The NRA and George Zimmerman

BRADY'S NEW PRESIDENT SPEAKS OUT ON TRAYVON MARTIN

TRIBUTE TO CHRISTINA-TAYLOR GREEN

My niece, my daughter's cousin....

"We don't need anymore restrictions on our society"

"If we live in a country like the United States, where people are more free than anywhere else, we are subject to things like this happening."

...The book analyzes and attempts to explain the motives of the various types of personalities that give rise to mass movements; why and how mass movements start, progress and end; and the similarities between them, whether religious, political, radical or reactionary. As examples, the book often refers to Communism, Fascism, National Socialism, Christianity, Protestantism, and Islam. Hoffer believes that mass movements are interchangeable, that adherents will often flip from one movement to another, and that the motivations for mass movements are interchangeable; that religious, nationalist and social movements, whether radical or reactionary, tend to attract the same type of followers, behave in the same way and use the same tactics, even when their stated goals or values differed.

Jan Brewer signs abortion ban defining pregnancy before conception
Source: Raw Story

Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Thursday signed one of the most controversial and restrictive abortion bans in the country, which experts say effectively bans abortions after 18 weeks and declares that a woman could be pregnant 2 weeks before she even had sex.

“This legislation is consistent with my strong track record of supporting common sense measures to protect the health of women and safeguard our most vulnerable population – the unborn,” a statement from the governor’s office said.

“Knowing that abortions become riskier the later they are performed in pregnancy, it only makes sense to prohibit these procedures past 20 weeks,” Brewer insisted.

Arizona’s HB 2036 takes Nebraska’s 20-week abortion ban one step further by starting the clock on pregnancies at the woman’s last last menstrual period, which could be two weeks before fertilization...

Colin Goddard: they guy who did to gun shows what James O'Keefe did to ACORN.

But it was for a good cause, so it justified the means. And only a lout would wonder why the unedited videos have yet to surface...
<sarcasm mode to OFF>

Planned Parenthood Worried It's The Target Of New Undercover Sting


While patient privacy laws prohibit Planned Parenthood from offering specific details about the visits and where they occurred, Cooney told The Huffington Post that the incidents are so unusual and so similar to each other that they have raised concerns among the organization's executives that the visits are being recorded as part of a concerted anti-Planned Parenthood campaign.

"For years opponents of reproductive health and Planned Parenthood have engaged in secret videotaping tactics with fictitious patient scenarios and selective editing in an attempt to promote misinformation about Planned Parenthood and our services," Cooney said. "As with the prior instances, we anticipate that once again this group, likely in coordination with a broad range of anti-abortion leaders, will soon launch a propaganda campaign with the goal of discrediting Planned Parenthood, and, ultimately, restricting women's health."

The most likely group behind the campaign, Planned Parenthood suspects, is anti-abortion activist group Live Action, which has a history of paying actors to walk into Planned Parenthood clinics and act out various controversial scenarios in an attempt to catch the family planning provider's staffers doing something illegal or immoral on tape. A recent operation involved actors posing as pimps and prostitutes engaged in human trafficking and seeking birth control, STD testing and other family planning services. HuffPost's Ryan Grim reported in February 2011 that Live Action heavily edited the videos they gathered to alter the meaning of conversations and falsely imply that Planned Parenthood is complicit in sex trafficking, but conservative lawmakers and media outlets cited the group's videos in numerous subsequent political attacks against the family planning provider...

April 25, 2012 1:23 PM
ATF's mysterious grenade smuggler case: new photos, documents turned over to Congress

By Sharyl Attkisson

Evidence photos just turned over to Congress under subpoena show a frightening stash of grenade parts, fuse assemblies and more than 2,000 rounds of ammunition. It was all hidden in a spare tire of an SUV crossing from the US to Mexico in 2010. The accused smuggler, an alleged drug cartel arms dealer named Jean Baptise Kingery, was questioned by agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) but released....

...Documents show ATF secretly intercepted the grenade bodies Kingery had ordered, marked them, and delivered them to him on Jan. 26, 2010. Their plan was to follow Kingery to his weapons factory in Mexico, with help from Mexican authorities Immigration and Customs (ICE). ...

...ATF officials in Mexico worried that once Kingery and the grenades crossed the border, they would disappear. And that's exactly what happened. Though ATF agents say they'd given all the specifics to Mexican military and police, the Mexicans failed to stop Kingery once he crossed into Mexico.

Four months later, Kingery surfaced again in the U.S. This time, the Border Patrol caught him trying to smuggle the new stash of grenade hulls shown in the photos. ATF questioned him but, once again, he was let go. Nobody has stepped forward to explain why Kingery was released after this incident. He allegedly continued to supply the Mexican drug cartels for another year and a half....

Truth2Tell Donating Member (1000+ posts) Wed Jan-09-08 05:48 PM
Original message
Bloomberg on the Iraq war: some disturbing hints

Buried in a June 23 New York Times piece on Mike Bloomberg receiving a charity award was some interesting reporting on where the mayor stands on the war. Nothing like a nice ground zero photo shoot with Pickles to highlight the patriotic bona fides.

A Mayor Often Ill at Ease, and Usually Muted on Iraq
By Jim Dwyer
June 23, 2007

…In May 2004, a year after the invasion, Mr. Bloomberg served as host to Laura Bush, who had come to New York in an effort to rally support for the war effort. Mrs. Bush visited a memorial for Sept. 11th victims. Standing next to Mrs. Bush, with the Statue of Liberty in the background, Mr. Bloomberg, right, suggested that New Yorkers could find justification for the war at the World Trade Center site, even though no Iraqi is known to have had a hand in the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Don’t forget that the war started not very many blocks from here," he said that day in 2004.

- snip-

… In his speech, Mr. Bloomberg remarked on the sacrifice of soldiers and what he implied was the ingratitude of people opposed to the war.

"We shouldn’t forget that we have young men and women overseas fighting and dying, sadly, so that we can protest," he said. "I sometimes think young protesters don’t realize that their right to protest is not something that they would have elsewhere, and it’s a right that has to be fought for continuously."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/23/nyregion/23about.html?_r=3&oref=regi&ocid=81&incamp=ts:chall_article_trial&headline=A+Mayor+Often+Ill+at+Ease,+and+Usually+Muted+on+Iraq&oref=slogin

baldguy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Mon Jan-05-04 07:36 PM
Original message
Are we safer now that Saddam is in custody?

There are people who acknowledge that Bush lied to America about the Iraq war: lied about Saddam's WMDs, lied about the threat posed by Iraq, lied about the connection to Al Qiada, and lied about the costs involved – both monetarily and in human lives. Yet they still support the war. They say "The overthrow and capture of Saddam Hussein has made America safer and made the world safer. Isn't it better that this homicidal maniac is no longer in power? Isn't it a great step forward in the war on terrorism? Hasn’t Bush made us safer?"

Saddam is now in custody, yes. But, the world is not a safer place. The primary threat from Al Qiada is still there - Bush has done almost nothing to stem the tide of anti-American hatred surging through the Muslim world. Unbelievably, he has even added to it. After the attacks of Sept 11, America had the entire world behind us, willing to support us in nearly anything we did to destroy the Evil Doers that murdered 3000 people. Bush has totally squandered that outpouring of compassion and support. With his arrogance he has alienated our historic allies to the point where they look upon the warnings generated by our intelligence services as a way for the Bush administration to score political points domestically. And they'd be right. For the Bushies there's no distinction between policy and propaganda. The vast array of non-partisan gov't apparatus that has been carefully built up over the last fifty years, which was meant to provide professional, objective analysis on any number of various domestic and foreign areas of expertise. - has been co-opted to solely to support the narrow domestic agenda of the NeoCoservitive-Industrial Complex. And to hell with literally everything else.

Saddam is no longer a threat, yes. But, he wasn't a threat before the invasion. Saddam can no longer hatch plots with Osama. But, he wasn't doing that before the invasion, either. He can no longer indiscriminately murder his people. But, when he was doing that Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr were supporting him; they looked the other way and gave him more arms and money. Also, there have been more Iraqi civilians killed in the last several months since the invasion than in the prior twelve years since the first Gulf war. Iraqi civilians have more to fear from Bush Jr than they did from Saddam.

Bush has been distracted from his primary purpose as Commander-In-Chief - that is to protect American citizens from harm. His main objective as Commander-In-Chief should be to fight the very real terrorist threat which America and the civilized world must face together. But the NeoConservitive-Industrial Complex has other ideas. They've been planning the Iraq War for the last ten years with PNAC. The drums for war were beaten by the Right-Wing media. The fires of hatred for the Arab world were fanned by the "Christian" conservatives. War-profiteering corporations needed a pliable gov’t to involve with their ghoulish trade. The manufacturing of a war fell right in with their needs. And Bush is beholden to all of these groups for his current position....

....My response:

In regards to James F. Cornwell's letter of Aug 30: If Mr Bush wished to protect the America, he would have only attacked those who posed a threat – al Qaeda and their sponsors in Saudi Arabia. He would have enlisted the aid of our best allies - such as France and Germany who have long endured the threat of fundamentalist terrorism. The fact is Mr Bush and his cronies planned on attacking Iraq from the start of his administration, and only needed a reason palatable to ill-informed
Americans and ill-informed media to do so. The attacks of Sept 11 gave him that reason, and Bush has referenced them at every occasion to justify his invasion & continual occupation of Iraq. Even through Saddam Hussein had absolutely nothing nothing nothing to do with Sept 11.

Mr Bush is due for criticism because he has simply failed as a President. His actions threaten the security of the United States. He has ignored the advice of, and demoted, fired or dismissed employees of the federal government and military who, with their vast experience and expertise, had warned him repeatedly of the folly of unnecessarily occupying an Islamic country like Iraq. He coddles our enemies and their supporters. He has alienated the very allies we need to fight the fundamentalist terrorists. And in doing so he has had people investigated, arrested & detained without trial or charge - merely for their political views. Smells like fascism to me.

One can wonder why, if he believes in his Glorious Leader's cause, Mr Cornwell isn't in Iraq serving in uniform instead of ensconced in the relative safety of "liberal" New York University? Or if he and the supporters of the war are willing pay the cost of it themselves (now about $30,000 each)? Or if he believes, as some in the right-wing punditry have stated, that his hosts in New York City behaved as cowards on Sept 11 while they were being attacked - and while Mr Bush failed in his duty to protect them - simply because that city is deemed to be too "liberal"?

The simple, moral and honorable solution to Mr Bush's Iraq Quagmire is to withdraw. We should pay reparations to the Iraqi people for committing the crime of invading their country. (This would be much less costly than occupying the country.) Allow them to employ themselves to rebuild their country - without lining the pockets the Republican middlemen in Halliburton and Bechtel.

As Clarence Page reminded us - a critic of the President once said "Victory means having an exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." If this was true when Gov Bush said it about Pres Clinton's policy in a low-level conflict like Bosnia, it is even more applicable about Pres Bush in a full-blown war like Iraq.

baldguy Sun Jan-30-05 09:31 PM

25. People are harassed, investigated & arrested for their political beliefs.

Edited on Sun Jan-30-05 09:34 PM by baldguy
Held anonymously without charge, trial, or communication with the outside world.

The President's press secretary says that people should watch what they say, or else - and the press is too afraid to say anything.

People are prevented from traveling freely because they are on a gov't list.

baldguy Donating Member Sat Jun-25-11 03:18 PM

4. The TSA's No-Fly list is entirely different than the FBI's Terrorist Watch List.

Trying to conflate the two is RW propaganda.

Mayor Bloomberg: 'I Have My Own Private Army' (in NYPD)

Source: PolitickerNY

Mayor Bloomberg: ‘I Have My Own Army’

By Hunter Walker 10:06am

In a speech at MIT last night to discuss the packed sweepstakes to build a tech campus in New York City, Mayor Bloomberg said he prefers City Hall to the White House. Almost immediately after Mayor Bloomberg dampened recent speculation he’s eyeing a White House bid, he added fuel to the fire by explaining why a mayor would be the best person for the job.

Mayor Bloomberg’s recent criticism of President Obama for allowing the debt reduction Supercommittee to fail led many political tea leaf watchers to believe he’s eyeing a potential White House bid. To the dismay of those who hope he’ll mount presidential campaign, Mayor Bloomberg began his speech last night by discussing why City Hall is just fine by him.

“I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world. I have my own State Department, much to Foggy Bottom’s annoyance. We have the United Nations in New York, and so we have an entree into the diplomatic world that Washington does not have,” Mayor Bloomberg said....


http://www.politicker.com/2011/11/30/mayor-bloomberg-i-have-my-own-army-11-30-11/

NYPD Infiltrated and Spied on Liberal Groups

Last edited Fri Mar 23, 2012, 04:18 PM USA/ET

The AP (via CBS) notes that undercover cops went to liberal political groups' meetings, building intel files on activists and protesters.

The newswire says that interviews and docs collected during the investigation "show how police have used counterterrorism tactics to monitor even lawful activities."

The AP points out that the NYPD used these same tactics in 2004, when the department monitored church, environmental, and anti-war groups in the U.S., claiming these policies were necessary to prep for the GOP convention.

But these methods continued far after the convention took place: in 2008, the NYPD's super-secret intel department sent an undercover officer to attend the People's Summit in New Orleans. The project report gathered information on two U.S. activists, journalist Jordan Flaherty and labor organizer Marisa Franco, the AP notes....

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/03/nypd_spied_on_l.php

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57403085/docs-show-nypd-infiltrated-liberal-groups/?tag=contentMain;contentBody