By How Much?

More on the Irish equal marriage rights referendum:

"As the official ballot counting continued, the only question appeared to be how large the "yes" margin of victory from Friday's vote would be. Analysts said the "yes" support was likely to exceed 60 percent nationally when official results are announced later Saturday." 

here or

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/23/ireland-gay-marriage_n_7426874.html

impressive!

IT'S IN. WE ARE ALL IRISH TODAY!!!!! :)

Ireland Gay Marriage Referendum: 'Yes' Campaign Poised for Victory

By Lisa McNally

Ireland Votes on Historic Same-Sex Marriage Referendum

Nightly News

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DUBLIN - Ireland appeared to have become the first country in the world to vote for gay marriage Saturday after both sides in its referendum declared a resounding victory for 'Yes' campaigners.

There was a mood of excitement in Dublin as early results showed a high turnout and a strong lead for 'Yes' votes.

Senior figures in the "No" campaign, who sought to prevent Ireland's constitution from being amended to permit same-sex marriage, said the only question was how large the "Yes" side's margin of victory would be. David Quinn, director of the conservative Iona Institute, conceded defeat and congratulated the 'Yes' side.

"There is going to be a very substantial majority for a 'Yes' vote. I'm not at all surprised by that to be honest with you," said Irish Sen. Ronan Mullen, one of only a handful of politicians who campaigned for rejection.

Political analyst Noel Whelan noted that "yes" majorities were being reported even in conservative rural districts and suggested the only question was how large the "yes" majority would be when all ballots in this predominantly Catholic nation of 4.6 million are counted.

Charles McQuillan / Getty Images

A Yes campaigner in favour of same-sex marriage takes a selfie at the RDS count centre on May 23, 2015 in Dublin, Ireland.

Government minister Leo Varadkar predicted that voters in the capital had endorsed gay marriage by about 70 percent against 30 percent against.

Official results in the poll, which pitted liberal forces against Ireland's conservative Catholic foundation, are expected later Saturday.

Polling station officials said Ireland could top 60 percent turnout nationally for the first time since the country narrowly voted to legalize divorce in 1995, but was unlikely to reach the 68 percent achieved when the Irish voted to ease access to foreign abortions in 1992.

Backers of gay marriage had hoped for high turnout, reflecting strong participation by young and first-time voters.

VOTE REPUBLICONS OUT and PROGRESSIVES IN 2016!!!!!!

Campaigners believe high turnout will carry IRISH Yes vote!!!!!

Take a look at this story here or below. IS this amazing or is this amazing?!!!!!! It's not completely counted yet but our progressive Irish allies put out a MASSIVE effort. This huge turnout is what gets progressives results no matter which country but especially in the US. It is how our president got elected.

GOOD FOR YOU, IRELAND, IF the YES vote prevails in numbers the first national marriage equality by referendum EVER will prevail. The pending results seem good. I'm not claiming marriage equality victory for our Irish progressive brothers and sisters yet as I have seen my hopes dashed too many times but it surely does look that way. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, IRELAND!! IF YOU PREVAIL IT HELPS ALL OF US IN THE WESTERN WORLD BUT ESPECIALLY IN THE US!

We MUST do this and get out the vote en masse to overturn one of the most rancid US Congresses EVER and get Republicans OUT of office so we can have a nation that is not the fear and the laughing stock of the world!

IT IS WHY FOR THE NEXT YEAR AND A HALF I WILL END MY POSTS WITH, PROGRESSIVES, GET OUT THE 2016 VOTE TO OVERTURN REPUGLICON CONTROL TO A SANE/HUMANE DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS!

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/campaigners-believe-high-turnout-will-carry-yes-vote-1.2222949

Nuremberg -- shortened

An article I read entitled "In the Same Week, the U.S. and U.K. Hide Their War Crimes by Invoking “National Security" " made me wonder. I thought Nuremberg was supposed to obviate all of this. PBS "Frontline" in its latest episode on American torture states clearly that videotapes showing the torture inflicted by Americans after the invasion of Iraq was nearly unviewable because of their extreme brutality. Congresspersons like Diane Feinstein and others were looking for the films to view but could not because one person, against higher orders, destroyed them. The answer as to why they were destroyed is obvious. Feinstein to her credit read the "Torture Report" in front of the Congress and the nation if the nation cared to hear it albeit much was blackened out as "classified."

It is clear the Nuremberg laws of WWII concerning Nazi war crimes and crimes against humanity are on life support and nearly dead. The question is can we breathe new life into them?

Some writers to their credit have been civil liberties steadfast even as this writer wavered because our adversaries care nothing about inflicting brutality on anyone else and if the enemy wins, my life and many many other innocents most especially journalists would be sacrificed.

My allies on the left rarely talk about the unconscionable actions o f the opposition but more prevalently cite US abuses at the drop of a hat. Yes, I know, we are held to a higher standard because the fundamental building blocks of our nation say we should. But I do not think that should be so. The Nuremberg laws concerning crimes against humanity should be a standard for all humanity. Anyone, any nation state that commit crimes against humanity that rise to Nuremberg heights should be called out for them, tried at the Hague and be made to pay the price!

Nuremberg

See Glenn Greenwald's article "In the Same Week, the U.S. and U.K. Hide Their War Crimes by Invoking “National Security" " below: I thought Nuremberg was supposed to obviate all of this. PBS "Frontline" in its latest episode on American torture states clearly that videotapes showing the torture inflicted by Americans after the invasion of Iraq was nearly unviewable because of its extreme brutality. Congresspersons like Diane Finestein and others were looking for the films to view but could not because one person, against higher orders, destroyed them. The answer as to why they were destroyed is obvious. Feinstein to her credit read the "Torture Report" in front of the Congress and the nation if the nation cared to hear albeit it was blackened out as "classified" in many places.

It is clear the Nuremberg laws of WWII concerning Nazi war crimes and crimes against humanity is on life support and nearly dead. The question is can we breathe new life into it?

Glenn Greenwald to his credit has been steadfast even as this writer wavered because our adversaries care nothing about inflicting brutality on anyone else and IF the enemy wins, Glenn's life, mine and many many innocents would be sacrificed.

Glenn Greenwald rarely talks about the unconscionable actions of the opposition but more prevalently cites US abuses at the drop of a hat. Yes, I know, we are held to a higher standard because the fundamental building blocks of our nation say we should. But I do not think that should be so. The Nuremberg laws concerning crimes against humanity should be a standard for all humanity. Anyone, any nation state that commits crimes against humanity should be called out for it, tried at the Hague and pay the price!

The Greenwald article is below.
 
In the Same Week, the U.S. and U.K. Hide Their War Crimes by Invoking “National Security”

By Glenn Greenwald
@ggreenwald


Colonel Ian Henderson was a British official dubbed “the Butcher of Bahrain” because of atrocities he repeatedly committed during the 30 years he served as chief security official of that Middle Eastern country. His reign of terror began in 1966 when Bahrain was a British “protectorate” and continued when the post-“independence” Bahraini King retained him in the same position. In 1996, The Independent described him as “the most feared of all secret policemen” in Bahrain, and cited “consistent and compelling evidence that severe beatings and even sexual assaults have been carried out against prisoners under Henderson’s responsibility for well over a decade.”

A 2002 Guardian article reported that “during this time his men allegedly detained and tortured thousands of anti-government activists”; his official acts “included the ransacking of villages, sadistic sexual abuse and using power drills to maim prisoners”; and “on many occasions they are said to have detained children without informing their parents, only to return them months later in body bags.” Needless to say, Col. Henderson was never punished in any way: “although Scotland Yard launched an inquiry into the allegations in 2000, the investigation was dropped the following year.” He was showered with high honors from the U.K.-supported tyrants who ran Bahrain.

Prior to the massacres and rapes over which he presided in Bahrain, Henderson played a leading role in brutally suppressing the Mau Mau insurgency in another British colony, Kenya. In the wake of his Kenya atrocities, he twice won the George Medal, “the 2nd highest, to the George Cross, gallantry medal that a civilian can win.” His brutality against Kenyan insurgents fighting for independence is what led the U.K. government to put him in charge of internal security in Bahrain.

For years, human rights groups have fought to obtain old documents, particularly a 37-year-old diplomatic cable, relating to British responsibility for Henderson’s brutality in Bahrain. Ordinarily, documents more than 30 years old are disclosable, but the British government has fought every step of the way to conceal this cable.

But now, a governmental tribunal ruled largely in favor of the government and held that most of the diplomatic cable shall remain suppressed. The tribunal’s ruling was at least partially based on “secret evidence for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) from a senior diplomat, Edward Oakden, who argued that Britain’s defence interests in Bahrain were of paramount importance”; specifically, “Mr Oakden implied that the release of such information could jeopardise Britain’s new military base in the country.”

The U.K. government loves to demonize others for supporting tyrants even as it snuggles up to virtually every despot in that region. Her Majesty’s Government has a particularly close relationship with Bahrain, where it is constructing a new naval base. The Kingdom is already home to the United States’ Fifth Fleet.

The tribunal’s rationale is that “full disclosure of the document would have ‘an adverse effect on relations’ with Bahrain, where the U.K. is keen to build further economic and defence ties.” In other words, disclosing these facts would make the British and/or the Bahrainis look bad, cause them embarrassment, and could make their close friendship more difficult to sustain. Therefore, the British and Bahraini populations must be denied access to the evidence of what their governments did.

This is the core mindset now prevalent in both the U.S. and U.K. for hiding their crimes from their own populations and then rest of the world: disclosure of what we did will embarrass and shame us, cause anger toward us, and thus harm our “national security.” As these governments endlessly highlight the bad acts of those who are adverse to them, they vigorously hide their own, thus propagandizing their publics into believing that only They — the Other Tribe Over There — commit such acts.

This is exactly the same mentality driving the Obama administration’s years-long effort to suppress photographs showing torture of detainees by the U.S. In 2009, Obama said he would comply with a court ruling that ordered those torture photos disclosed, but weeks after his announcement, reversed himself. Adopting the argument made by a group run by Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney against disclosure of the photos, Obama insisted that to release the photos “would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in danger.” Obama went further and announced his support for a bill sponsored by Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman to amend the Freedom of Information Act — a legislative accomplishment which Rep. Louise Slaughter told me at the time had long been “sacred” to Democrats — for no reason other than to exempt those torture photos from disclosure.

In March of this year, a U.S. judge who had long sided with the Obama DOJ in this matter reversed course. In a lawsuit brought in 2004 by the ACLU, the judge ordered the release of thousands of photos showing detainee abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq, including at Abu Ghraib. He ruled that the Obama DOJ could no longer show any national security harm that would justify ongoing suppression.

Rather than accepting the ruling and releasing the photos after hiding them for more than a decade, the U.S. Justice Department last week filed an emergency request for a stay of that ruling with the appeals court. The argument from The Most Transparent Administration Ever™:
No healthy democracy can possibly function where this warped mindset prevails: we are entitled to hide anything we do that makes us look bad because making us look bad harms “national security,” and we are the ones who make that decision without challenge. As the ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer said:
 
To allow the government to suppress any image that might provoke someone, somewhere, to violence would be to give the government sweeping power to suppress evidence of its own agents’ misconduct. Giving the government that kind of censorial power would have implications far beyond this specific context.

But even more threatening than the menace to democracy is the propagandized public this mentality guarantees. A government that is able to hide its own atrocities on “national security” grounds will be one whose public endlessly focuses on the crimes of others while remaining blissfully unaware of one’s own nation. That is an excellent description of much of the American and British public, and as good an explanation as any why much of their public discourse consists of little more than proclamations that Our Side is Better despite the decades of brutality, aggression and militarism their own side has perpetrated.

Leaving Iraq

The mainstream media does not hit Jeb and the other Republican candidates hard when they erroneously say it is Obama's fault for Iraq's present mayhem, the rise of ISIS and how the surge troops worked so swell to contain it. It did NOT work so swell. There were bombings and destruction every day. US troops continued to have to endure horrific IED and other attacks killing hundreds. The insurgency may have been slowed down but it did not stop. Iraqis and others did NOT want American troops there and a STATUS OF FORCES AGREEMENT was signed by GEORGE W. BUSH promising a date certain the US would leave.

Obama was (1) living up to the signed agreement and (2) doing exactly what he was elected to do get out of Iraq. Jeb Bush and other Republicans except for Rand Paul are saying their policy would be to return to Iraq. Are they kidding? And how many body bags would it take if Obama had kept them there (which he did keep some troops there and some are even on the ground still) to achieve our illusive goal? How many would the American people have to see before there was an outcry - 3 body bags, 30, 60, 100, 1000 PLUS.

If the US stayed how much longer would we stay -- forever maybe? Oh yeah we still have troops in Germany and Japan BUT they ceased fighting WWII and established governments western style because they were DIFFERENT cultures and the Marshall plan saw to it that Versailles of WWI disaster would not be repeated again. Religious fanaticism no matter what it is will allow people to do horrific things into eternity because everyone thinks God is on their side.

Would the American public if we stayed and committed more and more troops have paid the bill when our infrastructure is crumbling by the second when oil the BEAST of ALL our huge problems remains the energy of choice and is killing us?

Between the oil spills destroying oceans, sea life and the ecosystem it has been the cause of climate change of constant droughts, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes all over the planet including the Middle East. Climate change will affect war and has. Fossil fuels are the direct cause of climate change and horrific weather events into the vast future.

Moreover, oil is the cause of war in the Middle East otherwise we would not have given a rat's petuti about that neck of the woods. It has propelled US and CIA interventionist behavior in the Middle East exactly what fundamentalists use as a rationale to hate America and to hurt America. Bin Laden said it in the documents retrieved at his capture.

Climate change, war, and destruction of the ecosystem are the quagmires in which the US is involved because we cannot get oil and its money monkey OFF OUR BACKS.

So how about saying loud and clear this Middle East mayhem is NOT Obama's fault. How many more TRILLIONS of American bucks and gallons of American blood would the American people want to waste in Iraq and in the larger Middle East? We have wasted TRILLIONS on a Bush and neo con FANTASY that the Middle East would be turned into a Jeffersonian paradise and oh yes put trillions into the war industrialists' pockets at the same time.

CNN and Wolf Blitzer with his Republican friends do NOT bring all factors up strongly. Fox is hopeless and NBC News, CBS news and ABC news is not far behind. Since they are the ONLY source for most American's daily diet of news it is important to speak the TRUTH.

Teach the American public, whose knowledge of US involvement in the Middle East extends for about one day, why we are in Iraq. It was NOT about removing tyrants to spread democracy. The US works perfectly well with tyrants as long as they support our economic policies. Tell them about Mosadeq in Iran, tell them about the rancid Shah and his gestapo-like police Savak we set up in Iran and the rationale for the Islamic overthrow of it, tell them about WWI and how Iraq was carved up by the west. Tell them WHY an Iraqi threw a shoe, an insult supreme, at George Bush.

THIS IS GEORGE BUSH'S WAR, HE BEGAN IT OVER LIES, HE PROSECUTED IT, HE TORTURED AND IF A DEMOCRAT WAS GUILTY OF ALL OF THAT HOW FAST DO YOU THINK REPUBLICANS WOULD BE PILLORYING HIM AND PROSECUTING HIM?

MEDIA, TELL THE TRUTH FOR ONCE IN YOUR SORRY POST WWII LIVES. YOUR SLANTED BIASED REPUBLICAN ORIENTED REPORTING COSTS TRILLIONS OF AMERICAN BUCKS AND AMERICAN AND OTHER INNOCENT LIVES -- THOUSANDS OF THEM!

Obama frames climate change as national security threat

I paste the article entitled above appearing in today's Globe here and below.

Republican know nothings think taking action on climate change could hurt the economy. How about the uber extreme weather events that have already happened hurting the economy? How about if those weather events hurt the nation so that we have NO economy? 

These utter nincompoops many of them if not most of them Republicans have one big disadvantage: their powers of intellect and rational thought are genetically damaged. It must be in their DNA. No one could be that stupid with a normal brain!

  

DEMOCRATS KNOW WHAT WE HAVE TO DO.  I MAY BE SAYING THIS UNTIL I AM BLUE (PARDON THE PUN) IN THE FACE.  NO ONE BUT NO ONE SHOULD WANT A REPUBLICAN ANYWHERE NEAR THE OVAL OFFICE.  YOU SEE WHAT THEY HAVE DONE OCCUPYING THE CONGRESS AND WORSE WHAT BUSH DID OCCUPYING THE PRESIDENCY.  TAKE A LOOK AT IRAQ AND WHETHER THEY WANT TO ADMIT IT OR NOT IT WAS REPUBLICANS WHO PUSHED FOR WAR AND THEY KNOW THE DEBACLE IS THEIR SIN AND THEIRS ALONE. 

WE BEGIN NOW, THE TIME IS NOW, GET THE 2016 ELECTION IN DEMOCRATIC HANDS FOR YOU, FOR YOUR CHILDREN, FOR OUR NATION AND FOR THE WORLD!!!

 http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2015/05/20/obama-frames-climate-change-national-security-threat/ynevt0yXL1n2jFPfku0PtK/story.html#comments

One More Shot at Mad Men

I waited to read the Globe's Matthew Gilbert's review of "Mad Men" link here or below because his opinions are valued but I wanted to come to my own conclusion about the "Mad Men" conclusion.

The first words out of my mouth explained my first reaction to the ending of "Mad Men" best: WAAAAAHHHT? Then I sat and then slept on it rolling it over in my mind like a clothes dryer trying to dry a big load of clothes. I am still mulling it over.

I do not know whether I am easily influenced by my betters but I think Gilbert's review gave me my final answer. A thumbs up to Weiner who gave us not only an interesting ending but a snap shot of 1950's, early 1960's, late 1960's and early 1970's America the analysis of which has always touched my soul because I experienced it.

Like 1929 and FDR influenced my parents on most everything the eras that encompass "Mad Men" influenced me on most everything. In the 1950's I drank a toast to the president Ike Eisenhower with milk as shown on Boston's "Big Brother Bob Emry Show," I mourned the JFK tragedy as all those I knew did, then I went to Boston University, the Berkeley of the east, in the late 60's where Howard Zinn and others captured my political heart.

"Mad Men" meant so much to me because I lived it. There is truth to Weiner's ending as I experience life now. The revolution of the late 1960's had its raging waters calmed. It never did turn out as I thought it would. Gene McCarthy would never be president, Robert Kennedy was assassinated as was Martin Luther King. But life went on despite the tragedies of those eras. In 2008 we elected a black president something I never thought possible. It was possible though and we did it. Don Draper thought down and out when he sat on the ground after his life's most explosive trials saying he could not move. He did move, though, back into the world as he knew it to create the beautiful Coke commercial I happened to love.

"Mad Men" is about birth, it is about death and it is about rebirth to give life one more shot (no pun intended!)

http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/television/2015/05/17/don-draper-final-bow-teaching-moment/2790c1AO1gkqAzj3heAoVP/story.html

Elizabeth Warren in CA--A Price Above Rubies

Elizabeth Warren rouses California Democrats: 'America is ready to stand with us'

If you can get the Youtube of her speech to the LA Democratic convention do so. It was electric! Larry O'Donnell had a tape of it on last night. You can Google "The Last Word" and perhaps get it. It's worth hearing and then spread it far and wide! I paste the LA Times story of it here or below.

This woman is a diamond in our pocket and she is our Massachusetts senator. Never since Senator Charles Sumner, anti-slavery senator from Mass., have we had someone so brilliant, articulate, charismatic and inspiring. She puts her academic knowledge of economics having taught it to work and relates it to the American people. She is our price above rubies!

Elizabeth Warren rouses California Democrats: 'America is ready to stand with us'
http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-elizabeth-warren-convention-20150516-story.html

What Works

"The GOP Is Dying Off. Literally" - Daniel J. McGraw

Link here or below my thoughts.

If Republicans do not accept the dictates of science from the biology of evolution to the science of climate change they will die out. One cannot argue with solid science. When it is correct based on repeated testing and verification of many other scientists it is truth.

One cannot say I will not be vaccinated against small pox because, as some Muslims, Christian religious fanatics and others falsely say -- it is a plot to inject them with tainted vaccine or a plot to make a buck.  If you reject vaccines your culture will become infected and with no modern medical treatment will die off eventually. If one gets a disease it is not a big deal but if an entire population is infected it is a big deal.

We must hope in the end those with intellect and rational thought who do not reject the truth of science prevail. If it is as the title of the article above says that the GOP is dying out then it is to the benefit of all of us. It should die out as it is woefully lacking the rational thought gene.  Our species will cease to exist if deniers of truth politically win for long periods of time.

One could say that about large parts of the Middle East. If ISIS and religious myth win so that fanatical religion prevails a people will ultimately never be able to sustain a system with all that entails over centuries. People die if they do not have proper food, water, and sound medical treatment delivery systems. One needs science and the contribution of all within its culture, including women who make up over half the population, to create a technologically advanced system.

Cultures -- all cultures --  must reject myths that keep them down, ignorant, empower and make rich the few leaving the rest to wither on the vine. It is true for all religious orthodoxies and other strict ideological belief systems. China and Russia are good examples. They managed, with little violence, to get into the business of rational economic thought, rejecting cemented ideological beliefs for economics that work. The west has done that generally. Survival of the fittest is the first law of nature.  The Chinese figured that out in recent history.  Strict Communist ideological belief could not provide appropriate numbers of goods and services for its huge populous. It switched to a mixed economy.

A people and a culture cannot advance if they are based on superstition, myth, lies and irrational thought. Human beings -- homo sapiens (wise man) -- must live up to its archeological appellation and accept the dictates of prevailing science as slowly but surely we see throughout the millennia science works!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/17/the-gop-is-dying-off-lite_n_7302934.html#comments

Deflated Footballs Much Ado About not Very Much

Rick, to your editorial in the Metro West Daily News May 16, 2015 (link here or below,) I think you are 100% right. I did not always think that way. At first I thought Brady, a man of whom I am not so fond especially because he threw dirt on the presidential acknowledgement of the Super Bowl win, seemed to me to be a self-inflated chiseled-looks ego brat. Maybe it is jealousy. How can one person be inscribed in the book of luck so completely when others trudge though a life infused with monetary woes, pain and looks that do not measure up in our looksist culture? All one has to do is ride through downtown Framingham to see the many empty stores, a metaphor for vacant-eyed human beings who were not so lucky as Brady has been in life. It's not fair. Okay life is not fair but I don't have to like it.

To the subject at hand: I suppose I wanted the league to come down hard on the NFL lawbreaker and its pretty boy who has all the luck, to get a klop (Yiddish for bang) in kop (Yiddish for head) through a hefty fine and suspension. But that is not fair either. You convinced me, Rick, the crime of slightly deflated footballs is much ado about not very much so the klop in kop should be reserved for the ones he receives on the field itself.

AS TO THE EMPTY STORES: IF REPUBLICONS ARE GIVEN THE BOOT OUT OF CONGRESS AND NEVER GOD FORBID GIVEN THE PRESIDENCY THEN THE EMPTY STORES WILL FILL UP AND THE VACANT EYED PEOPLE WILL HAVE JOBS!!!

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/…/201…/OPINION/150517100/…

Holmes: Hyperinflation in the NFL

How arrogance turned a misdemeanor into a felony

metrowestdailynews.com|By Rick Holmes Daily News Columnist

To Be or Not to Be--Your Final Answer

"ISIS Advances Into Iraq's Ramadi Amid Wave Of Suicide Attacks" (link below)

So old Jebby boy thinks that if the US stayed longer (despite a Status of Forces Agreement signed in the Bush era to leave and an old shoe tossed at Bush and NOT like a lover blowing him a kiss) that Iraq would have remained stable. What Kickapoo juice is this know-nothing drinking? Yes, he would have, like his brother, made war on Iraq, no he wouldn't have and who cares it's all so hypothetical anyway. Jebby is truly stumped as he tried to answer the same question four different ways to save face. What face was he saving? Now everyone is mad at him including probably brother Georgey.

Saddam Hussein was the ONLY force who kept the lid on that religiously civil war prone divided insanity and the US got rid of that guy in short order to place only Shites and Iran in leadership while the Sunnis ran away with their weapons in hand to fight another day and kill Americans.

Jebby, the second of the brainless Bush brothers, would have wanted to keep American forces in Iraq and for how long?; into the next century? What delusion is he under, pot is he smoking, or LSD is he taking to psychedelically think the American people would have gone along with war eternal costing more TRILLIONS onto our Republican-crazed bloated debt about which they claim to be so concerned?

What a sad, sad, sad, thing the result of the Iraq War is. Jebby, we are talking about human life here not just a bunch of X's and O's on a chalk board and that is not even counting the Iraqi "collateral" murder of hundreds of thousands of innocents, refugees of millions and a Middle East blown up and fractured beyond recognition. Jebby, your brother and his cronies are war criminals accounting for the impossibility of answering that important question posed to you -- to be or not to be in Iraq. Iraq was the greatest stomach turning BLUNDER in US history bar none.

Our nation is dying from drought, tornadoes, floods and other horrific weather-related events attributable to climate change; its infrastructure and electrical grids are decaying; its bridges, railroads, highways unsafe and Jebby thinks his brother made this nation safer? There are a lot of adjectives I would use to describe the status of our nation. Safe is not one of them. Jeb Bush wishes this nation could have spent more blood and treasure to fight and die in Iraq for decades more. Why to find the non-existent WMD? To be or not to be in Iraq that is the question. Jeb, please, make up your mind on your final answer.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/15/isis-advance-ramadi_n_7290786.html#comments

Dream On: Immigration Hardliners Prevail In Fight Over Dreamers And The Military

The story on the above is linked below.

As Mitt Romney himself said, the Republicans CANNOT win an election without the Hispanic vote. This rejection of Hispanics in the military is a good thing for Democrats.  The know nothing Republicons put a sledge hammer to their own heads because rejection of this bill will and SHOULD solidify the huge Hispanic vote and focus laser sharp on getting out the Hispanic vote to REJECT a Republicon Party of White that is racist, right wing nationalist and dead set against Hispanic immigrants gaining citizenship.

Make no mistake if ever God forbid a Republicon president were elected there will be a concerted effort to round up Hispanics and send them back from whence they came.

RepubliCONS, you have sealed your fate. Do NOT believe any Republicon presidential candidate who just to get elected will soften his position during the general election. IN REALITY THEY ARE SUPREMELY ANTI-IMMIGRANT AND they lie ALL the time when they think it will get them elected. Remember, middle, working class and 98% Americans, the RepubliCON Party is NOT ever about you!

HISPANICS, ALL DEMOCRATS, PROGRESSIVES AND OTHERS GET OUT THE HISPANIC AND DEMOCRATIC VOTE.  Register people who can vote for Democrats TO VOTE for Democrats.  Crush Republicons in the Senate, the House and most of all deny them the presidency if you want to have the America we all knew and loved (with a secure infrastructure, jobs, and policies that work for us back again!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/14/dreamers-military_n_7283676.html

Safe Abortion is NOT an oxymoron

In response to both Richard Carey and Jenny Maroney's anti choice letters with respect to abortion in the Metro West Daily News of 5/11 and 5/12 respectively I disagree with both views posted below.

Jenny, up is not down and down is not up as you characterize our culture. It is not that easy. Your down may be my up and vice versa. Culture does not work especially in a free nation in an "up or down" way. Things change because sometimes change is called for.

Richard Carey's anti choice position that "safe abortion" is an oxymoron because killing a human life can never be safe.

My view is “An attack on legal and safe abortions” is NOT an oxymoron because it means the word "safe" relates to the full term MOTHER carrying a fetus. That means if it is legal it will be performed not by a quack in a back ally abortion of yesteryear where women suffered blood poisoning, ruined uterae and even death. Safe abortion means that the mother could have another child when she could care for it properly or when she was not impregnated by a rape, or when she was not incestuously impregnated by her father, uncle or brother.

You will have to accept the fact that I do not accept your definition of a fetus as a viable full-term human being. It isn't to me. It's a fetus. Killing a baby OUTSIDE of the uterus at 9 months would be killing a full term human being.

Moreover, different cultures and religions think of the fetus as a child in different ways. Some would preserve the life of the mother first before the life of the fetus if both were in trouble. Some cultures do not consider a child viable unless it lived for two weeks or more after its birth. This was true for my own mother who gave birth to a severely deformed child who lived less than two weeks after its birth. The child was given no name, there was no funeral, and there was no shiva (a week of mourning) because for Jews of that era that was Jewish law. My mother's psychological welfare after the traumatic death of her child was deemed preeminent.

The moral of the story is you define when life begins your way but let others who define it differently from you have access to safe, legal termination of a pregnancy as the 1973 Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade said she could.

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/opinion/letters?refresh=true

My Letter to Rachel Maddow:

We LOVED your tribute to your mother.  It was to us very moving.  I said to my partner that your mother's choice was our gain.  I cannot tell you in words that sufficiently convey how much you mean to us.

I was born post WWII but grew up in the 1950's so I relate to that stifling era and matured in the 1960's and the wonderful late 1960's at BU, the Berkeley of the east.  We relate to the Mad Men era.  Your birth has helped us immeasurably and I know you have saved and do save lives.

We watch you every night without fail and marvel at your ability to take obscure historical events and weave them into present day news.  We are awestruck by your academic excellence and consider ourselves so fortunate that you are on the humane and empathetic political left of center side.  You are the best of the best in a world that can be so frightening especially with the off-the-rails Republican Party of Crazy.  I am hoping you along with many others who share your gift and the millions of us who supported the President and all Democrats in 2008 will get out to vote again in 2016 to crush the often obscene opposition of unconscionable hate.

Thank you for being you.  We thank your mother and father too for producing you, a life without whom we would be sorely diminished. 

Mourning "Mad Men"

"Mad Men," the series to which I have been glued since 2007, I am now mourning. I am mourning Sterling Cooper and "Mad Men" before it even ends! What a series it has been and that is an understatement. Would it appeal to those young ones born in the 1980's? I suspect not.

I am, it is no secret, in love with the 1960's because unlike Caesar's Gaul it is divided not in three parts but in two.

I came out of the 1950's, grew up in the 1960's and LOVED until death the LATE 1960's. Life for me in that era was a shot of adrenaline. It infused me with hope, a love for life and a feeling that the nation as I knew it was going to change humanely for the better and I would be with the army of Gene McCarthy to do it.

Now I stopped hoping and have leaned back into silent resignation that despite hating so much of our red state right wing extremist life, we the children of the 1960's, if one looks back, did in fact change a lot.

It is what Howard Zinn always told me. Don't look at history now look at where it has been, how much it has changed and what it could still be in the future IF we work hard enough. All I can do is try but I cannot help but feel sad as if someone or something died.

The Cost of Free Speech

When I was young, in elementary school one of the most memorable lessons was given to me by my teacher instructing us to always ask questions. I was told, in school, I could ask any question I wanted to ask about most anything. I remember thinking, even at that young age, how wonderful it was to live in a country that not only tolerated questioning but actually encouraged it.

Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes though said of free speech that it does not mean "you can yell fire in a crowded theater." He went on to write in Scheneck v. United States "The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent." Clearly, there are many aspects to the concept of free speech that place limits on its use.

The question, though, in pertinent part before us, concerns right wing zealot Pamela Geller's cartoon exhibit of the Prophet Mohammed at a venue in Texas. Geller is a woman who has the dubious distinction of earning a place on the SPLC hate list because of her virulently absurd hate speech against Muslims and Islam. Is it permissible to allow her to convene a group in Texas specifically designed to be the most toxic insult to many Muslims by creating a contest dedicated to drawing a cartoon of their revered and sacred Prophet Mohammed?

Ms. Geller knew well that the contest could and indeed did provoke not only controversy but violence. One security guard was wounded and two assailants killed. Even more mayhem could easily have occurred to the visitors of the “exhibit” if the security guard did not perform his job well. Her group paid $10,000 for that security which says something about what she knew could happen.

Does the reverence our nation holds for free speech, the first freedom in our Constitutional hierarchy and the foundation upon which all other freedoms rest outweigh the danger that Geller posed to those who attended the event and also to those who secured it? Is this the cost of free speech we must pay?

The oft quoted phrase of the philosopher Voltaire provides, I think, the answer. "I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Even though Geller is a person with whom I do not agree, and even though she is listed as a hate group by the SPLC, and even though the convocation of her event could pose a danger, I believe her right to political free speech trumps all of that no matter how offensive that speech may be to some. In politics and religion, too, what is revered by one is rejected by another. All speakers must gain a forum to espouse their views hoping that what will emerge is a sifting of thought, rejection of the most extreme ideas and a gravitation toward moderation by the majority.

The west fought mercilessly over religion for centuries. Our Founders fought to remove it from the egis of the newly created nation-state to keep religion out of the purview of government mandate specifically to avoid wars that religion uncompromising and extreme engenders.

Because of our Founders sagacity, I freely watched, in my youth, numbers of religious films. I was particularly fond of movies about the life of Christ and watched many from Max Von Sydow's “Greatest Story Ever Told” to Mel Gibson’s brutal rather anti-Semitic depiction of “The Passion of the Christ.” I saw the film "Last Temptation of Christ" which engendered some Christian controversy and there were, of course, protesting picketers outside the theater but they did not shoot me in line nor did they burn the theater down for showing it.

I have often, even before I knew it was verboten, possessed a yearning to see in film the historical growth of Islam, the Koran and, yes, even what Islam’s Prophet looked like. He was after all a human being who lived in the 4th century. One would think there would be some depiction of the Prophet but there is nothing I could see even if someone possessed it as they or I would be killed for having it.

I do not fear Muslims or the Islamic faith but I do fear the mixing of religious tenets with the prohibitive mandate of the state. Church/state amalgamation chills me as does man's stifling of his own intellectual creativity and natural inquisitiveness that makes him uniquely human, allows our species to evolutionarily improve and, indeed, helps us survive.

Yelling “fire” in a crowded theater is unacceptable but all other speech should be. Whether Nazis march in Jewish-populated Skokie, the art of the Sistine Chapel’s depicting God, Mapplethorpe’s controversial sculpture of Christ nothing should be verboten to see, hear or discuss. It is how we learn.

The third of the greatest monotheistic faiths, Islam, revealing to the world a mind’s eye depiction of its revered Prophet, should not be prohibited by ISIS or any other group that thinks there is no other truth but their own. I wonder what the Prophet looked like even if it is in the mind's eye of man. No one should be killed for that!

WOW -- FINALLY!!!!!!

Baltimore State's Attorney: 'We Have Probable Cause To File Criminal Charges' Over Freddie Gray Death

Posted: 05/01/2015 10:52 am EDT Updated: 6 minutes ago

WOW WOW WOW . She is one good prosecutor and I do not say that often. I am very impressed. GOOD FOR HER! FINALLY )

COURAGE times 10. I am so proud of my nation...it gets things so wrong BUT it fixes them and when people come together to protest an act IT means EVERYTHING!!

Today is a good day -- SO FAR!

Baltimore Baloney

The lawless alleged enforcers of the law in Baltimore are now trying to say and the Washington Post rag is reporting another prisoner in the van separated by a metal wall could hear Freddie Gray trying to hurt himself.  Oh yes, how many times does one sever ones spinal cord on one's own?  A neurosurgeon reported today there were 20,000 spinal cord injuries and only one was self inflicted and that was in Japan.  Who is kidding whom?

To have the hutzpah to say that Freddie Gray did that to himself is outrageous as it is immoral.   It is Baltimore police speak cover up! Are they kidding me?  The Washington Post rag leaked that information and they think a moronic idiotic statement like that is going to take the onus off the police and calm things down?  It is going to be another Missouri Officer Wilson who will get away yet again with murder.  I think the people in Baltimore will go berserk if this statement is put out as truth.  It is a fabrication to cover up the most egregious behavior by law enforcement since the Rodney King beating.  At least King lived to tell the story. If it makes me enraged I can only imagine how persons of color feel.

How could the other prisoner in the van tell who was banging on the wall when a metal opaque wall was between them and he could not see the extent of bodily harm or who inflicted it? 

In my opinion the more probable happening is that the police had Gray's hands cuffed putting him on his stomach his legs bent backwards tightly.  His spinal cord may have snapped in transit.  No one knows .... yet.  When transporting him there is a particular torture practice called a "Rough Ride" when the police van takes hard turns left and right and hard stops bouncing the prisoner around like a basketball.  It accounts for other spinal cord injuries. 

I would be hopping mad if there is not a proper unbiased investigation NOT by the police but by and independent prosecutor otherwise it is simply Baltimore prosecutorial baloney!

UPDATE:  A new statement was delivered with new information of a video showing yet another stop was made by the van holding Freddie Gray that the commissioner is saying changes the veracity of the first delusional statement that Mr. Gray did this to himself.  Sure, he did this to himself my posterior.  Dream on Baltimore Police dream on.  Someone(s) should be tried for murder!

BEST OPINION EVER--Worth the read

An open letter to the people who hate Obama more than they love America

by MinistryOfTruth Follow--DAILY KOS, January 9, 2012

    I meet you all the time. You hate Obama. You hate gay people. You hate black people, immigrants, Muslims, labor unions, women who want the right to make choices concerning their bodies, you hate em all. You hate being called racist. You hate being called a bigot. Maybe if you talked about creating jobs more than you talk about why you hate gay people we wouldn't call you bigots. Maybe if you talked about black people without automatically assuming they are on food stamps while demanding their birth certificates we wouldn't call you racist. You hate socialism and social justice. You hate regulations and taxes and spending and the Government. You hate.

     You like war. You like torture. You like Jesus. I don't know how in the hell any of that is compatible, but no one ever accused you haters of being over-committed to ideological consistency. You like people who look like you or at least hate most of the things that you hate. You hate everything else.

Now, I know you profess to love our country and the founding fathers (unless you are reminded that they believed in the separation of church and state), but I need to remind you that America is NOT what Fox News says it is. America is a melting pot, it always has been. We are a multi-cultural amalgamation of all kinds of people, and yet you still demonize everyone who is not a rich, white, heterosexual christian male or his submissive and obedient wife.

You hate liberals, moderates, hell, anyone who disagrees with Conservative dogma as espoused by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. You hate em.

Well, here are the facts, Jack. If you hate the Government then you are unqualified to manage it. If you hate gay people more than you love America than you should take your own advice and get the hell out. There are several countries that are openly hostile to gay people, but they are full of brown people and you don't like them much either from what I understand. It looks like you are screwed, but that's not what I am here to tell you.

Now that you have thrown everything and the kitchen sink at President Obama and it still hasn't worked you are panicking. Obama's approval ratings are still near 50% despite your best efforts to undermine the economy and America's recovery at every step you can. You tried to hold the American economy hostage to force America into default on its debts, debts that YOU rang up under Bush, so you could blame it on Obama and it failed. You've used the filibuster more than any other Congress ever, going so far as to vote against providing health care access to 9/11 first responders. You remember 9/11, don't you, it's that thing you used to lie us into a war in Iraq, and then when Obama killed Bin Laden and ended the war in Iraq you told people that he hates America and wants the troops to fail. You monsters. You hate Obama with a passion, despite the fact that he is a tax cutting, deficit reducing war President who undermines civil rights and delivers corporate friendly watered down reforms that benefit special interests just like a Republican. You call him a Kenyan. You call him a socialist. You dance with your hatred singing it proudly in the rain like it was a 1950's musical.

Frankly, you disgust me. Your hatred nauseates me. Your bigotry offends me. Your racism revolts me.

Dear haters, I am openly questioning your patriotism.

I think you hate gays, Obama, black people, poor people, all of us, women, atheists and agnostics, Latinos, Muslims, Liberals, all of us, I think you hate every one who isn't exactly like you, and I think you hate us more than you love your country.

I think you hate gay soldiers more than you want America to win its wars.

I don't even think you want America to win wars, you just want America to have wars, never ending wars and the war profiteering it generates. You love that kind of spending, you love spending on faith based initiatives and abstinence based sex education (George Carlin would have loved that one), you love spending on subsidies for profitable oil corporations, you spend like drunken sailors when you are in the White House, but if it is a Democrat then suddenly you cheer when America doesn't get the Olympics because it might make the black President look bad. But oooh you love your country, you say, and you want it back.

Well listen here skippy, it isn't your country, you don't own it, it is our country, and America is NOT the religiously extremist Foxbots who hate science, elitist professors and having a vibrant and meaningful sex life with someone we love if Rick Santorum doesn't approve of it. Rick Santorum isn't running for America's fucking high school dance chaperone, he should probably just shut the hell up about sex, but he can't because he has nothing else to run on.

Republicans can NOT win on the issues. They've got NOTHING. All they have is a divide and conquer class war that pits ignorant racist and bigoted people against the rest of us in a meaningless battle of wedge issues and the already proven to fail George W. Bush agenda again of tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, privatization and war profiteering and nothing else, so all they can do is blame black people, gays the government, anybody and everyone else for their own failings. The party of personal responsibility, my ass.

But they love multi-national corporations, just ask a gay hating and racist religious extremist if they think Corporations are people and they will gladly agree, but if you ask them if gay people are people they aren't so sure.

Dear haters, you are the cruel, heartless misinformed a *&^holes who would sell America out to Haliburton in a heartbeat, you would rather pay ZERO taxes than you would see a newly born baby get access to quality health care, you cheer when we discuss denying health care to young people with preventable diseases, and you boo when we discuss the First Ladies plan to cut back on childhood obesity. You are a cross to carry and a flag to wrap yourself in away from being the people who Sinclair Lewis warned us about, but I guarantee that if Fox News told you to dress that way you would, because you are the same blind, ignorant and closed minded dunces who drove this country into a civil war years ago because you are bound to the notion that some men are more equal than others. In short, the reason I proudly wear my union army hat is because of seditious sell outs like you who constantly f ____ over the working class Americans so a foreign entrepreneur like Rupert Murdoch can get a bigger tax break. If corporations are people, they are neither American patriots nor capable of love. Just like you.

So stop wearing your hate with pride. Stop celebrating your anti-science, anti-math ignorance. Stop using code words to mask your bigotry like "family values", especially when you hate my family and when you stand on the same stage as a guy who has had three marriages or if you share a seat in the Senate with a guy who cheated on his wife with hookers while wearing diapers. You should be ashamed. I know that you are just doing this to motivate your misinformed hate cult base because if they actually knew that your ideas will make them poorer than they are now, they would never vote for you. You are doing your best to impoverish your countrymen so rich people can get bigger tax breaks and you can keep on delivering corporate welfare to the special interests who have bribed you, and I am disgusted by the way you gleefully parade your hatred with aplomb. I don't think you do love America. At least, not as much as you hate everyone in America who isn't exactly like you.

You should think about that, and maybe get some help.

And for the record, I do not hate you. I am embarrassed by you and nauseated by your cruel and thoughtless behavior and your all consuming greed, but I do not hate you. I forgive you and I hope you can change someday, but I don't hate you. You have enough hate in you for the rest of us as it is.

You can follow me on twitter @JesseLaGreca

Originally posted to MinistryOfTruth on Mon Jan 09, 2012 at 01:57 PM PST.

Also republished by ClassWarfare Newsletter: WallStreet VS Working Class Global Occupy movement, Street Prophets , Mitt Romney Bain Chronicles, and Daily Kos Classics.

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