An Open Letter to Tennessee State Representative Stacey Campfield

Hello Mr. Campfield,

This is Jon Fish. You may remember me as the person that asked you why you wanted to regulate opinion in public universities and you, in turn, accused me of using drugs. Or maybe you remember me as the guy that took said e-mail correspondences and published them in one of the largest newspapers in Knoxville. You probably saw it in one of the hundreds of comments you deleted which linked to it on your blog.

Anyway, as you're back in the news, I decided to sieze the opportunity to berate you mercilessly and further destroy your career by writing yet another piece about you. So I have some questions which I hope you will respond to in the same arrogant yet incompetent tone that you have now become more than famous for with the 100,000 people that have visited the page where I posted your previous letters:

1. Why do you want to join the Black Caucus?
Follow Up: Is it just pure narcissism?
Second follow up: Did you know what narcissism means, or did you have to look it up?

2. Has it been difficult to maintain balance on that pedistal with your giant ego?

3. What would you do if you were allowed to join the Black Caucus? Would you actually go? Or would you merely bow out because they wouldn't play your self-agrandizing game you shallow, self-important wannabe pseudo-martyr?

4. I have an application pending with the Republican National Committee, could you throw some influence my way? They seem to be mad that I want to join considering I'm not a Reuplican.
Follow up: How is this any different from you not being allowed to join the Black Caucus? Are they discriminating against liberals?

5. Same question, except regarding the Christian Coalition. I'm not a Christian so they take offense at the insinuation that I think I should have a voice in a group that believes in pretty much the exact opposite of everything I do.
Follow Up: How is this any different from you not being allowed to join the Black Caucus? Are they discriminating against non-Christians (a not all too uncommon occurrence from the right)?

6. Can I work on your campaign next year?
Follow Up: If not, why?
Second Follow Up: How is this any different from you not being allowed to join the Black Caucus? Are you discriminating against people who actively seek to destroy your political career?

7. What will you do when you don't even get the Republican nomination next year because no self-aware conservative with any hope of keeping the seat in Republican hands will support you anymore?

Anyway, feel free to respond at your leisure and have a good day. Thank you for bringing both dignity and sanity to politics in this country.

Jon Fish
Editorial Columnist
The Daily Beacon

Stacey Campfield is at it again...

White lawmaker, Black Caucus at odds

Yes that's right folks, white narcissistic State Rep. Stacey Campfield of Koxville's 19th district wants to join the Black Caucus.

Personally I say they should let him. If he goes he can hear about why he's a hypocritical moron at every meeting, and if he doesn't then he just looks like jackass (well, moreso than usual).

Let's make him a deal: he can join the Black Caucus if I can join the Southern Baptist Convention. Not being a Chrisitan, I think it's important that I get a voice in something that is absolutely contradictory to my views.

Ugh...what an idiot.


Thanks to Egalia over at Tennessee Guerilla Women for the heads up.

Thank You John Kerry

The Flood Continues...

"Natural and human calamity have stripped away the spin machine, creating a rare accountability moment, not just for the Bush administration, but for all of us to take stock of the direction of our country and do what we can to reverse it. That's our job -- to turn this moment from a frenzied expression of guilt into a national reversal of direction.
We've seen America at its best and our government at its worst. Millions of Americans are beginning to realize where they fit in our democracy under Republican governance: nowhere."

"Katrina is a symbol of all this administration does and doesn't do. Michael Brown -- or Brownie as the President so famously thanked him for doing a heck of a job -- Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to slam dunk intelligence; what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad; what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy; what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning; what Tom Delay is to ethics; and what George Bush is to "Mission Accomplished" and "Wanted Dead or Alive." The bottom line is simple: the "we'll do whatever it takes" administration doesn't have what it takes to get the job done.
This is the Katrina administration."

"This is the real test of Katrina. Will we be satisfied to only do the immediate: care for the victims and rebuild the city? Or will we be inspired to tackle the incompetence that left us so unprepared, and the societal injustice that left so many of the least fortunate waiting and praying on those rooftops? "

"Today, let’s you and I acknowledge what’s really going on in this country. The truth is that this week, as a result of Katrina, many children languishing in shelters are getting vaccinations for the first time. Thousands of adults are seeing a doctor after going without a check-up for years. Illnesses lingering long before Katrina will be treated by a healthcare system that just weeks ago was indifferent, and will soon be indifferent again."

"The rush now to camouflage their misjudgments and inaction with money does not mean they are suddenly listening. It's still politics as usual. The plan they're designing for the Gulf Coast turns the region into a vast laboratory for right wing ideological experiments. They're already talking about private school vouchers, abandonment of environmental regulations, abolition of wage standards, subsidies for big industries, and believe it or not yet another big round of tax cuts for the wealthiest among us! "

"On the line is a fundamental choice. A choice between a view that says “you’re on your own,” “go it alone,” or “every man for himself.” Or a different view - a different philosophy - a different conviction of governance - a belief that says our great American challenge is one of shared endeavor and shared sacrifice."

Our challenge...[is] to speak out so loudly that Washington has no choice but to make choices worthy of this great country.

-Senator John Kerry, in speech at Brown University, 19 September 2005
Transctipt


Amen.

By the way, I had no idea this or Bill Clinton's remarks were coming when I wrote my column for this week. Both came out after my deadline, Sunday, so I guess for a lowly college student to see the exact same problems as a standing senator and a former president before their views are made public really shines a light on how obvious the problems with this administration on poverty, debt, economics, and their priorities really are.

Not to be narcissistic, but my psychic powers are proving to be much stronger than anticipated. Kerry comes very close to calling for impeachment in this speech, and though he can't get it with this congress, there's 33 senate seats up for grabs in 12 months. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Thank You Bill Clinton

"What Americans need to understand is that ... every single day of the year, our government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq, Afganistan, Katrina, and our tax cuts...We depend on Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Korea primarily to basically loan us money every day of the year to cover my tax cut and these conflicts and Katrina. I don't think it makes any sense." -Bill Clinton, Sunday, 19 September 2005

Clinton is referring to the skyrocketing defecit, which was the largest surplus in history when he left office. Frivilous war and now absolutely horrible planning threatens to make the US Economy completely untenable, and Republicans still want to cut taxes while Katrina threatens to double the defecit, which is already larger than the defecit has ever been.

Oh, by the way, Senator Bill Frist is championing a resolution to abolish the Estate Tax, which affects only the wealthiest 1% of the country yet woulc cost the government over $70 billion. Presidnet Bush is very in favor of this bill. Considering that Katrina threatens to cost use more than $100 billion, I think that this owuld jsut be one step closer to crippling the economy. Meanwhile, the wealthy elite continue to bare the lightest tax burden while we, the middle class, continue to suffer from the extravagance of the government and the elite class.

I urge you to write Mr. Frist and let him know how you feel about this.

Sigh...I just can't help but wonder if these people have ever cracked open a history book. Untenable finances, overwhelming foreign debt, a hedonistic upper class not paying their fair share, the forcing of the financial debt on the poor and middle class...This is beginning to look an awful lot like what caused the French Revolution.

I'm all about change, but I like my head where it is, thank you.

Taxes hurt the victims?

"One of the worst things we could do to our economy right now is raise taxes. It would particularly hit the people who have been affected by this hurricane hard." -Scott McClellan, White House Press Secretary

What?! How does raising taxes affect the people who have nothing? It doesn't make goddam sense. Raising taxes would take from the people who currently are recieving incomes, not take from people without incomes. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my entire life, and further solidifies impressions of how economic conservatives will lie to protect the wealthy.

It's official: I'm Psychic. And it makes me sad when I predict the future...

http://dailybeacon.utk.edu/showarticle.php?articleid=48295

Chief Justice Rhenquist dies less than ten days after I predict that Bush will probably get two Supreme Court nominations. And I die a little inside...

Time to put my new psychic powers to the test:

My next prediction is that George W. Bush will be impeached for his treacherous actions of involving us in a war based on lies, his abhorrent mismanagement of the hurricane, driving our country into a calamatous debt for private corporate gains, and his myriad of other failures to the people of the United States.

Evolution and religion are NOT opposed

I don't even know why we have to have this discussion, but apparently we do, so I'm going to try to get through this as quickly as humanly possible.

Evolution and religion are in no way opposed to each other. "Believeing" in evolution does not in any way reject anything laid out in the bible nor does it render one a non-Christian.

First, lets deal with the claim that evolution is a "theory". Evolution is a theory in the same way gravity is a theory. It has been tested innumerable times and irrefutable evidence of it's function has been garnered from a myriad of observations.

Intelligent Design, Creationism, or whatever else you want to call it (Flying Spaghetti Monsterism...), on the other hand is bad science at best, and bad theology at worst. It has no ability to stand up to scientific scrutiny, hence why it's proponents appeal to the masses instead of the scientific community to sew the seeds of their beliefs, because they know it cannot be supported scientifically (don't believe me? Check out this article describing a leaked memo from the Discovery Institute, which heads up the Intelligent Design movement, in which ID leaders talk about their strategy to mislead the public by knowingly applying false logic to confuse people not well-versed in evolutionary theory).

But this shouldn't even be the issue. Is it really so hard to believe that God is the driving force behind evolution? Evolution is a theory based upon as strict set of physical and natural laws. ID requires that carbon dating not work. It requires God to put dinosaur bones inside the earth and to falsify the geological record so that it indicates the earth is 4.6 billion years old instead of less than 10,000 as ID claims. Then fails to explain why He gave creatures that have lived inside caves for longer than Creationists say the earth has existed functionless eyes or why He gave humans tailbones, appendixes, and pinky toes.

Is it really so hard to accept that the universe may not have been created in 6 days? Is it really so hard to accept that humanity could not conceptualize billions of years or the evolutionary process when the Creation was written? Is it really so hard to believe that the six day creation is an allegory to show simply that humanity is God's favoered creation?

I've talked a lot before about how much of the bible is flat out false and can be disproven both historically scientifically (see The Da Vinci Code on Christianity for a few examples. Thank God Dan Brown brought mainstream attention to some of the inconsistencies that religious scholars and, well anyone that actually read their bibles, have known for centuries). I've been saying this stuff for years, not to say that the bible is false, but merely that it cannot be taken literally because people, being fallable, flawed creatures, make mistakes, and some of them even have ulterior motives to decieve would-be believers.

In closing, I want you to ask yourself a couple questions. In the bible, God calls Himself "Law" and "Order". Which theory sounds lawful and ordered to you? The one based upon the natural laws upon which it can be proven that the universe functions, or the one that requires God to lie and decieve us, whom he calls "his most favored creation?"

I sure hope it isn't the latter.