kpete

kpete's Journal

July 26, 2015

if.....

July 26, 2015

OBAMA rips Confederate Flag: “just because something is a part of your past doesn’t make it right"

In Nairobe Kenya, President Obama says that “just because something is a part of your past doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t mean that it defines your future.”

As an example Obama pointed to the controversy over flying the confederate flag in the United States.

“It was a flag that flew over an army that fought to maintain a system of slavery and racial subjugation. So we should understand our history, but we should also recognize it sends a bad message to those who were liberated from slavery and oppression.”

“Just because something’s a tradition doesn’t make it right.”

MUCH MORE:
http://theuptake.org/2015/07/26/obama-bad-traditions-confederate-flag-suppressing-women/

July 26, 2015

TPM Poll: Bernie Sanders (44.8%) Hillary Clinton (36.6%) Martin O'Malley (1%)

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic. So I put it here:

These numbers stunned me.

Bernie Sanders (44.8%)

Hillary Clinton (36.6%)

Martin O'Malley (1%)

I think what offsets ideology here is that these are, like all "opinion leaders", very politically active and well read and they talk to other people about politics a lot. That makes them less likely to default to the establishment candidate. Still, for voters who aren't that far to the left, that is a very impressive number.

more interesting stuff:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/how-tpm-readers-view-the-sanders-phenomenon

July 26, 2015

Judge Orders Release of Immigrant Children Detained by U.S.

Source: New York Times

A federal judge in California has ruled that the Obama administration’s detention of children and their mothers who were caught crossing the border illegally is a serious violation of a longstanding court settlement, and that the families should be released as quickly as possible.

In a decision late Friday roundly rejecting the administration’s arguments for holding the families, Judge Dolly M. Gee of Federal District Court for the Central District of California found that two detention centers in Texas that the administration opened last summer fail to meet minimum legal requirements of the 1997 settlement for facilities housing children.

Judge Gee also found that migrant children had been held in “widespread deplorable conditions” in Border Patrol stations after they were first caught, and she said the authorities had “wholly failed” to provide the “safe and sanitary” conditions required for children even in temporary cells.

The opinion was a significant legal blow to detention policies ordered by Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson in response to an influx of children and parents, mostly from Central America, across the border in South Texas last summer. In her 25-page ruling, Judge Gee gave a withering critique of the administration’s positions, declaring them “unpersuasive” and “dubious” and saying officials had ignored “unambiguous” terms of the settlement.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/us/detained-immigrant-children-judge-dolly-gee-ruling.html&_r=0

July 26, 2015

'I suspect my critics back home are suggesting that I'm back here to look for my birth certificate'

He made jokes about his birth certificate in his father's homeland.

"I suspect that some of my critics back home are suggesting that I'm back here to look for my birth certificate. That is not the case," Obama quipped as the room broke out in laughter and applause.

Obama made his birth certificate public in 2011 after opponents questioned his birthplace and eligibility to be president, claiming he was not a U.S. citizen. The certificate lists Honolulu, Hawaii, as his place of birth.

His visit to Kenya marks the first time a sitting U.S. president has traveled to the East African nation.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-jokes-about-birth-certificate-during-kenya-visit_55b4cecfe4b0074ba5a4d170?

July 26, 2015

TPM Poll: Bernie Sanders (44.8%) Hillary Clinton (36.6%) Martin O'Malley (1%)

These numbers stunned me.

Bernie Sanders (44.8%)

Hillary Clinton (36.6%)

Martin O'Malley (1%)

I think what offsets ideology here is that these are, like all "opinion leaders", very politically active and well read and they talk to other people about politics a lot. That makes them less likely to default to the establishment candidate. Still, for voters who aren't that far to the left, that is a very impressive number.

more interesting stuff:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/how-tpm-readers-view-the-sanders-phenomenon

July 26, 2015

Dear Politico: WTF is THIS besides RACIST Bullcrap?

Politico Finds ‘Capital of American Jihad’–Based on 2 Cases, 6 Years and 268 Miles Apart
Roughly 10 hours after another white, apparently racist Christian senselessly opened fire in a public place in the American South, Politico (7/23/15) published what has to be one of the worst pieces of Islamophobic pseudo-journalism this side of Pam Geller.

In his piece “Tennessee Is the Capital of American Jihad,” author and “War on Terror” think-tanker James Kitfield sets out to draw a connection between the the recent Chattanooga shooter Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez and the case of Carlos Bledsoe, who shot up a recruiting station in Arkansas in 2009. The fact that both attacked recruiting stations, both lived in Tennessee and both were Muslim is apparently enough to make Tennessee the “Capital of American Jihad.”

Yes. There is no other evidence provided. That is all.