May 3, 2013

Move to Amend Event in PDX. This Evening/This Weekend. Anybody Else Going? I am.

Move to Amend (MTA), the organization trying to overturn the SCOTUS ruling in Citizens United is hosting an event this evening/this weekend.

MTA is hosting an event this weekend that begins with an opening session today at 6:30 and continues Saturday and Sunday. Here's the link on their site to event details: http://movetoamend.nationbuilder.com/portland_2013_convergence?utm_source=movetoamend&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=portland_conve7&recruiter_id=42008

If you haven't registered for it and still want to go that's okay. They'll register you on site today or tomorrow.

I'm looking forward to it. Hope some of you are there too. Is there a secret DU handshake we can use to ID each other? Maybe I'll just make a big DU sticker on my computer and attach it to any "badge" they give us to wear.

If you're going, , note that in comments here on this thread.

May 3, 2013

Move to Amend Event in PDX. This Evening/This Weekend. Anybody Else Going? I am.

I started to post this in Oregon but since it's about Move to Amend (MTA), the organization trying to overturn the SCOTUS ruling in Citizens United, I decided to go with GD instead. Hosts, if you want me to move just let me know.

MTA is hosting an event this weekend that begins with an opening session today at 6:30 and continues Saturday and Sunday. Here's the link on their site to event details: http://movetoamend.nationbuilder.com/portland_2013_convergence?utm_source=movetoamend&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=portland_conve7&recruiter_id=42008

If you haven't registered for it and still want to go that's okay. They'll register you on site today or tomorrow.

I'm looking forward to it. Hope some of you are there too. Is there a secret DU handshake we can use to ID each other? Maybe I'll just make a big DU sticker on my computer and attach it to any "badge" they give us to wear.

If you're going, , note that in comments here on this thread.

April 28, 2013

White House Correspondents' Dinner Lays Bare the Elite Club that is DC.

Once again we mere mortals who vote in the politicians and pay their salaries and who read the papers and web sites/blogs of the DC "journalists" are treated to viewing the WH Correspondents' Dinner. It's a cozy little affair with all the DC gliterati there to roast one another like the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts TV show. They are a tight-knit group, those politicians and those "journalists."

I know I'm preaching to the choir when I say those "journalists" are no more reporting objectively on the politicians they're so cozy with than the Justice Dept. and Treasury Dept. are regulating and prosecuting banksters and criminals on Wall Street.

They certainly are not doing the type of reporting on the government and its foibles that prompted the founding fathers to write the First Amendment for fear of having the voice of the people censored and silenced. The so-called "journalists," their editors and media owners do that all on their own now.

April 23, 2013

Greg Ball, New York State Senator, Defends Tweet Advocating Torture For Bombing Suspect

I didn't see this here yesterday. Maybe I missed it. Sorry if I'm repeating.

A New York Republican is defending his call for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to be tortured during the interrogation process.

State Sen. Greg Ball (R-Carmel), a potential 2014 congressional candidate, said on "Fox and Friends" Monday morning that torture is necessary in this and other cases of terrorism to save lives. “If getting that information, including torture, would save one innocent life, including what we’ve seen children, would you use torture?" Ball said. "I would be first in line.”

After Tsarnaev was captured on Friday night, Ball drew criticism when he tweeted, "Who wouldn't use torture on this punk to save more lives?"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/22/greg-ball-torture_n_3130895.html

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I guess he missed the whole Geneva Convention thing and the repeated fact cited by experts that torture doesn't provide good information. Tortured people tell their torturers whatever they think the torturer wants to hear to stop the torture.

April 23, 2013

Source: Boston bomb suspect says brother was brains behind attack

Source: CNN

Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told investigators his older brother Tamerlan was the driving force behind last week's attack and that no international terrorist groups were behind them, a U.S. government source said Monday.

Preliminary interviews with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev indicate the two brothers fit the classification of self-radicalized jihadists, the source said. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, wounded and held in a Boston hospital, said his brother wanted to defend Islam from attack, according to the source.

The government source cautioned that the interviews were preliminary, and that Tsarnaev's account needs to be checked out and followed up on by investigators.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/22/us/boston-attack/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

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So, if true, he's really not an enemy combatant and neither was his brother.

On Edit: Could just possibly, maybe be an angry immigrant (older brother) who didn't integrate into US society very well, didn't make it in boxing, got his citizenship put on hold and just got angrier and angrier because of all those things. Then, at the same time he was turning to militant Islam - an extreme and not the norm for Muslims - he decided to take out his anger on the US by bombing something. The Boston Marathon happened to be convenient maybe. Just theorizing.

April 20, 2013

Anybody Else Have a Wizard of Oz Flashback When the "Stay in Place and Shelter" Request was Lifted?

April 20, 2013

Report: 3 arrested in New Bedford in connection to bombing suspect - Update: Quickly Released

Source: ABC6 Providence, RI

Neighbors say three have been arrested in New Bedford in connection with the Boston Bombing suspect.

Police apprehended suspects from the Hidden Brook Apartments on Carriage Drive in New Bedford. Neighbors say they think that the girlfriend of 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev may have lived in the complex and they have seen him in the area as recently as yesterday.

Dzhokhar is a student at the nearby University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Earlier on Friday his brother, also a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing, was killed in a gun fight with police.


Read more: http://www.abc6.com/story/22028344/report-3-arrested-in-new-bedford-in-connection-to-bombing-suspect

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That's the whole article above. Pictures at link.

On Edit: They were quickly released. So they probably didn't have much to do with the bombings
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022719216

April 20, 2013

Why Did Everyone, All of a Sudden, This Week Forget Posts/Blogs By Private Citizens are Not FACTS

4chan and reddit need have no shame. They are what they are. Sites where people posts things about current topics. Some of it legitimate, some (most) of it crap.

It should be no surprise to anyone that so many private citizens with no criminal justice or investigative expertise were making claims that could not be substantiated. It happens every day, all day on the internet. The unfortunate thing is that this week it really had the possibility to cause immediate harm. Harm to those poor guys on the cover of the NY Post who were innocent. They're lucky some vigilante didn't take them out before they were cleared.

The real shame is to organizations like the NY Post. It presents itself as a serious journalistic endeavor. However, this week it has proven, once again, it is anything but. While other "serious" news organizations didn't run the picture the Post ran they participated in the hanging of those two innocent men. I saw descriptions in many main-stream papers and on network news sites that described the two guys in the picture the Post printed as the two men the FBI would be releasing pictures of later. Now know they were all wrong.

4Chan and Reddit didn't spread anything. Their members spread gossip and unofficial garbage.

April 18, 2013

Anybody Holding Their Breath for an Apology from NY Post to the Two Guys it Hung Today on Its Cover?

I'm not expecting them to do anything - like apologize for turning the dogs loose on two innocent people. But they should print a full front page apologizing and making clear to all the people who might do them harm that those guys were not involved.

They're probably in hiding right now. I would be.

April 16, 2013

Why is that EVIL Carmen Ortiz given a mic in Boston?

She was just on the live press conference. There is no reason she is relevant right now. She's a prosecutor, not an investigator. She's not an explosives expert. She's just trying to get in the limelight for her future career ambitions.

In case you forgot she was Aaron Swartz's abusive prosecutor that drove him to suicide.

ON Edit: she also tried to take a family's only business, their motel, away from them using drug laws. Fortunately the judge slapped her down on that.