Islam

Hagerstown Mayor Bob Bruchey is an idiot

Hagerstown Mayor Bob Bruchey posted a comment on Facebook that implied the mayor of London was a terrorist.

The mayor of London is Sadiq Khan, born to Pakistani emigrants in Tooting, South London. He is also a Sunni Muslim.

Mayor Bruchey is suggesting that since Mayor Khan is a Muslim, he’s a terrorist. What an idiotic thing to believe, let alone post publicly on social media. Only a microscopic fraction of Muslims are terrorists. Considering there are over 1.5 billion Muslims in the world. If Mayor Bruchey was correct and every one of those Muslims was also a terrorist, by now the planet would be a smoking hunk of rock.

To imply every Muslim is a terrorist is like implying every Christian goes to funerals of U.S. service members and holds signs that say, “GOD HATES FAGS.” It would be an absurd thing to suggest. Absurd and stupid.

The position of mayor in Hagerstown is honorary

Hagerstown’s City Council wields all the power in city government. The Hagerstown mayor is more of an honorary position. What happens then when the mayor is someone without honor? To post a comment on social media implying Muslims are terrorists is a very stupid and dishonorable thing to do.

Bob Bruchey lacks good customer service skills

Those of us who live in Hagerstown are Mayor Bruchey’s constituents. Another way of looking at it is we are his customers. I know for a fact some Hagerstown residents practice Islam. To post such an insulting and inflammatory comment on social media suggests at the very least, our major has no customer service skills.

Speaking of customer service, when Mayor Bruchey isn’t representing the people of Hagerstown or posting stupid comments on Facebook, he works at Hagerstown Ford as the Director of Sales. We’ve purchased three cars at Hagerstown Ford.

After Bruchey’s stupid remark about Muslims, we won’t be buying a fourth vehicle at Hagerstown Ford. When it comes time to buy another vehicle and if we decide to buy another Ford, we’ll go to Frederick to buy it before we spend another dime at Hagerstown Ford.

I have been blocked by Steve Shives

I’ve joined thousands of other Twitter users and I’ve been blocked by Steve Shives. Who’s Steve Shives? He’s a guy who lives in nearby Sharpsburg, Maryland and maintains a YouTube channel dedicated to social justice, feminism, and atheism.

He’s pretty famous for blocking people on Twitter. Evidently, he has a bot that blocks people based on who else they follow on Twitter.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, block bots are evil, dumb, and I hate them.

Back before Steve was on YouTube, I considered him an e-friend. We both lived here in the Hagerstown area, we both had blogs, and we both shared a dislike for our local newspaper, The Herald-Mail. We were also very similar in our political views until we weren’t.

I was a fan of Steve’s writing on his blog, Steve Likes to Curse. It was a daily read for me. Although the site is still up, he no longer writes blog posts. That’s too bad. I think he is a good writer. He probably writes scripts for YouTube, but listening to someone’s videos is not the same as reading someone’s written words. And to be honest, I don’t like Steve’s videos.

Here’s a recent video of his:

Steve Shives is such a polarizing figure on YouTube that he is often the subject of other YouTube creators. A good many YouTubers make videos about Steve Shives and the things he says. Some of them are quite funny.

I started having problems with Steve and his opinions even before he left LiveJournal for YouTube. Mostly it had to do with his inconsistency of atheism. Even though he gave the impression he was an atheist, when he and his wife married, they married in a local church. I know this because I saw the photos in The Herald-Mail. What kind of atheist gets married in a church?

That threw up a red flag for me.

And then there was Steve’s defense of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. Atheist Steve was a vocal defender of building it. What kind of atheist supports building religious structures for any religious group? Here are some of the posts he wrote about the topic seven years ago:

If you can get through the above posts about the Ground Zero Mosque, give the following post a read and look at the inconsistencies. In it, Atheist Steve writes about a local church, the Emmanuel Baptist church spending an estimated $7 million on a new sanctuary and classrooms for a fundamentalist Christian private school.

The Herald-Mail gives free publicity to a misogynist church

I also found the title of the above post to be a little silly. How can you call any Christian church misogynist when there’s such a thing as Islam? Islam is the apex predator of misogyny. It’s not even close.

How can an atheist defend an Islamic group building a religious center, but criticize a Christian church for building a new sanctuary and new classrooms? Shouldn’t atheists be consistent in standing up against all religious groups?

And that’s when the wheels fell off for me with Steve Shives. He was a pro-Islam, anti-Christian atheist who when it came time to marry the love of his life, got married in a Christian church.

In comparison, when my wife and I got married nearly twenty years ago, we got married in the courthouse, like the honest, consistent atheists that we are.

Confederate monuments are the ultimate participation trophies

One of the things I’d like to see in my lifetime is the removal of every single Confederate monument displayed on public land. These monuments are the ultimate in participation trophies.

The people these statues attempt to glorify took up arms against the United States of America. They were also resoundingly beaten. The Confederates were forced to surrender in defeat because they were beaten into submission on the battlefield.

The Confederates don’t deserve statues or monuments. They didn’t earn them. Statues and monuments are for winners. Statues and monuments are for those who fought for what was right and just.

The Confederates didn’t do that. They fought so people could continue to own other people. They fought for one of the most revolting and disgusting reasons people can fight other people for: the continuation of slavery.

Just because you participate in something doesn’t mean you deserve a trophy, or in the case of the Civil War, a monument.

Robert E. Lee doesn’t deserve a statue displayed on public land. He was a traitor. He resigned his commission in the United States Army and took up arms against the United States. He was personally responsible for the death of thousands of Americans. He no more deserves a statue displayed for the purpose of memorization then does Osama bin laden.

Confederate monuments are the ultimate participation trophies - Bent Corner — Robert E. Lee and Osama bin laden

Robert E. Lee and Osama bin laden had a lot of common. They both sent men to kill Americans. Osama bin laden killed Americans in the name of Islam. Robert E. Lee killed Americans in the name of extending the institution of slavery.

I’d like to see each and every Confederate statue gathered up and dumped in the middle of the ocean. It’s what they did with Osama bin laden’s body. It strikes me as a fitting end for all the Confederate participation trophies currently littering our country.

The Ariana Grande Wacky Package sticker

I bought a pack of 2017 Wacky Packages 50th Anniversary stickers today at Target. Don’t judge. I went through them when I got home and when I saw the one featuring pop singer Ariana Grande on Starbucks’ inspired coffee cup, I thought Topps, the publisher of Wacky Packages, probably wishes they could have a do over.

How were they supposed to know that Islamists would use an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England to commit an act of terror?

At the very least, whoever approved this sticker probably wishes the words “More bang bang for your buck” weren’t included on the sticker. Twenty-three people were killed as a result of an improvised bomb detonated by a British-Muslim terrorist.

The sticker is supposed to be a play on the word Grande, the singer’s last name and the word Starbucks insists on using to indicate large cup of coffee.

Islamist terror attack in London kills seven, injures 48

Three Islamists killed seven people and wounded another 48 last night in England’s capital city. The attack involved ramming a fast-moving vehicle into pedestrians on the London Bridge.

The three Islamists then left their vehicle. All three were wearing what turned out to be fake suicide vests. They then began stabbing people in nearby bars and restaurants.Read More

Trump bans citizens from seven countries from entering U.S.

President Donald Trump is unique from past presidents in that he seems to keep his campaign promises. I’m still waiting for President Obama to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

Our new commander in chief signed an executive order that bars citizens of seven countries from entering the United States. This ban will remain in effect for the next 90 days.

These seven countries are:

Iran
Iraq
Syria
Sudan
Libya
Yemen
Somalia

The Department of Homeland Security classified these countries as “countries of concern.” President Obama signed this classification into law on December 18, 2015, as part of the Omnibus Appropriations Act of FY2016.

This list was an augmentation to an earlier list of countries contained in the Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015. It added the countries of Libya, Somalia, and Yemen.

This temporary travel ban is being referred to in the media as Trump’s Muslim ban. That’s not correct. It was the Obama administration that crafted this list. Were countries added to this list because they have a majority of people who practice Islam? It wouldn’t appear so. There are other countries with far more Muslim people that didn’t make this list.

If I wanted to ban Muslims from traveling to the United States, I’d include the most populated Islamic countries to this list.

I don’t care if folks from these seven countries cannot come to the United States. Not once in my life have I wished my community had more Iranians or Yemenis in it.

Traveling to the United States is a privilege, not a right.

Even if the goal of the Obama administration’s list was to curtail Muslims from coming to the United States, I couldn’t care less. Not really. The religion you practice is a choice. Nobody is born Muslim. A person’s DNA does not decide what religion they practice. Religion is always a choice. People are no more born Muslim than they are born Pentecostal, Mormon, or Southern Baptist.

Religion, or the lack thereof, is always a matter of personal choice. It’s about time we stop pretending otherwise.

The First Amendment to our Constitution includes the words, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

I’m not a lawyer, but I have watched many episodes of Judge Judy. What these words in the Constitution mean to me is that you’re free to practice whatever kooky religion you wish without the government stepping in and endorsing it or condemning it. The government will not respect your chosen religion. The government will not prohibit your chosen religion.

That sounds swell to me.

I don’t support Donald Trump. I don’t like Donald Trump. I didn’t vote for Donald Trump. I reluctantly voted for Hillary Clinton. Is Donald Trump my president? According to the U.S. Constitution, yes he is.