So have the wingnuts flipped out over this McDonald's World Cup commercial yet?

If Hillary's past stand on marriage equality disqualifies her, it disqualifies most of the party.

I've never been a fan of Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom because, as San Francisco mayor, I feel he neglected many of the basic functions of a municipal government. But I also remember the beginning of 2004 when he stood alone and opened the doors for marriage equality in The City. And suddenly, the rising young star many discussed as a future presidential candidate was ridiculed by the press and shunned by almost everyone in the national Democratic party. When a mediocre John Kerry (who,we learned, left $15 million unspent after losing by a fingernail in Ohio), many in the party blamed Newsom for being the one for introducing gay marriage into the national debate. Ten years later with Nerwsom proved on the right side of history, the country and the party moved forward. President Obama evolved and Hillary, who had a front row seat during the worst part of the DADT (a HUGE step forward for the military at the time) and DOMA debates is fully and politically committed to full equality for the GLBT community.

So if you're going to indict Hillary, you'll have to throw out most of the party as well.

Salon: The day I left my son in the car

I took a deep breath. I looked at the clock. For the next four or five seconds, I did what it sometimes seems I’ve been doing every minute of every day since having children, a constant, never-ending risk-benefit analysis. I noted that it was a mild, overcast, 50-degree day. I noted how close the parking spot was to the front door, and that there were a few other cars nearby. I visualized how quickly, unencumbered by a tantrumming 4-year-old, I would be, running into the store, grabbing a pair of child headphones. And then I did something I’d never done before. I left him. I told him I’d be right back. I cracked the windows and child-locked the doors and double-clicked my keys so that the car alarm was set. And then I left him in the car for about five minutes.

He didn’t die. He wasn’t kidnapped or assaulted or forgotten or dragged across state lines by a carjacker. When I returned to the car, he was still playing his game, smiling, or more likely smirking at having gotten what he wanted from his spineless mama. I tossed the headphones onto the passenger seat and put the keys in the ignition.

Over the past two years, I’ve replayed this moment in my mind again and again, approaching the car, getting in, looking in the rearview mirror, pulling away. I replay it, trying to uncover something in the recollection I hadn’t noticed at the time. A voice. A face. Sometimes I feel like I can hear something. A woman? A man? “Bye now.” Something. But I can’t be sure.

We flew home. My husband was waiting for us beside the baggage claim with this terrible look on his face. “Call your mom,” he said. I called her, and she was crying. When she’d arrived home from driving us to the airport, there was a police car in her driveway.


http://www.salon.com/2014/06/03/the_day_i_left_my_son_in_the_car/

Mitt Romney: Hillary Clinton's Record Is A 'Monumental Bust'

Former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney said Sunday that Republicans can win the White House in 2016 by focusing on likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's time as secretary of state.

"The playbook, I believe, is to look at her record," Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts who was defeated by President Barack Obama in 2012, said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I think you have to consider what's happened around the world during the years that she was secretary of state, and you have to say it's been a monumental bust."

Earlier during the discussion on the show, Romney brought up Clinton unprompted when talking about the current crisis in Iraq. He said that the majority of the blame for the insurgency fell to the Iraqi leadership, but that the Obama administration had also failed to do what was needed to maintain stability.

"The United States of America has long had the capacity to shape events and to influence events, but what you’ve seen from this administration, whether from Hillary Clinton, with the reset button to Russia -- which, by the way, I think should have been called the repeat button -- I mean, this administration from Secretary Clinton to President Obama has repeatedly underestimated the threats that are faced by America and has repeatedly underestimated our adversaries," he said. "Whether that’s Russia, or Assad, or ISIS, or al Qaeda itself, it has not taken the action necessary to prevent bad things from happening. It has not used our influence to do what's necessary to protect our interests."


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/15/mitt-romney-hillary-clinton_n_5496621.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

Lindsey Graham urges simultaneous war with Iraq and Syria

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Sunday warned that Islamic militants' insurgency in northern Iraq could lead to another massive terrorist attack.

"This is another 9/11 in the making. The FBI director has warned us in Congress that Syria and Iraq present a direct threat to our homeland," he said on CNN's "State of the Union."

The senator urged President Obama to take action in Iraq.

"Put American airpower into the game. These guys are not 10-feet tall. Stop the advance on Baghdad. Get people on the ground that the Iraqis trust. Maliki must go. Get a new government in place, right, and hit Syria," he said. "If you don't deal with Syria in a coordinated fashion, maybe with Turkey, regional Sunni Arab states, you will have this happen all over again in Iraq."


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/graham-iraq-another-9-11

Goshen College article cites staring as an example of "Psychological Rape"

Don’t allow psychological rape or commit it yourself. Psychological rape consists of verbal harassment, whistles, kissing noises, heavy breathing, sly comments or stares. These are all assaults on any woman’s sense of well-being. The underlying intention is to intimidate the woman. They are power plays couched in the language of sex.

Florida woman kidnapped daughter to avoid vaccinations, black history lessons

"A Sunrise woman who disappeared with her 2-year-old daughter last month to avoid having the child vaccinated now faces a federal criminal charge, according to court records.

Megan Elizabeth Everett, 22, was last seen on May 6, when Robert Baumann dropped off their daughter, Lilly, in compliance with a shared custody agreement. Lilly was supposed to be returned to Baumann a week later, but Everett never showed up."
...

" "One of the issues we had was, she wanted to home-school my daughter," said Baumann. "I didn't want that to happen. She didn't want Lilly to learn about black history. She just wanted her to learn about the Confederacy." "


http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/fort-lauderdale/fl-anti-vaccination-kidnap-20140613,0,1990050.story

Grimes: Don't send US troops back to Iraq

FRANKFORT, KY. — Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes says she would not support sending U.S. troops back to Iraq.

Islamic militants once linked to al-Qaida have taken Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, and have vowed to advance on Baghdad. In a statement released Friday to The Associated Press, Grimes called the situation very dangerous and concerning. But she said ultimately the fight is up to the people of Iraq. Grimes said the United States should play a supportive role by providing useful intelligence.

Grimes is challenging Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in one of the country's most closely watched Senate races. Democrats are trying to keep control of the Senate in the midterm elections. Republicans need to pick up six seats to take a majority and control both houses of Congress.



http://www.kentucky.com/2014/06/13/3290337/grimes-dont-send-us-troops-back.html#storylink=cpy

Watching World Cup coverage on ABC is a painful experience.

I've tried watching ABC's World Cup coverage between games and all I see are three lifeless corpses in suits trying to look like they're enjoying their time in sunny Brazil. And two of them were former soccer pros. I'm sticking with Univision.

Neo-Cons call on President to "bring back" the team "who knew how to win'.

Now, Neo-Cons like McCain are calling on the President to "bring back" the Bush team "who knew how to win." Unbelievable. The people who led us into the Iraq War have no business even commenting on foreign policy -- much less managing it. In fact, any self-respecting television network should simply ignore anything they have to say, since they led us into the worst foreign policy disaster in half a century.

The Iraq War will ultimately cost the American taxpayers trillions of dollars. It caused the collapse of our international reputation. It costs hundreds of thousands of lives -- including 4.500 American soldiers, and it wounded and maimed hundreds of thousands more. And the Iraq War unleashed simmering sectarian conflicts that had existed for centuries throughout the Middle East.

Now those sectarian conflicts have spilled over into an awful civil war in Syria and are part and parcel of international tensions throughout the region. And these "geniuses" should be brought back to manage Iraq policy?

Oh, they say, President Obama should have been a tougher negotiator when it came to maintaining a residual force of training personnel in Iraq. But that ignores that the Maliki government refused to agree to conditions that every other country in the world provides for Americans who are stationed on their soil. The fact is that Maliki did not want American troops to remain in Iraq because he is entirely beholden to the Iranians who did not want any residual American troops in Iraq.

But that, of course, is beside the point where most Americans are concerned. The vast majority of Americans didn't want to maintain a residual force of American troops in Iraq either. They wanted to end America's involvement in the Iraq War -- and do not want American troops to be sent back to Iraq or any other war in the Middle East.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/only-two-words-for-neo-co_b_5494812.html