Just in case you imagined for half a moment that Trump wasn't really
under Vladimir Putin's powerful sway, or perhaps that Trump is not
really quite as incurious, uninformed and just plain stupid as he sounds
when he attempts to do presidential...
This happens.
Well, after all, why would Putin lie to his buddy, Donnie-baby? "He
said that I'm a genius!" "I pressed him three times about meddling in
the election. He denied it vehemently every time. You already know my
position."
Putin
and I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that
election hacking & many other negative things will be
guarded. [sic]
Just wow. Much stranger than fiction.
Damn
straight! 2016 is going to be the last time ever that Crooked Hillary
and Obama collude with the California Registrar of Voters to allow three
million undocumented brown people to corrupt what should have been a
fair and honest count of the votes. Go Putin! BFF! #MAGA!
It's
probably not his fault. He may actually have been hypnotized when he
thought he was just having a good time with the pretty blond hookers in
Moscow. Post-hypnotic suggestion. Brainwashing. Apparently it is
still practiced. And apparently, it still works.
Sunday, July 09, 2017
Friday, April 07, 2017
Middle Fingers Up!
God Bless Rosie O'Donnell.
She is a friend, indeed.
That's the thing. When you see Trump on the TV or you hear someone mention his name, remember Rosie's call to action. "Middle Fingers Up!"
The only video that matters right now is the one that should have prevented his election.
Middle Fingers Up!
She is a friend, indeed.
That's the thing. When you see Trump on the TV or you hear someone mention his name, remember Rosie's call to action. "Middle Fingers Up!"
The only video that matters right now is the one that should have prevented his election.
Middle Fingers Up!
Friday, February 17, 2017
What the Hell Just Happened?
The unthinkable happened. Because the American electorate revelled in their unthinking. We saw it unfold in microcosm right here in the venerated blogosphere. Asked who they would vote for, uncaring millennials said something like, "Oh, I dunno. I'll probably vote for Jill Stein." Bernie Bots openly flouted their hatred of Hillary Clinton whilst claiming true liberal cred out of the other side of their mouths. When asked if their boy lost the primary, would they cast their votes for HRC? "We won't!" they proudly proclaimed.
What just happened? Who are the good guys? Who can we trust? We thought Jill Stein was a crunchy progressive?
Turns out she actually campaigned on the concept of principled collaboration with Russia, spouting the pseudo-liberal line of bullshit, "The United States is now embarking on a $1 trillion program to update its nuclear weaponry while we are slashing programs to fight hunger, address homelessness, and provide economic security for our people,"
And the full-on crock-of-shit, "Solutions to problems such as jihadi terrorism will require Russia and the United States to work together, shedding outdated cold war attitudes that prevented collaboration on problems facing both nations."
And even the reprehensible, "The Obama Administration's obsession with toppling the government in Damascus is fundamentally inconsistent with winning the fight against ISIS," Stein asserted. "US pursuit of regime change in Libya, Iraq, and Syria created the chaos that promotes power grabs by extremist militias. Many of the weapons we are sending into Syria to arm anti-government militias are winding up in the hands of ISIS. This isn't a clever foreign policy - it's disastrous militarism."
On another topic, I'm sure you were as dumbfounded as I was when Rand Paul said it was time to get busy repealing Obamacare instead of investigating. They trying to pull young minds into the abyss.
What just happened? Who are the good guys? Who can we trust? We thought Jill Stein was a crunchy progressive?
Turns out she actually campaigned on the concept of principled collaboration with Russia, spouting the pseudo-liberal line of bullshit, "The United States is now embarking on a $1 trillion program to update its nuclear weaponry while we are slashing programs to fight hunger, address homelessness, and provide economic security for our people,"
And the full-on crock-of-shit, "Solutions to problems such as jihadi terrorism will require Russia and the United States to work together, shedding outdated cold war attitudes that prevented collaboration on problems facing both nations."
And even the reprehensible, "The Obama Administration's obsession with toppling the government in Damascus is fundamentally inconsistent with winning the fight against ISIS," Stein asserted. "US pursuit of regime change in Libya, Iraq, and Syria created the chaos that promotes power grabs by extremist militias. Many of the weapons we are sending into Syria to arm anti-government militias are winding up in the hands of ISIS. This isn't a clever foreign policy - it's disastrous militarism."
On another topic, I'm sure you were as dumbfounded as I was when Rand Paul said it was time to get busy repealing Obamacare instead of investigating. They trying to pull young minds into the abyss.
Wednesday, February 08, 2017
Full Text of the Attachment to the Letter to the Senate by Corretta Scott King as cited by Elizabeth Warren
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:
Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to express my
strong opposition to the nomination of Jefferson Sessions for a federal
district judgeship for the Southern District of Alabama. My longstanding
commitment which I shared with my husband, Martin, to protect and enhance the
rights of black Americans, rights which include equal access to the democratic
process, compels me to testify today.
Civil rights leaders, including my husband and Albert
Turner, have fought long and hard to achieve free and unfettered access to the
ballot box. Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the
free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to
serve as a federal judge. This simply cannot be allowed to happen. Mr.
Sessions' conduct as a US Attorney, from his politically-motivated voting fraud
prosecutions to his indifference toward criminal violations of civil rights
laws, indicated that he lacks the temperament, fairness and judgment to be a
federal judge.
The Voting Rights Act was, and still is, vitally important
to the future of democracy in the United States. I was privileged to join
Martin and many others during the Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights
in 1965. Martin was particularly impressed by the determination to get the
franchise of blacks in Selma and neighboring Perry County. As he wrote,
"Certainly no community in the history of the Negro struggle has responded
with the enthusiasm of Selma and her neighboring town of Marion. Where
Birmingham depended largely upon students and unemployed adults to participate
in non-violent protest of the denial of the franchise, Selma has involved fully
10 per cent of the Negro population in active demonstrations, and at least half
of the Negro population of Marion was arrested on one day." Martin was
referring of course to a group that included the defendants recently prosecuted
for assisting elderly and illiterate blacks to exercise that franchise. In
fact, Martin anticipated from the depth of their commitment twenty years ago,
that a united political organization would remain in Perry County long after
the other marchers had left. This organization, the Perry County Civic League, started
my Mr. Turner, Mr. Hogue, and others, as Martin predicted, continued "to
direct the drive for votes and other rights." In the years since the
Voting Rights Act was passed, black Americans in Marion, Selma and elsewhere
have made important strides in their struggle to participate actively in the
electoral process. The number of blacks registered to vote in key Southern
states has doubled since 1965. This would not have been possible without the
Voting Rights Act.
However, blacks still fall far short of having equal
participation in the electoral process. Particularly in the South, efforts
continue to be made to deny blacks access to the polls, even where blacks
constitute the majority of the voters. It has been a long, up-hill struggle to
keep alive the vital legislation that protects the most fundamental right to
vote. A person who has exhibited so much hostility to the enforcement of those
laws, and thus, to the exercise of those rights by black people should not be
elevated to the federal bench.
The irony of Mr. Sessions' nomination is that, if confirmed,
he will be given life tenure for doing with a federal prosecution what the
local sheriffs accomplished twenty years ago with clubs and cattle prods.
Twenty years ago, when we marched from Selma to Montgomery, the fear of voting
was real, as the broken bones and bloody heads in Selma and Marion bore
witness. As my husband wrote at the them, "it was not just a sick
imagination that conjured up the vision of a public official, sworn to uphold
the law, who forced an inhuman march upon hundreds of Negro children. Who
ordered the Rev. James Bevel to be chained to his sickbed, who clubbed a Negro
woman registrant, and who callously inflicted repeated brutalities and
indignities upon nonviolent Negroes peacefully petitioning for their
constitutional right to vote."
Free exercise of voting rights is so fundamental to American
democracy that we cannot tolerate any form of infringement of those rights. Of
all the groups who have been disenfranchised in our nation's history, none has
struggled longer or suffered more in the attempt to win the vote than black
citizens. No group has had access to the ballot box denied so persistently and
intently. Over the past century, a broad array of schemes have been used in
attempts to bloc the black vote. The range of techniques developed with the
purpose of repressing black voting rights run the gamut from the straightforward
application of brutality against black citizens who tried to vote, to such
legalized frauds as grandfather clause exclusions and rigged literacy tests.
The actions taken by Mr. Sessions in regard to the 1984
voting fraud prosecutions represent just one more technique used to intimidate
black voters and thus deny them this most precious franchise. The
investigations into the absentee voting process were conducted only in the
black belt counties where blacks had finally achieved political power in local
government. Whites had been using the absentee process to their advantage for
years, without incident. Then, when blacks, realizing its strength, began to
use it with success, criminal investigations were begun.
In these investigations, Mr. Sessions, a US Attorney,
exhibited an eagerness to bring to trial and convict three leaders of the Perry
County Civic League including Albert Turner, despite evidence clearly
demonstrating their innocence of any wrongdoing. Furthermore, in initiating the
case, Mr. Sessions ignored allegations of similar behavior by whites, choosing
instead to chill the exercise of the franchise by blacks in his misguided
investigation. In fact, Mr. Sessions sought to punish older black civil rights
activists, advisers and colleagues of my husband, who had been key figures in
the civil rights movement in the 1960's. These were persons who, realizing the
potential of the absentee vote among blacks, had learned to use the process
within the bounds of legality and had taught others to do the same. The only
sin they committed was being too successful in gaining votes.
The scope and character of the investigations conducted by
Mr. Sessions also warrant grave concern. Witnesses were selectively chosen in
accordance with the favorability of their testimony to the government's case.
Also, the prosecution illegally withheld from the defense critical statements
made by witnesses. Witnesses who did testify were pressured and intimidated
into submitting the "correct" testimony. Many elderly blacks were
visited multiple times by the FBI who then hauled them over 180 miles by bus to
a grand jury in Mobile when they could more easily have testified at a grand
jury just twenty miles away in Selma. These voters, and others, have announced
they are now never going to vote again.
I urge you to consider carefully Mr. Sessions' conduct in
these matters. Such a review, I believe, raises serious questions about his commitment
to the protection of the voting rights of all American citizens and
consequently his fair and unbiased judgment regarding this fundamental right.
When the circumstances and facts surrounding the indictments of Al Turner, his
wife, Evelyn, and Spencer Hogue are analyzed, it becomes clear that the
motivation was political, and the result frightening -- the wide-scale chill of
the exercise of the ballot for blacks, who suffered so much to receive that
right in the first place. Therefore, it is my strongly-held view that the
appointment of Jefferson Sessions to the federal bench would irreparably damage
the work of my husband, Al Turner and countless others who risked their lives
and freedom over the past twenty years to ensure equal participation in our
democratic system.
The exercise of the franchise is an essential means by which
our citizens ensure that those who are governing will be responsible. My
husband called it the number one civil right. The denial of access to the
ballot box ultimately results in the denial of other fundamental rights. For,
it is only when the poor and disadvantaged are empowered that they are able to
participate actively in the solutions to their own problems.
We still have a long way to go before we can say that
minorities no longer need be concerned about discrimination at the polls.
Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans and Asian Americans are grossly
underrepresented at every level of government in America. If we are going to
make our timeless dream of justice through democracy a reality, we must take
every step possible to ensure that the spirit and intent of the Voting Rights
Act of 1965 and the 15th Amendment to the Constitution is honored. The federal
courts hold a unique position in our constitutional system, ensuring that
minorities and other citizens without political power have a forum in which to
vindicate their rights. Because of this unique role, it is essential that the
people selected to be federal judges respect the basic tenets of our legal
system: respect for individual rights and a commitment to equal justice for
all.
The integrity of the courts, and thus, the rights they
protect, can only be maintained if citizens feel confident that those selected
as federal judges will be able to judge with fairness others holding differing
views.
I do not believe Jefferson Sessions possesses the requisite
judgment, competence and sensitivity to the rights guaranteed by the federal
civil rights laws to qualify for appointment to the federal district court.
Based on his record, I believe his confirmation would have a devastating effect
not only on the judicial system in Alabama, but also on the progress we have
made everywhere toward fulfilling my husband's dream that he envisioned over
twenty years ago. I therefore urge the Senate Judiciary Committee to deny his
confirmation.
I thank you for allowing me to share my views.
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