5 Things to Know About the Investigation of Fast and Furious

The graphic above is a screen grab that came from Alan Colmes "Liberaland" blog which was a summary of a Think Progress Report Five Things To Know About The Republican Witchhunt Against Attorney General Holder  which is a very important article to read.

Issa himself is no stranger to using trumped up charges for overturning government.  He was the one that started recall petitions against democratic Governor Davis in California in 2003, only to be pushed aside by his party-mates as a "can't win" so they could focus on action star Arnold Schwarzenegger who further crippled the state (after the power companies scam during the rolling blackout period) and worked to break the strong liberal majority within it.

The petition drive for the recall was itself the target of and investigation for illegal petition gatherers and signers from other states (California law states that only California residents (as shown by having permanent living arrangements like a renter's agreement for an in-state dwelling, can pass petitions, and only registered voters, again required to be residents, but also to have  legally completed a registration for voting in the state at least 5 weeks prior to using any voter privileges).

Of course, no matter what top Republicans say now they are grateful for this conspiracy theory against Obama's Justice Department and a black man,  So Issa, using a program started under Bush and his Justice Department to try to pretend it's all a plot from the Obama administration is just like toppings for the hot fudge Sundae of a program to get back into power and pass tax cuts for fat cats and stage more wars for their military industrial complex buddies.

You Can't Give Million Dollar Donations and Use a Phony Name? Who Knew? #p21

Flamingo Party, Laguna Hedionda, Bolivia

Someone hide the Tequila They already look like they're happy enough.

Picture shared via Flickr native coding and allowed by Creative Commons License (CC by 2.0).  Rollover to see flickr name of photographer who has no connection to this blog or blogger.

NPR has a report on how two top men of Nu Skin (an Amway type company) gave a million dollars each to Romney's SuperPAC by using the name of a fake business and something you might find on WOW.  That is apparently illegal and sad.  (Audio version of report is also available from page at link above.)

Instead of getting the privacy they craved and not informing their customers what they apparently do with the money they get from selling a product, they managed to get a local reporter and NPR interested it the donations and now a lot more people know.

BTW,  Eric Prince's sister is married to Dick DeVos "of the Amway fortune" as described by a Huffington Post report (and others to which I have not linked) so I guess like with pizza: cheap ingredients being used to make something sold for enough to offer seven figured donations = success for Republicans.  And then they would like government to ignore them please while they buy up the nation.

Video: The Lies Behind Kerry Picket's Claim that Clinton's DOJ "Found Out" That Assault Weapons Ban Was Useless

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Above you will hear Kerry Picket say something equivalent to "Clinton's DOJ "found out" that the type of weapons banned by the assault weapon law were not the types of guns being used in violent crimes."  I've listened to it three times, but cannot repeat it more as my old computer tends to stall out rapidly under video viewing and I have terrible delay problems already.

I am not up on all weapons and their parts and what are assault weapons or what were defined as such by the Brady Bill, but I'd like to ask if no AKs were ever used in crime, or were they not banned by the bill, or was Ice Tea just fronting when he rapped about them?

But Ms. Pickets statements are obviously so misleading that in essence she is lying (which is probably why she is stuttering so badly in this video. She was sent out to get lies passed on a national show. Some people are not as smooth as the big liars that no one wants to listen to anymore and so they tend to stutter when they play the same right wing game of lying on national television when the host and others can't run to their computers and look things up or otherwise sit and think about what she said and figure out how she's twisted the truth.

But, even if Kerry Picket (@kerrypicket on Twitter) was telling the truth she was cutting it so thin that it wouldn't make an adequate sandwich for a toddler. Possibly the banned guns weren't used in crimes (though she should talk to the LAPD out here who constantly are claiming to be taking banned guns used in crimes off the street). Maybe, the truth is that once the currently banned guns were against the law, new ones were developed that were even more dangerous, as appears to have happened.

Then what should we have done? We should have banned the new, more dangerous guns, but something happened. The GOP realized there was a desperate interest group in the US who depended on buying, trading, and selling guns to fill their wallets and assuage their fears. The GOP also realized they could use this group to gain votes that they could sell to fat cats who wanted tax cuts for the wealthy and more wars to grab other nations' resources at little expense to themselves. So they started wailing about how the Democrats were going to ban guns and that would leave gun buyers at the mercy of those "dark people" or "Commies". I believe it was Ronald Reagan who actually posited that Soviet Russia might come up at us through Nicaragua. Within 4 years of his leaving the White House though, of course, the Soviet Union collapsed due to it's over extension in expansionist wars, a line we started heading towards when the GOP got control in 2001 and is still trying to get back to. So, while gun manufacturers were creating more powerful guns and bigger clips the GOP enforced a ban on banning them and refused to even renew the now whimpy and ineffective Brady bill. But plenty of deaths have been caused by the rejiggered assault weapons and assault level cartridges. After the Virginia Tech massacre people were crying out for banning the sell of large capacity magazines, but the GOP stood in the way. Even before people had worried about them, but they were used over and over again. After the shooting of US Representative Gabby Giffords, and the killing of many others including a Federal District judge and a sweet nine year old girl the cries reached a crescendo, yet the GOP sits back and laughs, and keeps promoting racism and gun ownership. Most of the mass killings in the last 20 years were done by firearms defined by the moniker "assault weapons" from the Columbine killings, to Fort Hood, to Tucson. Josh Sugarman noted just 10 at the Huffington Post, but there have been so many others, the Colorado killings at a missionary school and a mega church, shootings at other schools and shopping centers. Law Enforcement officers agree that without assault weapons people just can't be killed so quickly.  And please don't ignore that we have filled Mexico with so many assault weapons that it is rapidly becoming a failed state, and a place of death and mayhem.

After jsut about everyone of the mass killings in the US, people cry out that the killer just couldn't have murdered so many if there was proper action on banning assault weapons, not just renewing the Brady bill, but keeping up with the new ways that weapons manufacturers push more death out the door to their customers. Next time it might be someone you love that is killed by a random stranger, an ex, or someone convinced that "minorities" or "the majority" have it coming to them and pick up an assault weapon to set things "straight". 

Vote for those who will listen to us about our concerns on the wild availability of assault weapons.  Elect people who will not only ban what is available now, but keep up with new designs that skirt the law. 

American GOP Posturing Over Post Birth Abortion Remarks From Italian Scientists

Melozzo di Forli's Angels, Sacristy St. Marks, Loreto, Italy.

It is a bit weird for Italians to be promoting such ideas, but it is also unlikely to sway Americans

Picture shared via native Flickr code and allowed by Creative Commons license Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)Roll over picture to see name of photographer who has no relationship to this blog or blogger.

"Sneaky Italian Scientists are going to slide into the US and start aborting new born babies (aka "4th Trimester" fetuses)" is the new meme from the hard right.  Or maybe they're going to convince Americans to start killing their own newborns.

Who knows, but much is implied since, if they come right out and say what they are claiming will happen most Americans will laugh themselves silly and then the 30% of Americans who really fall for such wild allegations won't send right wing Christian groups and
GOP candidates big donations to keep the evil bogeyman (and woman) at bay.

See hysterical report:
Pro Life Action League report  "Abortions in the Fourth Trimester: Why Not?"

Profiles:
Dr Alberto Giubilini  (See Biography section lower on page)

Francesca Minerva

If you believe those two are going to get post birth abortions going in the US, I have a Jaguar in mind that you can buy me, and I will be forever grateful!  God loves it when you buy a poor person a Jag and he will reward you 20 times for it.  (Actually the Bible does say that those who give to the needy will be rewarded in return with more than they gave, but you don't see Christians giving like they believe in that part of the Bible.)

Two Scientists who were educated and likely born and raised in Italy, make some statements about post birth abortions and the posturing right acts as if it's already enthroned in law or that Obama is going to pass a bill in his next term. 

That is how the American Right Wing pushes their fascism-lite.

This, obviously, isn't going to become mainstream American law or even accepted quirky behavior.  It is a non starter.

Even if the GOP manages to get hormonal birth control outlawed so a lot of extra babies are born, you will see a likely rise in cost for caring for such children by the state as many families will have to give them up.  You'll be footing the bill for that, Dear Taxpayer.

 Years later you will see a horrific exponential rise in crime, making most cities and even towns and rural areas unsafe.

But you won't see "4th Trimester" abortions; not as an accepted practice.  (and yes, there are those now that kill their kids.  The Church hasn't been able to stop those people, even now.

The claim that "4th Trimester" abortion practice will ever really be acccepted in the US is just more of the Nazi talk from the right. Their tendency is to make outrageous claims to try to get people's rights taken away, and to collect money based on the fears those claims create in certain susceptible folk.

 The GOP is now even more effective than the Third Reich.  In Germany, much of the church just tried to hide from the onerous effects of the Nazis, while today's American Evangelicals and even the Catholics jump right in.

But God says: "ROFLMAO!  Get real Douchbags.  It ain't gonna happen."

Proof that #Keystone XL Pipeline will Take #TarSands oil To Make Gasoline for World Market (Asia)

The shrill GOP defenders of the Keystone XL pipeline say they are interested in getting that Tar Sands oil to Texas in order to fill gas tanks in the US with cheaper oil, but they are lying.  The fact that the Keystone XL pipeline is being built across a major MidWest aquifer to transport  the tarsands oil to the Gulf Coast proves that the resultant gas will be used for the world market not the US.

There are plenty of refineries in the upper MidWest in with which to refine the tar sands oil and some of them wanted that chance so badly that they were willing to undertake extensive expansion for the chance, which would create 10 times more permanent jobs in the Great Lakes region than the pipeline will. 

Most of the jobs for the Keystone XL pipeline heading for Texas will instead  be temporary ones, and once the tar sands oil reaches it's destination on the Gulf Coast, the resultant product can be dumped onto ships and taken through the Panama canal to Asia keeping gasoline prices just as high as always home.

And that's the reason the world wants the US to endanger the underground water supply (Ogallala aquifer) for a major portion of the MidWest.  Tainted drinking water, anyone?

At least, the GOP should allow enough time for a real analysis of the ability to safely build and maintain that pipeline to be completed, but the Republicans want to posture about the pipeline for the 2012 political race. and can't wait for safety evaluations.   A spill could be incredibly damaging to the upper plains region.

But many interested parties don't like to think about problems that could develop in the future. That's how Japan ended up with a major disaster from the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Is that how we should do things in our nation?

Not if we want to protect the environment and especially regional families' health and well being.  The MidWest shouldn't be held hostage under the threat of public safety crisis to the world gas market.

We need to do the environmental review, do it right and select the proper route for the tar sands oil.

The GOP should stop posturing.  The gas isn't for us.  It won't help us.  So we need to look out for ourselves first and take the time to figure out how to do the job safely.

Video: Is Mitt Romney a Serial Killer? Funny Ad from "Definitely Not Coordinating with Stephen Colbert Super PAC"

Scott Walker Failing to Meet Promised Job Creation Goals in Wisconsin #wi #wiunion #ows

Remember when Wisconsin governor Scott Walker promised all those new jobs from his austerity and public union busting measures passed by the creepy Republicans in the state legislature? Well, his state isn't reaching a year's worth of those jobs. In fact the jobs numbers look just like what you'd expect under any austerity program. Cutting debt does not create jobs. Walker might know that if he had completed a college education.

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Will #GOP be Tracking, Spying on Registered Republicans Again For 2012 Election?

A new app is bring touted as bring able to keep track of Republicans this election season.

Feeling like a deer in a gunsight yet friend?
 
Maybe you'd better change to Independent,

This may simply be a continuation of the GOP program of spying on its members to make sure they know how to lie to them best.  That program has been admitted for years.  The party has acknowledged that they keep track of the purchases and interests of their members ( they claim by buying information from credit card suppliers, magazine subscriptions, and the membership lists of interest groups and churches people belong to.).

Such a system allows misleading information to be delivered to party members, whether about morality, the economy, or war. 

Master campaigner George W. Bush accomplished much of the same thing when he promised to walk  with more humility in the world, ie not get engaged with conflicts.  The new president  though told his cabinet that he planned to invade Iraq 10 days after he took office (From Ron Suskind's book "The Price of Loyalty" written with information supplied by Paul O'Neill, Bush's first Secretary of the Treasury).  That conflict made Clinton's cooperation with NATO and the UN over the Serbia-Bosnia and Serbia-Kosovo conflicts look like Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte. No I don't know French myself. The Wikipedia page, linked, supplied that title.

Ron Paul has adopted a similar meme and trumpets his intentions to end all US involvement in military operations, though he also wants to disappear all your Social Security and Medicare funds (that you've put much of your own money into) as well.

http://bit.ly/z9NSAM

Supreme Court Case Against Health Care Overhaul Could Lose "Standing"

The Supreme Court Building

The Supremes will likely have to first decide if anyone still has standing to press the case against the Health Care Overhaul passed and signed into law in 2010.

Picture above is allowed via Creative Commons license using  Flickr's native attribution and placement code. Roll over for photographer's name, click to go to original Flickr location, to see more sizes of picture available.

In August, Mary Brown, the owner of a small auto repair shop in Florida, became the only successful plaintiff to get her case against President Obama's Health Care Overhaul past a District Court and to the Supremes.

But this year, just after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the business woman, she became a non business woman by closing up her auto repair shop according to a Wall Street Journal report "Hurdle for Health-Law Suit". (If this link doesn't work for you, copy the words "Hurdle for health law suit" into Google which is authorized to give you 5 such entries into the WSJ daily according to what I've heard and indeed that is how I got into online WSJ today.

The Court doesn't want to decide on the case surrounding the Universal Health Care Plan based on the case of an individual because the balance of costs versus benefits is unclear. As a business owner Ms. Brown could have argued argued that being forced to pay for employees' insurance would have made it impossible to continue her business. It turned out though that her business was apparently nonviable even without the added cost of health insurance for employees. In addition the plaintiff and her husband filed bankruptcy in September and their financial problems could exempt them from the mandate as private citizens.

A retired investment banker was also a plaintiff on the case, but he acted as an individual, again something the court already seems to say doesn't give a person standing. A business association that Mary Brown belongs to believes they can assume standing, but they weren't part of the case as judged by the 11th Circuit Court.

And on it goes with one expert saying there is likely no standing left and another saying that if the Supreme Court wants to find standing, it will find it. I think the standing issue will show whether the right wing members of the most prominent court in the land are truly conservative, or just determined to sell the nation to the highest bidders.

GOP House Leaders Stuff #XLPipeline Approval into Payroll Tax Holiday and #Unemployment Ins. Extension #p2 #ows

A revised report at The Hill newspaper after a 12:52 pm EST update makes the move by Boehner and others look like a generous measure to save the payroll tax holiday and unemployment insurance extension.  The earlier report made it much more obvious that the XL pipeline was put into the bill to pass pipeline approval by Congress.  The earlier report also said the final decision on the XL would be taken from the State Department and given to FERC.

That second claim doesn't seem to appear in this report.

The copious amount of blatant anti Obama propaganda in the new Hill piece seems to indicate that someone let GOP  staffers direct their writing quite a bit.

The article also mentions that some EPA decisions will be shot down if the measures survive, which is likely since all the Big Energy money will be going into the campaign coffers of those Congressionals who vote the way the energy industry likes.

My guess is that the orange faced drunk Speaker of the House is furious over how Obama outwitted him by using the Super Committee (which was basically guaranteed to fail) to get military cuts without having to give away entitlements.

The XL Pipeline gambit could be payback as well as a way to attract even more oil money to his party.

See current report at The Hill (mobile): http://bit.ly/sgHIzu

After 911, Thousands of Pests Slipped into US While Gov't Focused on Terrorists

Just months after the GOP got hold of the White House they passed a tax cut for Fat Cats telling us we didn't need the money.
Yet within months we did need the money as we had to decrease our agricultural security for increased scrutiny of our ports of entry for human to Ham terrorists.
Did the Fat Cats give the money back?  Of course not, and the GOP controlled White House and Congress didn't ask them to do so.
The result is shown that agricultural terrorists (though not human) slipped into the US and started harming our nation. 
Stop the wars? Tax the wealthy to fight the pests at the ports of entry?
Not while Republicans controlled Congress and the White House!
An AP report show that Homeland Security only started ramping up inspections in 2007 and also cites Congress members behind the effort to push ramped up inspections that got border agricultural security back to a decent level
I think its safe to say that Democrats in charge of Congress is the best for agriculture.  Too bad that after so many years of total GOP control it was too late for many farmers and agricultural products.
Farmers and people who like healthy food and ecosystems should notify their Congress members and tell them they will be watching to see of they are really protecting our crops from foreign pests and diseases
Otherwise they'll be voting them out.
Just in case though, I'd stick with the party that brought sanity back to Homeland Security in keeping our nation and it's food supply safer.
Oil companies have gotten major supply contracts from the war on Iraq.  Other fat cats are still hoping for access to the trillion dollars worth of rare earths and valuable minerals in Afghanistan from the Bush White House's wars. 
All farmers got from the Republicans being in total control of thr nation was decreased security, and more problems for all their work and support of the GOP.
See link below for report on how post 911 response by the GOP left agricultural security out to dry.
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LA Times - Study upends term-limit theory

See: Study upends term-limit theory

Video: Now Republicans Are Talking About Killing Social Security

First Medicare and now Social Security. And you wondered where the GOP thought it would get the money to finance American Exceptionalism, where the US fights eternal war for big business? From you, friend.

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GOP State Governments To Let Corporations Contribute Without Limits, but Cut Unions' Contribution

Republicans promised jobs, but they are destroying democracy.

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