July 29, 2013

MILITIA-LEADING COP FREAKS OUT

Hemorrhaging allies and local goodwill, Gilberton, Pennsylvania police chief Mark Kessler says he expects to lose his job over a profanity-laced YouTube video in which he discusses shooting “libtards.” “I’ll probably be out of a job by the time I get home,” Kessler told NBC News while on vacation in Texas. Since we first wrote about Kessler last week, dubbing him “America’s scariest police chief,” the lawman has received national attention for his antics, which include forming a right-wing paramilitary organization called the Constitution Security Force. Meanwhile, a group of pro-gun law enforcement and military officials with whom Kessler has aligned himself say they want nothing to do with the chief. “Chief Kessler is not working with Oath Keepers, nor is Oath Keepers working with him,” Elias Alias, who sits on the Oath Keeper’s board of directors, said in an email to Salon.



Kessler sometimes sports a black Oath Keepers t-shirt and has earned praise from the group’s leaders in the past. His militia-style organization and the Oath Keepers share a similar ideological agenda and have at least some overlapping membership, but Alias made clear that Kessler is not a member of his group. The police chief has largely eschewed media interviews since the controversy broke (he did not respond to a request from Salon), but addressed the controversy on his radio show today. “What a week,” he sighed, bewildered at the attention he’s received and the degree to which he’s “pissed off a lot of libtards.” “It’s about to get very ugly, I can tell you that,” he said, explaining that he has received death threats and calls for his children to be taken away from him.



He was completely and totally unrepentant, and called out his critics by name: The local school board president is a “fucking fat fuck,” detractor radio hosts are “faggots,” and the sheriff is an “illustrious piece of shit.” Noting that his father fought in Vietnam, Kessler added: “He killed better people than these fucking scumbags that are attacking me today.” Gilberton Mayor Mary Lou Hannon told the AP that “the profanity and violence in [the video] was a little upsetting,” but said that Kessler has been a “loyal” public servant. The chief is also a member of the North Schuylkill school board, which released a statement Friday saying that it doesn’t “condone or agree” with Kessler, but has little power to remove any of its members.



Still, when Patriot-News opinion editor John Micek visited the tiny coal town of Gilberton this week, he found a number of residents willing to defend Kessler. “He’s a good guy. He’s good to the town,” one man remarked. And Kessler had enough clout to get the borough council to unanimously pass a resolution he authored in January that authorized him to take “any and all measures” to prevent the enforcement of gun control laws. Since our first story on Kessler last week, we’ve been deluged by people sending us other comments that they find offensive. For instance, there’s this instructional video Kessler posted on YouTube, where he teaches viewers basic pistol technique using “Nancy Pelosi” as a target. The image is of a deranged clown with a hammer. “This is what most of our congressmen and women and senators look like without their plastic surgery and makeup,” he quips, before riddling “Pelosi” with bullets. “We’re going to give two to Nancy [bang, bang]. Then we’re going to put two in her face [bang, bang],” he explains, repeating the exercise several times with glee.


cont'



http://www.salon.com/2013/07/29/militia_forming_police_chief_lashes_out_at_critics/

July 29, 2013

WOO-HOO: Rep.Peter King BLASTS Rand Paul For 'Apologizing For America': 'FRINGES' WILL 'DESTROY' GOP

The global hegemonists in the GOP – who have never fully addressed the fiscal, moral and military fiascoes that were the Afghan and Iraq wars – nonetheless can still summon the energy to carpet-bomb anyone questioning the logic behind them. Matt Welch marvels at the “Angry Birds’ multi-front attack against” Rand Paul started by Chris Christie last week and continued yesterday by former terrorist-funder, Peter King (seen above):






Paul’s camp has fired back at the above comments from King: “He wants us endlessly patrolling the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan instead of ours at home.” And the shifting politics of NSA surveillance suggests that Paul is onto something. If there’s an actual debate within the Republican party about the disastrous legacy of Cheney, it can only advance sanity, and break the groupthink that has paralyzed the GOP intellectually. Of course, there should be a debate about whether the US needs to spend a huge amount of money policing the entire world, and financing the crony capitalism of the military-industrial complex, while its own infrastructure crumbles, its healthcare liabilities mount and its population ages.



Paul needs to remind Republicans that Reagan was, at heart, a peacenik whose global strategy was premised on a Soviet union that no longer exists. He got the hell out of Lebanon the minute Marines were massacred – something Cheney would declare treason if Obama did the same today. He needs to remind them that Eisenhower was the man who coined the term “military-industrial complex” and won or ended wars, rather than starting and losing them, like Cheney and Bush. The GOP, in other words, cannot be for limited government in all things but defense and national security – where it signs a huge blank check to the defense welfare state because of paranoia and nationalism (which are not to be conflated with prudence and patriotism).


cont'


http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/07/29/the-preemptive-war-on-paul/

July 29, 2013

OH-OOH: Rand Paul MOCKS Christie and King: ‘GIMME, GIMME, GIMME ALL MY SANDY MONEY NOW’

Republicans Peter King (Rep, NY) and Chris Christie (Gov, NJ) have been tearing into Republican Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and his “anti-war” NSA foot pounding, saying he is weakening the Republican Party’s bona fides on national security. So Paul took it to the next level, slamming both King and Christie for being takers who are bankrupting the government. At a Republican fundraiser in Tennessee on Sunday, Senator Paul accused Christie and King of being all “gimme, gimme, gimme”, according to CNN affiliate WKRN-TV. Speaking as the headliner at a Boots and Jeans, BBQ and Beans fundraising event in Franklin Tennessee, the Senator said,





Bizarrely, the Senator also explained that the GOP needs to be more inclusive, and suggested that they need to get those New England votes. Senator Paul expounded on ways to grow the Republican Party, “New England, the West Coast, Illinois, we need to figure out how to win in those states. And until we get more inclusive, until we get more African American votes, more Latino votes, more women’s votes, more youth’s votes, we have to do all of that.” Probably won’t get east coasters by slamming Sandy Aide. Just a thought.



But then, the Senator’s plans for expanding the party all seem to follow the same blueprint. Want more African American voters? Hire a racist secessionist who champions the assassination of President Lincoln as your close aide, defend said racist until the pressure gets too high and then say you hope hiring said secessionist won’t damage the GOP brand. Want more women votes? Get out your transvaginal freedom probes on your way to an anti-choice rally for personal liberty (Bob Cesca nicely points out the hypocrisy here).



Republicans are now calling each other names in public, accusing each other of putting the nation at risk by being against national security (delicious to watch this after years of purple band-aid attacks against Democrats) and defending themselves by mocking Republicans who took aide for their states as bankrupting the country.




cont'


http://www.politicususa.com/2013/07/29/rand-paul-accuses-fellow-republicans-bankrupting-government-sandy-aid.html

July 29, 2013

COSTCO's CEO Explains How They Make RECORD PROFITS!

July 29, 2013

WHITEHOUSE Continues Playing "LET'S MAKE A DEAL" With GOP on Social Security & Medicare Benefit Cuts

Just two months ago, the Obama White House vowed it wouldn’t be sucked into debt ceiling negotiations with Republicans again. “Thank goodness” we all said, since that debacle ultimately led us to the ongoing budget mess and sequester which continues to hurt American families nationwide.

Hmmm....Guess what? The White House has been meeting behind closed doors with Republicans ever since then doing exactly that...negotiating with Republicans about which middle-class benefits will be cut in order to head off another GOP led hostage taking over the debt ceiling. Clearly, past is prologue.




Here’s what the National Journal reports:







Just in case you’ve forgotten, those “structural reforms” actually end traditional Medicare and put seniors at the mercy of private insurance companies, dramatically increasing their health care costs and limiting their choice of doctors. What Republicans want is passage of the Ryan/GOP budget, which is nothing more than “CouponCare” which gives seniors a coupon to go buy their health coverage from private insurance companies. The American people don’t support “CouponCare” yet the Republicans in the House have introduced this plan three times and clearly hope President Obama will give them what the Senate will not. And then there’s President Obama’s plan for Social Security and Medicare, which isn’t to be applauded either. He proposes cutting Social Security benefits for current and future retirees, veterans and the disabled plus raising taxes on the middle class through the Chained CPI.







In a letter to the White House Max also told the President:







cont'


http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/17835-white-house-continues-playing-lets-make-a-deal-with-the-gop-on-social-security-and-medicare-benefit-cuts

July 28, 2013

A Shameful Day to Be a US Citizen

AG Holder promises Russia not to torture Snowden




I have been deeply ashamed of my country many times. The Nixon Christmas bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong was one such time, when hospitals, schools and dikes were targeted. The invasion of Iraq was another. Washington’s silence over the fatal Israeli Commando raid on the Gaza Peace Flotilla--in which a 19-year-old unarmed American boy was murdered--was a third. But I have rarely been as ashamed and disgusted as I was Saturday reading that US Attorney General Eric Holder had sent a letter to the Russian minister of justice saying that the US would “not seek the death penalty” in its espionage case against National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, promising that even if the US later brought added charges against Snowden after obtaining him, they would not include any death penalty, and vowing that if Snowden were handed over by Russia to the US, he would “not be tortured.” So it has come to this: That the United States has to promise (to Russia!) that it will not torture a prisoner in its control -- a US citizen at that -- and so therefore that person, Edward Snowden, has no basis for claiming that he should be “treated as a refugee or granted asylum.” Why does Holder have to make these pathetic representations to his counterpart in Russia?Because Snowden has applied for asylum saying that he is at risk of torture or execution if returned to the US to face charges for leaking documents showing that the US government is massively violating the civil liberties and privacy of every American by monitoring every American’s electronic communications.




Snowden has made that claim in seeking asylum because he knows that another whistleblower, Pvt. Bradley Manning, was in fact tortured by the US for months, and held without trial in solitary confinement in a Marine military brig for nearly a year, part of the time naked, before being finally put on trial in a kangaroo court, where the judge is as much prosecutor as jurist, and where his guilt was declared in advance by the President of the United States -- the same president who has also already publicly declared Snowden guilty too. It is incredibly shameful that we US citizens have to admit that we live in a country that tortures its prisoners, that casually executes people who are mentally retarded, who are innocent, who had defense attorneys who slept through their clients’ trials, whose prosecutors slept with the judge, who were denied access to DNA evidence that could have proven their innocence, or who were convicted based upon the lies of prosecutors and prosecution witnesses.


This country’s “justice” system has become so perverted and politically tainted that the rest of the world, including Russia, knows that Snowden is telling the truth when he says he cannot hope to receive a fair trial here. Indeed, Congress has passed laws, and the President has signed laws, giving this government the power to lock someone like Snowden up indefinitely without trial, to torture him, and even to kill him, not through a jury decision on capital punishment, but simply on the basis of a secret “finding” by the President that he has aided or abetted terrorism. No wonder Russia and several other countries, including Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua, have offered or are considering offering Snowden asylum. And no wonder that, in its obsession with getting its tyrannical hands on him, this government is willing to promise (for what a promise from the US government is worth) not to kill him or torture him. Shame and anger are the only appropriate responses to that letter from Holder. If this were a country that honored the rule of law, Attorney General Holder would not need to promise not to torture. He would need only to point to the US Constitution, with its ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.” He would not need to promise a fair trial to Snowden, with no capital punishment on any charges. He could point instead to the Constitution’s promise of a presumption of innocence and of a public trial by a jury of the accused’s peers, to make the case against the granting of asylum.



In such a country, someone like Snowden, with the help of a crack legal team, would have a fair shot at proving to a jury his innocence of the government’s frivolous espionage charges. He’d have a fair chance of convincing at least one juror of his absolute innocence of any crime, making his conviction impossible. But that is not what this country is, especially today. In today’s US courts, we know the “Justice” Department would seek to bar testimony about Snowden’s motives in leaking the documents he downloaded from the NSA’s computers. They would ask the judge to limit defense arguments and testimony in the case to the narrow issue of whether or not he downloaded and leaked files, not to whether those files exposed Constitutional violations and needed to be brought to the public’s attention. Our judges, nominated by presidents and confirmed by senators, Democrat and Republican, who want jurists who favor government secrecy and who generally side with the government against the people, can be counted on to grant the government’s motions. In such circumstances, a defendant like Snowden, facing charges of espionage or theft of government secrets, has no ability to defend himself. The trial would be like in a Lewis Carroll event: “Verdict first, trial later!”



cont'




http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1888

July 27, 2013

Chris Hayes: O’Reilly Rhetoric Like NEO-NAZI SKINHEADS from ‘American History X’

On Friday night’s edition of “All In with Chris Hayes,” host Chris Hayes broke down the real math behind the statistics that Fox News Commentator Bill O’Reilly has been spouting in his racist rants in the wake of the verdict of the George Zimmerman trial.





Hayes said,





He went on to play a clip from “American History X,” a 1998 film about American Nazi skinheads starring Edward Norton. White people, said Norton’s character “aren’t offing each other in record numbers all over America. Look at the statistics for Christ’s sake, one in every three black males is in some phase of the correctional system. Is that a coincidence or do these people have some kind of racial commitment to crime?” Hayes’ guest, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) said, “These are recycled arguments which don’t get to the real root of the issue. First of all, racial profiling, disparate treatment in the criminal justice system.” Secondly, she said, Congress can’t even pass a gun bill requiring background checks. “We have not dealt with the structural issues in this country when it comes to institutional racism,” said Lee.





http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/27/chris-hayes-oreilly-rhetoric-like-neo-nazi-skinheads-from-american-history-x/

July 27, 2013

RIGHT WING IN PANIC MODE As Affordable Care Act Roll Out Working

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has a great analysis in his piece “Republican Health Care Panic”. Before going into the most prescient statement in his piece it is essential to quote his interpretation of what the law does. Inasmuch as it has been explained in many forms, Krugman’s one paragraph puts it more succinctly than most.





So what ‘horrible truth’ is it that better informed people on the Right seem to finally be facing up to? They are panicking as they noticed that





For those that have followed the real news and widely available information, that should not have been hard. After-all, the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has been working successfully and effectively in Massachusetts for several years now (Obamacare was modeled on many parts of Massachusetts healthcare). Additionally, the information about the success of health insurance exchanges in states that care more about the health of their citizens than ideological politics, are coming in. The pricing from these health insurance exchanges, contrary to the myriad of lies and misinformation from Republicans have been much lower than expected. Because of the manner in which Obamacare was implemented, much of it was stealthy inasmuch as it did much for most. As such it was easy to demonize.


cont'


http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/07/27/right-wing-in-panic-mode-as-affordable-care-act-roll-out-working/

July 27, 2013

Who's Really 'THE ENEMY' In the Bradley Manning Case?

Court martial scene with Colonel Denise Lind, lower right, and Pvt. Manning in drawings
by Clark Stoeckley




We now have clarity from a full-bird colonel in judicial robes that Bradley Manning is to be charged with “aiding the enemy.” OK, not much of a surprise here. Colonel Denise Lind’s ruling seems pretty predictable. Her ruling may make things simple for all the right-leaning pod-people who salute everything a field grade military officer says, but for the rest of us, it raises a profound and rather perplexing question: Exactly who is the “enemy” in this case? The military and intelligence agency brass and their enablers will tell you it’s some nefarious and nebulous network called al Qaeda, which we should all know by now is a substitute for our old Cold War enemies and fictional entities like Spectre in the original Ian Fleming spy pulps. That is, al Qaeda has become The Boogie Man.



American patriots on the right will get no argument from me that there are, indeed, people and affiliations that mean real harm to Americans (including me) and that we need to protect ourselves from them. But that doesn’t address the question whether al Qaeda and other “terrorist” groups are being exploited as the boogie man for the convenience of the Pentagon, the CIA, NSA and demagogues like New York Congressman Peter King. I fear a lot of “the hunt for al Qaeda” narrative is standard militarist fear-mongering employed to justify embarrassing and often illegal secret behavior that would shrivel up if it were really exposed to the light of day. Boogie men like al Qaeda are also useful to advance the careers and interests of the usual gang of capitalists and oppressive wealthy dominators that made this nation what it is today -- the nation that Bill O’Reilly was wondering the other night might be going down the tubes like Old Rome.



To understand exactly who “the enemy” is in this case, it seems logical to, first, ask who it was Bradley Manning intended to benefit by leaking all that information to WikiLeaks. I’m not sure whether Colonel Lind asked young Manning this, but I doubt it. From his statements and from all that I can glean from following the case in the press -- I and other journalists have not had the opportunity to interview Manning -- the key reason he leaked all that information, including a damning video of US Apache helicopters gunning down a Reuters cameraman and another Reuters employee and embarrassing leaks of back-channel State Department cables, was to share it with the American people. If any credence is given to the accused man’s own admissions, which seem absolutely plausible to me, it would seem logical that, from the military's point of view, the American people are the enemy in this syllogism.




I realize for anyone to conceive of this as a serious analysis as to who the enemy is in this case, one has to be skeptical of our US military and intelligence apparatus circa 2013. Those captivated by the military and its mystique will obviously sputter and groan and see such an analysis as the ravings of a lunatic left-wing journalist. They will also imply, without, of course, openly saying it, that such an analysis is pointless because they -- the military and intelligence complex -- have young Manning by the you-know-whats. If I'm allowed to put words in their mouth, they might put it this way: “Eat your hearts out, you left-wing, pinko fags. We have him totally under our control. And we’re gonna do with him as we wish. And, right now, we wish to try him as if he was a raghead in a cave in the tribal areas of Pakistan. So demonstrate all you want. There’s nothing you can do about it.” The US military/intelligence apparatus realizes in post-9/11 political America they trump pretty much everything. They're the Big Dog. If it involves lethal weapons or snooping into your private life, it’s OK with them. You can’t be too safe when those al Qaeda characters are out there and Sharia Law threatens our precious bodily fluids.



cont'




http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1878

July 26, 2013

Glenn Greenwald To TESTIFY Before Congress

A congressional hearing next Wednesday on the National Security Agency's surveillance efforts will include testimony from critics, including the journalist who first reported on the programs.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) told The Guardian that he's working with other lawmakers to spearhead the hearing in order to rebut "constant misleading information" from the intelligence community. It will not be a formal hearing, but will feature rougly a dozen lawmakers from both parties.

Grayson said that The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, who reported on the surveillance programs based on information provided by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, has been invited to participate in the hearing via video conference from his home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Greenwald indicated over Twitter on Friday that he will participate.


http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/glenn-greenwald-to-testify-before-congress