As the House of Representatives gears up for Tuesday’s debate on HR 1797, a bill that would outlaw virtually all abortions 20 weeks post fertilization, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) argued in favor of banning abortions even earlier in pregnancy because, he said, male fetuses that age were already, shall we say, spanking the monkey.

“Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful,” said Burgess, a former OB/GYN. “They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?”

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/06/17/texas-congressman-masturbating-fetuses-prove-need-for-abortion-ban/

they are trying to terrify us for profit!!!!


Robert Scheer's Columns
The Terror Con
Posted on Jun 18, 2013


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For defense contractors, the government officials who write them mega checks, and the hawks in the media who cheer them on, the name of the game is threat inflation. And no one has been better at it than the folks at Booz Allen Hamilton, the inventors of the new boondoggle called cyberwarfare.

That’s the company, under contract with the National Security Agency, that employed whistle-blower Edward Snowden, the information security engineer whose revelation of Booz Allen’s enormously profitable and pervasive spying on Americans now threatens the firm’s profitability and that of its parent hedge fund, the Carlyle Group.

Booz Allen, whose top personnel served in key positions at the NSA and vice versa after the inconvenient collapse of the Cold War, has been attempting to substitute terrorist for communist as the enemy of choice. A difficult switch indeed for the military-industrial complex about which Dwight Eisenhower, the general-turned-president, had so eloquently warned us.

But just when the good times for war profiteers seemed to be forever in the past, there came 9/11 and the terrorist enemy, the gift that keeps on giving, for acts of terror always will occur in a less than perfect world, serving as an ideal excuse for squandering resources, as well as our freedoms.

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much more:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_terror_con_20130618/

Democrats Risk Losing a Generation to Cynical Libertarianism

"Too many Democrats have a smug assurance that the younger generations will automatically keep voting Democratic; that "demographic change" will condemn the GOP to permanent minority status in just a couple decades. But if the American people elect Democrats and then those Democrats keep cutting government services for the poor, elderly, and disadvantaged, while continuing to expand the military-industrial-security state and serving the Wall Street lobbyists that people were actually voting against, why are they going to bother to vote for Democrats again? "Because they have no other choice," right? I don't think that's going to work much longer.

The GOP is not stupid. There is a rising libertarian wing of that party, led by Sen. Rand Paul, which seeks to appeal to young voters who have given up on the promises of Democrats who talked the talk but didn't walk the walk -- young liberals who would seriously consider voting Republican if only the GOP would cut the military, end the domestic spying, the Wall Street bank bailouts, and the war on marijuana. Do you really think the Democrats have these pissed-off young voters locked in their column for life? Do you really think the Republicans are never going to try to rebrand their party to appeal to young Democrats who saw all their political hopes and dreams slip away under the weak, centrist, corporate-dominated, too-similar-to-Bush administration of Barack Obama? Think again.

It is time for a concerted movement to take back the Democratic Party from the centrist, corporate-driven "Republican lite" party it has become. It is time for the voters of America to have a real choice between conservative and liberal, not ultra-conservative and mildly, sanely conservative. ..."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/17/1216862/-Democrats-Risk-Losing-a-Generation-to-Cynical-Libertarianism




found this a while back:

The Leadership Trait That Barack Obama and Dick Cheney Share
Though vastly different, both think more highly of their own judgment than any law.

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"Do you see the similarity now? When it comes to doing whatever the hell one wants, or not doing it, due to legitimate constraints, Cheney's avowed preference and Obama's revealed preference are the same. In their own ways, they both subvert whatever it is that gets in their way. Obama thinks of himself as balancing lots of complicated factors -- and somehow it always comes out that he has to assume more power than he thought prudent when others were exercising it.

What a coincidence!

Cheney and Obama both had apologists encouraging this arrogance in them, though in different ways. Cheney's cheerleaders argued for a powerful presidency, testicle-crushing and all. Obama's arrogance has been bolstered more by the pundits insisting that his decisionmaking prowess is akin to Reinhold Niebuhr playing 12-dimensional chess against Wile E. Coyote."


He is so wise, thinking dimensions beyond the comprehension of his doubters! We're so lucky to have him!
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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/the-leadership-trait-that-barack-obama-and-dick-cheney-share/276916/

“George Orwell’s ghost is shaking his head saying, ‘I told you so’,” says Richard McGuire, the artist behind this week’s cover.


http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/06/cover-story-uncle-sam-is-listening-richard-mcguire.html#slide_ss_0=1

Snowden: If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-nsa-files-whistleblower?commentpage=1

Source: NBC

Bank of America former employees: 'We were told to lie'

In sworn testimony, six former employees describe what they saw behind the scenes of an often opaque process that has frustrated homeowners, their attorneys and housing counselors.

They describe systematic efforts to undermine the program by routinely denying loan modifications to qualified applicants, withholding reviews of completed applications, steering applicants to costlier "in-house" loans and paying bonuses to employees based on the number of new foreclosures they initiated.

The employees' sworn testimony goes a long way to explain why the government's Home Affordable Modification Program, launched in 2008 during the depths of the housing collapse, has fallen so far short of the original targets to save millions of Americans from being tossed from their homes.

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/suit-bank-america-paid-bonuses-foreclosures-6C10351458

Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/suit-bank-america-paid-bonuses-foreclosures-6C10351458

via:
http://www.balloon-juice.com/
Our Overlords have messages for us:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jun/15/al-gore-obama-keystone-pipeline
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/17/1216788/-Al-Gore-lays-it-down-Keystone-an-Atrocity