U.S. Attorney General Found In Contempt By GOP-led House.

Today, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was held in both civil and criminal contempt by the House of Representatives.

Washington (CNN) -- The House of Representatives voted Thursday to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for refusing to turn over documents tied to the botched Fast and Furious gun-running sting -- a discredited operation that has become a sharp point of contention between Democrats and Republicans in Washington.
The House approved a pair of criminal and civil measures against the attorney general, marking the first time in American history that the head of the Justice Department has been held in contempt by Congress.

House members approved the criminal contempt measure in a 255-67 vote. Almost every House Republican backed the measure, along with 17 Democrats. Shortly thereafter, the civil measure passed in a sharply polarized 258-95 vote.

A large number of Democrats -- including members of the Congressional Black Caucus and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi -- walked off the House floor in protest and refused to participate in the criminal contempt vote. A slightly smaller number of Democrats appeared to boycott the vote on the civil measure as well.

17 Democrats voted along with Republicans on the criminal contempt measure. 21 Democrats did likewise on the civil contempt measure. NBC News' Frank Thorpe thoughtfully provided a list of names:





And there you have it. Concerned Democrats who chafe at this display of Blue Dog dumbassery can organize a movement to replace these people with actual Democrats. Speaking of which, dozens of Democrats walked off the House floor in protest of the civil and criminal contempt votes.

So, what happens next?

Unlike a contempt charge at the county courthouse, AG Holder isn't gonna spend 30 or 60 days cooling his heels in the pokey. But Darrell Issa and crew can push him to resign under the assumption Holder's been tarred and feathered good over this "disgrace." The GOP can also use this to further de-legitimize the Obama administration's authority and run it out on a rail come this Election Day:

...the next step would be to send the contempt citation against Holder to the local U.S. attorney for enforcement. Traditionally the Justice Department doesn't pursue criminal contempt of Congress cases against its own administration.

If, as history suggests, the Justice Department won't prosecute a criminal case against Holder, the House could hire its own lawyer and file a civil lawsuit in federal court. Such a case could lead to an order for Holder to turn over the documents. But the federal District Court in Washington has been reluctant to rush into such cases.

The hopes of the House winning a legal resolution before the November elections are dim. And the authority behind House subpoenas or contempt citations traditionally are considered to expire when that Congress ends, according to the Congressional Research Service. That happens in January 2013.

In any event, if Obama loses his re-election bid the case becomes moot. If Obama wins and Republicans retain control of the House, they could vote to restart the fight. But Holder might no longer be in office.

A contempt of Congress vote against Holder probably would amplify calls from some Republicans for his resignation. Although the administration's shown no signs of that so far, it's widely believed, even among Holder's close associates, that he doesn't intend to return should Obama win a second term. When asked about it, Holder has been noncommittal.

However, in issuing these contempt measures, the GOP once again verified that it would go to great lengths just to see the president and attorney general bum-rushed out of office by any means necessary. It also has plenty of racial overtones. A lot of people want to see Holder, a black guy, fail in order to validate their beliefs of black American men being incapable of managing leadership positions unless they happen to be both conservative as all get out and under the total and complete tutelage of the GOP (Cain, Thomas, Steele, West, etc). If they can't get Obama to go down in flames, Holder will do just nicely. Even better if they both go down.

Holder happens to be the first black U.S. Attorney General. He also happens to be the first AG to be held in contempt by Congress. Funny how that works out. Even funnier is this excruciatingly detailed account on how the GOP's narrative of the "Fast and Furious" operation isn't what it appears to be at a close glance.
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SCOTUS Upholds The Affordable Care Act And Jim DeMint Fires On Fort Sumter.

If you're one of the millions of unlucky bastards following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on the Affordable Care Act on CNN, you probably saw the following:


Turns out the reports of the individual mandate's death have been greatly exaggerated:

Correction: The Supreme Court backs all parts of President Obama’s signature health care law, including the individual mandate that requires all to have health insurance.

Watch live coverage and analysis of the pivotal decision, its impact on you and on the presidential race now on CNN TV, CNN’s mobile apps and http://cnn.com/live

In a race to break the story first, CNN tripped all over its half-tied shoelaces. Looks like it's time to invest in some Velcro slip-ons. H/T to Redeye.

Meanwhile, Jim DeMint is echoing a sentiment supposedly offered by Old Hickory himself:

“This government takeover of health care remains as destructive, unsustainable, and unconstitutional as it was the day it was passed, unread, by a since-fired congressional majority. Now as then, our first step toward real health care reform and economic renewal remains Obamacare’s full repeal, down to the last letter and punctuation mark.

“I urge every governor to stop implementing the health care exchanges that would help implement the harmful effects of this misguided law. Americans have loudly rejected this federal takeover of health care, and governors should join with the people and reject its implementation.”

It looks like states already have a roundabout way for opting out of ACA:

The bottom line is that: (1) Congress acted constitutionally in offering states funds to expand coverage to millions of new individuals; (2) So states can agree to expand coverage in exchange for those new funds; (3) If the state accepts the expansion funds, it must obey by the new rules and expand coverage; (4) but a state can refuse to participate in the expansion without losing all of its Medicaid funds; instead the state will have the option of continue the its current, unexpanded plan as is.

State governors can opt out of Medicare expansion if it offends the sensibilities of their constituents, most of whom are a part of the one in four Americans who are currently without health insurance of any kind.

The next move for conservatives is to convince Americans that ACA, otherwise known as the semi-derogatory "Obamacare," is actually a tax on hardworking middle-class folk, 26,000 whom die annually without having any coverage. This way, conservatives can sell themselves the story of how Justice Roberts pulled off a clever end-run on the Obama administration:

The Supreme Court has upheld the Affordable Care Act. Chief Justice John Roberts has upheld the individual mandate. But not under the commerce clause. Instead, Roberts has said that the law can proceed under Congress’s ability to tax.

It’s a tax. That thing that Democrats were trying so hard not to do so Republicans couldn’t call Obama a “tax and spend” Democrat is now called a tax by the Supreme Court. And now it’s a victory. Until the GOP starts saying that Obama “raised your taxes.”

Americans really have little concept of how they pay taxes in the first place, why they should pay and how the tax brackets actually work. There's also the mostly-unspoken fear of how minorities are gonna steal everyone's tax monies and spend them on rims, fried chicken, lotto tickets and whatever else those people spend their money on. It's how the GOP can convince conservatives to vote against their interests (in the form of tax cuts for billionaires and corporations) and how these folks just can't connect the dots between their ridiculously low taxes and the growing number of potholes and dead street lamps on their block.

These same people want to keep anything approaching universal health from coming to fruition, yet continue paying private healthcare insurance providers thousands of dollars per year on coverage that might get dropped from under them if the provider thinks it'll put even a small scratch in their bottom lines. I don't like having the Emergency Room as my only option because it costs a significant part of my wages to be insured. Or because my insurer unceremoniously drops my coverage over a lifesaving procedure. Or because of "preexisting conditions" no one will touch with a ten-foot pole.

For anyone considering the ACA a sop to the healthcare industry (in the same way state-mandated auto insurance is to that industry), it'll seem that way unless enough people hop aboard the "Medicare for All" bandwagon to make that concern moot or unless the Obama administration finds a way to lower healthcare insurance premiums, the overall cost of healthcare or both.




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All Grover Norquist Needs Is A Rubber Stamp.

"All we have to do is replace Obama . . . . We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan Budget. . . . We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don't need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate."

"Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States. This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared."

In short, all Grover Norquist and his fellow conservatives want is a rubber stamp president -- a president who'll sign anything and everything that comes out of a GOP-controlled Congress, no questions asked, no hesitation shown. By any indication, it seems Mitt Romney is the perfect rubber stamp, a guy who'll do as he's told when he's told.

If anyone's still wondering why it's a supremely bad idea to allow Romney to win, look at the above quote. Because that's what you'll be getting with a Romney administration.



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Compare And Contrast: Amanda Knox vs. Richard Hinds.

Several months back, Amanda Knox was released from prison after her murder conviction was overturned by an Italian appeals court. She was originally convicted of murdering her roommate, 21-year-old Meredith Kercher and served four years of a 26-year sentence prior to her release. The case was largely marked by fascination from an international audience and from most accounts, an amazing amount of overzealousness on the part of the prosecutor.

Some might say that with her being an attractive white American woman who wasn't a communist, union leader or married to a black American, Amanda Knox could afford to gain a certain amount of sympathy and support, even if there was a possibility of her being guilty.

Knox initially placed the blame for the murder on one Patrick Lumumba, a Congolese business owner, in order to escape culpability for the crime. Reminds me of another big case from way back. Rudy Guede was found guilty, but his actual guilt will remain suspect in light of spotty evidence that seems concrete, but still casts a bit of doubt in my mind, IMHO.*

If Knox had been tried for this crime in the U.S., there'd be a possibility of her being found innocent much sooner. Lumumba and Guede may somehow be deemed solely responsible for the crime. In the United States, ethnic backgrounds have a funny way of coloring the way justice is handled.

In a literal contrast, you have 19-year-old Richard Hinds and 23-year-old James Blackston, both accused of murdering 21-year-old Nicola Furlong in her Tokyo hotel room and molesting her friend in a taxi that same night. Needless to say, it's not looking good for either of them at all.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Department told ABC News that Hinds has admitted to strangling Furlong, but told investigators he had no intention to kill.

Let's pause briefly here. It helps to know that Japan's justice system works a bit differently from what most Americans see on their own turf. For starters, suspects can be held for a maximum of 23 days before they're actually charged with a crime. Also consider that Japan touts a 99-percent conviction rate, not because they're "that good," but due to most suspects admitting to a crime under duress, whether they actually committed it or not. It's an ongoing problem that's long since caught the attention of the U.N., and other human rights groups.

I wonder if Hinds and Blackston had to sign a form, written exclusively in Japanese, without anyone telling him it was really a confession form.  Dealing with Japanese law enforcement isn't a walk in the park.

Not that they'd end up getting much different treatment back home, but there's always the scant possibility of the justice system working in their favor, provided they're actually innocent of this crime. All we can do is see if the skin color of these two men proves to be as much of an impediment there as it is in these United States.

*"Spotty" was probably the wrong word to use in this instance.
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Too Fast, Too Furious.

From 2006 to 2010, the BATF ran a program that essentially walked millions of firearms into the tender loving hands of Mexican cartel members, with the purpose of nabbing straw purchasers and gun runners on the U.S. side. It was a good idea at the time (to them), at least until a Border Patrol agent was killed. After that, the wheels pretty much fell off that wagon.

Today, Darrell Issa intends to use a program crafted during the Bush administration to collect the scalps of one U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and a certain U.S. president. If you want a great indication of how eager Issa is to bend the Obama administration over his knee, note that he's asking for a partial investigation that covers the program from 2009 and onward. Remember, the program started back in 2006.

President Obama is also under fire for exercising executive privilege on behalf of Holder, obstinately to prevent sensitive documents and transcripts from being released under subpoena. Now some are accusing the Obama administration of "covering up the truth."

Somewhere on the House floor is the corpse of Brian Terry, propped up and placed behind glass to elicit heartstring tugs and politically motivated sympathy.

Allow yours truly to direct you to more detailed commentary on Fast and Furious and the ongoing attempts to legally lynch the president and U.S. attorney general with high-tech rope:

- Redeye's Front Page: "The "Fast and Furious" legal lynching of President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder"
- "The Rant" by Tom Degan: "The Importance of Being Eric"
- Digby's Hullabaloo: "Issa goes down the rabbit hole"
- Field Negro: "The Sequel"
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Joe Williams Speaks Truth, POLITICO Develops A Case Of The Vapors.

Being outspoken is a wonderful thing. Sometimes, not so much:

Politico has suspended White House correspondent Joe Williams over comments suggesting that Mitt Romney is more "comfortable" around white people.

Williams, who is African-American, made the comments during a Thursday appearance on Martin Bashir's MSNBC program. During the appearance, Williams discussed how he believes Romney appears more "comfortable" appearing on Fox News Channel, as opposed to other outlets, and implied that race is a factor.

So, what exactly did this man say to have POLITICO swooning in the general direction of the nearest fainting chair?

"Romney is very, very comfortable, it seems, with people who are like him. That's one of the reasons why he seems so stiff and awkward in town hall settings, why he can't relate to people other than that," Williams said during the appearance. "But when he comes on 'Fox and Friends,' they're like him. They're white folks who are very much relaxed in their own company."

Oh.

I wouldn't say Sir Willard Milton Romney's visible discomfort stems from his reluctance towards darker hues. He's a wealthy man who feels most at home with men and women of his economic and social class. No wonder the man has to feign sincerity everywhere he goes - connecting with the common man is a foreign concept to him.

It seems like this straw was the last one the POLITICO camel could carry before its back snapped. Not only is Williams on the hook for the above quoted, as spoken on Martin Bashir's show on MSNBC, he's also on the hook for a string of Twitter comments, including this one:



Seriously, there have been worse things said about Mitt and Ann. In the cold, cruel world of the Internet, this would be a non-issue. Except the folks at Breitbart decided to make it one and commenced flagging this and other tweets penned by "jdub":



This is tame. Spectacularly tame. Other organizations would see Breitbart's attempts to make something of nothing for what it is and subsequently ignore it. Instead, POLITICO rushed to throw Williams under the bus. Essentially, this guy got suspended (without pay) for doing what Glenn Beck does on a regular basis. If a Fox News White House Correspondent made a similar remark about President Obama, they'd get a pat on the back and plenty of thumbs-up.

I can't see POLITICO throwing one of their correspondents under the bus unless it was 1)an inside beef between Williams and the editors or 2)the POLITICO was so fearful of the response from Breitbart and other conservative outlets that it collectively shat itself and consequently shat on Williams. From my understanding, POLITICO is supposed to be neutral, yet it has a soft touch for Mitt Romney, as evinced by its executive editor and chief White House correspondent's accusations of the New York Times and Washington Post being biased against Mitt Romney:

On the front page of its Sunday edition, the New York Times gave a big spread to Ann Romney spending lots of time and tons of money on an exotic genre of horse-riding. The clear implication: The Romneys are silly rich, move in rarefied and exotic circles, and are perhaps a tad shady....

...and the horse-riding story came a few weeks after a second story that made Republicans see red – another front-pager, this time in the Washington Post, that hit Mitt Romney for bullying a kid who might have been gay, in high school nearly a half-century ago. The clear implication to readers: Romney was a mean, insensitive jerk.

These "implications" aren't implications at all: they're pretty much fact, verified by countless media outlets. The Romneys are wealthy as all get out and Mittens was, in fact, an asshole back in his high school and college days.

The official explanation from POLITICO for Williams' suspension is as follows:

"Regrettably, an unacceptable number of Joe Williams's public statements on cable and Twitter have called into question his commitment to this responsibility," POLITICO's founding editors John Harris and Jim VandeHei wrote in a memo to the staff. "His comment about Governor Romney earlier today on MSNBC fell short of our standards for fairness and judgment in an especially unfortunate way."

"Joe has acknowledged that his appearance reflected a poor choice of words," the continued. "This appearance came in the context of other remarks on Twitter that, cumulatively, require us to make clear that our standards are serious, and so are the consequences for disregarding them. This is true for all POLITICO journalists, including an experienced and well-respected voice like Joe Williams."

"Following discussion of this matter with editors, Joe has been suspended while we review the matter," they wrote.

Williams declined to comment on the matter.

In the memo, Harris and VandeHei reminded staff that "POLITICO journalists have a clear and inflexible responsibility to cover politics fairly and free of partisan bias."

From Williams himself:

I regret that this happened. I understand and respect John Harris' point of view - that I've compromised Politico's objectivity, and my own. At this point my suspension without pay is still indefinite, and I don't know what management has in mind as an appropriate sanction, so I can't object or appeal. Politico still employs me, but the review process hasn't started in earnest so my future remains unclear.

Having covered the Shirley Sherrod firing and seen the fallout from James O'Keefe's brand of journalism, I'm not surprised a small group with internet access and an ambitious agenda can affect reporting and distort analysis of political news. It's quite unfortunate and incredibly frustrating, however, that I landed in the crosshairs this time, calling Politico's integrity into question and jeopardizing a job and a career that I love.

I have a feeling Williams might have to call someplace else home after the dust settles.

Dr. Boyce Watkins believes that since Joesph Williams wouldn't emulate the more tepid and timid style of Juan Williams and refrain from going off-script, he was deemed a "rogue" and had to be put back in his place:
But you see, there’s a pattern and unfortunately Joe has been affected by it. For the most part, being born a Black man who speaks conscientiously or accurately about issues of race effectively defines you to be a rogue. There isn’t much of a disconnect between the Black man who is stopped and frisked on the street, and the Black male professor/journalist/doctor/lawyer who has his capabilities questioned, even when he does nothing wrong.

Cornel West was a rogue at Harvard for seeking to reengage the black community. I was a trouble maker in elementary school when I answered questions without raising my hand. Barack Obama was defined as a radical leftist by the Republican Party for saying that the wealthy should pay slightly higher taxes. It’s easy for black men to be marginalized very quickly in most mainstream environments, primarily because people are waiting for you to say something that they can define to be volatile or dangerous.

That's what made Breitbart's methods of attack so pernicious. Breitbart's team of plucky "journalists" have been successful in derailing and demolishing the careers of outspoken individuals who don't quite adhere to the desired arch-conservative narrative, under the pretense of maintaining "journalistic integrity." They know how to pick their targets, from the folks at ACORN to Shirley Sherrod - targets who could be assumed guilty before proven innocent of their "crimes" and easily disposed of with little to no consequences. No heads have rolled over the loss of ACORN or Shirley Sherrod, and I suspect no heads will roll over the premature disposal of Joesph Williams.

I suppose if Williams decided to comment on how President Obama seemed "comfortable only around his own people," he'd still have his job. Speaking of which, a commentator over at Huffington Post hits it out of the park (albeit on the Washington Post/NYT post):

The problem as I see it, is that certain parts of the so called press figure that if you are not attacking Obama 24/7 then you are a liberally biased news organization and not worthy of respect.

Whereas if you report anything negative about Mittens, then you are also a liberally biased news outfit.

They consider it fair and balanced only if you attack Obama incessantly and give Mittens nothing but the softball treatment with out looking deep into his background.

Reading both outfits it's easy to see Politico leaning hard to the right. They figure the cons will win all three houses and are doing nothing but preparing hopefully for a friendly relationship for who is in power...hopefully.

Politicos so called truth seeking is at best poorly done and at worst ignorant.

To cap things off, a declaration from the members of the Church of Andrew Breitbart and his Latter Day "Saints":

This is our MSM.
This is Politico.
This is why God created Andrew Breitbart.

Pardon me while I go throw up.
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Jerry Sandusky Found Guilty Of Child Sex Abuse Charges.

A jury convicted former Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky on 45 counts related to child sex abuse, closing a dark chapter for Penn State that led to the ouster of a university president and icon Joe Paterno and cast a cloud over the rural center of this state.

He faces a maximum sentence of 442 years in prison and barring an appeal will spend the rest of his life in prison. Family members of victims in attendance wept and hugged one another after the verdict was read.

At trial, the prosecution's case centered on the often graphic and emotional testimony of eight young men, ages 18 to 28, who said Mr. Sandusky abused them as boys, and two witnesses who said they saw the former coach abuse two boys who were never identified.

The young men testified that Mr. Sandusky gave them clothes and other gifts and took them to football games after he met them through the Second Mile charity he founded in 1977.

Eventually, they testified, affectionate touching became sexual. Several young men said Mr. Sandusky engaged in oral sex with them in the basement of his home, in hotels and in athletic-facility showers on Penn State's campus.

A common theme in this and many other similar cases is how administrative officials, people with the power to do the right thing and put an end to the predation, instead chose to look the other way, pass the buck or keep the entire incident and the person behind it under wraps, usually to protect their own careers and the institution's reputation. There were many people who knew what Sandusky was doing and how it was hurting the young boys in his charge. Yet and still, administrators like Tim Curley chose to look the other way in the interests of preserving PSU's

Sometime before the Jerry Sandusky case broke wide open, there were similar goings-on at Grace Fellowship Christian School in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. In Grace Fellowship's case, administrators chose to look the other way for a time and later on, dropped the ball when Aaron Thompson's actions and behavior became even more apparent. In the end, scores of victims were preyed upon and the school was practically buried underneath the publicity, outrage and legal action.

The Catholic Church could have cast out predators in their midst and left them to law enforcement to deal with. Instead, the church used its considerable wealth and size to shuffle clergy suspected of child sexual abuse from parish to parish as well as stymie investigations into their behavior. Doing so cost the Catholic Church its image, the well-being of scores of young children victimized by priests, bishops and other clergy and a generation of people who, as a result, are not inclined to set foot in another church, let alone a Catholic church, for the rest of their lives.

In short, it's always the cover-up that gets you. Not acting upon or dismissing allegations does more damage to an institution than stepping up and doing what needs to be done.


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Sir Willard Romney Conducts A Royal Survey Of The Common Peoples.

Pictured above is Sir Willard Milton Romney, shocked by the astonishing freshness of peasant pastries.

The Most Noble Willard Milton Romney of the Massachusetts Commonwealth, aspirant to the position of Chief Administrator of the American Republic, was compelled to circulate among the common peoples in order to gain favor with his most devoted subjects as well as curry favor with other, less-devoted commoners. His hopes are to gain enough devoted followers to stage an overthrow of the treacherous Marxist Usurper, Baraq Hussein Superallah Obama al-Kenya. The Marxist Usurper gained his position under the false promises of giving each peasant family a warm meal three times per day, forty acres of land and a pony.

Sir Willard's brave expedition into the world of the common man led him upon a strange sight: a clearinghouse where foodstuffs were distributed to commoners in exchange for currency, or in the case of the peasants, a voucher signifying their fealty to the Marxist Usurper. When Sir Willard inquired as to what this place was called, one of his servants answered "awawas," presumably Indo-American peasant speak for "food store."

Sir Willard descended from his conveyance, careful not to step on anything that was too peasant-y, and entered "awawas," only to be amazed by what he saw. Fresh produce! Canned goods! Fresh meats! Air conditioning! These were things that Sir Willard had once only believed to be available to royalty such as himself, his wife and their beloved stable of dressage horses. Prior to this, Sir Willard thought the common people ate bark, dirt pies and occasionally, one another. This "awawas" amazed him so that he spent most of his time there prancing about the aisles, knocking over several displays while sampling several items, to the consternation of common shoppers and the servants employed by the awawas.

Sir Willard later recounted his experiences to a crowd of loyal supporters and peons graciously gathered from Sir Thomas Corbett's palatial estate holdings. He first asked them if they purchased their "hoagies," a peasant foodstuff made of several meats, vegetables and condiments within a loaf of oddly-shaped bread, at the place he came to call "awawas."

"I say there, peasants, where do you obtain these 'hoagies'? Do you get them at awawas? Is that where you obtain them?"

The peasantry delivered a resounding "NO!!" Amazed at the offense these mere peons had taken, Sir Willard then asked if they got their hoagies from another, smaller food store known as "Shitz." The peasantry became even more disgruntled. One peon was later caned for attempting to offer Sir Willard an old sandwich as a gift by tossing it at his head.

Sir Willard then went on to the amazement he experienced when ordering a common foodstuff. The awawas utilized a technologically advanced touch display that allowed commoners with a presumably high-enough IQ to select the type of sandwich they wish to purchase. Sir Willard was amazed by this discovery, as he believed these devices were the sole domain of royalty and that most peasants were simply too stupid to operate devices more complex than sticks, simple hand tools and high-gloss masturbatory aids featuring women of a rather corpulent size and shape.

"You press a wonderful little touch-tone keypad," Sir Willard said, referring to the chain's touch-screen system. "You touch this, touch this, disinfect your hands, have your servant offer currency to the cashier, and have him bring you your sandwich. It's amazing! I only wish an actual peasant presented this sandwich to me, then offered his own belly for me to stab him at with my fencing sword. Say, where is my fencing sword?*"

Sir Willard enjoyed his time pretending to bond with the lesser commoners while feigning interest and concern over their trifles. Hopefully, this will aid him greatly in amassing a large enough army of angry, firearm-wielding peasants to storm the Marxist Usurper's encampment in the Columbia District and overthrow the captivating Kenyan and his socialist lackeys. Hopefully, this army will be strong enough to challenge and defeat Holder's People, nearly all who have sworn their absolute fealty to the Usurper.

*Sadly, Sir Willard's crack team of security officials were never able to find his fencing sword and were subsequently hanged, as per royal decree. Presumably, this finely handcrafted sword was pawned in exchange for currency that was later used to purchase a substance known as "White Crack." There is now a $10,000 bounty for any peasant or commoner who knows the whereabouts of this cherished and beloved item. Sir Willard promises he will only execute those who come forward after they receive their reward, instead of before.
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The Man Takes A Good Look Into "SWAT-Gate."

Swatting is a practice that involves calling 911 from either a spoofed number or a blocked number and relaying information that would get the police to a home in force.
Calling a SWAT team on someone is a pretty vicious prank, especially considering the countless instances where contact with a SWAT team has meant death for many innocent individuals. Imagine this practice being used to silence bloggers, journalists and other influential people.

Now imagine this practice being used in a carefully-planned scheme to generate sympathy and big headlines in favor of conservative bloggers while allowing that same media apparatus and popular opinion to rip the "perpetrators" a new one. It's similar to the shenanigans performed by James O'Keefe against ACORN and the recently departed Andrew Breitbart and crew against Shirley Sherrod. Michelle Malkin, Chris and Dana Loesch both hoped the "Twitter Gulag" scandal would help gin up some sympathy points for them and other right-wing tweeters, to no avail. In other words, it's hard to approach this without wondering if this isn't just another scheme cooked up along those lines.

Conservative bloggers Patrick Frey and Erick Erickson were both "Swatted," supposedly as part of a feud between the two and political activist Brett Kimberlin. It's also worth noting that Kimberlin served time due to his role in the infamous "Speedway bombings." The undercurrent is that a guy who is despicable enough to wantonly injure and possibly kill innocents is surely capable of "Swatting" two guys who pissed him off. The expected response is to rally behind Frey and Erickson regardless of their political affiliations. However, it also helps how Kimberlin aligns himself to liberal causes, so conservatives also get to castigate both Kimberlin and liberals in general.

Make no mistake, "Swatting" is a legitimate problem that could get people hurt and possibly killed. And it's something you wouldn't expect conservatives to play games with. But as Matt Osborne puts it:

So we know how these types of games get played: right wing activists make the news they want to see with a sinister stunt, the right-wing blogosphere goes ballistic, spends weeks roaring about their victimization, and their yarns get days and days of mainstream coverage. Only later, when said media finally examines the facts, do we find out that we’ve been had once again.

And it seems we may have been had. Again.

In the midst of finding out more about "SWAT-Gate," I ran across this interesting tidbit of information from, of all things, a pastebin. And because of its source, the smart thing to do is to take the following with a rather large grain of salt until it's been properly verified*:

Mike Grimm is the Congressman from NY-13 and a former FBI undercover agent.

Grimm attempted to extort a Jewish congregation on the mafia stronghold of Staten Island, threatening to use his law enforcement contacts to “make it difficult for them”.

The congregation's rabbi approached former Congressman Anthony Weiner for assistance. This led to an extortion investigation for Grimm.

Grimm made contact with Brandon Darby and employed he and a small group of smear artists including Lee Stranahan and John Patrick Frey aka Patterico.

Anthony Weiner was pursued by a variety of real and synthetic female personas through 2010 and the spring of 2011. He was successfully smeared and forced to resign one year ago today.

Mike Stack was left holding the bag for the smear. He refused to drop out of sight, so he was swatted by Brandon Darby in order to silence him.

Ron Brynaert was investigating. They needed a bag holder for the swatting and Ron was the lucky winner, being set up via a phone call with Frey, purportedly for an interview, but in actuality it was purely to put him on the phone and engaged at a specific time.


Don't let the Weinergate rabbit hole distract from these simple facts. Follow the money and keep in mind a dangerous, complex hit job like this would only be entrusted to a few committed, hardcore operatives like Darby, Frey, and Stranahan.

Brandon Darby is a former FBI informant who currently spends his time as a conservative activist. Lee Stranahan is a conservative blogger who also hosts his own podcast. The following is audio from Stranahan's show when he took the call of the purported "swatter" who set the whole thing up (taken from Osborne's post):



And here is a video comparison of Darby's voice along with the voice used in the "Swatting" calls, including his appearance via phone on Stranahan's show:



The voices are remarkably similar and rather thinly disguised. There have been calls for a proper voice analysis to be made by law enforcement officials, something that Darby would be pretty reluctant to have happen if he was indeed behind all of this. In addition, there hasn't been any concrete proof that intended target Brett Kimberling was actually behind any "Swatting."

Meanwhile, fingers are being pointed at former Raw Story editor Ron Brynaert for being the one behind the "Swatting" calls, as the following video attempts to prove:


Brynaert's voice doesn't quite match up to the "swatter," although it would be very easy to simply assume it did on first listen, without Darby's voice to compare with it.

As for Mike Grimm, he's found himself under the wheels of the Romneymobile™ in addition to dealing with the fallout from his attempted shakedown.

So, is "SWAT-Gate" the end result of an elaborate and ultimately successful attempt to "ratfuck" Anthony Wiener out of a job for dropping a federal investigation right into the lap of a fellow representative who attempted to extort and intimidate the Shuva Israel congregation, who then turned to Wiener for help? And in addition to cleaning up loose ends, does "SWAT-Gate" also provide a sensational story for a bunch of aspiring Breitbarters to plaster up on mainstream media for weeks on end until the results of the inevitable round of fact checking come through?

It seems far-fetched and it's very easy to take "SWAT-Gate" at face value without reading into the motivation behind it. At any rate, it's gotten the desired reaction from across the blogosphere, one of shock, dismay and an expressed desire to see the designated target go down in flames without making sure it's the right one in the first place.

* http://sibob.org/wordpress/?p=10634, http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/03/fbi_confirms_agency_tipped_off.html
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Barack Obama And The Soft Bigotry Of High Expectations.


Der Spiegel has a comprehensive article on President Barack Obama. While it mainly focuses on his perceived failure to "deliver," it also hits upon why the president hasn't been able to achieve much in the way of a Democratic agenda, from GOP obstructionism as election strategy and a polarization of political lines at the expense of those in the "center" to political apathy and frustration. It's a far more thorough read than anything you'd get from other outlets in the U.S., which is a damned shame.

It also hits upon something I haven't been able to articulate until now: the growing number of people who say they're "done" with Obama because he hasn't given them what they wanted. The below is the perfect counter to all of the talk of how Obama hasn't done this or that for whatever reason, given that many people fail to look at the political realities before deciding to ditch him on the grounds of political idealism:

To fairly judge his presidency, one has to go through the list of his kept and broken promises. Based on that criterion, Obama's performance falls within the "above-average" category when compared to the 11 US presidents since World War II. It is a modest success, the kind that many politicians would welcome. But it cannot seriously be enough for Obama.

And despite a long list of achievements, it's never enough. People have expected so much from one single human being that when he proves to be just as human as the rest of us, they become absolutely crestfallen to the point of disavowing their support for him.


Read more »
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Meanwhile...

- Greeks are headed to the polls to cast votes that could not only affect their country's future, but also that of the Euro and the European Union. The country is in deep fiscal shit and the biggest issues are the possibility of pulling Greece out of its fiscal death spiral vs. the possibility of setting the country adrift, at the risk of sinking the entire union:

There is no mechanism to kick Greece out of the euro, and the two leading candidates say they have no intention of taking Greece out voluntarily. Greece could be forced to fend for itself if the European Central Bank decides that it is a fool’s errand to keep replenishing Greek banks that have no collateral or credibility. But the bank’s job is to protect the euro, and it has repeatedly argued that contagion from an exit by Greece could outweigh the costs of keeping it afloat.
Historically speaking, inflating its way out of fiscal jams has been Greece's go-to solution, but it doesn't have direct control over the Euro, which leaves that option a non-starter unless they bow out of the union for good and return to the Drachma. In the end, it's up to the European Central Bank, or more pointedly, the Germans, to decide if and how to resolve the financial crisis without putting the rest of the European Union in hock.

- When was the last time you saw a white guy get randomly frisked in Manhattan? Never? So it's understandable that people are a bit miffed over approximately 630,000 black and Hispanic men being stopped and about half that number being given the once-over. Yesterday, Al Sharpton held a 200+ gathering ahead of a planned Father's Day rally against "Stop and Frisk." A similar rally was held days ago by the Staten Island NAACP.

"Stop and Frisk" is a flawed policy that does little to prevent crime but a lot to not only antagonize the community, but also to perpetuate unfounded beliefs about black and Hispanics in regards to criminal activity.

Here's a lovely comment from "jimbo-2648066":

If the good reverend is on one side of an issue, I am automatically on the other.

I bet he'd make a great NYPD officer </sarc>.

- Mitt Romney predicts he will end the Democratic Pennsylvania winning streak. Good luck with that. Although with Tom Corbin at his side, there'd probably be enough Dem. voters kicked off the rolls and enough machines rigged or "malfunctioning" to make that happen. Meanwhile, Ron Paul struggles to show that he's very much still in the game.

- The President has put the brakes on deporting illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children:

Under the new policy, people younger than 30 who came to the United States before the age of 16, pose no criminal or security threat, and were successful students or served in the military can get a two-year deferral from deportation, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said.
A two-year deferral, and yet Republicans are crying about "unconstitutional overreach" and how this sets the stage for a general amnesty. Yes, let us ignore how the previous president also proposed sweeping changes in how immigration policy was handled.

Remember, today is Father's Day. Try giving your dad something a bit more substantive than a cheap tie and a box of cologne. Ladies, today isn't a good day to press your "baby daddy" about that back child support, either.
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Money To Burn.



“I’m against very wealthy ­people attempting to or influencing elections, but as long as it’s doable I’m going to do it.”
The above quote belongs to Sheldon Adelson, a big-time casino mogul who is currently the eight-richest man in the world. He's read the writing on the wall and now he's betting a cool $10 million on the RMoney Team after spending a fortune on Newt Gingrich. For a man with a net wealth of $20 billion, handing the pro-Romney super-PAC "Restore Our Future" and the Congressional Leadership Fund a total of $10 million is like giving those nice Girls Scouts $10 for a box of shortbreads. His wife also kicked in a cool $12.5 million to Restore Our Future, along with another $2.5 million to the CLF, for a total of $15 million. The amount of money being thrown around by well-heeled conservative interests is nothing to laugh off.

If Citizens United gave the moneyed 0.1% the green light to influence American elections with pallets of cash, then the recent, hard-bought victory of Scott Walker in Wisconsin was akin to the first car pulling away from the intersection. If progressives are still wondering why Cory Booker kept close to his well-heeled Manhattan friends or why President Obama seems reluctant to piss off the Wall Street crowd, now you know why. Politics was always an arena where you had to pay to play, but Citizens United raised the cost of admission. Those who can afford to pay do while those who can't are stuck on the outside looking in.

So what is this Adelson feller all about?

A college dropout raised in Boston by poor Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Adelson pursued various business ventures before striking gold in the computer trade show industry. He used that money to revive the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. He helped turn the Strip into a major convention destination and now owns resorts in Macao and Singapore.

Adelson started out life as a Democrat. But in the 80s and 90s, as his wealth grew and he clashed with unionized hotel workers, he became a loyal Republican. He also supports conservative politicians and causes in Israel, where he owns the newspaper Israel Hayom. He also donates millions to charity, in particular medical research.

 This seems like an interesting turning point that's worth studying. You have to wonder what about the unions stuck in Adelson's craw so badly that he flipped from donkey to elephant:

Adelson clearly loves both Romney and Gingrich’s fealty to the policies of Israel’s hard right government. But it’s also important to note that Adelson hates unions about as much as Ahab hated that white whale (except Adelson is sort of the white whale, too…never mind). Over 90% of the rooms on the Las Vegas Strip are unionized. The union, Culinary 226, is, arguably, the most powerful local union in the country, beloved by its membership, primarily, of housekeepers, and tolerated by the large game companies that dominate the strip.

And like many billionaires, when it came to what seemed like a bunch of leeches siphoning off his hard-earned wealth, Adelson sought to get rid of this "problem" once and for all. Culinary 226 members earn 30-percent more than the national average and even non-union workers enjoy roughly the same wages thanks to their clout. You can imagine how much he'd save on this bottom line by making union membership a thing of the past.

Adelson's penchant for playing sugar daddy to well-known politicians doesn't stop at the U.S. border. He's also well-known for being sweet on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As mentioned before, he also owns Israel Hayom, a Hebrew-language paper that's ardently pro-Netanyahu. The paper hasn't made a profit in years, unless you consider being a shameless promotional rag for Bibi while helping to turn Israeli political thought thoroughly conservative to be profit enough. And for a bit of schadenfreude (or Stockholm Syndrome), it's liberal paper Haaretz that's largely responsible for printing hard copies of Israel Hayom. Approximately 20 percent of Haaretz's revenue comes from Israel Hayom payments. What's more, 20 percent of the company's shares were purchased by former Yukos vice-president and right-winger Leonid Nevzlin.

Well-heeled billionaires with world-wide ties influencing national elections and policies for their own advantage. It's something that puts the average citizen who wants to make a difference at a distinct disadvantage on the state and federal front. The recent wave of voter disenfranchisement is working its magic across numerous states, insuring that even local elections wind up skewed in favor of candidates most willing to carry multinational corporate water. Sheldon Adelson is just one among many well-heeled figures who are slowly but surely tilting the playing field in their favor and to the everlasting detriment of the rest of us.

Meanwhile, a comment from the Las Vegas Sun article exemplifies what's wrong with America's mindset when it comes to the actual functions of unions:
Station employees DON'T WANT a union! They got the same wages and better benefits of unionized joints. Why would they want to pay dues to these crooks? I go to Station because they are NOT union and avoid places that play footsies with these thugs.
Because once the unions go away, so will the wages and benefits. Then you'll be dealing with places that hire real thugs instead of merely playing footsie with them, as the quality of employees will take a nosedive, along with service.

I believe many people readily conflate unions with Jimmy Hoffa, mobsters and surly Teamsters hailing from Long Island and New Jersey. Others see unions as a group that's gotten fat and greedy on $75.00/hr wages while "the rest of us" get by with non-union jobs paying $10/hr or less. Some believe that if unions simply went away, employers would be magnanimous enough to raise their pay a little bit in response. These fallacies, combined with the constant anti-union drumbeat of conservative politicians, corporations and media outlets, help keep nationwide union support at an all-time low. People are convinced that they don't need unions to represent them and that the company will take care of them.

Well, you can look to Wal-Mart as an example of how companies take care of their workers. Or you could look at how Amazon treats their workers. Here's a closer-to-home example of how companies take care of their workers, sans union representation.

People don't realize what they have until it's gone. It'll happen with education, genuine electoral representation, voting rights and of course, unions. People will have to go back to selling their souls to the company store before they realize how good they had it and how stupid they were to give it all up.
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Obstruction Junction, What's Your (Dys)function?

Pardon the title, but I had "Conjunction Junction" on the brain when I started writing this post.

Not only have the GOP blocked a bill that expands abortion access for servicewomen who are victims of sexual assault, but they've also blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act, which promised to put some teeth into the Equal Pay Act of 1963. Senate Republicans also blocked debate on whether to prevent a doubling of the current federal student loan interest rate from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. Members of the GOP are putting their ideological foot down in lockstep, apparently in hopes of making sure that wily Negroid in office doesn't get any more bright ideas or accolades for said ideas.

Looking at the rampant obstructionism displayed on the right side of the political aisle, you probably can't help but wonder why they're so hell-bent on blocking bills that are set to actually improve the lives of lower and middle-class Americans. Republican supporters and fellow Fox News fans are probably wondering why their party isn't doing more to wail on those damn fucking hippies and those communist/mafia unions. Meanwhile, a growing number of Democrats are becoming so disillusioned over President Obama's administration "not doing anything" or "doing the wrong things" that they'll willing to once again hold their votes (or vote third-party) in protest. That worked pretty well back in 2010. For the Republicans. And President Mitt Romney will personally thank each and every liberal who held back his vote.*

I would mention that the GOP has succeeded in blocking over 375 bills since October 2010, but without the exact statistics to back that claim, it isn't something anyone should rely on with certainty. Instead, here's someone who did post a small sample of the bills they've managed to block.

All of this obstructionism is for the sole benefit of encouraging people to dispose of current President Barack Obama come November 6, 2012, so the country can "get back on track again." Which is code talk for "rolling back every gain made by Democrats and ensuring that Dems are no longer a viable political force in the U.S." Even if it leaves the country a veritable trainwreck. You know, burn the village to save it and all that.

Meanwhile, the biggest worry on many progressives' minds is drones. Not that there's anything wrong with wanting the president to cut back on the warmongering. However, it's not worth exchanging him for another president who will not only double-down on the warmongering, but also tell you to "go fuck yourself" if you tell him to cut it out. I'm sure Mittens will say just that in a more polite manner befitting his social standing.

*No, he won't.
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Mitt Romney Is A "Moral Failure Of Tragic Proportion."

“This president’s misguided policies have seem muddled, confused and simply ineffective,” said Romney, speaking at the minority-run Production Products, a military contractor that manufactures shelters to shield from chemical and biological attacks, among others.

“When you look around at America’s economy, three-and-a-half years into this presidency, it’s painfully obvious that this inexperienced president with no experience as a leader was simply not up to the task of solving a great economic crisis,” said Romney. “This is not just a failure of policy; it is a moral failure of tragic proportion. Our government has a moral commitment to help every American help himself. And that commitment has been broken.”

“I will not be that president of doubt and deception,” said Romney. “I will lead us to a better place.’

It's safe to say that just about everything that comes out of Mitt Romney's mouth is a lie. If this man had Pinocchio's nose, it would have traversed the entire globe by now. The tip end is currently hurling along a crash course towards the man's own asshole. Nevertheless, a large swath of Americans are prone to inhaling this hot air with generous gulps, so it's dangerous to sit by and believe that your fellow Americans will see through this BS. Chances are, they won't.

The lovely Angry Black Lady breaks down Romney's latest ploy of deceptive politics with cold, hard facts:


The GOP is doing all it can to bring about economic and social ruin. It's like a contractor who takes a sledgehammer to your roof and when it starts pouring rain, points at the holes he's made and says "There!! That's why you need me to patch this mess up!" The GOP is doing the same thing to education, healthcare, Social Security and other government programs, under the assumption that people will vote in the very folks who were busy destroying these programs (and the jobs and benefits they provide) to save them.

The GOP also has a pathological tendency to project their own failures onto the president, in hopes that if people start believing this "big lie," they'll either grow disenchanted with the president and not vote or start voting Republican. Mitt Romney is simply capitalizing on the GOP's rampant projection of failure and obstruction. He has to, otherwise people will realize there are no other redeeming qualities that make him worthy of the presidency.

Speaking of moral failures, Mittens should ask himself why he faked his way into being in uniform, yet avoided a chance to wear it for real.
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Just A Little Programming Note.

Unlike most other blogs running on Blogger, I don't use the default commenting system it offers. Instead, I use Disqus. Not only does it discourage most of the anonymous trolls that drift from blog to blog, it also gives yours truly an effective way of dealing with those that do end up here. As a result, anyone posting a comment through Blogger's default commenting system won't see it posted on DDSS. Because it will be, by virtue of Disqus, be effectively hidden.

Speaking of hidden comments, here's one from...who else? Anonymous:

It's sounds as though you assume the elderly man was racist. You see the colors white and black... and it just has to be huh? And what do you mean when you say "these people"? Plain and simple, this young man did not deserve losing his life!!! Not that it matters in the least, but in the news, articles, etc. the gun used was not a shotgun... if your going to blog, please get your facts straight.

Anonymous should ask him/herself if John Henry Spooner would had acted any different if 13-year-old Darius Simmons looked just like his grandkid, if he had any. Would he have had that 9mm pistol (see, anon? I double-checked and made corrections) at the ready to confront him if Simmons was of a less "color-arousing" skin tone? I suspect this story would have had a much different ending if Simmons was a young white American male.

Now, I don't have a beef with anonymous comments, except when they're used to facilitate drive-by sniping, "race realism" and other such foolishness. Some blogs welcome these comments as examples of how the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory comes into play every single day. Not this one.

All comments are welcome, as long as they're within reason and posted in accordance with the House Rules.


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I Wonder If This Will Put An End To "Stand Your Ground."

The entire concept of "Stand Your Ground" revolves around having the right to protect yourself and loved ones. However, the actual execution has been remarkably different from the concept. When you have people who deliberately escalate situations in order to justify the use of deadly force, you have to sit back and ask yourself whether keeping something like this on the books is a good idea. As much as some of us would like to extra-judiciously punish car thieves and burglars, it wouldn't be a good idea to sanction stabbing one in the chest for nabbing your car stereo.

As mentioned in the previous post, the latest casualty of "Stand Your Ground," also known by yours truly as the "Empowerment Act for the Removal of Unsavory Negros," is 13-year-old Darius Simmons:

Frightened by the sight of a gun being pointed at him only five feet away from his chest, Darius raised his hand in surrender as Spooner fired one shot into his torso. Scared, wounded and confused, Darius took off running as Spooner aimed and fired another shot, striking Darius in the back.

Simmons had been accused of robbing 75-year-old John Henry Spooner's home, nevermind how the youngster was in school at the time of the alleged robbery. Not that it would have mattered - Spooner was dead-set on making an example out of him anyways.

Meanwhile, there's a unique case involving "Stand Your Ground," this time coming from Boulder, Colorado:

Many questions remain in the matter of Zoey Ripple, the CU grad who was shot after entering the wrong house -- an incident detailed in our original coverage below. But we've got more answers thanks to Boulder Police's release of an arrest affidavit, seen here, which quotes her as saying that after a night spent drinking, she thought she was at a pal's house until a bullet tore into her hip.

According to the affidavit, Timothy Justice and Doreen Orion were asleep in their spectacular College Avenue home -- an abode described in the affidavit as being in a remote section of Boulder accessible by a road on a steep incline. The property is well-fenced and the surrounding area is covered with rocks, trees and bushes, with only the lengthy driveway allowing access to the residence.

Suddenly, the report continues, Orion heard a noise outside the French door of the master bedroom. She initially assumed an animal was causing the ruckus -- at least until she saw a glowing light and watched as an unidentified person entered through a sliding screen door. The couple ordered the person to leave several times, they stressed to officers, before Orion told Justice, "Get the gun," which was conveniently located in a nearby nightstand. He grabbed the weapon, chambered a round and fired toward the light, striking the intruder -- Ripple -- in the hip from a distance of about six feet.

At that point, Justice switched on the bedroom light to see Ripple on the floor at the foot of the bed, incongruously making a cell phone call. An instant later, Orion dialed a phone of her own, punching in the digits "9-1-1."

Unlike Darius Simmons, Zoey Ripple is not an American male of African descent, therefore she wasn't "finished off" by her shooter, nor is the shooting being justified in the media as a "good one." Current media consternation involves whether it's fair for the district attorney to slap her with a trespassing charge after all she went through. Going to the wrong house shitfaced is apparently a tradition among CU students.

Then there's the case of Summer Moody, also not an American male of African descent, who thought it would be a good idea to accompany three of her friends as they trespassed on a private campsite with the intent to rob its occupants. Needless to say, it didn't go well. Unlike Ripple, Moody did not survive.

Before those two cases came up, I figured the best way to put an end to "Stand Your Ground" was to a)have a photogenic young American white woman killed in one of these scenarios, b)have a popular politician meet the same fate somehow or c)have a rash of white Americans killed "in self-defense" by legally-armed black Americans. Considering the response to both cases, I suspect option A has gone out the window.

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We Can't Let Them Get Away With This.


To the left is Patricia Larry. She's holding a picture of her son, 13-year-old Darius Simmons. To the right is 75-year-old John Henry Spooner, accused of murdering 13-year-old Darius Simmons.

The fun loving 6th grader was simply moving a garbage can in front of his home when his neighbor, 75 year old John Henry Spooner confronted him with a shotgun and accused him of stealing from his home. Darius, who was in school the time of the robbery, denied being involved with the theft. John Henry Spooner then proceed to shoot Darius in his chest, while he had his hands raise showing Spooner he was unarmed. His mom, who was watching in horror, ran to Darius to see if she could find a pulse, she couldn’t. Darius, 13 years old and unarmed, was murdered in cold blood in front of his mother.

Had enough? It gets worse:

According to Milwaukee Alderman Bob Donovan, he had breakfast with Spooner an hour before the shooting and Spooner told him he suspected Darius of the crime and was upset that the police hadn’t done anything about it. Spooner then told the Alderman, that there were other ways of dealing with these problems. That qualifies as premeditated murder of a 13 year old boy. To make matters worse, the family only lived next to Spooner for a month.

You know, I'm not a violent man by nature and I don't condone mob violence or so-called "blood feuds," but it wouldn't pay me no mind to see this man taken off this earth for what he did.

He didn't even bother to talk to the parents. He just put a gun to the kid's chest and just let it rip. That's a coward's move. John Henry Spooner is a complete, yellow-backed coward.

Many people believe that there's no consequence to snuffing a young black life. The general ineffectualness of the justice system and America's card blanche for harming and killing innocent black Americans throughout history seems to back this assertion. It's long since been time to deliver a message to these cowards about snuffing out black lives and it won't take Obama or Eric Holder to do it. Nor is it going to take online petitions or marches. We're long past the point of doing battle in 2012 with 1960s-era tactics.

Something has to give, otherwise people will take this killing and others as a sign that they can get away with this. The shit has to stop here and now.

You're probably asking yourself "how?" So am I. There's no one answer that'll be the magic bullet. At the end of the day, it's gonna take the forced acknowledgement that all life has an equal value. These people won't even give us that common courtesy. Frankly, I believe these people don't want us to exist, period. And that's a big problem.

At the very least, I think I'm gonna move up getting my concealed carry permit a little sooner.




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Stand At The Ballot Box.


The 2000 Presidential Election was a watershed event. Not just because it pitted one Albert Gore, Sr., Democrat nominee and Vice President to outgoing President Bill Clinton, against one George Walker Bush, Jr., Republican nominee, son of former president George Herbert Walker Bush and then-governor of Texas, but because of the effect it would have on voting, politics and future elections. It also demonstrated the sheer desperation of one party to attain and preserve power at all costs.

As a "swing state" packing 25 (now 29) electoral votes, Florida remains one of the most contested battle grounds in the presidential election. It's literally one of those states that could "go either way," puns unintended. On that election night, Bush was trailing Gore by nine electoral votes, with 37 still up in the air. 25 of those belonged to Florida, 5 to New Mexico and 7 to Oregon. Whoever tallied the most votes in Florida was guaranteed to walk away with the entire presidential election sewn up. If that outcome was neck-and-neck between the two candidates, any sort of irregularity or outright fraud could tip the scales in the other candidate's favor, allowing him to take all 25 electoral votes.

The clusterfuck that ensued on election night was years in the making. In 1998, the state of Florida passed a law to combat voter fraud. The state also signed a $4 million contract with a private firm to create a master list of names to be purged from the voter registries, with the aim of removing duplicate registrations, deceased voters and felons who were legally prohibited from voting. Of course, the process itself turned out to be a complete clusterfuck -- many voters were incorrectly identified as felons. In a state that, at that point, had 31 percent of the black male population unable to vote due to criminal convictions, that was a big deal.

These purges most likely played a significant role in the then-Republican nominee's comfortable margin of approximately 100,000 votes, at least until the counts from Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties started pouring in. By the time Gore conceded to Bush, the Republican's vote margin dwindled to bare triple digits, prompting a recount by officials, Gore's retraction of his concession and a renewed effort by Florida Secretary of State and Bush campaign co-chair Katherine Harris to make sure those manually counted votes came out in Bush's favor. Between the reported electronic ballot fraud, butterfly ballots, hanging chads and stories of outright voter disenfranchisement, it took a Supreme Court decision to declare a winner. In a 5-4 decision, the court decided to grant Bush's request to halt the recount while the tally was still in favor of the Texas governor.

The state of Florida, like many of its fellow southern states, has a long and rich history of voter disenfranchisement, and it looks like it's going to happen again.

According to the Broward County Supervisor of Elections, eligible voters will be removed from the voting rolls as a result of the massive voter purge ordered by Governor Rick Scott. “It will happen,” Mary Cooney, a spokeswoman for the Broward County Supervisor of Elections, told ThinkProgress.

Late last year, Governor Scott ordered his Secretary of State, Kurt Browning to “to identify and remove non-U.S. citizens from the voter rolls.” Browning could not get access to reliable citizenship data. So Scott urged election officials to identify non-U.S. citizens by comparing data from the state motor vehicle administration with the voting file.

That process produced a massive list of 182,000 names, which Browning considered unreliable. The Fair Elections Legal Network, which is challenging the purge, noted that database matching is “notoriously unreliable” and “data entry errors, similar-sounding names, and changing information can all produce false matches.” Further, some voters may have naturalized since their driver’s license information was collected.

Deja vu all over again. The GOP has found that the best way to secure important elections is to stymie the voting and registration efforts of those most likely to vote Democrat: college students, blacks, Latinos and even elderly individuals with long-standing Dem allegiances. 91-year old Bill Internicola and Maureen Russo can both attest to the efforts being made by a largely conservative political structure. Imagine a natural American citizen who fought in the Battle of the Bulge and earned a Bronze Star for his troubles being told by his state that he's not American and therefore, can't vote.

Scott's shenanigans are well-known to the state of Florida. This is the same guy who decided to order mandatory annual drug testing for welfare recipients and state workers, at $35 a pop. He also hatched a plan to move low-income and elderly state residents into managed-care plans. Private healthcare provider Solantic stood to gain plenty from all three efforts. When the good governor's ownership of this company was revealed and his ethics questioned, he transferred ownership to his wife, Ann, described as a "a homemaker involved in various charitable organizations." In other words, not only is Ricky a creepy looking bastard, he's also an ethically bankrupt creep.

The U.S. Justice Department is stepping in by ordering a halt to all voter registration purge efforts. So far, all 67 of the state's election supervisors are complying as ordered. Too bad Ricky's being a bit hardheaded, not unlike a particular someone who was being equally hardheaded:

"The Florida Secretary of State is being recalcitrant," said Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of The Advancement Project, a Washington-based voting rights advocacy group that last month asked the Justice Department to investigate. "He wants to move forward despite federal notice of illegality and supervisors of elections' refusal to purge voters. He should just quit it."

Florida is among a small number states, mostly in the South, covered by Section V of the Voting Rights Act, a 1965 law that reinforces voting rights guaranteed in the Constitution. In five Florida counties and other states, election officials have a history of such of egregious and creative efforts to suppress black and Latino votes that any changes in voting–related policy or procedure must first be approved by the Justice Department or a panel of federal judges, Browne Dianis said.

Florida failed to get clearance for its purge or its methods to identify the people the state suspects are non-citizens.

My mother always told me a hard head leads to a soft behind. If Ricky decides to continue with voter purges in defiance of a federal order, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder should be ready to break out the switch/paddle/belt/Hot Wheels race track/that wooden spoon your mamma keeps hung up on the kitchen wall/etc. If the state of Florida is allowed to continue without any consequence, you can expect other states to follow suit. There's no way Holder can appear to look even the least bit weak on this, lest it set bad precedent and make the Justice Department look toothless when it comes to defending voters' civil rights.

One idea I had that would really drop a steaming load of shit into the state's corn flakes is taking away the majority of the state's electoral votes. I'm not familiar with how that would happen, but yanking 20 of Florida's 29 votes would not only make the state's efforts in rigging the election for a GOP win moot, it would also send one hell of a message -- that you can't get away with this shit without suffering dire consequences. This is one area where I want to see President Obama walk on stage with his big-boy pants on.

With a milquetoast nominee on board and scores of crazy "true believers" at the helm, voter disenfranchisement is practically the only card left in the GOP's reelection deck. Well, that and scores of emoprogs who are really, really fed up with the president not being the Magic Negro™ they expected him to be. Rigging the vote is practically the only way that a guy like Mitt Romney can sail through the elections and into the presidency. Oddly enough, this isn't being talked about much on the mainstream media. Something about zombies taking over and eating faces instead of brains.

Left to their own devices, the GOP would very much like to rig democratic elections in their favor and if possible relegate the Democrats to a rump party that's about as effective at getting the vote out as those Socialists and Americans Elect guys. The natural inclination of the GOP is towards one-party rule.

He who controls the ballot box controls the election. Don't forget that. And don't count on the Supreme Court to straighten this mess out at the last minute. We've already seen how that worked out before.


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