Jon Stewart's The Daily Show on Republican Outreach to "You People"

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Republicans try to craft plans to attract women and minorities.  JW tells it straight.

There is Actually Proof That The Surge Didn't Work!

We are claiming "fair use" of excerpts of published findings as offered below because of willing ignorance of mainstream news media, Fox News, & NPR who just let Senator McCain define the conversation on the 2007 Surge in today's reports of Chuck Hagel's confirmation for the position of Secretary of Defense.  If people take the time to actually read this and look at the light patterns portrayed above, they should be convinced that what happened in Baghdad due to the Surge, was not the healing of a city, but an emptying out of many areas in it as families fled the deadly sectarian cleansing being enacted upon their loved ones.  Senator McCain's image is only propped up by too much BS from the news media which gets their money from the warmongering billionaires to whom he caters.

To Senator McCain:  Dude we get it.  Your wife is 14 years younger than you are, and has more money.  Selling out your nation to blood thirsty Oligarchs isn't going to fix that.  And Oh yeah, it is still selling out your fellow citizens.  End of story.  (BTW, you lost in 2008 for a reason and you showed people that reason today at the hearings.)

Summary of findings Agnew J, Gillespie T W, Gonzalez J, Min B, 2008, "Baghdad nights: evaluating the US military ‘surge’ using nighttime light signatures":
 ...

Far more than the surge, the battle for Baghdad has determined the political landscape of Iraq for the foreseeable future'' (Cockburn, 2008).

...

In classic Clausewitzian terms, the surge was an extension of politics by other means.
It was never primarily about reducing US military casualties but about abetting a
political process in which while the US handled `security' that would see an improve-
ment in the quality of everyday life the various groups would come to a political
reconciliation that would in turn make it easier for the US government to withdraw
its troops from Iraq.

Our findings suggest that in these terms the surge has had no observable effect,
except insofar as it has helped to provide a seal of approval for a process of ethno-
sectarian neighborhood homogenization that is now largely achieved but with a
tremendous decline in the extent of residential intermixing between groups and
a probable significant loss of population in some areas. That is the message we take
from the nighttime light data we have presented. Furthermore, the nighttime light
signature of Baghdad data when matched with ground data provided by the report to
the US Congress by Marine Corps General Jones and various other sources, makes it clear that the diminished level of violence in Iraq since the onset of the surge owes
much to a vicious process of interethnic cleansing. This might resume if US forces
withdraw. But as the case we have made strongly implies, the massive residential
segregation and population loss happened anyway even when US forces were present
in increased numbers. Perhaps they are not as central to events in Baghdad and Iraq
as US government and popular opinion seems to believe. They certainly have not been
over the past two years.

A shorter URL for this is http://x.co/tCyS

Welcome to OK Corral Middle School. Our First Lesson Will Be On Dodging Bullets Fired by Ms Oakley Who May Be Experiencing Hallucinations While Trying To Stop a Killer in the School

Admonitions to Arm and Train Teachers and Other School Officials Ignores Problems Even Officers Have in Confronting Gun Threats

My first thought after reading a Swampland report on armed and trained officers and their experiences in confronting actual violence:

Yeah, lets not make teachers also do that job too, it will be dangerous for our children and for them.  And BTW, teachers already have a job for which they need all their attention:  TEACHING OUR CHILDREN!

Well trained and well armed police and other security professionals in specific careers in which they can expect some violence at any time, have trouble during encounters that should make voters think twice before supporting politicians who adopt a posture that teachers and other school officials can prevent gun violence at schools by taking a few hours of gun training and carrying or storing a loaded firearm on the job.

Time magazine's Swampland report with input from real security professionals shows how unrealistic the call from some to give teachers a gun and a few hours of training.

It's linked below.  But if you think they can just take repeated courses or something, remember what a teachers job is supposed to be about, teaching children, not trying to watch out for killers or trying to decide if someone needs to be "taken down".  Posturing Congress members or wannabes should be put on "Ignore".

If school security provided by armed guards is what people want they should be willing to pay more for the school districts to hire some.  Lets those local taxes go up.  Otherwise, teaching will become more about watching out for the next killer, rather than teaching impressionable young children that they can reach their potential and in that way reducing the number of those who might become killers out of despair, or outrage at lives that go nowhere.

We have enough of that second scenario in Chicago and other major cities where street violence is a massive problem that the gun lovers in Congress don't seem to care to help fix.

None of their white knights with guns have offered to patrol the ghettos where young black men are dying daily have they?

Better recording of who are the buyers and users of guns would help.  If a private seller knows that a gun he sells is going to be tracked person by person until the finger comes back to him as the last legal possessor of the gun that killed some family's breadwinner or a teenager in the street, that is going to cut down on those selling guns to shadowy unlicensed individuals for quick money.  If guns are stolen they should be reported as soon as the theft is discovered or the last legal owner should face at least a fine.

I checked out the other day and found that Jame Earl Ray's criminal history should have kept him from owning a gun legally-- at least in my state at this time, but since those providing his gun to him wouldn't be held accountable under even current law, no one needed to worry about that gun in his hands leading back to them.

The proposed gun law the Democrats want to pass would also have kept the gun out of the hands of  Sirhan Sirhan who shot Robert Kennedy too, even if he hadn't had a record, since he was not a US citizen, or it would have leed to the last legal owner and at least fined him for letting the gun slip into anonymous hands.

Those of us who get caught and fined for minor driving infractions know that fines keep climbing to help pay for cops on the beat to catch such behavior.  Maybe that's for the good, at least it gives some impetus for drivers to drive safely instead of endangering lives with every decision they make.

Amanda Ripley (in the Swampland article Your Brain in a Shootout: Guns, Fear and Flawed Instincts) puts together a lot of testimony from security professionals that show how difficult the job is.  It is not a hobby for an amateur any more than teaching reading, writing,  higher math and critical thinking, is a job for a retired cop without lots of training, and his or her complete attention on that task.

One excerpt for truly time pressed or those who won't just take 20 minutes to read it themselves.

In the New York City police department, for example, officers involved in gunfights typically hit their intended targets only 18% of the time, according to a Rand study. When they fired 16 times at an armed man outside the Empire State Building last summer, they hit nine bystanders and left 10 bullet holes in the suspect—a better-than-average hit ratio. In most cases, officers involved in shootings experience a kaleidoscope of sensory distortions including tunnel vision and a loss of hearing. Afterward, they are sometimes surprised to learn that they have fired their weapons at all.

Imagine, then, what a person trained only to shoot at a target is going to experience in such a situation.  Even if you play cops and robbers for a few days of training, it will be nothing like trying to actually stop a killer especially when there would be so many non shooters around, but you aren't sure who are and who aren't.  Add to that the fear that you could be hit at any second and your body and brain goes seriously out to lunch.  This is something I've been pondering ever since Wayne La Pierre made his infamous speech after the Newtown shooting, and indeed often thought about after mass shootings.  What would a person who is not fully immersed in the human control careers really do when confronted with a determined mass killer like A

The article also briefly brings up something I keep trying to get people to think about who figure arming themselves will turn them in to heroes in the face of  a mass shooting.  When the real cops arrive, on edge and worried about keeping the most people and themselves alive, what do you figure they are going to think of you standing there with your firearm(s) with people laying around and bleeding.   The actual bad guy is not going to be wearing a sign and probably has the presence of mind to kill himself, or hide, while you think your heroism will instantly be recognized, so you stand there with your trusty gun in a room with people laying on the floor.

Vegas wouldn't give you odds on getting out of that scenario unscathed, maybe even alive.

I believe that arming teachers is another way to get young, liberal, and less prejudiced women out of the profession, so children can be indoctrinated with beliefs that call for letting the poor and the old people die and lets have another war, as the billionaire backers of Republicans want them to be.  Call that spade a spade.  It's not about safety for your children, it's about their ideology.

And for that goal, your children's safety and well being can be flushed down the toilet (which, under Republican plans, your children can clean instead of a real professional who is trying to earn a living for his or her family).

Picture above appears to have been taken at the Boothill Graveyard in Tombstone Arizona and used via Creative Commons License Attribution (CC by 2.0) thanks to Flickr user WordRidden who has no connection to this blog or blogger.

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Mind Boggling Hypocrisy Erupts in Benghazi Hearing

'From Politico:

I'm claiming Fair Use on the above because the mainstream news media won't point out any more of the Republicans' extremely phony sense of "scandal" in the GOP led questions and even direct allegations about the Benghazi consulate tragedy.

Another graphic (below) created by a less visible group captures more of the sanctimony being expressed by GOP Congress members (especially Senator Rand Paul) and the stage-managed "Shock and Awe" over the September attack. Since these incidences (and some Internet sources say there were more attacks that this during George W Bush's administration w/o televised hearings. And the smart GOP Congressionals actually stepped down from the stage after the November election was over and their case was lost on in the court of the American electorate. But these phonies think they can keep it going to get the votes of the stupid people in future elections. They obviously believe that most of their constituents are political imbeciles. Will the right finally get a sense of outrage over their leaders racists BS?  Or do they want to be treated by Americans like the racist hate-mongers they will appear to be if they continue raising ridiculous outrage with the Obama administration over the kinds of incidents they recommended acceptance, mourning, and future vigilance during past Republican administrations.  Yes, in reality they themselves said the practical equivalence of what Secretary Clinton said in the Benghazi hearings.  At this point what difference does it make.  The point is to figure out what happened and make sure it doesn't happen again in the future."  (That's how I remember her words.  Though I may have gotten some of them wrong, I believe I captured the spirit and meaning of them.)

 

• A good short URL for this post is: http://x.co/smN8 

BTW, the Clinton administration had problems with embassy attacks, and who can forget the attack on our embassy in Lebanon in 1983,  followed in 6 months (despite that warming) with an attack on the Marine barracks which killed over 200!

VA State GOP Offers Up Rovian Arguments for Their Ugly Attack on Virginians' Voting Rights

Who's attacking your voting rights?

**Breaking  VA State Senator Introduces bill to change voting in VA from winner take all electoral college assignment to coincide with the Gerrymandered US House Districts for the state which I showed below disappears nearly half of Virginia's Democratic voters via Gerrymandering.  A paragraph below will explain how that works. I'm having trouble with interior links with Google's blogger or I would link to it.

Will the Commonwealth be known from now on as a state with dirty politicians and an electorate with with too little honorable outrage to protect their electoral rights?  Or will the people of  Virginia take things into their own hands.

The Virginia GOP think they are too smart for their people.  They reached into Karl Rove's nasty bag of tricks and are offering up smelly excuses for their Gerrymandering ploy. 

But I've noticed that some political reporters and analysts have swallowed the Rove spittle about the precincts.  I've decided that they aren't worth my time anymore whether they pose as liberals or not.  Two are MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Steve Karnaki. Not splitting precincts means that liberals are bunched into high democratic districts while Republicans can stretch out their power by wining 53-60% over a greater number of districts.  That has all the signs of one of Rove's scams with which he helped Cheney/Bush start two unfunded wars.

Again, a precinct hall is nothing but a place to put voting booths, Dummies!  The people are the important part of the electorate, not lath and plaster

Want to see how "not splitting precincts" works in VA's US House districts   I found a page (as I was adding up all the US House districts by myself) that has the totals for the votes for those same districts all added up for me.

Adding Green party votes to the Democrats for liberals, and Independent Green party votes to the Republicans (because research led to Wikipedia information that said the IG party had been with the Greens, but broke off because they were more interested in "The Debt" crisis so it seems they were and are using the "green" label as a scam to attract liberal voters for conservative candidates).  In any case the IGs only grabbed .6% of the vote anyway, and therefore were extremely inconsequential.  And to be honest they far out polled the Greens who were even more inconsequential.  Write ins apparently not affiliated with the two mentioned 3rd parties above polled less than .4%, so I'm not finding any 3rd party numbers relevant to the discussion though I added them into the total of votes, and the Greens and Indie Greens to their respective sides of the political spectrum.  In general 5% is minimum for relevancy in science and I think we can assume in politics as well. return to above
Out of  30720420 votes for US House seats  1898743 went to Republican or IG candidates so we credit conservatives with 51.0% of votes for US House seats, and Liberals with getting 48.6% of votes for US House seats.

But the sleazy Republicans of Virginia who got to redistrict the US House districts in their state used the creepy "Don't Divide the Districts" and other scams to create, instead 8 Republican seats and 3 Democratic House seats.  That's 72.3% of those seats for the GOP, and 27.3% of them for the Democratic party.  Over 20% of  the Commonwealth's people have been disenfranchised in the US House of Representatives.  6 Seats for Republicans and 5 seats for Democrats would have been more equitable, and if we go through making states US House Seats equitable, the Democrats see Nancy Pelosi sitting in the Speakers chair because more people voted for Democratic House candidates than Republicans. 

Virginians can change this though.  You don't need your members of the state Senate nor those of the House of Delegates if you have a method of citizen government by which you can start petitions to call for a vote for a special panel to create new, more representative voting districts.  That's what's happened in California (and to be honest I voted against it, but it passed and worked beautifully to better represent our state).

Don't let Rove's political buddies mess with your state anymore. The Structure of your US House contingent will be important to help protect your Social Security funds (which the record proves you saved by applying 15% of your income to it over your working years and should last for 40 years of retirement)  (that's not an entitlement, it's a savings plan no matter how much wealthy Big Liars say it's a handout) and to keep our nation from prosecuting any more criminal wars in the Middle East or other places that big money interests want to rip off for immense gain which are going to cost tens of thousands of lives of our young adults.  You've heard the call by Republicans for a Universal draft, right.  The details are that they want to be able to scoop up any person from 18 to 34, male or female, without educational or any other deferments (except for extreme disability).  But wait there will be some categories, like medicine and, or computer expertise that can get you drafted at any time of life.

I don't know about you, but avoiding another 5000 (or multiples thereof) Americans dying so some wealthy and powerful industry can grab another nation's natural resources cheaply is one goal I think we Americans need to achieve.  And BTW, since Iran has a military at least 10 times as strong as Iraq's when we invaded it, including a real air force, and was never forced to destroy it's chemical and biological weapons, not invading Iran is a real cause to fight for if only to keep 50-100k American from being killed.  But there is no way to fight if our US House is Gerrymandered and the state legislatures are Gerrymandered so nothing is done about it..  But to end Gerrymandering of the US House, the people of VA most likely have to get something passed on the state level now that their GOP politicians have Gerrymandered even their own state districts to disappear millions of Democratic votes.

From news reports:

Virginia GOP Accused Of "Plantation Politics"

Moderate Republican John Watkins was used as a foil to introduce new plan to VA Senate.

Picture at top, of Hong Kong building being attack by apparently post developing applied monsters, used via Creative Commons License Attribution (CC by 2.0) thanks to Flickr user Tommy the Pariah who has no connection to this blog or blogger

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Evenly Divided Virginia Senate Passes Gerrymandering Bill While Civil Rights Hero Is Attending Inauguration

Monticello Doesn't Look Half As Attractive When Seen From a Slave's Viewpoint, Does It?

Welcome to the New Confederacy, Where Most Virginians Can Equally Serve "Massa" (IE Billionairesand Multi Millionaires and their political insiders).

While Civil Rights Hero and member of the evenly divided Virginia State Senate Henry Marsh was celebrating the 2nd inauguration of President Obama, the Republicans thereof took advantage of the departure to pass Gerrymandered districts to heavily favor Republicans in their chamber.

And no surprise there, they excuse themselves by saying they created a heavily Afruican American district in Sourthern Virginia, thereby showing that they, like other Republicans are intent on either destroying the Civil Rights Act (cases are already on their rise to the Supreme court of the United States to do just that) or to enshrine Civil Rights as an excuse to Gerrymander their own superiority in state legislatures and the US House and take away the rights of everyone who is not in the Billionaire and Millionaire classed they get large chunks of Citizens United (hidden donations) funds from.

The article from which I took the exclusive facts of this news is at a link below.  First we need to explore the results of such scamming:

What the Republicans do after they, by any scam, get control of states or the big prize the United States government (like they did in 2001 after treasury Secretary Alan Greenspan crashed the great Clinton economy by keeping interest rates too high for too many years as has been acknowledged by economists from across the liberal and centrist to conservative spectrum) is throw massive amounts of money to their biggest donors through "Supply Side Tax Cuts".

Then they start the march to war to pay back their big donors in the Military Industrial complex by starting wars.  (Reagan is known by insiders to be sick with Alzheimer's for most of his presidency and failed to follow orders on that score, but his successor George H W Bush help repay their impatience starting two military adventures, one that had the effect of desensitizing and training Oklahoma City Bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols until they "did a job" to promote the 2nd amendment though they knew that preschool children were in daily on care work days in the Alfred P Murrah Federal building.  (Security video shows McVeigh visiting the building in the days before the massive explosion.)

Notice though, after all that spending and throwing money at fat cats, now that Democrats control the White House and Senate (and only fail to control the US House of Representatives through massive Gerrymandering fraud in many Democrat strong states) the GOP cries Deficit, Deficit!  Must have Austerity (which tends to destroy recessed economies which would tend to favor the GOP's take over of the nation again in 2016).

The Reagan administration itself left the nation a mini foretaste of the banking disaster of 2007-2008 in the Saving and Loan Crisis.   Important people were actually jailed in the aftermath of that one, though big money had become even bigger, and more reckless by the end of  President George W  Bush's second term, and because of its power, in neither crisis did Big Money suffer for very long, thanks to it's control of our political system that only gets worse when the GOP or anyone is allowed to Gerrymander election districts to favor one class or one party over the other even with a flimsy excuse of making a permanent minority seat.

It has been shown that Gerrymandered legislatures do lead to harm to the middle and working classes, and we know that people in poverty and in the political minority get reduced help and much harm from the outsized control from a party favoring the wealthy because legislators no longer fear being removed for acting poorly towards the people.

Virginians should protest this, even if their protests after the ultra sound mandates were imposed were not completely successful at insuring reproductive rights.  But they should do more and stop supporting the GOP which has shown it cares little about their rights if they can sell them to the highest bidder.

But do more than just stand silently looking at GOP legislators walking into their chambers during the short time the actually work on the people's business.  Work long term to fix your state or we'll all be back to making major wars and suffering from more massive financial catastrophies after which Americans bail out those who caused the crisis, and suffer for years with shrinking resources from the economy and from the government they send so much of their own income in taxes to support.

I'd say organize, organize, organize, but what the heck does that mean?  Write your representatives and state senators and warn the Republicans they will be losing your vote if they don't reverse this.

And organize if you can get into or create a large group of people who are committed to citizens' voting  and civil rights, real civil rights, not gimmicks that are likely to set your state up and our nation up for more war and tax cuts for fat cats.

For the details of what was done yesterday by the VA State Senate see NBC DMV: Virginia GOP Sneaks Controversial Redistricting Map Through Senate

For more news on this and other important political news follow Twitter feed, @Bill_Lenner (Right now it's the one being recognized by feedburner.  I've tried to change it or at least add to it, and can't.)

Four Pinnochio Noses For NRA Ad Claiming Obama Kids Protected by Armed Guards at School!

Excerpt from Glen Kessler analysis of the NRA's ad.

    Sidwell Friends, ... has two distinct campuses, a lower school in Bethesda and a middle and upper schools in Washington. So given shift rotations and three different schools, it appears that the 11 “armed guards” is really just one or two unarmed guards per school at a time.

 If you can only read quickly that is all you need above.

The report though has more explanation of how they got to that conclusion at:

4 Pinocchios for a slashing NRA ad on security at Sidwell Friends School

In fact the whole thing sounded like a Karl Rovian creation, or even a little more virulent.  Creepy stuff like this usually does turn out to be BS.  But, like others, I assumed they meant Secret Service.   Also, notice how the NRA'S BS was "learned" from other right wing sources who also have a problem with sticking with the truth.

I guess they don't think they need truth as long as they have their guns and their greed.

Picture above used via Creative Commons License Attribution (CC by 2.0) thanks to Flickr user Kaja Bilek who has no connection to this blog or blogger

Grandfather Who Comforted Sandy Hook Children Attacked by Deniers

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Mr. Rosen took care of the children while waiting for help for them, and then he was asked to give his story by the news media. But apparently that led to right wing pro-NRA trolls singling him out, calling him a liar, and accusing him of helping to create a false scenario of a faked shooting at Sandy Hook. Yes, that is how far they will go.

The video above shows Mr. Rosen right after Sandy Hook as he was relating how he tried to help kids who had escaped from the school, from the very classes that were attacked.  I thought it was a video report of the blow back from the NRA's buddies, but it's still valid.  The report on the verbal attacks from the NRA is here:  Grandfather who comforted Sandy Hook Elementary kids says 'truthers' are targeting him.

Please, you don't have to fight about this, but if you know a person who is believing the lies that say there was no shooting at Sandy Hook elementary, tell them you won't listen.  I'm sure you're too smart to fall for the denials, but make sure they know you can't swallow that story.  A lie grows on the avoidance of everyone who doesn't show their deceived friends how ridiculous they know that lie to be, until societies change, and you can't recognize your nation anymore.

Ask the Germans.  They know a lot about that.

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What's the Matter With Pennsylvania?

Ladies and Gentlemen, the great state of Pennsylvania.

We've invited Pennsylvania here today because weak minded news media people have been covering up the massive Gerrymandering of US House of Representatives Districts.  (PA above is currently wearing its US House districts map for information and discussion purposes.)

Last night I had to endure another newsman, MSNBC's Steve Karnacki, resorting to spewing the old lie that Democrats living in cities have caused the US House to be dominated by Republicans.  Land does not vote for Congress members, people do.  Districts expand and shrink in accordance with the density of the human population, not in accordance with square footage.

Lawrence O'Donnell was right when he came back with the word Gerrymandering right after Steve Karnacki spewed out the right wing lie about people in cities leading to their own downfall in the US House (and state legislatures) in the video below.  Yes, Republicans have been very smart to buy up or otherwise aquire farmland and then take the farm susidy welfare while decrying much smaller amounts of welfare to city dwelling poor and minorities.  One Tea Party leader was found to be getting $200k a year because he had bought farmland, which he never farmed while claiming that welfare was killing the United States.  But that shouldn't affect your voting rights.  Money doesn't vote, people do.

But lets deal with Gerrymandering.  Below is a snip Lawrence O'Donnell's show "The last Word" from January 14, 2013.

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For a good illustration of the actual truth lets head off to Western PA, where Pittsburgh interacts with surrounding areas some of which are presumably more rural, and showing the result of the 2012 election after the post 2010 census and 2011 redistricting.

 (Immediately below)

Here we see 3 complete US House Districts.  One is a red wormish type thing that ends in a non symmetrical hammer head shape. Then there's a squirly blue triangle with a "guinea worm" sticking out, and just below the triangle an amorphousred stain (bordered by West Virginia to the west and south at the edge of PA).


Let's contrast with the results of the 2002 election in Southwest Pennsylvania (below):

Like in 2011, a restructuring of districts was done in 2001 following an election dominated by Republicans.  But apparently the Koch brothers and ALEC hadn't gotten new enhanced Gerrymandering instruction to the PA Republican party as they did after the 2010 election.   There were actually 2 Democratic districts created in southwest PA by the 2001 redistricting.  You can almost see the head of the hammerhead worm from the 2012 map.  That's obviously a democratic corridor that they took great pains to disappear in the 2011 redistricting and it is now red.
Looking at the numbers in the 2011 redrawn districts after the 2012 election in districts that are shown on the map above and left, the 3 we see in entirety are PA 12 (the Hammerhead worm), PA 14 (the Pittsburgh triangle with guinea worm), and PA 18, (the blob that emerges from the lower right corner).

Their 2012 House seats election results are (winner denoted with **):

PA  12 **R votes 173,340 51.8% D votes 161,397  48.2%

PA 14 R votes   74, 955 23.1% **D votes  249,012 76.9%

PA 18 **R votes 212,712 64% D votes 119,791 36%

The close race in PA 12 shows why the nonsense of the guinea worm sticking out of the Pittsburgh triangle was so important.  It drained PA 12 of some Democrats, I'm guessing just enough to keep PA 12 in Republican hands even while it devoured the Democratic corridor of the hammerhead area. BTW, notice the red 76.9% win total of PA 14.  That's another great way to drain another district of voters you don't like, stuff them uselessly in an already one party dominant district.

I'll have to it to them, that showed 24 carat Nazi genius.

If you add all those numbers up you could get 3 Democratic districts, and yet there is one out of three.  You don't make such fantastic shapes and then claim the demographics made you do it, cities made you do it, or even the devil made you do it.  And, in fact, in CA where we took the matter out of the hands of politicians and gave it to a committee of people of good will we got much more sensible districts, and more of the proper representation for minorities.  We saw Hispanics take seats long held by rich white people like Mary Bono Mack.  You may recognize her middle name, it used to be attached to her late husband, onetime singer US Representative Sonny Bono whom she succeeded after he was killed in a skiing accident, and then held onto the seat in her own elections.  So this white husband and wife were dominating a majority Hispanic/Democratic area and that wasn't fixed until someone we changed the game, and the bipartisan commission gave proper representation to the people the duo represented during their terms.

Democracy works when it's done right.  Before the bipartisan commission the House districts were decided for California by the US House caucus for the state.  No wonder nothing ever changed in our DC caucus though our state had changed greatly demographically.  I've seen differences in the Michigan state districts  and their US House districts that make me think the MI US House caucus chooses their own districts, too, and I suspect other states do as well.  How incredible is that?  It's like me going into Tiffany's and naming my own price!  "I'll take everything for $10, thank you!"   People need to figure it out.  They are having their democracy stolen from them.

And Pennsylvania has the worst Gerrymandering I've seen yet.  Folks, fix your state.  This can be done by petition, even without the approval of your Gerrymandered state legislature, and you don't have to wait 10 years as decided by the Supreme Court itself 10 years ago.  Even Chief Justice Roberts couldn't ignore that decision. Remember also that SCOTUS in 2003 said that Texas districts for both their state legislature and their House caucus could be redrawn in League of United Latin American Citzens vs Perry "for any reason".

Don't let anyone tell you that your state can't do redistricting again until 2020.  That's faulty reasoning at the least and an intentional lying at the worst.  Contact anyone who has some clout in your state and tell them you will help getting signatures or whatever it takes to get a proper redistricting done.  Don't let your state become like Pennsylvania where each voter is worth 1.25/5ths or 1/4 of a human being.  Don't let them make you into a worm to powerful and wealthy interests.  It is literally your ability to earn a decent living or even to not be killed in a war for another nation's benefit.

Shrot URL: http://bit.ly/18ZTP0a

All the President's White Men

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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And to further illustrate the ridiculousness of freaking out over Obama's "White Male Cabinet", this is The Cabinet from the first administration. It's pretty diverse.

I dunno, though.  Do you notice what I noticed?  There isn't one Martian in the whole group!

Everybody Freak Out!

From that group one woman has resigned.  When hints came that he was thinking of moving Susan Rice from UN ambassador to Secretary of State the Republican party had a tantrum led by Senator John McCain who chose Sarah Palin for his successor if he were to be elected president in 2008!

And now they have the audacity to bitch about his first four nominees to replace retiring members.

The fact that other news sources followed along shows they are no longer news sources but FOX News repeaters.

I don't think the fact that Charlie Rangel first said something, if he didn't get a buzz in his ear from a FOX troll, recuses the news media from thoroughly checking things out before running with a story.

This better illustrates how miserable News Media are today, much more than it says anything about Obama.

Sandy Hook Shooting Faked?

Lovely.

NRA puppets have a new angle now. The Sandy Hook shooting was faked. And apparently front and center of this BS is a professor (It took them a while to find a Big Lie passer that could pronounce words correctly, I guess) working for the state of Florida.Way to go, wingers. Yur really gonna git that Baracks Obama now!

(Thank goodness the holidays are over. No turkeys/hams etc. need to be thrown on the floor for this whack-a-doodle theory.)

The rantings of today's fake news hosts like Limbaugh, Beck and most of those at FOX serve as a modern day whispering campaign for those who feel racial and sexual equality has disenfranchised them, just like the lies that created the Third Reich in Germany.

 Luckily, nothing bad came from that mind-control experiment.  Oh, Wait.

Our 39th president was impeached and almost removed from office for lies about consentual sex which would then be exposed to his wife who was not behind the investigation.  (How many of us would keep our families together if we had the same level of scrutiny aimed our way?)  But, BS over gun violence that is killing children teens and adults.  Oh, that's okay. Go right ahead.  Use your public trust to spout lies.

See what happens.

How about this though:  Tell us just what you buy with your check from the NRA.  Okay, Professor Tracy?  You owe the public that much transparency.  Will you get a new boat, add a sauna to your home, take a trip to the Caribbean or to Vail?  Come on, be a pal!  Tell us what you got.

A good short URL for this post is  http://x.co/s35G

Hitler and His Nazis Did Not Take Away Guns. Other Lies Debunked.

The allegation repeated by gun afficianados that Hitler and the Nazis took away the guns if the citizens of Germany are false.

According to reports Wayne La Pierre has said:

“In Germany, Jewish extermination began with the Nazi Weapon Law of 1938, signed by Adolf Hitler.”

and

 "In Germany, firearm registration helped lead to the holocaust," leaving citizens "defenseless against tyranny and the wanton slaughter of a whole segment of its population."

 In fact, de facto personal gun prohibition was imposed on Germany with the help of the Weimar Republic government by the allies who had lost so many of their own citizens in World War 1.

In fact,  the Nazi loosened the restrictions and the famous 1938 law. completely, except for Jewish people and others that the Nazis wanted to control and hinder.   The Jew's weakness was not their lack of fire power, but the previous years of targeting for discrimination and harm.

 So yes, the Jews could not fight back, but the Russians lost over 7 million men fighting the various armed Nazi military groups with all the weapons at their disposal.  And in the fight for the Warsaw ghetto, in Poland, where the Jews did have guns, only 20 German soldiers were killed while over 60,000 thousand Jews were killed on site or shipped off to the camps. Gun ownership solved nothing and saved no one.

Salon article The Hitler gun control lie  also debunks the Stalin gun control myth as well.

I also used a quote and general understanding from Mother Jones article Was Hitler Really a Fan of Gun Control?

Yes, La Pierre and others cite other societies.   But fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.  And there is ample evidence that the NRA real agenda is to help gun sellers make more money, not the safety and well being of our citizens, even our children.  In the meantime their followers and repeaters are even scaring law enforcement in pro gun states.  If Tennessee takes away your gun permits, you've seriously jumped the shark, friends.

BTW, there is a good reason that all our American World of Warcraft players are not out there using dark magic to kill when they get mad at people, or pissed over their loser lives, or whatever.  Nor are the Japanese going out and killing lots of people with guns though they play many of the same games and their movies and anime are even more violent.  The weapons they admire on the screen and use in games are just not available to the general public.  Curiously, though, Assassin Creed players aren't hoarding swords and scimitars, so maybe there is something going on that promotes gun ownership and use.  Right, Mr. La Pierre?

A good short link to this report is http://x.co/s1kz

Picture at top of 30s era church used via Creative Commons License Attribution (CC by 2.0) thanks to Flickr user seier+seier who has no connection to this blog or blogger. 

TDS Video. Jon Stewart on the Sale of Current TV to Al Jazeera

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And Rupert Murdoch's, and Saudi New Corp's investing prince co-ownership of virulently anti-American and anti-Israel Arab language TV station.

Video: What's Behind the Jack Lew Drama?

See *** for info on Current TV that  may have you feeling weird about this source.

Former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm asks political consultant Ted Devine why Republicans don't like family man Jack Lew for Treasury Secretary.

Video can be slow in loading.  You may want to read below while it does

I think it's actually more than their grade school level feeling of need for payback, though Devine assumes that is the problem and that is probably partially the reason, but watching what the GOP have done through the past decades, I'd say there is a grander scheme to their stubborn outrage over this appointment.

Jack Lew at Treasury would make it harder for the GOP to funnel your Social Security money, which you have actually earned, to their fat cat donors like Bush and Cheney did in 2001 and 2003.  Remember the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts which were so obviously heavily weighted to centi-millionaires and billionaires (their largest solo political donors and on which they rely on much more than Democrats who tend to collect a much higher percentage of small donations from the middle and working class families).

The method that the GOP is going to use to steal from you this time is to claim that "The Retirement Age Must Be Raised!" though we have proven that you actually save your own Social Security money through your and your employers' contributions to the Social Security fund.  And Medicare is actually an insurance program you pay into throughout your working years, and now they don't want you to get timely access to it before your health problems cause an early death.  Sadly, that tragic outcome solves their problem of how to steal your Social Security money, too.

In the 90s they proclaimed "Welfare's killing the US"  And got it reduced to nearly nothing.  That actually had the tendency to hamper the ability for single parent families to improve their children's lives so the kids could go on to advance our society by getting decent jobs and making all of us richer instead of setting up drug war camps like still happens in the inner cities and endanger you and your loved ones.  But that is all water over the bridge now, though you may notice that the US's strength was reduced the most by the years in which elections allowed the GOP to do much of or exactly what they wanted by waging all out economy killing war (the Dubya years), cutting taxes on the wealthy , and sending jobs overseas.

Write, call or fax** your Senators 

* If you haven't yet via link within post above you may want to read the simple facts of how you actually save the money for 20 years retirement and your employers are charged with saving the money for 20 more years.  This is what the GOP now wants to steal part of by raising the retirement age.

** Warning If you fax you Congressionals, you open the door to them actually faxing you back whenever they want if you keep your fax on for other business, etc.  By law you cannot receive faxes from people you haven't established a relationship with.  By faxing them you establish that relationship.  That can cost you money for paper and toner or ink (unless you have a program that saves the faxes on disk instead of auto-printing them.  If you write via email you do also open a relationship to your email box, but, unless you pay according to messages received or print all your email automatically by some method, you won't pay extra when a Republican gets some materials from the GOP propaganda groups to blast to every contact.  I have a separate email box for political messages.  Okay, that's not exactly true.  I have one for political actors I'm trying out.  I actually do enter and read many of that second box's messages to keep an open mind some times, and then pick and choose whom to put allow into my primary email box for easier access.  Any pol who starts sending Rovian messages is much easier to ignore that way.  I had to ban a few of them outright before I did that.

***  Yes, Current TV is the station that was currently sold to Al Jazeera.  There has been much broohaha about the new ownership from conservative news media.  Jennifer Granholm has nothing to do with that deal and has reported that she is leaving when it closes and transfer is complete.  (And, in fact. Al Jazeera has said it is dumping all Current's programming so no host on the channel will have any relationship to the Qatar station.  The had a small cable channel already that did not have wide distribution and will be expanding that reach.)  FOX News itself is is owned in substantial portion by a Saudi Prince who also owns an Arabic station which hosts many shows and videos which disparage Israel, tell lies about it's people, and call for the deaths of Americans and Israelis.  (and BTW, Jon Stewart has revealed that Rupert Murdoch himself is 1/4 owner of the Arabic station just mentioned.)  I will be posting a video in which Stewart explains that. It is likely already posted above by the time you read this.  Click on our blog's name at top to see  the latest posts.  (I will link directly to it once it's established if I don't have to rush off to work by that time.)  Return to top of post and video.

Video: More Stewart. This Time on Guns and Gun Control.

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Stewart was sick as a dog, but still made the case pretty darn forcefully.  Alex Jones and other gun nuts better be watching out that Jon Stewart isn't following them around debunking their idiocy every place they go.

Video: Jon Stewart on GOP Senators' Refusal to Vote for Hurricane Sandy Help

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How the Debt Ceiling Crisis Could Be Solved With One Coin

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Normally very cautious Ezra Klein, warns we may have to counter Reichstag fire insanity from the GOP with less crazy platinum coinism, and how that would work.  Hint it will not permanently wipe out the US Debt.

What Will Happen if We Really Do Breach the Debt Ceiling Through Republican Intransigence

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What Ezra Klein assumes you know, and is actually even admitted in this video  by the Arizona Congressman (who thinks he's pulling the wool over our eyes), welfare now is a a non issue.  It has mostly disappeared.  What they are really going after now is your Social Security savings.
Republicans and many media people call them entitlements, something to which you think you're entitled, but didn't earn, like an inheritance (which strangely they claim is a holy devt to the children of the wealthy.) 

But we showed that you earn 20 years of retirement by the money that you alone paid into the Social Security system, and employers payments into the Social Security system for employees boosts that retirement to 40 years all prepaid.  Yet, Republicans want to permanently take away part of those savings which they call entitlements (ie gifts) and have carefully crafted their arguments so that it appears that seniors and working people would be supporting taking more from "welfare" which is virtually non-existant instead of supporting the theft of their own Social Security moneys which they have placed in charge of the government.

Even younger people, have already paid heavily into the system (read our report on how up to 15% of your income each year was paid into the SS & Medicare system -- calculate that out and learn how much of you money you would lose) and they will get a better deal than they are likely to do with greedy Wall Street managers taking care of that money (especially since employers are not likely to offer them matching savings compensations on the private market and financial firms are experts in stealing their investors' money which is why they can afford massive dumps of glitzy ads on cable and broadcast programs.  But hey, if you want to support billionaire GOP supporter bankers instead of your own retirement, go ahead and follow the Republicans to their entitlement free future.  Just remember them in their castles in Cabo while you're shivering on the streets of Detroit or wherever when you  get older.  Knowing they're laughing at you might help you survive another day.  Who can't appreciate a good joke?  Well, maybe those who are the butt of the joke, like we all are to the GOP.)

Again, the best way to make your Congress member do what you want is to contact them.  YOu can find their addresses (for DC and local offices), emails, fax and phone numbers at House.gov and Senate.gov.  For your specific House Representative you will need to know your valid registered address, including your zipcode and possibly the 4 number extension.  You can find your zip and extension at usps.com by clicking on  "Find a Zip-Code" which opens up a floating box where you can put your address information.  (Alternatively, click here to go to a full page dedicated to the same purpose.) For your Senators, I assume you remember which state you live in and can go from there.

Tell your Representative and your Senators through their staff, or via mail, or fax, that you will not find it acceptable that the 15% you've put into Social Security  through your and your employers' mandated contributions be disappeared, by law or by their defaulting on the debt the Congress already has agreed by vote to take on through tax cuts for millionaires in the Bush years, two unfunded wars during the Bush years and the financial mismanagement that led to a near depression which started during the Bush years, and that you know that the nation does better when the rich pay their fair share of taxes given the immense wealth they get from our nation than with the supply side tax cuts they want to give to their fat cat backers.  Tell them you will hold them personally responsible for the outcome of this new looming crisis, and protecting your Social Security funds.

Don't let them BS you about how Wall Street bankers will take care of your retirement for you.  Those people crashed our economy in 2008 and have shown they are adept at stealing from investors.  (Wall  Street banks are also responsible for  the crises in Greece and Spain that is dragging down the whole of Mid latitude and Southern Europe though GOP operatives and officials lie about that.  Scandinavian nations which offer high amounts of financial help for the poor and for seniors and a great public education to their younger citizens are doing surprisingly well, for the same reason that the Clinton economy did better than the supply side heavy and sputtering Reagan economy which really only had one upturn in mid to late 2004 allowing his re-election.)

And, yes, this is a new crisis brought on by GOP grandstanding which has even more power to crash our economy and keep it down than the Fiscal Cliff crisis they threatened the US with two weeks ago.  I'll apologize for Congress, but the GOP must bear their own blame for seeking to win the already decided 2012 election by forcing repeated crises.

A good short URL for this post is  http://x.co/rs7W

Alabama Releases Movie Pretending You Can Fight Back Against Assault Weapons with Stuff You find Around Office, School

A few things wrong with this:

a) Shooter looks somewhat like Vin Diesel. For some guys that's a huge step up. Lets not make our shooter look like a star, Dudes.

b) Though most shooters may shoot randomly, most worksplace shooters seem to tend to go for specific people.

c) This shooter had a pump action gun.   The new hot gun is the AR 15.  I saw young women shooting at 1 bullet per second, and suspect it can be shot faster, though Holmes whose victims say he was shooting rapidly did jam his gun.   Since I don't hang out with shooters, I'm not sure how fast an AR-15 can shoot without jamming, but it appears faster than the pump action thing faux Diesel is using.  That could make somehow fighting the guy into subconsciousness or, submission before you are killed substantially less possible

d)  In spite of years of training just on how to keep alive and subdue or kill those who want to kill them, our armed forces, and private security guards working the Iraq War lost over 5000 members with many more severely disabled.  So a short training video that made money for someone's cousin isn't going to help people all that much.  but that doesn't keep Deep South officials from playing Sheriff for one second (and using our tax dollars to do so).

d)  I first thought this was paid for by Alabama and not coming from my tax dollars, but nope, it was a grant from the federal Department of Homeland Security.   

e) Below is the video in which I saw the quickest repeated shooting.  I didn't look too long, though.  There were a few gun seller types teaching arming using, breaking down but I was looking for shooting.  There were some guys aiming at distant targets shooting 1.5- 2 seconds apart, but I figure your invasion shooters aren't really aiming and certainly not distantly, so I watched the girls, got disgusted with the video guy's tendency to drift down towards the young ladies breasts and buttocks, tried some more and got nothing until some guy sitting on the couch with a top half of a naked woman and a black man with his AR-15 (I hope those were just statue pieces) and decided the young women it is because I'm not going to search anymore in that subject.

All Hail the United States of Assault Weapons, everyone.

 Remember ladies, that WIFI modem is your friend when a mass killer enters your office!

Work that Belkin!

BTW,  if you are caught in a situation of a mass shooting, of course, do anything you can.  It just might work, and in many instances our lack of gun control and/or poor mental health management, the tendency of one of our political parties to promote violent overthrow of specific politicians if not the nation does actually promote workplace/school violence, and lax gun laws promote their use on nonviolent people.  So go a head and fight back if you are in one of these horrible situations, if you can and if it seems feasible--deciding not to take action if the person with a gun offers safety is indeed another option.  What I'm objecting to is the idea that people are not already trying to fight back, trying to hide, or trying to run, and that lax gun laws are okay because people just haven't used all their resources when one of their crazed gun owners goes on a rampage.

(My personal Belkin 300n WIFI modem is great, but weighs less than 9 oz, so I'm not impressed with the idea I could bean a killer with it, if I needed to.)

How Obama Outfoxed The GOP For a Tax Increase in the Fiscal Cliff Negotiations

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Obama play a long game over the fiscal Cliff negotiations to get more than a necessary tax increase, also an extension of Federal Unemployment Benefits that are so necessary for struggling American families, many of which had members who were thrown out of jobs after states elected creepy Republican dominated legislatures who promised to put more people back to work, but instead, decimated public jobs and threw massive tax cuts and outright money gifts to their fat cat backers like the Koch bros.

A good short URL for this post is http://x.co/rkWd