Monday, June 30, 2014

HOBBLE

BOYCOTT HOBBY LOBBY AND ALL CORPORATIONS THAT DENY REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH CARE RIGHTS TO WOMEN!

Hobbied


There are no words to describe the noxiousness of the five "conservative" justices on the Supreme Court.  Keep electing Republican presidents that nominate these malignant decision- makers to the court with Republicans in the Senate who consent to them and these are the decisions you will get.  The Hobby Lobby decision will now allow employers in on your most personal health care decisions.


You will get a Citizens United and McCutcheon v. FEC decisions buying up the political process by billionaires staggeringly iterating corporations are people, you will get women's health care patients getting hurt or killed at clinics by anti-choice religious fanatics, you will get unions obliterated and you may even make abortion illegal again depending on the state so women can return to coat hanger abortions and then die.  The rich will never suffer but poor women having unwanted or malformed pregnancies with no available parental support for them wil.  Conservatives wax vaporous when they rail against using taxpayer money to pay for support of the poor.  They say “let em die.”  I say, good, let conservatives pay!

People die with these malevolent decisions handed down by a reactionary Court, they die and the conservatives on the Court do not give a damn! It's as simple as that!

It is why, no question, Democrats need to be elected everywhere if you care about a dying nation!

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Mass. abortion clinic buffer zone law struck down -- TO LIFE?

ANOTHER BIG REASON WHY THE DEMOCRATS MUST KEEP THE SENATE, TAKE BACK THE HOUSE AND KEEP THE PRESIDENCY.  IF THIS DOES NOT PERSUADE YOU NOTHING WILL!

I paste the SCOTUS decision referenced above here or below.

Our country has gone reactionary insane.

Those so called "counseling" parameters the court talks about in yet another rancid decision striking down the 35 foot buffer zone for protesters at women's clinics were put in force by the Mass legislature for a reason -- so people will not KILL those providing safe treatment for women receiving reproductive care!

We in Massachusetts have had two clinic murders of full term human beings simply doing their job. The right wing is a violent part of our nation NOT a nice counseling body. They invade personal space of women making personal decisions. They are brutal, their signs are brutal and their speech is not a sweet dialogue. It is a screaming monologue.

Right wing anti choice speech is anything but gentle counseling it is hostile and intimating and more than a few times has lead to violence. This is yet another terrible political right wing SCOTUS decision based on so called "free speech" not decided on the merits not even on a state's rights issue of the ability of a state to regulate protest for safety at clinics.
If you do not like abortion by all means do not have one!!

To the Court: Forgive them for they know not what they do. I am waiting for the next right wing murderer to hurt those providing the most personal of medical services because it IS STILL LEGAL to provide those services at least for the next minute and one half.

The court seems to want to regress to the 1950's when women died from back alley abortions or committed suicide when they found out they were pregnant. Respectfully, the so called "conservative" justices are one thing and that is right wing political. Stare decisis? I think not.

The fact that the progressives on the Court joined them in this decision is mind numbing unbelievable. The Court should blame itself when the next violence to an innocent employee or patient at a clinic takes place! This is a despicable decision. Obviously, the Court rendering this decision cares little for life!

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/06/26/supreme-court-throws-out-massachusetts-abortion-clinic-buffer-zone-law/VTTYHYD8oiVJJNreAPyKAN/story.html?p1=ArticleTab_Article_

A Time to Choose

Elect Democrats and sign them up across the nation.  Do NOT let Republicans
with their Tea Party violent fringe that suppresses the vote take the Senate!!


I post the web page for NARAL  here and below for more info.




NBC to Accept Ads for Obvious Child

NBC says it will accept ads for the film Obvious Child as submitted, including the word "abortion."

See http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/ for details.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Mississippi Avoids Madness


Even when Republican Tea Baggers win a few they are not where this nation ideologically is.  While many certainly call themselves conservative they are not a militia mad Cliven Bundy fanatical right wing fascist-like Ku Klux Klan electorate.

In general, this nation is center sometimes center left and sometimes center right.  When a question was posed to the Tea Bagger McDaniel in his run for the Senate against longtime-establishment Republican Cochran if a devastating storm like Katrina were to hit again would you accept federal help.  McDaniel actually said “I do not know I’d have to look into it” which is political double speak that means NO.  No? You would not accept aid for the victims of a catastrophic hurricane in your state? Are you kidding me?

It was, though, the answer a Bagger should give because that is exactly what they are about. They are about, as Grover Norquist, the conservative anti-government poster boy, said government should be so small one can sink it in the bathtub. 

The reality is when disaster hits the Federal government, we have learned from our collective historical experience, should play an important role.  Government is the only entity that has the size, organizational resources and the ability to help with the funding to deal with massive catastrophes to our nation.  Whether it is help with healthcare or help to repair tornado devastated communities government supplying help NOT for a hand out but for a helping hand up, is in Goldwateresque prose, no vice but a virtue.  FDR knew as all Democrats in our era now know that is truth.

No matter how much Republicans Rove-like election fraud steals elections Republicans will NOT prevail.  Vigilance and voting is what will ultimately defeat Tea Baggers and Republicans throughout the nation whose ideology is sink or swim.  If one has no health insurance too bad, they say, "let him die." This nation, as rugged individualistic as its political mantra has been, still has a heart and each one of us knows that no one is immune from catastrophe whether an economically Wall Street driven crash destroying jobs or catastrophic illness destroying lives. No one is completely safe.

Tea Bagger Republicans left their hearts in the arctic polar vortex.  A nation needs empathy for others’ hurt because, quoting Bette Davis "old age ain't for sissies." She also said ... hold on to your hats; it may be a bumpy ride” and we know it may.  Good fortune can turn in a sour second.  

Thank you, indeed, President Roosevelt, for Social Security. Where would the middle class and the recent poor be without it?  Many Tea Baggers can and do say that too then they step on their own toes and vote a Republican in to eradicate all safety nets.  Do not let them.  When we are in trouble we need help, yes, – often government help – when our maladies are big enough to warrant it and its help that should be there when we need it to help us all!

REGISTER TO VOTE DEMOCRATS, INDEPENDENTS AND DEMOCRATIC LEANING OPPOSITION PARTY OTHERS.  ESPECIALLY REGISTER WOMEN, HISPANICS AND OTHER MINORITIES, THE ELDERLY AND THE DISABLED ACROSS THE NATION.  DO IT AS IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDS UPON IT BECAUSE IT, IN FACT, DOES!

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

A Happy Ending

This is an amazing video. I post it here and below. STICK with it if you can as it has a MOST happy ending. It will warm your heart.

I sobbed and then I cheered. I wanted to hold that rescued pup in my arms and never let go as he gets a transformation by wonderful humans from certain death to life. The organization Hope for Paws needs your help. They restore my faith in humanity while the bestial humans who left this pup on the street to die earn my wrath. I would love to see these sub-humans who left a pup abandoned to certain death on the street prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Watch and see what empathy and kindness human beings can deliver. It made me so happy to see what goodness there is still left in us who call ourselves human but when the evil in us triumphs it stops my heart.

The pup WILL have a good life and Hope for Paws will see to it that he does. I wish I could adopt him but I cannot so I hope that many will contribute to this wonderful organization, adopt and give a great life to an abandoned pup if you can. I also hope Hope for Paws gives us updates on Theo's condition and when he is adopted I hope it monitors where he is placed and how he is treated. I trust they will find him a good home!!

Please, Hope for Paws, give him many hugs for me!

Forward this to anyone you choose.

 
 

Monday, June 23, 2014

Election Rigging, Dark Money in Cantor's "Upset" Loss to Koch Stealth Candidate


In case you have not seen this article in TruthOut.org.  It is exactly why Democrats must be registered in every state and why they must win.  Monitor fraud i.e. Republican election fraud everywhere!

Sunday, 22 June 2014 00:00
By Ben-Zion Ptashnik and Victoria Collier, Truthout | News Analysis

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 5, 2013. Cantor will resign as majority leader within weeks, according to leadership aides a day after he was defeated in the 2014 primary election by David Brat. (Photo: Christopher Gregory / The New York Times)House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 5, 2013. Cantor will resign as majority leader within weeks, according to leadership aides a day after he was defeated in the 2014 primary election by David Brat. (Photo: Christopher Gregory / The New York Times)
November's political races will feature an all-out battle for control of the US Senate. Eric Cantor's "upset" Virginia primary defeat raises two integrity issues barely covered in the media that are red flags for those concerned about vote manipulations.

Political races this November will feature an all-out battle for control of the US Senate. The "upset" Virginia primary defeat of Eric Cantor raised two critical election integrity issues that few in the mainstream media have covered, but which should set up serious red flags for those concerned about manipulations of the 2014 and 2016 elections.

The first alarm is the hidden connection that Professor David Brat's victory had to the Koch Brothers dark money network: hundreds of millions of dollars in "charitable contributions" to inoculate American academic institutions and media with extremist libertarian philosophy, promoting the Ayn Randian culture of greed while boosting radical Tea Party candidates. The net effect has been to undermine the civility of American politics, divide the Republican Party, stalemate Congress and hobble government institutions.

Most pundits reflecting on the Virginia race have myopically ignored the money-in-politics corruption, because outwardly, Cantor outspent Brat by a huge margin. Instead they focused analysis on immigration issues, intraparty Republican division, Cantor's complacency as a candidate, or the possibility of Democrats in the open primary crossing over to vote for his radical opponent.

David Brat was not just any economics professor. He was director of Randolph-Macon's Moral Foundations of Capitalism program, a curriculum underwritten by John Allison's BB&T Bank's charitable foundation. Allison is on the Board of Directors of the Ayn Rand Institute, which means Rand's thousand-page ode to antigovernment libertarian capitalism, Atlas Shrugged, is usually included in the curriculum. Allison is also the CEO of the Cato Institute, the Koch-funded, far-right think tank working closely with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to set back the social reform and safety net programs of the 20th century.
ALEC has promoted legislation for voter suppression and antilabor laws, and its legislative members have pushed extreme gerrymandering in states such as Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan.

"The virtual vote count can be manipulated in total secrecy. By means of proprietary, corporate-owned software, just one programmer could steal hundreds, thousands, potentially even millions of votes with the stroke of a key. It's the electoral equivalent of a drone strike."

Meanwhile Koch Industries and related front charities are engaged heavily in financial "sponsorship" of right-wing radio talk jocks who push climate change denial and play a heavy-handed role in supporting Koch-backed political candidates. A number of these, particularly Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin, vigorously boosted Brat's campaign while denigrating Cantor. Combined, these factors prove that Brat is not just a benign professor who luckily caught the Republican House Leader offguard; he is a construct and pawn of Koch industries' deliberate and methodical transformation of the Republican Party and American democracy.

Computerized Election Rigging - the "Hidden" Voter Suppression

The Virginia primary not only displays the nefarious role of dark money in promoting extremism, it also raises yet again the question of vote rigging - specifically the proven vulnerability to error and insider manipulation of the computers that register and tabulate our votes.

Brat won by 7,000 votes. But at least 37,000 votes in Virginia district 7 were cast on ballotless Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines, providing no ability to recount, audit, or verify that these votes were counted as cast. Seventeen states use the same DRE technology in at least some of their districts.

Nationwide, electronic voting machines are programmed on proprietary software that cannot be publicly examined, and sold to voting districts by private corporations known to have lied to public officials, employed convicted felons, and maintain ties to right wing partisan and religious extremists.

As explained in the 2012 Harper's Magazine article, "How to Rig an Election":
"The virtual vote count can be manipulated in total secrecy. By means of proprietary, corporate-owned software, just one programmer could steal hundreds, thousands, potentially even millions of votes with the stroke of a key. It's the electoral equivalent of a drone strike."
The Virginia primary brings to the foreground how likely it may be that, if all else fails, this cabal of right-wing libertarian-anarchists could hack the voting machinery, as has been suspected in a number of recent elections. A prime example is the evident manipulation of the voting technology in the 2010 Democratic primary race in South Carolina.
In that remarkable election, Alvin Greene - an unemployed, often incoherent man facing obscenity charges - became the Democratic candidate for the US Senate. As described by election watchdog VoterGA, Greene ran absolutely no campaign; no debates or fundraisers, and did not even deploy a yard sign, yet he mysteriously - miraculously - beat former National Guard Colonel, judge, and four-term state legislator Vic Rawl, by a stunning 18 percent margin. This ensured the landslide victory in November of Tea Party Republican and fundamentalist Christian, Jim DeMint.

Voters reported that "defective" Touch Screen machines "flipped" votes in the primary to Greene in a number of SC voting jurisdictions. Half of South Carolina's counties reported large disparities between absentee ballot counts and those tallied by the suspect machines on election day. According to VoterGA, In 20 out of 24 SC counties, Rawl won the verifiable absentee vote tally but lost to Greene on the total computerized counts - statistically a highly improbable occurrence.

Greene declined to explain where he got the $10,400 needed to file as a candidate and denied that he was a GOP plant.

Immediately after the story of his controversial election broke again into the mainstream media, Jim DeMint abruptly resigned his Senate seat in December of 2012 and was hired to head up the Koch-backed rightist Heritage Foundation. Filmmaker Jason Smith made DeMint's scandalous 2010 election subject of an in-depth documentary on computerized election fraud, I Voted?
Why Has Nothing Been Done to Safeguard Our Elections?

For decades, democracy activists have sounded the alarm on the dangerous spread of e-voting systems through dozens of books and films, and thousands of articles. The growing attention certainly has raised the risk to would-be criminals, and may have entirely thwarted some rigging attempts (in 2012, legal action and even counter-hacking was credited with preventing the stealing of the presidential race in Ohio). Unfortunately, during the quiet interim between elections, this issue falls back into obscurity.

Much of the blame falls on the media, both mainstream and alternative. When election "upsets" and anomalies occur - such as Cantor's race in Virginia - media pundits and analysts engage in whatever contortions are necessary to rationalize and explain the outcome. Rarely do they question the faulty and vulnerable technology, even in shocking turnarounds that defy polling gravity.

As noted by Election Integrity journalist, Brad Friedman: "Three days ago, The Washington Post reported that Cantor's internal polling showed him 34 points ahead of Brat. Tonight, it's a given among the pundit class, that those numbers were simply wrong, and tonight's completely unverified computer-reported results are correct, showing Cantor losing instead by more than 11 points."

Progressive media has largely ignored the evidence that recent election "upsets" have favored extreme right-wing candidates so consistently that some Election Integrity activists have coined the phenomenon, the "red shift."
Alvin Greene's glaring election fraud was certainly not the first example. In 2002, the GOP regained control of the US Senate with the crucial defeat of popular Georgian Democratic Senator, Max Cleland, a Silver Star recipient who lost three limbs in Vietnam. Early polls had given him a solid lead over his Republican opponent, Saxby Chambliss, who was supported by the Christian right and the NRA. Two days before the election, a Zogby poll gave Chambliss a one-point lead among likely voters, while the Atlanta Journal - Constitution reported that Cleland maintained a three-point advantage.
Cleland lost by seven points; a "red shift" of 10 points.

However, just prior to the election, Diebold Voting Machine employees had applied a mysterious, uncertified software "patch" to 5,000 voting machines that Georgia had purchased in May. Diebold consultant and whistleblower, Chris Hood, later confessed: "We were told that it was intended to fix the clock in the system, which it didn't do. The curious thing is the very swift, covert way this was done . . . It was an unauthorized patch, and they were trying to keep it secret from the state . . . We were told not to talk to county personnel about it."

Two years later, John Kerry lost his 2004 presidential bid in Ohio; a key swing state crucial to George Bush's reelection. A blitz of right-wing voter suppression and dirty tricks tactics were reported by thousands of voters, including voting machine anomalies and "flipped" votes. The Republican secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, a fundamentalist Christian who also served as cochair of Ohio's Committee to Re-Elect George W. Bush (yes, you just read that), oversaw the controversial election.

Four years later, Ohio attorney (and former Republican) Cliff Arnebeck began gathering evidence to file a racketeering claim against Karl Rove, which included the charge that Rove's computer operatives had masterminded the theft of the 2004 election. Specifically, the investigation focused on the unusual computer architecture of election night, designed by top GOP tech-guru (and zealous anti-abortion Christian) Michael Connell. It was discovered that this system funneled electronic vote data to the servers of a right-wing, Rove-connected company in Tennessee, which could have tampered with results before displaying them on the Ohio Secretary of State's website. Connell was fighting Arnebeck's subpoena to testify in open court against Rove, when he was killed in the crash of his single-engine Piper Saratoga he was piloting alone.

Lou Harris, long regarded as the father of modern political polling, stated: "Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen."

John Kerry showed an insurmountable lead in exit polling late on Election Day. Yet the final vote tallies in 30 states deviated widely from the polls, with discrepancies favoring George W. Bush in all but nine. Some of the greatest disparities were concentrated in Ohio; in one precinct, exit polls indicated that Kerry should have received 67 percent of the vote, but the certified tally gave him only 38 percent. The odds of such an unexpected outcome occurring only as a result of sampling error are 1 in 867,205,553.

Other victories that contradicted the polls, where electronic vote rigging has been suspected, include Chuck Hagel's US Senate 1996 win in Nebraska, where it was discovered that Hagel had not disclosed his prior role as chairman of ES&S, the voting machine company that counted his own votes.

Computer manipulations triggered George W Bush's first win in 2000, where programmed purging of voter rolls was topped off by a rogue memory card in Volusia County, Florida. At midnight, the card mysteriously registered 16,000 "negative" votes for Al Gore, allowing Bush's cousin at Fox News to call the election for him at the order of Governor Jeb Bush.

Where Do We Go From Here?

We can only speculate about the possibility of computerized rigging in the Virginia Republican primary - or in any election - but it would be insane not to embrace the truly overwhelming evidence that our system of voting is flawed and ripe for fraud and abuse by anyone with access - as proven by Argonne National Labs recent $26 hack.

We must immediately stop using DRE voting systems that do not even afford the ability of a recount or audit. That is the very least we can do to somewhat safeguard important upcoming elections - but it is not enough. In European countries, election technology that offers no public transparency has been outlawed. A fully transparent paper-based system, counted in public on election night, is internationally considered the Gold Standard of democratic elections.

As November approaches, American voters still lack the ability to know with certainty who wins any given race, or the true results of ballot initiatives and referenda affecting some of the most vital issues of our day.

Election Integrity remains a dangerously overlooked vulnerability in the overall populist and progressive strategy. Democracy activists must take the steps necessary to implement real reform and safeguard future elections.

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

REGISTER DEMOCRATS IN EVERY STATE IN THE NATION AND MONITOR EVERY ELECTION FOR TRUE FRAUD I.E. REPUBLICAN FRAUD.

Socked


I never cared one wit about soccer and surely never called it football.  The Patriots were football but soccer was not a part of my life until it was one week ago.  I am now in love with that sport and seduced by the nationalistic feeling it engenders.  I usually eschew extreme nationalism and American exceptionalism as they are not part of my repertoire of thought.  I reject it for more intellectually careful well thought out politics and reject the often fascistic brutality that is part of the essence of extreme nationalism.
 
But I caught the FIFA World Cup soccer fever and built my Sunday around a game between the US and Portugal.  Portugal tied it in the last second and I thought I got hit by a truck as I watched the American team snatch a defeat-like tie from the hands of victory.  I actually cried.  I was at first sad and then childlike angry that the USA lost-like tie.

I do not like mindless, uncritical nationalism the kind where one accepts national behavior no matter who it hurts.  I am Nuremberg wary and careful to laud policy I think humane and decry policy I think viciously brutal.  But on this day I surprised myself.  I cried at the national anthem, I cried at the enthusiastic rooting of the USA supportive crowd and I cried when America tied.  It would have been a USA come-from-behind win that was not to be.  My disappointment was palpable.

So, is it just a silly game or was it something more?  I decided it meant something more.  I am tired of America losing; I am tired of the endless national discord, disputed foreign policy and wars that make things worse; that kill so many or maim them for life so that others can buy oil and make the oil barons and their political lackeys very rich.  I am tired of America getting kicked in the teeth; I am tired of hearing the curse of other nations when so many here have paid so much for policy that was so brutally bad over there. 
 
I watched the ceremonies during the Normandy remembrance when we were blessed and loved by the nations we lifted up from the jackboot of tyranny; when we saved the masses from a world that went viciously insane.  My father, a Republican at heart, loved FDR.  It was to be the only thing political upon which he and I agreed.  Though I never knew that president I loved him too.  I went to Hyde Park, and stood at his, Eleanor and their dog Fala’s graves and cried.  I want an America like that once again.  I want us to stand for something and not have to question the veracity of politicos who never served a day in their life sending men and women to their deaths based on lies.  I want an FDR again, I want a humane nation again, I want to feel pride about my nation again which stood then for what was moral, good and right.

I let FIFA World Cup Soccer allow me the privilege of fervent nationalism and cheered my country on wanting it to win.  I want it to win again and I want other nations to love us again.  I want to return to a WWII afterglow when it seemed all things were possible and most everything good was made in America.  I want things to be made in America again. 

But it felt like we lost today yet again.  The FIFA World Cup game was a metaphor allowing me to recapture a patriotism that lies just beneath the surface waiting for the next FDR to free us and the world to love us once more.  I want us to win again one more time before my own generation comes to its end.


Friday, June 20, 2014

Jon Stewart repairing the gay away!

The June 17, 2014 episode of the magnificent Jon Stewart is here or pasted below. It is absolutely hysterical and brilliant but a warning there is a bit of an ick factor.  Still worth watching for how he satirizes the idiotic gay reparative religious wacko therapy "cure" for homosexuality as the right wingnut morons own the ick.  If you easily blush then beware. Stewart reached a new height of satire that might have made even Lenny Bruce blush but be oh so jealous of the very talented great Jon Stewart!


http://thedailyshow.cc.com/full-episodes/6vda7v/june-17--2014---daniel-schulman

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Cheney and the Neo Con CONS


KUDOS to Megyn Kelly of Fox News someone with whom I usually do not agree but on this she went out on a limb to state FACT to the over inflated murderer Dick Cheney and his neocon gang. Bush rode along with his circus. SHAME ON ALL OF THEM.  They are war criminals and they know it. How dare he say what he did against  president Obama that inherited this vile Iraq debacle that those sickening mendacious horses posteriors that were the Neo CONS, emphasis on CON,  perpetrated.

 If hell exists he and they should get a free pass to it.

Make sure this never happens again by electing Democrats across the board who will make sure it never does!

Megyn Kelly Totally Owns Dick Cheney Over His Terrible Iraq Track Record

 | By Jack Mirkinson
Posted: 06/19/2014 7:24 am EDT Updated: 1 hour ago

Fox News' Megyn Kelly mercilessly confronted former Vice President Dick Cheney on her Wednesday show about his track record in Iraq. Posted here and below.

After quoting Cheney's recent op-ed on the war, in which he said of President Obama, “Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many,” she put this scorcher of a question to him:
"Time and time again, history has proven that you got it wrong as well in Iraq, sir. You said there was no doubt Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. You said we would be greeted as liberators. You said the insurgency was in its last throes back in 2005, and you said that after our intervention, extremists would have to 'rethink their strategy of jihad.' Now, with almost a trillion dollars spent there, with almost 4,500 American lives lost there, what do you say to those who say you were so wrong about so much at the expense of so many?"
Kelly didn't drop any mics, but she might as well have. Fox News viewers who were expecting something different might have wondered whether they were watching another network.
"No, I just fundamentally disagree, Reagan — I mean, Megyn," Cheney replied.
Luckily for Cheney, the questions got much easier after that.

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Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Straw is for Horses


The latest Supreme Court decision Abramski v. United States involved the limitation of so called “straw” purchases of guns.  I paste the article written by NBC News here and below.  In summary:

[Abramski] involved a Virginia resident, Bruce Abramski, who was convicted of committing a "straw" purchase of a Glock 19 because he answered 'yes' on the background check form 4473 when asked if the gun was being purchased for himself. In fact, he purchased the gun for his uncle, a resident of Pennsylvania, who sent him the money because Abramski was able to pay a discount price for the gun at a store near his own home. Abramski then took the gun to Pennsylvania, gave it to his uncle who gave him a receipt. The receipt turned up in Abramski's possession when his home was searched by police investigating an unrelated offense and it was this receipt that led to his ultimate conviction for lying on the 4473.
In other words, this case really was about whether or not the government could regulate firearm transactions at all [in this case “straw” purchases], not just about the behavior of a particular individual at the time he purchased a gun.

Barring “straw” purchases of guns, obviously, is not going to stop everyone from getting a gun and then giving it to someone unregistered, unknown to the state and to whom the gun should not be given. The point is to make it harder for those unfit to have guns to get them and easier for the state to know in whose hands all guns lie.  When one purchases a gun for another (a “straw” purchase) the state can have no idea for whom it was purchased or to whom it was given.  This SCOTUS decision will and should make it more difficult to make a purchase yourself as a legal gun owner and then give it to just anyone no questions asked.

Would one be permitted to not register a car? No, of course not, we register all cars as the state, for obvious reasons, must have the ability to see and, if necessary, to track down the owner of the car.  If a car did not have to be registered one can only imagine the mayhem that could and would take place.

Guns, yes, are used for sport and for defense BUT they are, in reality, killing machines. A gun even more than a car, is used to kill.  Guns are lethal weapons. Because of that they must be registered and straw purchases not allowed.  Moreover, the mentally ill and those felons convicted of a violent crime should not have them either.  Have I left anything out?  Yes, a ban on extra magazine clips used to make it easier for an inordinate number of bullets to kill more humans more quickly and AK47's used for nothing but mayhem. SCOTUS has, through the Heller decision and now the Abramski decision left an open door for the state to regulate guns and we should do so everywhere post haste.

Rightwingnut Second Amendment geniuses you are NOT -- I repeat NOT -- going to overthrow the US government of 350 million people.  You need to get that out of your overinflated heads. Unless climate change or a domestic, Christian or Islamic terrorist commits a mind numbing sickening act then the structure of what government you see is what government you will, in the future, get with the ability to institute legal change. It is amazing it has worked often well and, yes, sometimes not so well for nearly 250 years.

May it be the world's last best hope for those who want equality, justice and democracy to prevail 250 years and well beyond that! Our Founders would want no less!

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Benghazi Suspect Said He Was Moved To Take Revenge For American-Made Video


Oh yes, Republicons are SO trustworthy -- NOT.  From the murder's mouth! Why it is important to elect Democrats; yet another reason as if we needed any more!  Please forward this to the immediate world!

Benghazi Suspect Said He Was Moved To Take Revenge For American-Made Video

 

Benghazi attack suspect Ahmed Abu Khattala, who was captured by U.S. forces on Sunday, told people the move against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya was intended as revenge for an American-made online video that was seen as an attack to Islam, according to the New York Times.

The New York Times reported Tuesday:
What he did in the period just before the attack has remained unclear. But Mr. Abu Khattala told other Libyans in private conversations during the night of the attack that he was moved to attack the diplomatic mission to take revenge for an insult to Islam in an American-made online video.

An earlier demonstration venting anger over the video outside the American Embassy in Cairo had culminated in a breach of its walls, and it dominated Arab news coverage. Mr. Abu Khattala told both fellow Islamist fighters and others that the attack in Benghazi was retaliation for the same insulting video, according to people who heard him.

In an interview days after the attack, he pointedly declined to say whether he believed an offense such as the anti-Islamic video might indeed warrant the destruction of the diplomatic mission or the killing of the ambassador. “From a religious point of view, it is hard to say whether it is good or bad,” he said.
The day after the September attack, the New York Times' David Kirkpatrick reported fighters involved in the effort were moved "by anger over a 14-minute, American-made video that depicted the Prophet Muhammad, Islam’s founder, as a villainous, homosexual and child-molesting buffoon." The Times did have a reporter -- not Kirkpatrick -- on the ground that night.

The publication stood by that reporting in October 2012 and again in December 2013, and were subsequently attacked by conservatives.

White House emails made public in April 2014 supported reports that the Obama administration wanted Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, to “underscore these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.” In September 2012, Rice said the attack was not premeditated.
 

Unity in USA Soccer Win

The soccer game for the FIFA World Cup was so much fun to watch. USA defeated who Ghana?  Yep, Ghana.  We were in a fingernail-biting competition against nations other than Russia!  How refreshing that was.  The World Cup of soccer creates an equal playing field (pardon the pun) as nations have a chance to compete with even the strongest of other nations.  All have a chance even Ghana!  The sport of soccer seems to be taking hold in the US too.

I had little idea of the rules and never heard of most of the players.  In truth I heard of none of them but the enthusiasm of the USA chanting crowd was incredible to see. It was infectious. I keep saying to myself it is a lot of hype to make what else -- money.  In truth, though, I am as hyped as anyone is when team USA wins. I love to see it.

Yes, I love my country even though am oh so critical of policy. In the end I want our nation to win and now soccer provided that win as one huge world-wide sport begins to draw as much enthusiasm here as our traditional sports historically have. It is Olympic in nature sparking gobs of nationalistic pride. 

America is changing as the sport begins to appeal. The demographics here are changing too from exclusively Anglo white to many hues of brown.  To this unabashed liberal that is a good -- no a very good -- thing.

If we could only get policy right as the world is blowing up and climate change is killing us. Two twin epic Biblical proportion tornadoes struck the American west that rivaled for our attention against the triumphant USA win. It is a metaphor.  We have a lot -- a very lot -- of hard work to do.  The hardest job of all, though, is to unite us. I thought for one joyous moment in Brazil it had!

Monday, June 16, 2014

Where is the Outrage?


ASTOUNDING -- Below reminds me of Einsatzgruppen the German killing squads grouped in Eastern Europe killing Jews during World War II. This is utterly disgusting.  And let's see what is this tribal Hatfield/McCoy 1000 year war over ideology? NO not much over that, although there are differences, but rather its etiology lay over the line of succession to the prophet (in respect: peace be upon him.) Are you kidding me?

Wikipedia: 

The historic background of the Sunni–Shia split lies in the schism that occurred when the Islamic prophet Muhammad died in the year 632, leading to a dispute over succession to Muhammad as a caliph of the Islamic community spread across various parts of the world which led to the Battle of Siffin. The dispute intensified greatly after the Battle of Karbala, in which Hussein ibn Ali and his household were killed by the ruling Umayyad Caliph Yazid I, and the outcry for his revenge divided the early Islamic community.

Can one imagine if the US were photographically on film caught doing this OR Israel? The outrage would be deafening.  This is a human catastrophe of immense proportions, in my opinion, a war crime rivaled by Nazi Germany; hundreds of thousands have been killed already all over the Middle East, thousands of American deaths, tens of thousands more maimed for life and millions more displaced.
  Where is the outrage from every corner of the globe left wing and right wing alike?
Read the article below and do not hide from images we all need to see and then speak out for the sake of humanity speak out!


Militants post apparent images of mass killing in Iraq


This image posted on a militant website appears to show members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant leading away captured Iraqi soldiers in plain clothes.
AP
This image posted on a militant website appears to show members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant leading away captured Iraqi soldiers in plain clothes.


MILITANTS CLAIM MASS EXECUTION

Rebels Post Gruesome Photos Of Alleged Mass Murder... Claim 1,700 Killed... 'Look At Them Walking To Death On Their Own Feet'... Insurgent Offensive Appears To Slow... Baghdad Prepares For An Attack... Rebels Seize Northwest Town In Heavy Battle... U.S. Begins To Evacuate Embassy Staff... Plans Talks With Iran... Explosions Kill At Least 19... Lightning Strike Was Years In The Making... FEAR: 'Multinational War Fought Along 500-Mile Front'...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Israel, Anti-Semitism and Me

Eric Cantor is through.  Did his Jewishness play a part in his defeat as Huff Post is asking?  Well, before one says absolutely not let's take another look at the hysteria of world wide anti-Semitism.


My left of center politics was formed in the late 1960's in large part because of the Holocaust.  I was not born when it happened but it did consume a major part of my thoughts when tying to decide where I belonged on the political spectrum. It became rather easy -- Nazism was the political extreme of the right and Communism was the political extreme of the left.  Both extremes hated one another.  I knew that while I would never be an extremist of any stripe I would rather be associated with a movement whose goal was universal equality for all irrespective of race and I wanted a more egalitarian society where economics was more universally distributed. The Nazis near extermination of all the Jews -- my Jews -- of Europe nearly became reality.  Thus, my politics was born out of near genocide.

Helping me arrive at my philosophical and political decisions were campus anti-war movements dedicated to rethinking this nation's post WWII foreign policy and proclivity for war.  There were books, movies, plays, professorial lectures by left of center intellectuals and there was a new form of music dedicated to creating a more just world -- folk artists like Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, of course the Beatles and many others.  Among these musicians were political satirists whose music I loved.  One such satirist was Tom Lehrer.  In his 1967 song "National Brotherhood Week" audio here or below one stanza of the lyrics reads:

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Muslims,
And everybody hates the Jews.

Surely, everybody hating the Jews is not reality.  Alan Dershowitz, however, makes an interesting case for not only German and Eastern European anti-Semitism but western European anti-Semitism as well. He indicts the left and the right for this obsession too.  He wrote what I thought was an interesting piece on it to give some alternative perspective on this 2000 year old pathology.  I paste his thoughts below.

Europe's Alarming Push to Isolate Israel



alan-dershowitzBy Alan Dershowitz

Why are so many of the grandchildren of Nazis and Nazi collaborators who brought us the Holocaust once again declaring war on the Jews?

Why have we seen such an increase in anti-Semitism and irrationally virulent anti-Zionism in western Europe?

To answer these questions, a myth must first be exposed. That myth is the one perpetrated by the French, the Dutch, the Norwegians, the Swiss, the Belgians, the Austrians, and many other western Europeans: namely that the Holocaust was solely the work of German Nazis aided perhaps by some Polish, Ukrainian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian collaborators.
False.

The Holocaust was perpetrated by Europeans - by Nazi sympathizers and collaborators among the French, Dutch, Norwegians, Swiss, Belgians, Austrians and other Europeans, both Western and Eastern.

If the French government had not deported to the death camps more Jews than their German occupiers asked for; if so many Dutch and Belgian citizens and government officials had not cooperated in the roundup of Jews; if so many Norwegians had not supported Quisling; if Swiss government officials and bankers had not exploited Jews; if Austria had not been more Nazi than the Nazis, the Holocaust would not have had so many Jewish victims.
In light of the widespread European complicity in the destruction of European Jewry, the pervasive anti-Semitism and irrationally hateful anti-Zionism that has recently surfaced throughout western Europe toward Israel should surprise no one.

“Oh no,” we hear from European apologists. “This is different. We don’t hate the Jews. We only hate their nation-state. Moreover, the Nazis were right-wing. We’re left-wing, so we can’t be anti-Semites.”

Nonsense.  The hard left has a history of anti-Semitism as deep and enduring as the hard right. The line from Voltaire, to Karl Marx, to Levrenti Beria, to Robert Faurisson, to today’s hard-left Israel bashers is as straight as the line from Wilhelm Mars to the persecutors of Alfred Dreyfus to Hitler.

The Jews of Europe have always been crushed between the Black and the Red - victims of extremism whether it be the ultra-nationalism of Khmelnitsky to the ultra-anti-Semitism of Stalin.

“But some of the most strident anti-Zionists are Jews, such as Norman Finkelstein and even Israelis such as Gilad Atzmon. Surely they can’t be anti-Semites.” Why not? Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas collaborated with the Gestapo. Atzmon, a hard leftist, describes himself as a proud self-hating Jew and admits that his ideas derive from a notorious anti-Semite.

He denies that the Holocaust is historically proved but he believes that Jews may well have killed Christian children to use their blood to bake Passover matzah. And he thinks it’s “rational” to burn down synagogues.

Finkelstein believes in an international Jewish conspiracy that includes Steven Spielberg, Leon Uris, Eli Wiesel, and Andrew Lloyd Webber!

“But Israel is doing bad things to the Palestinians,” the European apologists insist, “and we are sensitive to the plight of the underdog.”

No, you’re not! Where are your demonstrations on behalf of the oppressed Tibetans, Georgians, Syrians, Armenians, Kurds, or even Ukrainians? Where are your BDS [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions] movements against the Chinese, the Russians, the Cubans, the Turks, or the Assad regime?  Only the Palestinians, only Israel? Why? Not because the Palestinians are more oppressed than these and other groups.

Only because their alleged oppressors are Jews and the nation-state of the Jews. Would there be demonstrations and BDS campaigns on behalf of the Palestinians if they were oppressed by Jordan or Egypt?

Oh, wait! The Palestinians were oppressed by Egypt and Jordan. Gaza was an open-air prison between 1948 and 1967, when Egypt was the occupying power. And remember Black September, when Jordan killed more Palestinians than Israel did in a century? I don’t remember any demonstration or BDS campaigns — because there weren’t any.
When Arabs occupy or kill Arabs, Europeans go ho-hum. But when Israel opens a soda factory in Maale Adumim, which even the Palestinian leadership acknowledges will remain part of Israel in any peace deal, Oxfam parts ways with Scarlett Johansson for advertising a soda company that employs hundreds of Palestinians. Keep in mind that Oxfam has provided “aid and material support” to two anti-Israel terrorist groups, according to the Tel Aviv-based Israeli Law Group.

The hypocrisy of so many hard-left western Europeans would be staggering if it were not so predictable based on the sordid history of Western Europe’s treatment of the Jews.
Even England, which was on the right side of the war against Nazism, has a long history of anti-Semitism, beginning with the expulsion of the Jews in 1290 to the notorious White Paper of 1939, which prevented the Jews of Europe for seeking asylum from the Nazis in British-mandated Palestine. And Ireland, which vacillated in the war against Hitler, boasts some of the most virulent anti-Israel rhetoric.

The simple reality is that one cannot understand the current western European left-wing war against the nation-state of the Jewish people without first acknowledging the long-term European war against the Jewish people themselves.

Theodore Herzl understood the pervasiveness and irrationality of European anti-Semitism, which led him to the conclusion that the only solution to Europe’s Jewish problem was for European Jews to leave that bastion of Jew hatred and return to their original homeland, which is now the state of Israel.

None of this is to deny Israel’s imperfections or the criticism it justly deserves for some of its policies. But these imperfections and deserved criticism cannot even begin to explain, must less justify, the disproportionate hatred directed against the only nation-state of the Jewish people and the disproportionate silence regarding the far greater imperfections and deserved criticism of other nations and groups - including the Palestinians.

Nor is this to deny that many western European individuals and some western European countries have refused to succumb to the hatred against the Jews or their state. The Czech Republic comes to mind. But far too many western Europeans are as irrational in their hatred toward Israel as their forbearers were in their hatred toward their Jewish neighbors.
As author Amos Oz once aptly observed: the walls of his grandparents’ Europe were covered with graffiti saying, “Jews, go to Palestine.” Now they say, “Jews, get out of Palestine” - by which is meant Israel.

Who do these western European bigots think they’re fooling? Only fools who want to be fooled in the interest of denying that they are manifesting new variations on their grandparents’ old biases.

Any objective person with an open mind, open eyes, and an open heart must see the double standard being applied to the nation-state of the Jewish people. Many doing so are the grandchildren of those who lethally applied a double standard to the Jews of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.

For shame!

This article first appeared at NEWSMAX.


NOT ANYMORE

  I wrote this last week and for the most part sat on it because I did not want my writing to imply anything against Israel. As stated agai...