toward immigrants.”
• “value deference to authority and libertarianism.”

Don’t knock the conclusions:

The findings are based on a telephone poll of nearly 4,500 registered voters in North Carolina and Tennessee conducted last year. The researchers also conducted 10 interviews and kept track of any signs and costumes at a tea party rally in North Carolina.

The news story did not list the questions or explain the polling procedures. It is as if the article wants to anger the reader into believing Tea Partiers are a crazy, mixed-up lot of loonies; and only Progressives who despise the Constitution bother to read it:

“The (tea party) supporters’ inconsistent views of the Constitution suggests that their nostalgic embrace of the document is animated more by a network of cultural associations than a thorough commitment to the original text,” the report states.

The Freedom Not to Be Offended per the Dictates of the ACLU

The ACLU issued a warning following an appellate court opinion concurring with the District Court’s that addressing one’s deity by name in an invocation prior to a county commissioners’ meeting violates the Constitution.

Henderson County Commissioner Larry Young said he will resist the edict.

“Not until the Lord takes me out of here — that will be the only thing that will change my mind about it,” Young said last week. “I’m going to stand up for him; he stood up for me. Jesus Christ gave his life for me, so I feel like I owe him as much as I can possibly give him.”

Podiatrist (Don’t ask me.) Sheldon Marne says there is a difference between prayer and sectarian prayer.

“I want to get in touch with the druids and the satanists and the warlocks and see if I can get a whole bunch of crazies to apply to the Henderson County Commission for the right to give an invocation to the devil, or some other lunatic fringe,” he said. “Maybe then (commissioners will) get to understand what the story is.”

Yo, Yo, Party Down on the Dance Floor

Paraphrasing a call to legislators from Representative Phil Haire to create jobs, the Democrats keep creating jobs, but the Republicans keep detonating them.

Tell Them How to Plan You

Polk County is soliciting input on revisions to its Unified Development Ordinance at 7:00 pm, Thursday, August 25, at the Polk County Senior Center. A draft document is available through polknc.org.