Working at various casinos around the country, I occasionally landed in tribal areas. Many of them are working hard to improve their communities while hanging onto their past. For some tribes, it is already too late.

I have never been to Hopi territory nor do I know if they even have a casino to bring some money into the community. That said, when I heard this story about the young folks there trying to preserve their language, it struck a chord.

And to hell with all those bastards who just want people to conform and lose their identity.

Patrick Swayze, Farrah Fawcett and John Hughes died and Orly Taitz, Dick Cheney and that idiot who wrote those Twilight books didn’t.

Chez Pazienza analyzes the politics and pop culture of 2009 in a nutshell:

How can I properly categorize the various virulent strains of blatant ridiculousness we’ve been throttled by as a culture? What makes Sarah Palin more balls-out fucking stupid than Glenn Beck, or either of them more shamefully, cartoonishly insane than Michele Bachmann or the Teabagging Army?

Read here.

“I know that public scrutiny will simplify this matter and act as a check against anyone’s need to be overly vindictive, aggressive or malicious, not that Bristol would ever be that way, nor that I would. But her mother is powerful, politically ambitious and has a reputation for being extremely vindictive. So, I think a public case might go a long way in reducing Sarah Palin’s instinct to attack.”

– Levi Johnston, in his affidavit

God help me, but I do actually like this kid Levi. In a world full of people grasping for fame, he just kind of fell into it and is making the most of it. And now that the Palin family is trying to cut him off from his son, he’s fighting back. Not for sole custody, but for joint custody, a chance at being in his kid’s life, something Sarah “Family Values” Palin doesn’t seem to want.

Don’t get me wrong, he may be an ignorant racist from the backwoods, but if even he is turned off by Palin, the rest of the angry conservatives might want to be taking notes as to why.

I heard this story about Sam, a kid from Elkhart, IN the other day. He’s an aspiring musician in a town broken by the recession. Already he had few options. Being the son of undocumented immigrants, he has no way of getting into college.

I remember hearing his story on Latino USA awhile back. Here are part one and part two of his story.

There’s a lot wrong in this country, from racism to poverty to “compassionate conservatism”. How we treat those trying to make their way in this country outside the narrow confines of the bigoted rules we have is one of those things.

Best of luck Sam.

Today’s Fresh Air was a pretty good one. As part of their best-of’s they do at the end of every year, today’s episode had the zany Russell Brand, Jane Lynch, and a cool interview with Dennis Brutus, who passed away last week.

I think Hitchens overdoes it in his hatred of religion (not that he’s necessarily wrong on some points, but I digress) though he hits it on the head in this article about the collective stupidity called “airline security”.

This slideshow needs to be viewed if just for the following quote:

“Sarah Palin has always made about as much sense as opening up a rib joint next to a mosque.”

– Michael Arceneaux

Rachel interviewed Bruce Schneier yesterday to get his thoughts on security and the stupid ways we pretend to go about it.

His thoughts on it.

Then go read his blog if you haven’t already been doing so.