Not In Our Town

I Don't Know If You Heard This One... But There Was This Guy (January 23, 2016)

2016-02-12T15:11:00.000-08:00

     His name was Job. He thought he was a pious man. No, not that one. I'm taking about Job Merle. His parents were decent folk, hard working, salt of the earth farmers from a semi-rural state. They believed in freedom and equality and all the things that made America a great place. They never achieved great wealth, but they were comfortable, partly thanks to farm subsidies that kept their farm profitable and their overhead down.

     Now, there are some people who are born to be geniuses, they excel at everything they attempt and can intuitively grasp concepts like economics and empathy. You can have children born of decent, upstanding, hard working people who grow up to be excellent human beings that love their neighbors and support others and do unto others and all that great Christian stuff. But Job wasn't one of those people. Job wasn't a psychopath, exactly. No, Job believed that the color of his skin, the fact that he had a penis, the fact that he was attracted to women, and the fact that he believed some fairy tales about a man nailed to a stick made him special. Those things meant that he should be given preference above other people that didn't fit all those criteria. Job also had no grasp of history or basic economic theory. In his mind, that kind of Ivory Tower mumbo jumbo was just the government's way of manipulating the people and oppressing them. Of course, Job was a libertarian tea partier. Job's idea of "patriotism" was to encourage people to hate the government, which most people would define as "sedition," but Job didn't know that word. That's because Job, well, he wasn't the best reader. In fact, he wasn't really that smart at all. This didn't stop him from writing a newsletter called "Hearth And Home" that he somehow got local businesses to fund.

     Job used his freedom of speech to do some truly heinous things. He disparaged minorities, belittled women, and encouraged people to take up arms against their duly elected government. Not directly, of course, but he implied as much in many articles. Job loved to rant and rave about President Obama, and how he was the worst president in the history of the United States. But more than anything, Job complained about those damn welfare queens. He hated people that got money from the government more than just about anything, except radical Muslims. It just made him so gosh darn angry that his tax money was being used to help other people! How dare the government provide people with food, clothing and shelter using his taxes when he worked so hard to make that money, all by himself with absolutely no assistance whatsoever! That's not what Job paid taxes for (or didn't). He wanted his tax dollars to go toward bombing people in Middle Eastern countries because they had the audacity to not believe in the same deity as him!

     If only there were something Job could do about this. He wrote his editorial, week after week, and despite the fact that Job could feel his readership growing (there's really no way to know if people were reading his claptrap or just using it to line their bird cages. After all, it's a complimentary newspaper, and Job really hated free things), nobody was out there stopping the Obama phones and HUD subsidized housing and keeping people from using food stamps to buy fancy things like coffee. It was just so unfair, that Job and his parents worked so hard for everything he had, yet these people were mooching off him! Why can't he get something from the system? Why isn't the government paying for his phone, or his house, or his food? He works hard tending his farm, putting his crops on trucks that go down the road to markets, trying to figure out this newfangled interweb thing to grow his business. If it weren't for those checks from the Department of Agriculture, why, he might have to actually sell his farm. And these lazy, no good, worthless welfare queens are drinking Caramel Macchiatos and playing the lottery! The nerve! Why can't they pull themselves up by their bootstraps like he did and earn their place in society?

    Then, one day, Job hit it big. Job's phone rang and the voice said those magical words he'd been waiting lo so many years to hear: "Is this Job Berle? I represent the Will O'Hurley Element. Will has been reading your papers, he'd like to meet with you." Job was over the moon! Finally, he would be recognized! People will hear him and the revolution will begin in earnest! He didn't even hear the rest of the discussion, just a date when they wanted him in New York. He hung up the phone, kissed his wife Debbie, and they and their children went out to the Steak and Shake to celebrate. Job even had two desserts, he was that excited!

    The next day, Job received an email from the O'Hurley people confirming his meeting. He purchased two plane tickets for him and Debbie and a hotel room in New York City. It was more expensive than he expected, but soon the money wouldn't matter. "Gosh," Job thought, "I've finally pulled myself up by my bootstraps. I've really earned everything. We should go see a Broadway show while we're there! It would be a great treat for Debbie. Nothing too filthy though, those homosexuals have completely ruined American entertainment. Let's see... Book of Mormon, that sounds like a good Christian play!" So Job also bought two tickets to that.

     Soon, the appointed day arrived, and Job and Debbie flew to New York. At the hotel, Job put on his best Sunday suit, Debbie wore the dress she bought for their son's wedding last year. When they arrived at the Faux News building, they were escorted to a conference room that was all glass and chrome, overlooking Radio City Music Hall. Job and Debbie had never seen anything like it. At the table sat not only Will O'Hurley, but three more men who had influenced his every belief: Mush Limburgh, Len Bock, and Job's idol, Shmalex Shmones. Job couldn't believe he was meeting the four people he admired most in the world, in one day!

     He stood there, staring, jaw agape, when one of the other men in the room addressed him: "You must be Bob. Hello, you spoke with my secretary on the phone. I'm Chaim Goldfarbsteinberg, and I'll get right to the point: I represent these four men." He handed Job a letter, it was on really nice paper, but Job couldn't understand what it said. There were lots of big words. About this time, Job realized that there were a dozen other people in the room. "This is a cease and desist letter," said Goldfarbsteinberg. "My clients are outraged that you've stolen their intellectual property and appropriated it as your own." (so many big words, Job thought, what do they mean?) "If you do not stop publishing 'Hearth And Home,' we will be forced to bring a lawsuit against you, and, let me tell you, you will lose."

     What? Job thought, This can't be! These men are my idols, I've patterned my life on them! "What kind of Jew crap is this?" Job spouted. "Are you really telling me that I can't say whatever I want? I'll have you know this is America, and I have a right to Freedom of Speech protected by the Constitution! I can say whatever I want!" Job was getting furious. Didn't this Jew know that he was a white Christian heteronormative man and he had rights?

     "Regardless of any of that," Goldfarbsteinberg said, "I assure you that we have everything we need. Either cease your publication or we will take everything you have. Thanks to the Republican Congress, restrictions on lawsuits have been loosened, and we can pretty much sue you for whatever we want. That's what happens when you de-regulate and strip government of all it's power." At that, he motioned to the guards outside and Job and Debbie were escorted out of the building.

     Well, Job wasn't going to take this lying down! No sir! He knew his rights, and he knew he had a right to a lawyer. So he and Debbie skipped Book of Mormon and headed straight back home, where Job enlisted the finest legal minds in his county. They told him exactly the same thing that Chaim Goldfarbsteinberg did: he was screwed. Government regulators had stripped protections against frivolous lawsuits so far back that there was literally nothing that people could not bring a civil suit about. Fair use in copyright was a thing of the past, and besides, Job's newsletter didn't fall under those meager protections anyway. And the First Amendment didn't apply here because it wasn't the government, the people that Job had been so paranoid about all along, that was trying to shut him down. It was a private enterprise.

     Job was distraught. He did not know what to do now. It seemed like a perfect subject for one of his trademark editorials, but he didn't dare risk publishing. Maybe he'd join that Facespace all the kids were talking about. Surely they can't shut him down for that. And he can reach a much larger audience, a world wide audience. People will have to listen, and the white, middle class, heteronormative Christian male will finally have a place to voice his opinions and have his struggle heard!

     Wow! What an amazing story! And it's totally not about a real person or anyone we know! I'm so inspired by it, to go and pull myself up by the bootstraps and make my fortune all by myself with no help from the government or the rest of society, at all, whatsoever! There has to be a moral in here somewhere, but who knows what it is? No, seriously, this is so rambling and incoherent, I'm not really sure there was even a plot. That's what happens when you mimic Bob's creative insights.

  Honestly, the best part of Bob's whole rant this month is the end, where after spending a good 1000 words attacking "liberals" and stereotyping them as lazy, entitled, and pretentious, he talks about not judging people until you've walked a mile in their shoes. No, really, he did that. He literally says those words, then, in the same paragraph, writes "ninety-nine percenters are nothing more than a bunch of bottom feeding, lazy ass, no good loafers who want to stick their hands in the pockets of hard working people and take from them all that they worked hard for, because ninety-nine percenters never worked hard at anything their entire lives and think that just because they breathe air the world owes them an existence." I guess Bob doesn't think he's part of the 99%, or that he should take his own advice. The cognitive dissonance here is so great, I need to go lie down now.

A Lesson in Free Speech (January 8, 2016)

2016-01-17T12:56:00.000-08:00

     It's been 9 months since my last post, and what an interesting 9 months it's been (on a side note, I really hope Bob didn't think that I'd given up. Life's been pretty busy this last year, so I had to eliminate some things. Doesn't mean I wasn't watching...) Looking at that last post, it amazes and saddens me how widespread the sort of extremist ignorance I've been writing about since 2011 has become. I don't know this for certain, but I'm willing to bet that Mr. Robert Beierle of the erroneously named Creative Insight LLC is driving around with a Trump 2016 bumper sticker on his car. He, and the alleged half a million people who "read" his magazine (side note: just because you print half a million copies doesn't mean half a million people are reading, much less agreeing with, your lunacy), are exactly the kinds of people that Donald J Trump has been aiming for. It's gotten embarrassing, as an American who travels internationally, that this is the level of national discourse we're having, as well as scary that it's not just tolerated but seemingly encouraged by so many people. More on that in a bit, first let's dive into what we've missed on my hiatus:

     In May we've got a wonderful little essay (and I use the term loosely) canonizing the Founding Fathers as saints of America, the men (and only men) who had the love, understanding, and faith (the right faith) to create this perfect country called America. Who would choose any modern politician over them? They were gods (ok, not gods, because that's blashpemy and we all know that Bob is a good Christian, but, you know, gods) who could do nothing wrong and had no foibles or compunctions or other shortcomings, especially when it came to writing that most sacred of texts, The Constitution! Bob is trying so hard to defend The Constitution, and he just can't believe how the media and the government are allowed to shred the sacred text and nobody is doing anything. Apparently, countries that seek America's destruction are making nuclear bombs (I'd love to know which. North Korea? Seriously? Iran?) but our politicians are too worried about things that don't matter, like global warming and women's rights. ISIS is coming to destroy us and install Sharia Law because we've stopped acknowledging Bob's god in our government. Apparently we're on the brink of disaster, and the only way to fix it is to bring back a true conservative like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. Don't think too hard on this, or you'll wind up with mad cow disease like Bob.

     In June we get some nonsense about the light at the end of the tunnel. First Bob blames the government for screwing up the economy (never mind that it was government deregulation, something he really, really likes, that lead to that. Those pesky facts...) so they could steal our money and resources for themselves (I really wonder what part of "Republic" Bob doesn't understand? Is it the "Government of the people" part?) and the media is selling you a bunch of lies so you'll stay compliant. As usual, Bob's here with the truth, the one Rush or Glenn or Alex or Rupert found up his ass somewhere and Bob just can't understand why nobody will believe it. So, apprently, ISIS is off somewhere raping children and killing women and radicalizing our pets or whatever Bob's twisted imagination has thought up and our government is giving them HDTVs to watch and his son's dog is howling and Obama (personally) has spent trillions of our dollars to flush America down the drain and why should some illegal immigrant welfare queen get free food and a phone and an apartment and a Cadillac and all we get is screwed, huh? This is so disjointed and rambling only a meth addict could have written it.

     July brings us Cowboys and Indians (yes, really). What ever happened to the good ol' days, when you could play Cowboys and Injuns without some mamby pamby PC know it all telling you that's culturally insensitive? Well what about BOB'S CULTURE, HUH? After all, he's a white, Cristian, heteronormative man and he pays his taxes (maybe?) and he'll be racist if he damn well pleases because FIRST AMENDMENT, BITCH! What happened to the days when kids could run around their neighborhoods with toy guns pretending to shoot each other? Life was so much simpler then, and if a kid got shot by a cop because he thought the kid had a real gun and was about to shoot him, well, that's just Freedom. It's ok when children want to play pretend, though (not that they do in Bob's world, anymore, because TV and video games and that scary Interwebs), the problem is when adults do. Like Al Sharpton or Rachel Dolezal or Bruce Jenner or that horrible liar Hillary Clinton (boo, hiss!). Yes, too many adults today are pretending to be something they're not, and dammit Bob is not going to go along with it! He refuses to accept Al Sharpton as a minister, he refuses to accept Bruce Jenner as a woman, and he refuses to accept that Hillary Clinton might have actually served her country, but we must accept him because he has rights and his white, Christian, heteronormative male beliefs (i.e. the only ones that matter) will not be infringed upon dammit!

     In August, we got some rambling claptrap about how the government are "magicians," spinning false narratives about global warming, marriage rights, the "war on Christmas," illegal immigrants "takin' ar' jerbs'" and all kinds of other tea party bogey men. As usual, Bob shows us that he has no understanding of any of these topics, just anger, hate, and jingoistic propaganda that he has misappropriated from his usual sources. He goes on to deify (again) the founders of America, calling the media and our current government unpatriotic and evil for having the gall to point out that our founding fathers did things like own slaves or have sex out of wedlock or be human, all so they can take your freedoms away! Bob must have been pretty worked up at being called a homophobe or a racist or a misogynist or something because he babbles about how butt hurt he is over being called those things just because he loves 'Murica so much that he viciously and ignorantly attacks anyone who dares question his twisted, ignorant version of it. That's right, we've all been sold a false history of America so that the government can destroy the Constitution, but Bob's here to educate us on the true meaning of Christm- er, the real history of 'Murica, i.e. the white, Christian, heteronormative, male version of the history of 'Murica.

     I missed September and October, (well, maybe not missed, exactly) but November came roaring back! It's Heerre!! is classic Creative Insight, by which I mean neither creative nor insightful. Bob wants us all to know that the holiday season is starting, and he's setting up a branch in Texas! How exciting! After all, where better to find the kind of fools, imbeciles, and racists that buy into Bob's insanity than Texas? Even people in mental hospitals get guns in Texas, Bob will feel right at home. So Bob goes on to talk about our American Christian traditions (because none of the others matter). Apparently Hanukkah is a Christian tradition in Bob's world, BTW, as is Halloween, Labor Day, Memorial Day, and the 4th of July. Because, you know, nobody but Christians ever died in service of America; they were all baptized after the fact and become Christians by giving their lives for Bob's America. And isn't it great that we don't live under Sharia Law? But if you're hurting this holiday season, if you haven't reached that level of success you think you're entitled to, well, Bob wants to remind you that it's all the government's fault. That's right, it's government's fault when you fail and if you succeed it's because you picked yourself up by your bootstraps and did all the hard work yourself and got no help from anybody, got that? Ok.

     Which brings us to December, and Looking for Christmas. Honestly, I probably would have ignored this if January's issue didn't make such a big deal about it, so I'm going to roll both into one. Apparently, one of Bob's franchisees was "pressured" into putting a sticker on Bob's "creative insights" warning people that what Bob says is offensive. Good for her, BTW. This was apparently motivated by complaints about Looking for Christmas, and I just can't figure out why. Just kidding, of course I can. It's not because Looking for Christmas is exactly what you think it is: oh, woe is us, the white Christian heteronormative men of America, our burden is so great and our lot is so low that we can't even get more than 90% of the country to recognize that Christmas is mostest specialist day of the year! We are so oppressed in our own country because we have to not only acknowledge other religions and races and sexes and sexualities, but actually tolerate them and let them have their own beliefs! Woe! It's not because Bob rants and raves about Black Friday and people being greedy and disrespectful. No, it's because Bob goes full on racist. Maybe go easy on the eggnogg next year, huh Bob?

    First, he talks about the BLM protesters chanting about "roasting pork" and that all the other people didn't want to be called "racists" for standing up to them. He also notes how a group of black men confronted these protesters, and some "black on black violence" ensued, disrupting the day of the "Caucasian and Latino" shoppers. Oh, and he manages to get a jab in at the police as well, talking about how the police must be showing up because there's a donut sale, not because of the riot he just described. But this is chump change compared to the obligatory attack on Muslims, complaining about "ninja people" and assuming they came here illegally through Mexico because that's how all Muslims get into Bob's 'Murica. In fact, I'm just going to quote the whole thing, because it's truly beyond belief that not only did a supposedly thinking, feeling, rational human being write and publish this, but people paid him to do it.

There was an orchestral version of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and I thought to myself, as I let out a nice deep breath and a light sigh, ahhh, surely I will find the Christmas spirit here. But that was kind of short lived too when I was knocked around by a half a dozen short female ninjas. You know, the karate people dressed from head to toe in black robes with only their eyes showing. They were yelling something. And once again a tidal wave of people ended up pushing me towards where all the screaming ninjas were going... which was to a cash register where a very sweet young girl with dark hair and green eyes, who was terrified and was being surrounded by these ninjas as they were chanting something, raising their arms and calling out something to ollie [sic] or olive .. or something ... I don't know what. But I was quick to find out that they weren't ninjas. They were refugees from some small obscure Middle Eastern country who came to our country illegally though our Southern border and these women who were dressed in burkas had no understanding of our culture or our traditions. They could not speak a work of English, but knew enough to become totally offended and incensed if somebody in this country wished them a Merry Christmas. Yes, that's right. The refugee women in the burkas fresh from some small obscure Middle Eastern country were all up in arms, screaming jihad and caliphate and were all upset because that sweet little dark haired girl with the green eyes behind the counter happened to wish one of them a "Merry Christmas." And the next thing you knew the ninjas were protesting to the store manager who was now firing the cashier to appease the screaming ninjas whose piercing screams could only resemble what I might imagine a barnyard animal would make if it was being assaulted form behind. Perhaps it was a sound that they were familiar with in their native country.

Yup. That is a direct quote from Mr. Robert Beierle of Creative Insight LLC, written not in the 1950s or the 1920s or the 1850s but in 2015. Just remember this man legally owns guns. Not a gun, but guns, plural. This is the kind of racist mindset that we are allowing in our community. Note that not only does Bob's racism include ignorance and religious intolerance, it also includes a healthy dose of misogyny. He never says that the "sweet little dark haired girl with green eyes" was white, but we are meant to assume she was, and get really angry when she got "fired" (because that happened). Hey Bob, before you press that speed dial button for your lawyer, it's called "fair use," look it up.

     There's a theme that hasn't appeared in Bob's writing in a while, but it's the theme that started this blog: namely, that Bob's right to free speech and equal protection under the law is sacrosanct, but yours is bullshit unless you agree with him. Bob actually has the balls to complain about a group of people exercising their right to peaceful assembly during Black Friday. He complains that people supporting Black Lives Matter actually have the audacity to assemble and protest in a place where hundreds of people simply want to beat up the person next to them so they can save $5 on a toy their kid is going to play with twice and break. How dare these people bring their politics into this most sacred of capitalist holidays? He attacks people because they have a different belief than him, stereotyping and belittling them for their culture while complaining about how his is "under attack."

     In January, Bob reiterates his assertion that his Free Speech is sacrosanct and the rest of you can just STFU. Obviously, Bob's knowledge of the Constitution is extremely limited. Even a 5th grader knows, though, that the Constitution only covers what government can and cannot do, and if other people want to shut down your seditious, racist, misogynist, homophobic publication by protesting to the people who sponsor it, they have every right to do so. Bob is so ignorant, so tone deaf, so absolutely clueless that he doubles down on the hate speech with a story about a woman in a burka at the beach. He complains about how persecuted he is because in some countries he wouldn't be able to publish a story about his family on Christmas. He compares people complaining about his hate speech to religious fundamentalists who will kill anyone who disagrees with them, then goes on to say that he's shut down someone who has done exactly that. He actually thinks he's speaking "the truth" about the world and America's culture.   It's unbelievable how totally and completely oblivious Bob is.

     So here's your lesson in Free Speech, Bob: hate speech like yours may be protected by the First Amendment, but so is my speech that says I will not tolerate your hate. It's good to know that I'm not alone, and it's good to know that some of your distributors and sponsors are actually reading the hate you publish and taking action. I'm going to keep emailing and calling and talking to them, whether you like it or not. I know others will join me. You want to stand up for free speech Bob? Then you have to stand up for all free speech, not just the kind you agree with, not just the kind that supports your beliefs and your prejudices, but all of it. Including the "ninja people" and the BLM supporters. I support that you have a right to say and publish the idiotic hate that you do, but I do not have to listen to it, I do not have to shop at the businesses that support you, and I will make sure that everyone that can hear me knows that what you are saying is wrong, it's not American values, and they should not support you either.

Random Thoughts

2015-04-08T09:21:00.000-07:00

     A thought came to me last week as I was moving my collection of Our Town pennysavers from one side of the room to the other. It occurred to me that in the three years I've been chronicling the bloviation of Mr. Robert Beierle of Creative Insight, LLC, he's gone from being just a seditionist, racist, homophobic, misogynist with a piddling "magazine" to something of a community leader, speaking at these new "Patriot Connectors" meetings. It drew a disturbing parallel in my mind, one that I hesitate to make for several reasons, not the least of which is that it's made so often and so erroneously as to make it almost impotent, but I'm going to put it out there anyway.

      Bob reminds me of another man, a man who called himself a patriot, who spouted anti-government rhetoric and blamed the problems of his society on competing political ideologies and minority religious groups. A man who published his thoughts and spread them throughout the community with great fervor and fanfare. A man who used violence, threats, propaganda, and fear to further his political goals. A man who promised prosperity and unity if only people would adhere to his extremist philosophy. A man who talked about how acceptance of foreign cultures and lesser peoples were destroying his country and society as a whole, who railed against what we today would call "political correctness" and socialism in all forms. A man who preached liberty and freedom, but only for people with the "correct" skin color, gender, sexuality, political affiliation, and religion. If you read this and can not figure out who Bob reminds me of, then I suggest you pick up a history book. After all, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and believe it or not, this man has appeared dozens of times throughout human history.

     Now, I don't think that Bob has the charisma or smarts to become the kind of totalitarian dictator these other men did. Then again, I also thought that George W. Bush was literally too stupid to make it through the primaries, so it shows what I know. I would also like to think that the American people are smart enough to see Bob for what he is and stand up to a man like that before he can infect others with his anger, hate, and ignorance. It seems, however, as if he's becoming more popular and gaining more followers. I'm not sure if others hear what he's actually saying or if they simply hear "freedom" and "liberty" and cheer mindlessly in some kind of Pavlovian response. Either way, I find it incredibly disturbing.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (February 23, 2015)

2015-03-13T07:58:00.000-07:00

     This week's entry into the saga of Robert Beierle's Creative Insight proves that even in the Happiest Place On Earth, our man Bob can still find a way to be an ignorant, racist curmudgeon. Bob's essay this week starts with a letter from his wife, Dorothy, explaining how Bob surprised her with a trip to Florida and Disney World for Valentine's day. How sweet! Dorothy's bit is the most competently written and least objectionable thing Our Town has ever printed. Too bad it's only a few sentences long.

     No sooner does Dorothy's letter end than Bob gets into his usual "creative insights," for lack of a better term. He starts with "the bad" things about Disney: having to be around people of other cultures and nationalities! Apparently, there was a woman in a burka who offended Bob and Dorothy. She smelled bad, like all Muslims. Bob knows, because Bob has been around a lot of Muslims and knows they all smell bad. But he didn't say anything, because he just knew she would charge him with a hate crime, because that's what all Muslims do in Bob's world. The PC liberal media can attack white Christian men all they want, but don't even think about mentioning that the woman in a burka smells bad, HATE CRIME! After all, where is the outrage, Bob wants to know, when Muslims are killing good innocent Christians and Jews? Why aren't THOSE hate crimes? No, really, he wants to know, because he finds that offensive, and I guess FOX News doesn't report on the people who are outraged over Muslim extremists, probably because if they did it would take up all 24 hours leave no time for them to blame Obama or find more ridiculous accusations about Hilary's email.

     Then comes the ugly: apparently there was a child running around on one of the lines while his "mama-San and papa-San" just sat there and watched. Now, I don't know why Bob feels the need to point out that the child is Asian or use those derogatory terms to describe his parents, but I don't think that Bob is truly seeing the ugly in this tale. He thinks the ugly is the woman who farts in the child's face when the child tries to squeeze past her. Isn't that just so funny! Personally, I think the ugly is the racist telling the tale, but what do I know?

     Finally there's the good. Bob's little black charcoal heart is touched when everyone waiting in line for the Seven Dwarfs ride starts singing "Heigh Ho" together. Wow. Disney World is truly a magical place. Is it any surprise that Bob holds Walt Disney in such high regard? A man who famously worked against unions, hated Jews and Communists, sympathized with the Nazis, and worked so many racist and sexist tropes into his films? That's Bob's kind of entertainment, the kind that reminds minorities to stay in their place and stop insisting on political correctness and fair treatment. The kind that reminds everyone that America is a Christian nation built by white men, for white men, so you can just take your tolerance and go back to Russia you dirty red commie!

A Love Lost... (January 23, 2015)

2015-02-19T15:20:00.000-08:00

     Well. Here we are again. I bet you thought I gave up, since I've been quiet for so long. No, I haven't given up. I won't give up, because to do so will be to surrender reason, common sense, and intelligent discourse in America, and I still believe we can have those things, if enough of us stand up to people like Robert "Bob" Beierle of the derisively named Creative Insight LLC. So, you may ask, why have I been quiet for so long? We'll I've been away from home, traveling for work if you must know. See, that's why I have hope and that's how I know that people like Bob are dead wrong: I've been all over this great country and all over the world, and I've talked to Americans and gotten to know them and I know for a fact that the Bob Beierle's are far outnumbered. He and his Fox News / Alex Jones / Glenn Beck type of rhetoric does not represent America but is held by a small, hateful, angry group of people who have determined to resist change, progress, and the American way to their dying breath. They wrap themselves in the flag and call themselves "Fellow Patriots" when they're nothing but ignorant, racist, misogynist seditionists. The thing is, nobody likes these people. They're tolerated, which is a problem, because as long as we tolerate this type of hate speech and inflammatory sedition we allow it to perpetuate and infect civil discourse like a cancer. I refuse to give up because I will not tolerate this sort of discourse; I will not suffer it silently and I will not allow theirs to be the only voice in the debate.

   Now, on to Bob's latest "creative" endeavor: this month, Bob tells us about how he has been flying his flag at half mast in memory of the Constitution. See, when President Obama (at least he's using the President's real name again, instead of his usual slander) signed his executive order granting amnesty for illegal immigrants, that apparently signaled the death of the Constitution. Bob so loved the Constitution that he's been in mourning ever since, which is kind of like a wife beater saying he misses his dead wife.

     The next chunk of insight Bob excretes is a comparison of America to an anti-drug ad. See, in Bob's narrative, America is like the girl in one of those don't-do-meth ads, once beautiful and vivacious but only a few years later destroyed and decrepit, because she's been on a horrible drug: liberalism! Yes, liberalism, that terrible canard that foments such horrors as political correctness, equality, and even empathy! Oh, the horrors! Why, a person on liberalism might even try to help another human being, what terror! Bob goes on to rant and rave against such liberal horrors as religious freedom, freedom of speech, and even due process. Where could the liberals possibly come up with these perversions, these disgusting and thoroughly un-American ideals? (That's sarcasm, Bob, see, because those ideals are guaranteed in that little document you love so much, what was it called? Oh, right, the Constitution of the United States of America!)

     Bob spends several hundred words ranting about some fever dream he had (should have gotten that measles vaccine, Bob) where "countless numbers" of Muslim Islamic extremist terrorists are walking across the Mexican border after being released from Guantanamo to destroy America. It's truly disconnected from anything resembling reality, so much so that one wonders if Bob shouldn't be on lithium or thorazine or maybe something stronger. How else can he connect Islamic terrorists coming into America illegally to take refuge in the "many" compounds harboring them to his being audited by the IRS in two sentences? Yes, that really happened. Bob believes he is being targeted for IRS audits by ISIS, through the office of the President of the United States of America. This would be hilarious if he wasn't serious.

     This whole thing is just a thinly veiled excuse for Bob to regurgitate the anti-immigrant and anti-Islam invective that he ingests from Fox News and whatever other paranoid delusional websites he's managed to find through AOL or whatever knothole he uses to look at the world. As usual, reading the entire thing is an exercise in masochism. Seriously, Bob, the ellipsis is not a pause. Stop abusing it. It's called a comma, try it some time. Bob is such a put upon person, with his being white, Christian and male making it so difficult for him to get anything in this world run by white, Christian men. If only those damn liberals weren't trying to take away his rights and give them to all the immigrants and Muslims!

     It's hard to tell exactly what Bob believes in, except maybe the Tea Party. He seems to be mostly libertarian, except when it comes to the military, which he thinks should be waging war in every Muslim country and any country that dares disagree with America. His militaristic, nationalist, racist zealotry smacks of fascism, and it wouldn't be surprising to find a copy of Mein Kampf on Bob's bookshelf. While comparing anyone you disagree with to Hitler has become such a common occurrence on the internet that there's a shorthand for it (Godwin's Law) and it's certainly one of Bob's favorite tools (Islam is the greatest threat to world peace since Nazism, really?), in this case, it really applies. Bob doesn't have an anti-Zionist bent, but the way he writes about Muslims is damn close. He is fiercely nationalist, believing whole heartedly in American exceptionalism. His anti-immigrant stance borders on race purity and eugenics, and his views on unions, liberals, feminism, and homosexuality all line up with fascist ideals. The only thing missing is a little mustache and an arm band.

     At the end of his "creative insight," Bob compares liberals to both North Korea and ISIS. Now, this really highlights Bob's ignorance, because North Korea and ISIS are about as polar opposite as you could get. One is an atheist totalitarian dictatorship, the other is a religious extremist group. In Bob's diseased mind, all three are out to curtail free speech, and so they're the same thing. It would be humorous, Bob's attempt to make liberals seem evil because there are some who would stop at nothing to make him shut up, including threatening violence, if it weren't so myopic and narcissistic that it borders on sociopathic. Honestly Bob, do you not read what you are writing? Do you not hear yourself calling for the restriction on the human rights of other people? People don't hate you because you're speaking truth, they don't hate you because they're afraid of you, they hate you because you are a self-centered, egotistical, ignorant bigot. America is sick, Bob, and the cure is cutting out cancers like you.

Oba + Lbr ... ... = (October 23, 2014)

2014-10-26T13:42:00.000-07:00

I implore you to read this all the way through, then think about what was said, because no BS, ~~domestic terrorist~~ "Fellow Patriot" Robert "Bob" Beierle of the insipidly named Creative Insight LLC is back with a heaping helping of fear and paranoia. Bob's campaign of terror this week focuses on ebola, and how illegal immigrant Muslim terrorist atheist Hollywood liberals are going to spread it to everyone and destroy America by using political correctness to make the government so big that it will destroy everything. You may think that last sentence was facetious, but I assure you that every single one of those groups gets not only mentioned but blamed for the coming plague. And just to prove that Godwin's law doesn't apply only to the internet, we even get a comparison to the Nazis in this article. It's a true Fox News libertard circlejerk of epic proportions. I can't believe Alex Jones and Glenn Beck haven't found this guy yet, I'm sure he's their biggest fan.

Bob's abortive attempt at a title shows us that his math skills are just as bad as his writing and punctuation skills. In his fevered brain, "O^ba + L^br ... ... =" is the mathematical formula for the end of America. Let's break that down: apparently, "O^ba" is supposed to represent Obama, because if we can't blame him, who can we blame? "L^br" stands for liberals, those dastardly politically correct, unqualified, big government loving red herrings that Bob and his ilk love to blame for everything. I'll at least give him credit that he's stopped using the pejorative "LIEberals," but I still maintain that Bob doesn't know what a liberal is, only that Fox News says they're bad, so he hates them. The doubled ellipsis is a mystery, except for the fact that Bob really seems to love them and have absolutely no clue how to use them, peppering his "editorials" with them. And is, of course, Death! Because when Obama and liberals get together, it means death! So be afraid, because politically correct liberals are keeping the border open and Obama is lying about it so that Muslim terrorists can bring ebola into the US and kill us all. I wish that was a sarcastic joke and not the actual summary of Bob's essay, but sadly it is not.

In what can only be described as a stylistic choice, Bob gives us a list of the kinds of people there are when a "true, honest to God danger is approaching," as opposed to all those fake, made up dangers that are blown out of proportion by a 24 hour news media and idiots with pennysaver magazines who consider themselves "patriots" but are in fact domestic terrorists. First you have the "preppers," the ~~morons~~ "patriots" who stockpile food and ammunition for the coming apocalypse. They're nothing new, they've been around for centuries carrying a sign that says "The End is NEAR" and taking every comet in the sky as a portent of the apocalypse, it's just that they now have a TV show. Every once in a while an actual disaster does come and they use that as a twisted justification of their paranoid delusions. They're the people who are constantly crying "the sky is falling" every time something they don't like happens. Any time society changes, the world gets a little more accepting of lifestyles and people of which they do not approve, it's the beginning of the end. They're rigid, small minded people who cannot think of anyone but themselves and live their lives in constant fear. Bob seems to count himself among these people, and it's really not surprising.

Next there's a few classes of people who basically live their lives, until we get to the "most dangerous," the people who downplay the coming dangers and alter facts to deceive you into thinking there's no danger for political reasons (as opposed to the ones who blow every sneeze out of proportion for political reasons). These people are the ones who keep the sheep in line (yup, sheep). They twist facts and tell you that the "preppers" are "extreme whackos ... racist, homophobe, anti-American, closed minded, paranoid people." Well, Bob, excuse me for calling a spade a spade, but you are an extreme whacko. Your writings are racist, homophobic, anti-American, closed minded, and extremely paranoid, not to mention ignorant, asinine, dangerous and incomprehensible. Anyone with a whit of intelligence can see this, yet somehow your rag winds up in hundreds of businesses across my state.

Finally we get to the "sheep," the fifth class of people on Bob's list. These are the ones who, I kid you not, "during the reign of the Nazis, turned in their neighbors." They blindly follow the propaganda spread by the evil media and Hollywood, by professors and teachers. That's right boys and girls: don't listen to educated people when they tell you that there is no danger, listen to Pennsatucky white trash! Clearly Bob knows more about infectious diseases, illegal immigrants, radical Islam, and political science than all those dirty, corrupt, politically correct liberals at the CDC, the NIH, Harvard, Yale, and Holly-weird, amirite! After all, according to the government's own statistics around 125 people fly into the US from West Africa every day! It's a mass migration, and they're all carrying ebola! Panic! Fear! The sky is falling!!! Apparently, there's a government up Bob's ass that is making up statistics, because that's the only place I can figure he got that number from.

From here, the "editorial" turns into this foolish rant about how the government is somehow downplaying ebola because of political correctness. Clearly, Bob has as much a clue about political correctness as he does liberals: Fox News says it's bad, so he hates it. Never mind that you can count the number of ebola cases in the US on one hand, never mind that you have a better chance of being struck by lightning than contracting ebola, never mind that reason, logic, history, or common sense dictate that freaking out about this is about as productive as running around the street screaming "ebola" at the top of your lungs. It's all a government conspiracy to, what, exactly? Maybe if Bob had some kind of rational conception of say, why the government would downplay ebola or what possible gain could be achieved by deceiving the American people about this disease there might be a case here. Instead, Bob uses this as yet another opportunity to bitch about the things he hates: Obama, liberals, political correctness, the IRS, illegal immigrants, the government, radical Islam, etc, etc. If aliens landed tomorrow, he would probably blame that on the same things.

If anyone doubts what Bob's true purpose is in these "editorials," I would like to direct your attention to his closing sentence. "Love God, protect your family, defend the Constitution, pray for the best, prepare for the worst, and lock and load." That's right: yet another call to domestic terrorism in the name of "defending" the Constitution. Espousing violence for the furthering of a political ideal; that's terrorism to the letter. The real virus we should be worrying about is people who continue to spread fear and paranoia, who continue to write seditious lies and call for insurrection against us. Inoculate yourself and your community by letting the businesses who display and advertize in the Our Town pennysaver know that you will not patronize their business as long as they continue to support a domestic terrorist.

The Second Amendment - October 8, 2014

2014-10-10T16:47:00.000-07:00

     Well, it's official. Mr. Robert Beierle, of the fatuously named Creative Insight, LLC, publisher of the Our Town pennysavers circulated throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and parts of New York and Maryland has now officially moved from seditionist blowhard to full on supporter of domestic terrorism. That's really the only way something like this can be interpreted. When we have a man running around the woods of Pennsylvania, killing police officers and another writing about how the Second Amendment guarantees our right to rise up in violent revolt against our government, what else could he be? Incredulously, Bob actually has either the gall or the total lack of self awareness (based on his past writings and his insistence on referring to himself as a "patriot," I'm going to go with the latter) to try to disassociate himself from this violent psychopath; as if his brand of rhetoric and vitriol is not the exact sort of encouragement that would lead someone to shoot at the authorities. I'm not saying Eric Frein was one of Bob's readers, because I can't prove that, but would anyone be surprised if he is? Hell, for all we know, Frein was at the "Patriot Connectors" meeting where Bob spoke, and it was Bob's misappropriation of the phrase "If not YOU, then who? If not NOW, then when?" that encouraged Frein to set up his little duck blind in the woods and kill the 38 year old father of two.

     Let's do a little break down of Bob's misguided attempt at explaining the Second Amendment. As you might expect, it's nothing but NRA fairy tales, half truths, and insurrectionist wet dreams. For starters, Bob is convinced that the Second Amendment is second because the hallowed Founding Fathers believed that the right to own a gun is second only to the right to free speech. Even a cursory inspection of the Wikipedia page on the Bill of Rights shows that not only was the right to bear arms the fourth proposed amendment to the Constitution, but James Madison (you know, the Founding Father who wrote the damn thing) didn't even want it included. Hell, even Bob's sacred freedom of speech was the third proposed amendment. There's some reality for you. By Bob's reckoning, the Founding Fathers thought that how much money Congress got paid was more important than freedom of speech. There's your truth, Bob. Open a damn history book once in a while.

     Next, I have to address this insurrectionist fairy tale that Bob is so hot for. First, I want you to download and read a paper called The Hidden History of the Second Amendment. It is an eye opening, scholarly paper that explains exactly why the Second Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights. I'll get to the crux of that paper in a bit, first, let's address the problems with what Bob is saying. For about 40 years now, the NRA and the firearms industry have been promoting this idea that the Founding Fathers included the right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights for two reasons: first, they wanted to be sure that they could raise a militia to defend the US from invading British or Native American forces, and second, they wanted us to violently overthrow the government every 25 years or so and rebuild it. This is so wrong headed and ignorant it hurts. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of history, especially the American Revolutionary War and post war period, knows that this is a flat out fabrication, and a damaging one at that. It's not surprising that Bob would perpetuate these lies, after all, he probably does not know any better. They play to his world view and support his twisted, destructive reasoning. Unfortunately for Bob, history, and the facts, do not bear him out.

      Let's start with point one: the Founding Fathers wanted a ready militia to defend the United States. This is one of those truly damaging lies that continues because it has the ring of truth to it. We've all heard stories of the brave Minutemen, farmers who were ready to fight the Redcoats in under a minute and win our freedom. It's a great bit of American folklore, and not much more. The reality is that the militias were not held in very high regard by the Founding Fathers. They were the reason the Americans were driven from Breed's Hill (you may know it as the Battle of Bunker Hill) resulting in a British victory. They failed to protect Washington's regular army as the British drove him from Brooklyn all the way across New Jersey in the fall and early winter of 1776. In fact, Washington didn't have a very high opinion of militia at all. The fact is, while the Founding Fathers were no fans of a standing army, they didn't put much stock in the idea that your average untrained farmer was going to be much worth if the British regulars came calling again either. The truth is, the militia question was one of the driving forces behind the Constitutional convention in the first place.

     Under the Articles of Confederation, the Federal Government existed to defend the United States from outside forces like the British or Native Americans, but had no power to deal with interior problems. Which is why, when a group of farmers lead by Daniel Shays decided to rebel in 1787, the leaders of the new United States got together and wrote the Constitution, which provided the new Federal Government with the powers to call up a militia to deal with such insurrections. In fact, the first time the Federal government called up the militia was to put down just such a rebellion. Mostly, however, the militias were called out to put down slave rebellions, like Nat Turner's, Harper's Ferry, and the German Coast Uprising in 1811. The truth, which racists like Bob Beierle don't want to acknowledge, is that the Second Amendment exists not to provide for the defense of the United States from external threats but to provide for the defense of white slave owners from their slaves.

     See, as The Hidden History of the Second Amendment explains, the only Founding Fathers concerned with the right to keep and bear arms at the Constitutional Convention were Southerners like Patrick Henry:

"If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress [slave] insurrections [under this new Constitution]. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress . . . . Congress, and Congress only [under this new Constitution], can call forth the militia."

The Southern delegates were worried that Northern representatives, who would outnumber them due to the higher populations of northern states, would use Article I, Section 8 as a way to destroy slavery by not arming the Southern state militias. Without arms, they could not control a slave population that outnumbered them in some states almost 3 to 1. The Founding Fathers were less worried about defending the country from the English than they were about the monster they were creating in slavery. This, and not the fairy tale Minuteman ready to defend the United States, was the reason for the compromise that is the Second Amendment. During the 1970s and 80s, however, with the threat of the Soviet Union hanging over the world and rising crime rates, gun manufacturers realized that they could sell a lot more guns if people thought they would be defending their homes from the Red Army or some cracked out inner city "thug" (that's Fox News code for "black person," BTW), so they spread this fairy tale of the American duty to own a gun and protect their homes, despite mounting evidence that homes with guns were more likely to be victims of gun violence. (Also here, here, and here. I know these come from "liberal" sources like Harvard, Yale, and the National Institutes of Health, but hey, science is science and facts are neither liberal nor conservative. So take your bias strawman and shove it.)

The second, and possibly even more dangerous, fairy tale that Bob perpetuates here is the insurrectionist fairy tale: the idea that our Founding Fathers wanted us to have the ability to violently overthrow the government. Not only does this confound all logic and reason, but it is simply not supported by anything. Most famously, the proponents of this delusion quote Thomas Jefferson as saying "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Not only is this always taken out of context, but it was a sentiment almost universally opposed by Jefferson's peers. For starters, it was part of a private letter Jefferson sent to the son in law of John Adams which was never meant to be made public. The statement is in response to an inquiry about Shays' Rebellion, which every other Founding Father decried as treason. Jefferson took a great deal of criticism for his position, with no less than Samuel Adams saying "in monarchies the crime of treason and rebellion may admit of being pardoned or lightly punished, but the man who dares rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death." Clearly, the Founding Fathers did not want bloody rebellion once a generation.

If you doubt this, think on this: the Americans had just spent the better part of a decade fighting a bloody and costly revolution that they had only barely won. It left them deeply in debt and left the populace war weary and distrustful. What possible reason could they have for wanting to do this once a generation? This quote from John Adams sums it up nicely:

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

Finally, the Constitution of the United States creates a system whereby the government can be peacefully changed every 2 - 6 years. The men who wrote this document set this system up in such a way that the States would determine who could vote for Congressmen and other representatives. In most states at time, the only people who could vote were land owning white men. So answer me this: if the Founding Fathers set it up so that less than 1/3 of the population could change the government through peaceable means, what kind of twisted, idiotic logic makes you think they wanted everyone armed and able to do it violently?

Now, I know there is no convincing people like Bob that these facts prove him wrong. He has feelings on his side, so he doesn't need facts. But this is reality. This is the truth. Bob actually says at one point that he doesn't have "an issue with opposing viewpoints that are thought out, well debated, and use facts." Well, maybe Bob should try some of those things some time, because none of his arguments are thought out, well debated, or remotely factual. He talks about extremists as if he isn't one. He talks about a domestic terrorist as if his own writings do not support and encourage the very actions that man took. He acts as if letting a gun manufacturer spread his lies and fear mongering in his magazine doesn't make him a shill. Bob is truly the most despicable type of human being. He makes me ashamed to be an American. You can lie to yourself, Bob, but you're not fooling the rest of us. We see you for the treasonous terrorist you are.

One final thought: Bob has a pullout in this week's rag advertising a party he's throwing this weekend for all the other bundhists. In a truly tone deaf and disgusting bit of irony, there's a bit about how they're holding an auction to raise money for the family of the PA State Trooper who was murdered in cold blood by one of Bob's "fellow patriots." I really hope his wife throws your money back in your face, Bob, but I doubt she even knows who you are or what you stand for. How about this Bob: instead of raising money for a real Patriot who gave his life in the line of duty, you stop printing your seditionist lies and insurrectionist fairy tales? How about instead of encouraging people to take shots at the police and the government, you act like a real patriot and support it? Like another great patriot, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson once said: "The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either."

A republic is a government of the people, Bob. Maybe start acting like one.

Wait ... Where the Heck Are We? - September 23, 2014

2014-10-10T16:45:00.002-07:00

     Well, Bob, good for you. I'm glad to see you're not such a stereotypical American male that you won't stop and ask for directions once in a while. Though I will say that if you often find yourself driving around and disoriented with no idea where you are, you might want to see a doctor. That could be early onset dementia, and while I'm pretty sure you are demented, I would hate to see you cause an automobile accident and hurt an innocent person. So get that checked out.

     Thanks for the shout out, by the way. At least, I'm guessing that's me you're talking about when you mention getting letters from "some guy in New Jersey." Did one of your kids teach you how to use the Google so you could find me? This isn't a letter, though, Bob, it's a blog. You're not worth the cost of the stamp to actually send you a letter. I'm sorry I have to write to you in crayon, but I want to make sure I keep it on your level. I'm sorry about the big words I use, too, but maybe if you look them up in the dictionary you'll improve your vocabulary without even realizing it. And terrorist lite, that's clever, really clever. Maybe look up the definition of terrorist, though, Bob, because it really describes you more than it does me. See, I don't use fear and the threat of violence to intimidate and coerce people into accepting my political views, whereas your writing is almost nothing but fear mongering and calls for violence. Say "hi" to the FBI for me, ok?

     So, back to the dementia thing: I don't know where exactly you get this idea that there are Muslim terrorists coming to kill you (I mean, I have a pretty good idea, but I don't know exactly), but you really do need to see a doctor. Paranoid delusions are a real problem, and a symptom of schizophrenia. I really don't want to see you hurt someone else. I do find it humorous that you can, in the space of a few paragraphs, spread fear of Sharia law and then call for laws based on Christian morality, as if they're somehow not equal. Oh, and I did Google "extremist Muslim training camps in America," and all I found was a bunch of reactionary websites blathering on about conspiracy theories. Not one credible source in the entire bunch, Bob, but I know that doesn't matter to you. Maybe you should ask your kid how to use the Google again. In fact, the only terrorists I see training in the US are the sovereign citizen jerks you so ignorantly refer to as your "fellow patriots," the Eric Freins, the Cliven Bundys, the Jerad and Amanda Millers, the Wayne Lapierres. You know, the people using fear and violence to coerce people into following their delusional political and religious views. People like you, Bob.

     Now, I have to ask: do you think that the man who shot State Trooper Cpl. Byron Dickson is a Muslim terrorist? Because you don't seem to understand that this madman is actually one of your "fellow patriots;" a survivalist sovereign citizen nutjob. I bet he's a "faithful Our Town reader." He probably likes all the misogynist jokes. Or maybe the Bible verses. Nah, I don't think he's much of a Bible reader, except maybe for Leviticus and any other passage that justifies hating homosexuals and people that "aren't Christian." (sound familiar? Not even a little like the Sharia law you're so scared of?) I mean, do you really think this guy is so different from you? That you haven't encouraged him with your hate and rhetoric? Are you that deluded?

     You can attack me all you want, Bob, but it does not change the fact that I'm not the one espousing domestic terrorism. Think on that the next time you want to accuse me of controlling "what you can read." This isn't liberalism, Bob, it's straight up humanity. You're a monster. You're the worst kind of person, the kind that wraps himself in the flag and calls himself a patriot while encouraging people to fight the government, not realizing that the people are the government so really they're just fighting themselves. You insult me and every other American every time you print your trash, and I'm sick of it. The same freedom of speech that lets you print your "Creative Insight" lets me tell you to get bent, Bob, and the horse you rode in on.

If Not YOU, Then Who? If Not NOW, Then When? (September 8, 2014)

2014-09-11T09:31:00.000-07:00

pa·tri·ot

noun

: a person who loves and strongly supports or fights for his or her country

     I start this post off with a definition of patriot because I keep seeing it misused and abused by people like Robert Beierle of the myopically named Creative Insight, LLC. I really think these people have never actually looked at the definition of the word, and have no idea what it means to be a patriot, yet they continue to use it to describe themselves as if wrapping their hate, bigotry, anger, and sedition in a flag somehow excuses it. It's disgusting. It's wrong. And it's time for rational, reasonable people to stand up and say no. It's time for real patriots, not these people who are so afraid of change, of real freedom, of equality and opportunity for all, not just wealthy white Christian men, to speak up and let these people know that they are wrong, and we will not let them drag us down and remove all the progress America has made in the last hundred years.

     Our "pal" Bob is very proud of himself this week. Apparently his little Reichsparteitag a few weeks ago got him and all his "fellow patriots" riled up and ready for the coming Volkskreig. He claims that they've even discovered Facebook (though the page for Our Town USA is owned by something called Cherry Tree, which seems to have nothing to do with our man Bob here but does seem intent on indoctrinating children into his ultra-nationalist mindset) and that there are videos of his speech on YouTube, which I did find. I'm not going to encourage you to watch them, because if you think his writing is bad, you really don't want to hear him speak. With 37 whole views, I don't think there's much danger of many people hearing it anyway.

     So, to save you the time, I'll sum up: as usual, Bob starts with a story of the "good ol' days," about how he met his wife in high school and yadda yadda yadda. He even relates this story about how his high school English teacher failed him on a writing assignment and told him he will never be anything more than a ditch digger. He really should have taken that advice.

     His speech, as well as his rant this week, is about how America is coming to an end. Bob has this delusion that America is under attack. That the big, bad, evil Muslims are coming to bring Sharia law and behead all our children. This is your brain on FOX News. Honestly, how can you complain about a $17 trillion Federal budget in one sentence and then say we need to send American soldiers to stop radical Islamists in the next? Do you simply not know that nearly 20% of the Federal budget is military spending, or are you so ignorant that you don't care? Never mind the 40% spent on Social Security and Medicare, which I'm sure your audience would be happy to give up to reduce Federal spending. The cognitive disconnect of this man and his "fellow patriots" boggles the mind. Where exactly Bob gets his $17 trillion number from, I don't know, but the last Federal budget I saw was $3 trillion. The fear and misinformation train keeps rolling and the propaganda hits just keep on comin'!

Bob thinks he's a patriot (see the definition above), but he's really a seditionist. Let me include that definition for those of you out there who think that Bob is a patriot:

se·di·tion

noun \si-ˈdi-shən\

: the crime of saying, writing, or doing something that encourages people to disobey their government

This is the main thrust of Bob's writings. Disobey the government, because they're no smarter than "The Three Stooges" and we need a "New Alamo," which is apparently Benghazi. He and his fellow "patriots" need to get proactive, Bob says, because they "believe in America and they're scared." No kidding they're scared. They're not smart enough to know why they're scared, but they know they're scared because the TV tells them to be.

If you only watch one part of his speech, I recommend part 12, where he lays out his oh so creative (get it?) "plan" for an occupation of Washington DC. That's right, 3 days, 1 million "patriots" invading the capitol and letting those no good moron politicians know exactly what they want. He even manages to throw in an insulting part about getting people from Texas, if you can find enough that speak English, by promising them food stamps (because they're all illegal immigrants). In case you're wondering where Bob finds his "creative insight," he pulls out a flask of "pure Pennsylvania mountain water" (sure) and gives directions to his favorite bar. So now that we know where Bob can be found, he then plagiarizes (more on that in a minute) Kurt Russel's toast from Big Trouble in Little China and calls for Sean Hannity and the FOX News crowd to organize his "patriot" rally in DC. I hate to break it to you, Bob, but like most of your "ideas," it's been done already, and only 80,000 or so "patriots" actually showed up.

One last thought on plagiarism: Bob, your title to this week's "creative insight," If Not YOU, Then Who? If Not NOW, Then When? Yeah, about that: you didn't write that, Bob. You didn't even think it up. So you can't copyright it. Sorry. Though maybe you should read up on Hillel the Elder, Bob, you might learn something about what it is to be not only a Christian, but an American as well.

"Do not judge your fellow until you are in his place."

"What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn"

-Hillel the Elder

Catching A Glimpse (August 8, 2014)

2014-08-13T13:21:00.002-07:00

     Oh, Bob. You really are simple, aren't you? Is this really your idea of creativity? Of insight? This religious claptrap? "I saw a ray of sunlight in the clouds and it was proof of GOD!" Gimme a break. This is something a sixth grader would be embarrassed to write, and you actually published it and distributed it to the world. Look, Bob, you want to believe in fairy tales and ancient myths, that's your right. You want to write about it, that's your right. Where I draw the line is your asinine and ignorant rant about the Founding Fathers and their beliefs. Because it's pretty well known that not only did your fairy tale "Creator" have nothing to do with the American Revolution, but most of the men leading that revolution couldn't be bothered with him. I draw the line at your calls for "moral" legislators, because your definition of moral and my definition of moral are not even in the same universe. Keep your religion out of my government, Bob, because I know you don't want my government up in your religion.

     Listen, I had this whole thing worked up in my head about how Bob is the living breathing proof that there is no God, no "Creator," because no intelligent being could create such an angry, evil, misguided, reprehensible creature as Robert Beierle of Creative Insight, but what's the point? Anyone who picks up his disgusting excuse for a "magazine" can plainly see that. Yet for some reason, people keep paying him to print this crap. And now, some group of morons has actually booked him to speak at their monthly meeting in PA. He even included a shameless plug for his appearance at the, I kid you not, Patriot Connectors meeting this month. Now, these people are not patriots in any sense of the word that is recognized by speakers of the English language, but are, in fact, a seditious organization that is connecting people to the Gospel of Glenn and Alex. They seem to be a small group from a backwoods town, but hey, the Nazi Party was once a small group from a backwoods town as well.

     How much longer must we tolerate this nonsense? Join me in boycotting the businesses that support this horrible rag.

That's all I have for this one. I really don't have the energy or the inclination to go into The Gray Wolf and the Environmentalist (conveniently printed on the back of your shameless pull-out ad for your appearance at the "patriot" meeting) except to say that it's eco terrorist, Bob, not ego. Besides, how can I even attempt this when John Oliver has already done it better than I ever could (NSFW, language). Congratulations, Bob, you've proven yet again that you're too stupid to be taken seriously. Way to go.

Twilight's Our Town Zone (June 23, 2014)

2014-07-06T11:50:00.000-07:00

A Freedom Day [Fairy] Tale!

Just when I thought our buddy Robert (Bob) Beierle was out of "creative insights" (get it?) because he's been running reruns for the last six months, he drops this steaming pile of invective on us, just in time for the Fourth of July. Judging by it's length, Bob's been working on this one for a while. Maybe that's why he hasn't really printed anything new since December.

So what is it, you ask? Well, it's a wonderfully paranoid and infuriating piece of insurrectionist propaganda, framed as an episode of The Twilight Zone. That noise you hear is Rod Serling spinning in his grave.

It starts out with his usual rambling and nonsense about "regular" Americans and how hard it is to be a farmer, but the simple pleasures of family are really all they need. It's like someone tried to type out a Norman Rockwell painting but instead got Thomas Kinkade's version of Mayberry. I really don't want to go through the entire thing, because it's so bad it's not worth the time. Let's just run down the tone deaf Tea Bagger talking points that Bob hits: he starts with how much better life was in the past; tosses in a nice bit of sexist nonsense about a female police officer; complains about car registrations, seat belt laws, and compares the police to gun happy, jackbooted fascists; attacks illegal immigrants and Mexicans; talks about the "war" on Christianity and how anyone carrying a bible in 2014 is somehow part of a cult; and it's all because of that darned color tele-vision thing the kids are so into these days. Basically, he makes every moronic libertarian, anti-government, insurrectionist, sovereign citizen argument in the book, from attacking the EPA to the CIA to the IRS to the USDA. It's just asinine. But it's not the worst part of this month's Our Town.

No, the worst, most heinous, most tone deaf and offensive part of this waste of ink and paper is the "joke" that appears on page four, with the I-kid-you-not title "Murder At Wal-Mart." Two weeks after a couple of insurrectionists who were considered too crazy to be allowed to stay at the Cliven Bundy ranch shot up a pizzeria and a Walmart in Las Vegas, this fool is printing a "joke" about a man hiring a hitman to kill his wife at Walmart. I wish I could make this up, but I can't.

These are the kind of people incited by Robert "Bob" Beierle and his tripe. This is what his "Creative Insight" inspires, the brutal murder of police officers and innocent people. How much longer will we tolerate this hate speech, this treason and sedition? Because that's what it is. It's not free speech, it's sedition. People like Bob spend a great deal of time talking about patriotism and freedom but what they're really talking about is treason. About insurrection against the government. It's time for real Americans to stand up and say no, we will not let you bad mouth America anymore, because when you bad mouth America you bad mouth us. You endanger us. If this horrible publication appears somewhere near you, please, do yourself and the rest of us a favor and let the businesses supporting this treasonous hate speech know that you will no longer frequent their establishments if they continue to spread it's poisonous message. It's time to stand up. It's time to make it stop. We may not be able to stop Fox News or Rush or Glenn, but we can stop this.

"All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing."

-Edmund Burke

It's 2014 And Where The Heck Is Our Happy Ending? (December 23, 2013)

2013-12-26T10:35:00.000-08:00

     Merry Christmas from the land of the paranoid delusional oppressed middle class Christian white man! And we do mean CHRISTmas, not Xmas or Happy Holidays or any of that liberal politically correct crap! After all, the only people that matter are white Christians, nobody else could possibly have anything else to celebrate, ever.

     Ok, now that we have that out of the way, on to this week's latest and greatest from our pal Robert "Bob" Beierle, of the completely seriously named Creative Insight, LLC. I can only guess that he had this ready to go before the whole Duck Dynasty kerfluffle happened and that's why we get this instead of some nonsense supporting homophobia in the name of religious freedom. I'm sure we'll see something about it in January. In the meantime, Bob asks where our happy ending is. And he's not talking about the Asian masseuse, either! Hyuk hyuk! If you have a "misogyny" or "racism" square on your Our Town Bingo board (note to self: make Our Town Bingo boards), mark it off!

     No, Bob wants to know why it's so hard to be middle class and white these days, what with the government telling everyone how to live their lives and all. After all, shouldn't hard work and being a white Christian man be enough to succeed? How are we supposed to do that when the government keeps taking away our health care?

     Wait, what? I know, I did the same thing. Obamacare is still Bob's #1 bogey man, even if it's totally irrelevant. He's incensed that the government has spent $2 billion on building a website, completely reformatting the health care laws in this country, and telling people how they can pay less for health insurance (or actually get health insurance they couldn't afford before). I almost hate to point out that this expenditure is less than 1% of the Federal Budget. I mean, they spent 4 times as much on prisons and wasted about the same amount on drug enforcement (while spending 1/4 as much on prosecuting financial crime, but whatever), but, since this isn't part of Bob's "happy ending," Obamacare is clearly something to get worked up about.

     Bob's really pissed that 6 million people have lost their health care because of Obamacare. Soon that number could be 80 million! I'm not sure where these numbers are coming from, by the way, but I can promise you that they came from somewhere near Bob's chair, approximately 2' above the floor and the sun doesn't shine there. I have to wonder when Bob will realize that those 6 million plans went away for a very good reason and were replaced by better, more affordable plans. Probably on that day when hell freezes over and Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly, Glenn, and Fox and Friends start reporting that part of the story.

   You might ask what is Bob's idea of a happy ending? Well, apparently it involves "the ability and the good health to work in a society where hard work, innovation, creative thinking, and the willingness to take chances is rewarded." Funny, I thought that was the society we lived in. Let's look at some of Bob's examples:

A farmer who only wants to own a farm and raise livestock. What a great idea! Why hasn't anyone thought to do this? What a shame that the government is so oppressive that they won't even allow people to grow and sell food. If only Obamacare didn't have those provisions making farming impossible!
Own a restaurant and make it the best one it could be. Gee, what a lovely dream, I'm sure we would all love to have a place where friends and neighbors could gather for a tasty meal and a few drinks and some fun without worrying about getting food borne illness or having some cheap bar owner charge them for a premium drink while pouring them swill. It's too bad the government has so many regulations making people lose their health care so they can't own restaurants.
Mom and Dad want to teach their kids instead of sending them to public school. I know, the Federal government is so strict about home schooling, it's such a shame they round up children every day to force them into public schools. If only we could just keep them in a shed where their only exposure to the world was through our strict interpretation of the Bible. Surely then they will bring nothing but good into the world. Too bad Obamacare won't let us educate our children the way we want.
A country that honors veterans instead of empty promises and broken deals. Seriously, it's shameful how poorly we treat our vets, we only have two holidays celebrating their service, plus all those sporting events where they give free tickets and recognition to service members, and all those "Support Our Troops" bumper stickers. I mean, it's really embarrassing that we spend so much time recognizing and thanking these people and then complain when the government wants to spend money ensuring their health. Oh, wait, that wasn't sarcastic, was it?

Yes, most Americans have simple dreams, they're good folk who only want to live their lives in freedom. They want a government that will allow us to protect our private property (because why pay for police when you can just shoot anyone you don't like?) and side with "real Americans who were either born here or came here from other countries legally, instead of allowing illegals to come into our homes, to take from us, and then to give us demands of how we should act towards them and what we should give to them." Yup, there's that racism you were craving, draped in an American flag, half baked at 350º and served up on a bed of outrage and anger.

Look, this is just a thought, and it might be a crazy one, but hear me out: maybe, just maybe, if you want a "happy ending," you shouldn't be putting so much hate and anger into the world. Maybe, instead of ignorant vitriol, try some empathy, some sympathy, even a bit of compassion or a modicum of respect for other human beings. Try reading and listening instead of ranting and raving. Instead of knee jerk reactions based on faith, rhetoric, talking points and misinformation, try educating yourself and basing your arguments on fact. As a wise man once said "in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." There are no "happy endings," Bob, this is real life, not a story book. The best you can hope for is a happy today with a chance of a happy tomorrow, but you won't get either if you're constantly angry and hate everyone. Even Ebeneezer Scrooge figured that one out.

Yes There Is a Solution (Nov. 22, 2013)

2013-11-25T06:04:00.003-08:00

     Happy Thanksgiving! Here we are, thankful for another certifiable rant from our favorite turkey, Robert "Bob" Beierle. In this weeks episode, Bob explains to us that he's not Cujo but Toto, as he pulls back the curtain on our government and the "true corruption" inside.

     The great irony here is that the whole thing starts with a plea to keep an open mind, to not look at these things as conservatives or liberals, Republicans or Democrats (nice restraint there, Bob, actually using Democrat and not some made up epithet), but to look at them as an American. Yes, Bob wants us to keep an open mind and remember that Hollywood and the media and liberal college professors have labeled people like him as racists, bigots, homophobes, "whackos" and extremists; not because they are any of those things but because the "lame stream media" and the great "Wizard of Oz/our politicians" don't want you to trust these people or listen to them as they try to warn you about the "big bad government" coming for your rights. That's right: the government is the Wizard of Oz, putting on a big show and hiding their true selves behind curtains, and Bob here is faithful little Toto, come to pull back the curtain and show you and me the truth.

     Now, look, I'm not exactly a fan of the government. I'm as disappointed by the current administration as everyone else who believed that change was possible. I have no delusions about what they're doing, listening to our phone calls and reading our browser history. But I'm not going to ask you to keep an open mind and then in the same paragraph tell you how horrible Obamacare is when it's barely been around for a month. I'm not going to go off on how this President has put us so much further in debt when the other option was to let the economy completely self destruct and bring on another Great Depression. That's what keeping an open mind means, Bob, that you look at all of the facts, not just the ones that support your views.

     This is why we don't listen to you and your ilk, Bob, because you go off the rails about things which you do not comprehend. All you know is Reagan said government health care is bad, so any form of government health care is bad, no matter what, right? Don't read the bill, don't bother to notice that it will reduce health care costs long term or that it will give millions of people health care that never had access to it before, it's from the government so it must be removing my freedoms and costing me money, so I hate it, Obama lied about keeping our plans, burn it all down. So much for an open mind.

   I don't even need to read the rest of this nonsense to tell you what he says: Benghazi was lies, the government is running the economy, printing "fiat currency," made up history (Seal Team 6 was set up by the government to be killed by Muslim terrorists? Really, Bob? CNN must have missed that one), and your standard Tea Party "our founding fathers were so great" baloney. In fact, the whole thing ends with a plea to drop your support for the traditional political parties and start supporting the Tea Party. If you worship the founding fathers so much, why haven't you realized that the greatest gift they gave us was a living, breathing Constitution that is designed to change with the times, not a set of commandments carved in stone that must be rigidly followed or else?

     Seriously, Bob, if you want me to keep an open mind, first open yours. As usual, your "editorial" is neither creative nor insightful. Stop parroting Fox News and Glenn Beck and Rush and actually generate a unique thought for once in your life. Maybe look up some facts before you make a decision, instead of just assuming that because something comes from a person you don't like it's automatically bad. Until then, you're not faithful little Toto, you're just a rabid dog slobbering all over itself until Atticus Finch comes along to put you down.

Rogue Government (June 8, 2013)

2013-06-27T10:07:00.000-07:00

     I've sat on this one for a few weeks, needing to digest Bob's essay and get my head around exactly what was going on before commenting. This edition, ranting about the IRS using their powers to go after conservative groups, is classic Robert Beierle, in that it is disjointed, barely coherent, and definitely neither creative nor insightful. It is more or less a rehash of whatever Bob heard that week on Fox News or Rush or Glenn or whatever cracked out radio waves that get piped into his brain, with a nice little anecdote about how he was personally targeted by the President. Not to call him a liar, but I seriously doubt President Obama has ever heard of Our Town Pennysaver, much less Robert "Bob" Beierle or "Creative Insight" LLC. But I digress...

    This week's rant starts off with a definition of the term "rogue." It's quite interesting that Bob can literally type out the definition (probably copied and pasted from Webster's) and then immediately use the word incorrectly in a sentence. Let's hear it for public education, right Bob? All this is leading up to is the accusation that our (but not Bob's, oh no) government has gone "rogue" and is no longer of the people. The proof, of course, is that the IRS is targeting conservative political action groups. Somehow, that all ties in with Benghazi and Islamic terrorists and armed Federal officers at Tea Party meetings and Leon Panetta and flu vaccines and radio tracking devices implanted in your head.

     Bob gets in the requisite "Obama is a Nazi" reference (thank you, Mike Godwin), comparing him to Sergeant Shultz (because he knows "nozink!" Get it?) Then, in what has to be the most twisted and asinine passage of a harangue so ludicrous that even a paranoid schizophrenic would say "tone it down," he somehow manages to imply that the President of the United States is a child molester. It would be funny if it weren't so mind numbingly insane.

     At one point, Bob says that there are people out there who think that this whole thing is ok. I'm here to tell you, Bob, that the only people out there defending this are the ones who were involved in it and personally benefited from it. If you think there is a Democrat or a liberal or a "college kid" out there who isn't angry with our government, who isn't outraged that they're spying on us and using our money for personal gain, then you're a bigger fool than I thought.

    Now, I'll admit, the crazy in this piece just got too much for me to handle. Yeah, Bob, what the IRS did was wrong. What the NSA is doing is wrong. I admit that I am extrememly let down by what President Obama has done and not done in his 5 years in the White House. I still maintain that he was a better choice than the alternatives. I would include Congress in that disappointment, but this type of nonsense is about what I expect from Congress; my expectations for them are so low that I don't know it would be possible to be disappointed in Congress.

     As much as I agree that there is a problem in government right now and something needs to be done about the overreach of Federal power, Bob's newest tirade is about three words short of advocating armed rebellion against the government, and I just can't get down with that. He describes himself as a Patriot at one point, and I would laugh at that except that it offends me so much. If this is what passes for patriotism these days, this type of paranoia and hate and anger, then leave me out of it. Bob has the right to speak his mind, he has the right to publish whatever he likes, but so do I, and right now, I'm asking Bob to please shut up and stop making the rest of America look bad.

2013-05-29T17:23:00.000-07:00

     Wow. Just wow, Bob.

     First, I need to address that I've been gone a while. That's because Bob has been relatively quiet, either not publishing, or what he is publishing I haven't seen, so maybe I'm getting to people; or what he has published has been personal and really just not worth attacking. I'm truly sorry to hear about his wife, and his essay about her almost made me think he has a shred of humanity. And then I picked up his May 8, 2013 edition and saw What's In a Name? So much for that idea.

     I honestly do not know where to start with this. Should I begin with the straight up insanity of how Bob thinks we fight disease? His complete and utter lack of understanding of modern medicine and what really happens when antibiotics are administered is just stupefying. The whole first page, where he talks about "finding the true name of a disease" is either the worst understanding of medical science in history or the most idiotic and painful metaphor in the entirety of the English speaking world. Yes, some voodoo practitioners take the idea of someone or something's true name and the power it holds over them very seriously, but I really doubt that Jonas Salk or James Watson and Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins or really anybody on this list would consider medical science "voodoo." It requires a great deal more than simply knowing the name of a bacteria, virus, or syndrome to cure it and implying that it's as simple as that requires leaps of logic that even your most strident homeopath would struggle to complete. This first page is dizzying in it's defiance of common sense, logic, and reality, and we have not even begun to scratch the surface of the twisted insanity that is this essay.

     Now, brace yourselves, because what I'm about to say may strike you as ludicrous, but I assure you, a man actually put it into print and then distributed it to stores throughout NY, NJ, and PA: the reason we have not won the war on terror is because we are not treating radical Muslims like a disease. Yeah. So, apparently, if we learned the "true name" of radical Islam and said it out loud three times, it would simply vanish, just like polio and Beetlejuice. You see, we eradicated polio and smallpox because we weren't afraid to profile them and call them by their "true names"; we did it because we're 'Murica and we know what's right and anyone who disagrees must be wrong. We (and nobody else in the world, not Europe or Asia or Africa, just 'Murica) stopped those diseases because we didn't worry about being racist or bigoted in destroying a disease, we went after it. Nevermind that scarlet fever and whooping cough aren't races or even people, we were not worried about being called racist for destroying them. Since he asked, no, Bob, for the record, we do not all agree with your version of history here. Some of us live in reality.

     In Bob's reality, if we stop being so sensitive about the feelings of all those Muslims out there who aren't radicalized and don't want to destroy us and start profiling all Muslims and all dark skinned, swarthy people who might be Muslims, we can stop terrorism. Don't worry, it hurts my brain too, but Bob put it out there, so I'll give him credit for having the balls to be that stupid. Or crazy.

     There's a lot of crazy in here, too, from some nonsense about his Irish grandmother getting on a plane with a seven year old to politicians who can't fight to bears and fish and birds and kids throwing ape "manure" at each other. From what I can piece out of this, he thinks that the Boston Marathon bombings have something to do with the fact that the President doesn't say "radical Muslims" enough, and that allows the "disease" of radical Islam to think it can attack us whenever it wants. He thinks that the town where the Tsarnaev brothers were radicalized is somewhere in Russia and should be bombed off the map. Well, Bob, I have some bad news for you: I don't know what Cambridge, MA ever did to you, but I'm sure they don't deserve that. That's right: the Tsarnaev's were not only living in the US for most of their lives, but found out about radical Islam here, too. They didn't go to Chechnya (it's Chechnya, not Russia, not Czechoslovakia, and definitely not China) to get radicalized, they found it on this newfangled thing all the kids are using called the World Wide Interwebs. Or did you think that in the 6 months the one brother spent in Russia that he went from good American boy who loved baseball and apple pie to murderous jihadi who magically convinced his brother to help him blow up America?

     Then, in a classic Bob Beierle ADD moment, we're suddenly talking about Syria. Apparently, in whatever reality Bob inhabits, Bashar al-Assad is being funded by al Qaeda, and John McCain thinks we should have soldiers in Syria sorting out their civil war, which is first the correct answer but then the wrong one. He also seems to be mad because the President didn't immediately bomb the hell out of Syria as soon as it was reported that they used chemical weapons. Good thing he waited for confirmation there, huh Bob, especially since there's still no definitive evidence which side is using them or even that it actually happened.

     The last bit of the article really just defines irony. Bob says we should let Syria tear itself apart, let millions of people be destroyed by a war they have no part in and want nothing to do with, all so that a group of radical Muslims (most of whom are not even involved in this struggle) who have "no tolerance or forgiveness for anyone else who doesn't believe what they believe" can destroy themselves. This was written with no trace of irony or sarcasm; Bob really does believe what he's writing here. You can't make this stuff up.

     Just in case some of you still aren't following, the part of this whole thing that truly boggles my mind is that Bob seems to think that radical Islam is a disease and that our tolerance for it is the reason we haven't beaten it like other diseases. The problem with that mentality is that radical Islam is not a disease. It is a belief, and that is much more infectious and much more damaging than any disease known to man. We're not talking about bacteria or viruses here; this isn't a genetic abnormality that can be treated with chemicals or surgery. It's not even a parasite that can be removed or killed. These are people; human beings. Bob lumps them all together under one designation and says they all need to be terminated, indiscriminately, and with extreme prejudice. Why? Because they're the intolerant ones. Without any hint of irony or self awareness, he, in one paragraph, suggests that the United States should stand by and allow innocent women and children who are begging for our help to be killed in Syria because a group of militants with whom they have no affiliation other than sharing a similar (not even the same) belief system has killed innocent women and children in America. And he wonders why these people hate America. (On a side note, please don't think that I'm advocating American military intervention in Syria, I'm not, I think that would be a terrible idea. But we should be working to help those who are not combatants with protection, food, and medical aid.)

After spending around 1,600 words talking about how our politically correct culture of tolerance is the problem, how the disease of Islam is trying to destroy America, how our attempts to placate Muslims around the world and show them that we do not want to be their enemy only makes them think that we are weak and easy targets, he explains that we need to destroy this "disease" because they don't tolerate anyone who thinks differently.

   Wow, Bob. Just wow.

2012-08-15T07:37:00.000-07:00

     This week, Bob gives us a timely and topical essay entitled "Are the BATMAN Movies Evil?" It's an interesting, albeit misguided and misinformed piece of writing. In it, our man with the Creative Insight (wink wink nudge nudge) addresses the recent shooting in Aurora, Colorado. His piece here is about personal responsibility, and while I understand the point he's trying to make and do agree that we are and should be held accountable for our own actions, his logic and method of argument is deeply flawed and thoroughly short sighted.

     We begin with a complaint about the fact that the news media has covered this event too thoroughly. Bob compares this tragedy to a car accident that killed fourteen people the same week, complaining that that tragedy got no news coverage at all while a shooting in a movie theatre was all anyone could talk about. Let me say that again: a shooting in a movie theatre, where a man willfully and with intent to harm others entered a building and opened fire on a crowd of people is comparable to a car wreck, where a truck flipped over. I'm not too sure about how these things compare. Maybe the people in the truck willfully entered it knowing it was dangerous, but I don't see how that equates to entering a movie theatre. Certainly no one in the truck intended to harm anyone, but it ended up that way. Anyway, apparently the shooting has become too personal, too real. We've gotten to know the victims and survivors of the Aurora shooting, and we feel their tragedy to be our tragedy. Why should these people's pain be any more important than the pain of other people suffering this week? Why does the media feel the need to cover this event so closely when there are other tragedies happening out there?

     Well, to answer this question, I would point to the fact that people generally don't die in movie theatres. It's not a place where one expects death to find them. Sure, people die in car accidents all the time. Sometimes, people get shot or stabbed walking down the street. It sucks, but it happens. But in a movie theatre? Watching a summer blockbuster is not really going to put me on my guard, you know what I mean? It's shocking that someone would do this, and it's difficult for most normal people to comprehend why something like this might happen. A man gets stabbed on the street for his wallet, sure, it's tragic, but there's a logic there, a reasoning we can understand if not necessarily relate to. But this? It's just senseless and violent. We can't begin to understand why it happened, because there is no logic to it. That's why we're talking about it so much.

     Now, I don't think anyone out there would find it reasonable or logical to blame the film for the tragedy. This could have happened at a showing of Ice Age or Tyler Perry's Medea or even Katie Perry's movie. Why did he pick Batman? Well, the shooter seemed to have a fixation on the Joker. OK. So a character that has existed for over 60 years, and has always been portrayed as a brutal, diabolical, homicidal lunatic (ok, maybe not always) is suddenly inspiring people to murder? Is Bob seriously making this argument, that if Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy never existed, those people would still be alive? I thoroughly and completely can deny that, Bob, and here's why: it's been pretty widely publicized that the shooter in question was mentally unstable, and was leaning towards a violent outburst, so much so that his psychiatrist warned the police about him. Sure, if Batman never existed, those exact people in that exact theatre may still be alive and well today, but odds are this kid would have shot somebody somewhere. So to blame Batman as the cause of this tragedy is simply nonsensical. Correlation does not imply causation, Bob.

     The real discussion that needs to happen here is about the assault weapon (sorry, semi-automatic rifle) and very ridiculously stupidly large capacity magazine he used. Maybe, just maybe, if there could be a reasonable discussion about firearms in this country, this tragedy could have been mitigated, if not prevented. Sure, the shooter would still have had to make a choice to enter the theatre and open fire, but at least there would have been a chance that some people could escape while he's reloading. These weapons really only have one purpose and it isn't killing deer. And before you say target practice, I need to point out a few things: first, semi-automatic weapons are not as accurate as bolt action, so why would you use a substandard weapon if your goal is to be as accurate as possible? Second, why do you need 100 rounds in your magazine when you're shooting at a paper target that doesn't shoot back? Is it really such a burden to have to reload? When you can satisfactorily answer these questions with something other than "2nd Amendment," we can have a reasonable discussion about firearms. Until then, you're just a bonehead.

     Getting back to the "essay," there's a great deal of discussion here about "evil."   I'm not really sure what Bob is getting at, but I can tell you that the world is not this black and white, good and evil construct he's talking about. Sometimes, people do things that are out and out cruel, they intentionally go out of their way to cause harm to other humans. It happens, and we need good people who are willing to stand up and say "this will not happen while I'm here." Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on who we're talking about), most of those people only exist in comic books.

     More often, that evil happens as a result of other factors, and requires us to use our brains and not our instinct when reacting. When a person has an imbalance, when they're just crazy and do something so bizarre and violent and inhumane that it makes the rest of us stop and take notice, we need to keep our own humanity and react as civilized and intelligent creatures, not like a group of animals running on instinct and fear. That's why we have a judicial system, it's why we have amendments to the Constitution other than the first two (you know, like 4 through 8). Evil may come in many forms, like Bob says, but evil is also relative. One man's butcher could be another man's savior, one man's soldier is another man's terrorist. I feel sorry for people who cannot or will not see this. Their world must be a very dismal and dreary place, full of shadows with "evil" waiting to spring out at them at any moment. What they don't realize is that you cannot have good without evil, they are one and the same, which is the lesson that the Joker taught us in Christopher Nolan's Batman movies.

     Bob ended his essay with a quote, so I'm going to end mine with one as well:

You take the good, you take the bad,
you take them both and there you have
The Facts of Life, the Facts of Life.

2012-06-27T08:06:00.000-07:00

     This week in an Our Town Special Edition: get your own copy of the Declaration of Independence! That's right, Bob Beierle, of the not at all satirically named Creative Insight, is attempting to co-opt one of the greatest pieces of American history to push his anti-government agenda. Bob really does most of the work for me here, starting his rant off by telling us about how hard the founding fathers had it, reminding us that they literally put everything on the line, and some even lost everything, to give us the freedoms we enjoy and take for granted today. Then he goes on about how our government today is so evil because they have things like eminent domain (at least, I think he means eminent domain. He says public domain, but then rants about government "taking our lands in the name of what serves the better good of the state," which sounds an awful lot like eminent domain and not intellectual property rights) and different sets of laws for the rich and famous and illegal (no, really, he equates being an illegal immigrant to being the same as rich and famous in the eyes of the law) than for us regular, working class folk. How can one even begin to compare the tyranny being committed by the British to the American government of today?

     Now, I'm guessing Bob isn't really a student of history. In fact, I would bet he got D's at best, because if he knew anything about history and the American Revolution in particular, he would know that the things he's complaining about are little piddling nothings compared to what the British were doing to the American colonists in the 1760s. He would know that the concept of eminent domain dates back to 14th century England, and did not generally merit compensation. That's right: the crown took what they wanted, because it was already theirs, you were just leasing it from them, so get out and be happy we don't just throw you in jail because we can. So be happy that the Fifth Amendment actually protects your right to not be derived of property without due process and provides for just compensation.

     Bob thinks our government overrides the will of the people and regularly invalidates elections and referendums. I'm sure Al Gore would have some things to say about this. Not only that, but I'm pretty sure that our founding fathers might have a few things to say about it too. Probably something to the effect of "In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury." Yeah. When was the last time the American government used force and jail to silence it's people? How many people have they killed to suppress dissenting opinions? Bob makes a great many accusations against the government, claiming they are illegally searching and seizing property, levying illegal taxes, and waging war against it's own citizens without offering a scrap of evidence or a whit of proof. If you're going to make ridiculous and outrageous claims, the least you can do is offer some evidence. Or is that the "creative" part of Creative Insight?

Finally, I want to leave you with this thought, from Mr. Jefferson:

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes"

These are light and transient causes, Bob. You can wrap yourself in as many flags as you can carry, but you're not fooling anyone. Your un-American ideals and selfish outrage will not help anything. Your divisive and accusatory and confrontational rhetoric is not making anything better. The founding fathers suffered to gain their freedom, our freedom. Their homes were burned, their families terrorized and murdered. All so that you could exercise your "god given right" to bitch and complain about paying taxes and how oppressed you are. Show a little respect and shut the hell up.

2012-06-13T08:43:00.000-07:00

             A new screed this week from Robert "Bob" Beierle of Creative Insight. This time, it's something about a dog. I'm really not sure why he spends over a page going on about Lassie and barking, but I guess there's some kind of theme where he thinks he's Lassie, warning America that bad people are coming or Timmy's fallen down a well or something. It's not until page two where Bob starts his real article, claiming that politicians are attacking the Constitution. While I have to agree that there's some real screwed up things going on in Washington right now, I think Bob really should get out of his basement and look around once in a while. Reality will shock him.
            First off, one might notice that the weather has been a bit weird lately. In my town, we suffered flooding last year worse than any on record. Homes that had never flooded were suddenly under water, destroyed. People were left without their most valued possession, lives ruined in one single, terrible night. Not for nothing, but those people have been and are being helped by an organization I know Bob loves, FEMA. That's right: the Federal Government is actually helping Americans who need it.
Later in the year, on Halloween, we had a freak snowstorm. Almost 30" in some parts of NJ. My parents were without power for nearly a week, because a tree branch was overloaded with ice and took down the power lines on their street. Now, we're being told that we may suffer a drought this summer. In 6 months, we've gone from record floods and snow to drought. How could this happen if the climate is not changing?
             Why am I talking about this? Maybe it's because Bob spends so much time railing on educators and "BS Hollywood movies" for trying to teach children that we only have one planet to live on, and we need to take care of it. Yes, buying fluorescent light bulbs will make a difference. Yes, planting trees will make a difference. I don't know why he can't see that, I know he can read. The facts (yes, Bob, facts. Not Fox, facts) are out there, in black and white, for anyone with enough sense to open their eyes and see it. You don't need fancy science to see that there are more tornadoes and hurricanes, more destructive storms, fires, and droughts than there have been in the past. All you need to do is open your eyes and see it.
              Moving on: we jump (literally. This is a bigger segue than his article) from climate change to the idea that the problems in this country are all caused by the politicians. They're the "big evil boogie men who are trying to destroy and gobble up our freedoms," right? Except, who controls the politicians, Bob? Who bankrolls their campaigns? Who spends millions on a SuperPAC that ensures they'll beat that recall election and continue to fight against unions and other groups that try to protect the rights of the middle class? Could it be the 1%, those wealthy "job creators" that seem to need tax breaks so much? The guys that are making record profits while unemployment soars?
               "We are told that prosperity and the desire to create and to build is mean and cruel and evil." Who told us this, Bob? Where, in America, does anyone believe this, except in your brain? Whoever said that is lying. Everyone in America wants to prosper. Everyone in America wants to create, we all want to build a better life. That's why we're here. But some people believe that once they achieve that better life, they need to protect it at all costs, even going so far as to deny it to others. They value greed and avarice over equality and prosperity. Instead of using their money to help others (you know, like Jesus said to), they use it to protect their position and ensure their own profit. They make "contributions" to politicians who then rewrite the laws making it harder for people who don't have money to prosper and create and build. You want to bark at someone, Bob, start barking at Wall Street. Start barking at the Koch brothers. Bark at Restore Our Future, American Bridge, and Americans for Prosperity. You complain about the symptom (politicians attacking our freedoms) and completely ignore the cause. Nobody wants a free ride, all they're asking for is a level playing field and a fair chance.

2012-01-25T06:02:00.000-08:00

A new rant from our good friend, Robert "Bob" Beierle. This one is a theme episode, starting off with a letter he "received" from a faithful Our Town reader, 8 year old Virginia. She's in the 4th grade, and even though her grammar and spelling aren't that great, she's perceptive enough to know how great Bob and Our Town is and how evil those people protesting Wall Street are. Her daddy calls them "free loading blasterds" and mommy and daddy fight with mommy's brother who is sleeping on their couch because the "fastest pigs" chased him out of the park he was camping in. Isn't she just the cutest?

Well, Bob goes on to explain to her about Never Never Land, a subject on which he is singularly qualified to speak, since he is the sole resident. He blathers on about how Never Never Land is actually Washington DC and that it is filled with Lost Boys who are led by Peter Pan. I'm not sure just who these people are allusions to, but I think John Boehner is supposed to be Peter Pan, and these guys and these guys must be the pirates he's talking about, since they're so intent on taking things that are valuable to us.

There's an entire paragraph here bashing the Occupy Wall Street protestors, though not directly. It's a fantastic example of passive aggression, really. He says that if we were living in "olden times," these "lazy, dumb and stupid" (but not redundant, no never that) protestors would have died off because of natural selection (this in the same paragraph that espouses creationism, no less). Since they are too lazy to hunt or scavenge for themselves, they rely on others to do it for them. Way to really showcase your intelligence, Bob. For the record, I'm rubber and you're glue, what you say bounces off me and sticks to you. Trying to keep the discourse at your level, hope it's working. Maybe you should turn off Fox News for a bit and actually read something about who OWS is and why they're protesting. You might find you actually have some things in common.

What kind of things, you ask? Well, there are three paragraphs here about how much you hate the government, how government stifles creativity and prevents innovation. Ironic that the examples you use (doctors curing diseases, advanced methods of communication, (can't forget ARPANET!) and high speed travel, also here) are great examples of how government has spent money to improve the lives of the people. Sure, many of those things were invented by private citizens, but they would be useless without the government funded development of the technology. But, hey, don't let me rain on your parade. You just keep on bitching about how horrible the government is and how evil everything they do is because they make you pay taxes (you do pay your taxes, don't you Bob? Wouldn't want anything bad to happen to you.)

Anyway, the point is, OWS is about frustration with the government as well. Despite what Fox News and Rush have told you, they don't want to institute a socialist government. They don't want to take all the money from Wall Street brokers. They don't even think that the wealthy should be paying for them to live. What they do want is a fair and equal government, one where having obscene amounts of money does not give you a greater voice than the working class. One where the people regulating our banking industry are not members of said industry. One where millionaires don't pay less taxes than people making $50k /year. And if a couple of the jerks on Wall Street who took our retirements and homes and gambled with them and lost, or the ones on K Street who facilitated it, or in the Federal Reserve who looked the other way and let it happen, gets prosecuted in the meantime (not one, as of this writing, BTW), that wouldn't be so bad either.

I'm sorry if you're against these things, Bob. I'm sorry if you can't understand how the system works and how broken it is. I'm sorry you're so angry that you will side against people trying to help you (I assume you're not a millionaire, but anything is possible) and make things a bit more equal for everyone, not just the wealthy. Please, Bob, for the love of reality, do a little research. Get a fact or two before you start ranting and raving. You're not helping anything by publishing this crap, you're only making people less informed and more angry. Either get a clue or go away.

2011-09-13T08:32:00.000-07:00

OUR TOWN? NOT MY TOWN.

Mr. Robert Beierle, of the ironically named Creative Insight, publisher of Our Town "magazine", this time you have gone too far. I've been quietly reading your tripe for months now, waiting to respond, building up an archive of your hateful and angry rants. Your slanders against our public officials, your whining and complaining about how difficult it is to be a white man in America, your claims that Christians are so persecuted in the US. I've bitten my tongue, because, really, if I respond to your awful claims, it legitimizes them, it lets you know that someone is actually reading your atrocious words. But I cannot, I will not, sit by as you co-opt the tragedy that was 9/11 and try to make it into yet another tale of how oppressed you are as a white Christian American. I will not.

As you say, "the truth of 9/11 is what we saw. Terrorists of Muslim faith hijacked planes, flew them into the twin towers, into the Pentagon..." This happened. We all saw it. It may be the only piece of truth in your editorial of September 8, 2011. You go on to blame Hollywood, progressives, liberals, President Obama (although you never name him directly, I can only assume that when you say "our President", you mean him and not Bush), the news media, and "elitists", whoever they are, for changing the history of the day and telling us not to blame every Muslim we come across for the act of 19 individuals. You have so much anger and fear of Muslims that you seem unable to accept that not every Muslim in the world wants to kill Americans. Worst of all, you wrap yourself in the American flag and point the finger at everyone else and claim that they're spitting on the memories of the people who died that day by not hating every Muslim on Earth.

Here's the thing, Bob: I don't know what you're talking about. As I recall, the tenth anniversary of 9/11 had plenty of replays of the planes hitting the towers. Yet you claim the news media will not show those images. If saw it once on Sunday, I saw it a dozen times. You claim that the "powers that be" refuse to call the terrorists Muslim or Islamic, yet that was all the discussion for most of last week. You even claim that the community center (not a mosque) that the Cordoba Initiative wants to build 1/10 of a mile from the site is funded by tax dollars. (It's not, for the record.) Who's rewriting history now, Bob?

You talk about how "Our President... felt it necessary to apologize to different leaders." Not sure who or what you're talking about here, Bob, but I do seem to recall President Bush having Taliban leaders at the White House. And since we're talking about rewriting the history of 9/11, who exactly was it that led the country to believe that Saddam Houssein was responsible for the attacks, and that's why we needed to fight a war in Iraq? Oh, right. (That link, BTW, is the Christian Science Monitor. I know you won't question them, right Bob, because after all, they're Christians, and not liberal elitist media types.)

You mention that the media and other news outlets refuse to play the footage of the towers from 9/11. You rail on that instead of calling them terrorists they're "Islamic freedom fighters" and it was a "man caused disaster." I'm not really sure what you're reading, Bob, but when I search for those terms in relation to 9/11, the word terrorist inevitably comes along with it. In fact, the phrase "freedom fighter" seems to be more often used to describe the people who ran into the towers or helped bring down United 93 than it does for the men who hijacked the planes. The only place I seem to find "man caused disaster" is from reactionary publications. It might be time to broaden your reading material.

Finally, Bob, I'd like to point out a part of 9/11 history you missed, a little bit of rewriting you did on your own. Remember what Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said, shortly after 9/11? Remember how they blamed it all on homosexuals and the liberals and America "throwing God out?" I know you do, and I'm willing to bet you agree with them. Who's really rewriting the history of 9/11? The reality is, this event has been politicized from day one, and will continue to be as long as we allow it. So I'm drawing a line in the sand, Bob, and telling you: stop it. Right now. No more. It's gone far enough, and I'm sick of it. You will not spread your lies and hate under the banner of patriotism anymore. I may not be able to stand up to Fox News or Rush Limbaugh, but I will stand up to you.