May 26, 2014

400 rounds is a bit much for someone planning peaceful activities. But it's common place. No wonder

some places can rapidly become a war zone. This state of affairs is what the Koch brothers, Birchers and NRA intend by fighting sensible legislation. It's not just about profits, there's more to it.

2nd Amendment absolutists and their running buddies the Second Amendment Solution crowd will drape it in all kinds of causes, but are now emboldened to give their real motive. They want the government overthrown.

The NRA, et al, have long had such a radical agenda that even Bush, Sr. objected to it. Some forget what is legal now, was not legal twenty years ago. Now it's batshit crazy and we're all going to pay the price. Here's what Bush said:

Letter of Resignation Sent By Bush to Rifle Association

Published: May 11, 1995

Following is the letter of resignation sent last week by former President George Bush to the National Rifle Association:

May 3, 1995

Dear Mr. Washington,

I was outraged when, even in the wake of the Oklahoma City tragedy, Mr. Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of N.R.A., defended his attack on federal agents as "jack-booted thugs." To attack Secret Service agents or A.T.F. people or any government law enforcement people as "wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms" wanting to "attack law abiding citizens" is a vicious slander on good people.

Al Whicher, who served on my [ United States Secret Service ] detail when I was Vice President and President, was killed in Oklahoma City. He was no Nazi. He was a kind man, a loving parent, a man dedicated to serving his country -- and serve it well he did.

In 1993, I attended the wake for A.T.F. agent Steve Willis, another dedicated officer who did his duty. I can assure you that this honorable man, killed by weird cultists, was no Nazi.

John Magaw, who used to head the U.S.S.S. and now heads A.T.F., is one of the most principled, decent men I have ever known. He would be the last to condone the kind of illegal behavior your ugly letter charges. The same is true for the F.B.I.'s able Director Louis Freeh. I appointed Mr. Freeh to the Federal Bench. His integrity and honor are beyond question.

Both John Magaw and Judge Freeh were in office when I was President. They both now serve in the current administration. They both have badges. Neither of them would ever give the government's "go ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law abiding citizens." (Your words)

I am a gun owner and an avid hunter. Over the years I have agreed with most of N.R.A.'s objectives, particularly your educational and training efforts, and your fundamental stance in favor of owning guns.

However, your broadside against Federal agents deeply offends my own sense of decency and honor; and it offends my concept of service to country. It indirectly slanders a wide array of government law enforcement officials, who are out there, day and night, laying their lives on the line for all of us.

You have not repudiated Mr. LaPierre's unwarranted attack. Therefore, I resign as a Life Member of N.R.A., said resignation to be effective upon your receipt of this letter. Please remove my name from your membership list.

Sincerely, [ signed ] George Bush

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/11/us/letter-of-resignation-sent-by-bush-to-rifle-association.html

I have no love for any Bush, but he saw the writing on the wall. Their talking points are now mainstream, not because they are right, but because they own the media and have brainwashed millions.

When the NRA's power in this country was called out by the father of a victim over this latest event, the GOP made crude remarks to defame any opposition. The NRA, ALEC and the Koch brothers are too powerful and their agenda does not bode well for Americans.... It's sick.

May 26, 2014

Mississippi Judge accused of hitting mentally challenged young man and using racial slurs VIDEO@link

Sarah Gray - May 25, 2014

The family of Eric Rivers has filed a police complaint against Madison County Justice Court Judge Bill Weisenberger, who witnesses say hit the 20-year-old mentally challenged man and called racial epithets.

Weisenberger, who is white, is a former law enforcement officer who was elected as a Justice Court judge — a position that in Mississippi does not require more than a high school diploma and six hours of training per year. On May 8, he was witnessed by two vendors, at the Canton Flea Market slapping a young black man on the back of the head and saying “run *n-word*, run.”

The two witnesses, sisters Cathy Hendrix and Tammy Westbrook, from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, were appalled by the attack. One of the sisters says she heard Weisenberger subsequently brag about hitting the young man.

Weisenberger was also witnessed arguing with a female vendor, and eventually demand to speak to her husband, because he did not like taking orders from women...

VIDEO at link, which came to Salon from the local news, the Clarion Ledger:

http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2014/05/23/madison-county-judge-accused-racial-abuse/9518717/

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/25/mississippi_judge_accused_of_hitting_mentally_challenged_young_man_and_using_racial_slurs/

Listen to the video and see some of the place where it happened, the man from the NAACP give details and the statement of a woman who may be white, who says she has African American family members. She has come forward as a witness to the Judge's acts.

The actions were clear. His calling on the boy to run as he was fondling his gun, sounded like he is the kind of man would set a black man or child up for being shot in the back. This is what he did in front of many witnesses. What has he done without the public watching?

May 25, 2014

Nope, not really. Pavarotti was a favorite of mine for years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luciano_Pavarotti

The Three Tenors:



Andrea Bocelli is now my favorite:



He was blinded in an accident at twelve years old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Bocelli

His performance at the Statue of Liberty concert still makes me cry:



I was fortunate to have seen this on PBS and record it. Then I converted it to see on my computer. Even without the words to the song, I felt I knew what he was saying.

The English lyrics to the song:

Andrea Bocelli — Sogno

Go, I will wait for you
The flowers in the garden mark the time
Here I will draw the day of your return
You are so sure of my love
You take it away with you
Cupped in your hands
When you touch your face
As you still think of me
And if you need to, you can show the world
The world that doesn't know what life there is
In an uncaring absent heart
Doesn't know what life there is
In that only the heart can feel
Doesn't know.

Here I will wait for you
And steal kisses from time
Time is not enough to erase
The memories and the desire that
Remains closed in your hands
That you bring to your face.
You still think of me
It will follow you and passing me in the city
I'll still be here
Dreaming of things that I don't know about you.
Where is the road that You will take on your return
I dream

Here I will wait for you
And steal kisses from time
I dream
A noise, the wind awakens me
And you're already here.

In Italian:

Va ti aspettero
Il fiore nel giardino segna il tempo
Qui disegnero il giorno poi del tuo ritorno
Sei cosi sicura del mio amore
Da portarlo via con te
Chiuso nelle mani
Che ti porti al viso
Ripensando ancora a me
E se ti servira lo mostri al mondo
Che non sa che vita c'e
Nel cuore che distratto sembra assente
Non sa che vita c'e
In quello che soltanto il cuore sente
Non sa.

Qui ti aspettero
E rubero i baci al tempo
Tempo che non basta a cancellare
Coi ricordi il desiderio che
Resta chiuso nelle mani
Che ti porti al viso
Ripensando a me
E ti accompagnera passando le citta da me
Da me che sono ancora qui
E sogno cose che non so di te
Dove sara che strada fara il tuo ritorno
Sogno

Qui ti aspettero
E rubero i baci al tempo
Sogno
Un rumore il vento che mi sveglia
E sei gia qua.



Hope you enjoy that.

May 25, 2014

I agree, but I just posted one above. He's the only one I'd post from RT.

You just threw one of my biggest supporters under the bus!

~ Barack Obama

May 25, 2014

Thanks, I was able to see it there but DU won't show that link for me, so I uploaded it elsewhere:

So now it shows up on DU for me. I really appreciate you posting it here and helping me out with this.

It is indeed damning and a truth which cannot be repeated often enough! American is being played by the employees like Joe who work for criminals.

May 24, 2014

Yes, it is an excellent read, I finished it but it was no mystery to me, though. It's exasperating

to have to continue to try to educate people on what the heart already knows and was played out in public daily.

As to Conyers, yes, I saw that thread since I posted, it even had people dissing him for no good reason. But I hope he will be back and push this study.

For those who would freak out about this and run away, don't panic. It's a study and should be studied across this nation. People should think about what's really important and extend their horizons.

May 24, 2014

Listened to him daily on community access television and radio for years.

He's for Democrats, equal rights, a secular state and our causes. He's against the GOP, Tea Party, Libertarians and Koch brothers.

He's a DUer and he reads what we write here and has commented on it on his show. Progressives are being run out of media in every venue and they have to take what they can get.

Look at how many times some have been amazed to see Schultz and Maddox talk about our causes and then interview some lying neo-con shill. That's because they'd be tossed off the air if they refused, just as Olberman and Donahue were if they didn't allow these guys on their shows to dispute progressive viewpoints, and have to give them equal time, when they are only there because the owners say so.

Here's a sample of his work on the the con job that this nation has been subjected to for years. He posted the video and the transcript as well. I say he is an honest intellectual. not a media gadfly nor an opportunist. He did a program on the Kochs long before Reid and Sanders made news about them, back in 2012:

Thom Hartmann: Conservative Millennials, Boomers & Libertarians all being Conned

thomhartmann - Jul 26, 2012

Multigenerational political influence by a very narrow special interest group is rare, but we're seeing it played out right now in front of us. A billionaire family - the Kochs - have gone from influencing my father's generation, to my generation, to my kids' generation - and very few Americans realize it. Daddy Koch - Fred - made his first millions palling around with Joe Stalin in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. As the fascists rose to power in Europe in the 1930s, he was an enthusiastic supporter of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who invented the word "fascist," meaning essentially the takeover of democratic governments by big business interests. Mussolini went so far as to dissolve the Italian parliament, and replace elected politicians with representatives of each district's largest corporations. Fred Koch and Mussolini both particularly hated the trade unionists and their sometimes allies, the communists. So after Mussolini, along with his ally Hitler, lost World War II against America, Fred Koch brought the anti-communist pro-business-running-goverment - what some would call "facist" - torch to America big time, helping start the John Birch Society.

Two of their biggest efforts are pretty well known. After the Supreme Court ruled, in 1954, in the Brown versus Board of Education case, that segregation in schools was unconstitutional, the John Birch Society put up billboards all across America calling for the impeachment of the Chief Justice of the Court, Earl Warren. Daddy Fred Koch was very concerned about the integration of our schools - in fact, he wrote, "The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America." With JFK's election, Fred Koch's John Birch Society went off again - this time against JFK. Using rhetoric not that different from the "secret Muslim" plots the Tea Party promotes about Obama, in a 1963 speech Fred said that " infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the President is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us.”

When JFK was scheduled to come to Dallas that year, the JBS distributed flyers saying, "Wanted, for Treason" all around the town two days before his arrival. On the day JFK was assassinated, large ads ran in the Dallas newspapers attacking Kennedy as being soft on Castro, among other things. That was my dad's generation. Daddy Koch died, and his sons Charles and David took over the family business of promoting the business and billionaire takeover of our American government.

They're doing it with a two-pronged attack. For people over forty, they're funding the Tea Party through a variety of groups, most notably Americans for Prosperity and Freedomworks. And for people under forty, they're funding Libertarian think tanks, like the Charles Koch Foundation (which was renamed as the Cato Institute), and the Reason Foundation, where David Koch is a trustee, which happily embraces a new generation of young people with the idea that "freedom" means the "freedom" to buy politicians and the "freedom" to pollute. For the young people, of course, the Libertarians throw in the "freedom" to smoke dope and hire a hooker, but those are just bones being cynically tossed to young potheads and young protoge's of Dick Morris.

But the Koch's have been inside the Libertarian movement from its beginning - 32 years ago this year, David Koch was the Libertarian Party's official candidate for Vice President of the United States. It's really pretty incredible, but it's all true. The main agenda of the Koch's John Birch Society was to enhance the power and control of our government by big business and billionaires, while fighting organized labor and people like me who were protesting the Vietnam War. The main agenda of the Koch's Tea Party is to get millionaires elected to Congress and have them cut taxes and regulations for Koch Industries and other polluting corporations, while fighting organized labor and people like me who were protesting the Iraq War.

And the main agenda of the Koch's Libertarians - again, funded and trained by the Koch Brothers - is to keep intact the power of big money over our government, cut taxes and regulations on billionaires and polluting industries, while fighting organized labor and people like me who are protesting the corporate takeover of the United States of America. Three generations of Americans, all duped by the same billionaire family. Three generations buying into the idea that "what's best for industry and billionaires is best for America" - and that government is our "enemy" rather than something that our nation's founders fought and died to create for all of "We The People" And, increasingly, it's not just the Koch family. The Walton family - whose combined wealth is greater than 40 percent of all Americans - funded a covert campaign to rename the estate tax as the "death tax" and lobbied so hard they got the estate tax eliminated entirely in 2010.

Senator Bernie Sanders pointed out yesterday that - so far - we know of 26 billionaires - worth over $146 billion - who have already "invested" or committed to invest over $561 million dollars in this election cycle - most of it to defeat Democrats who want to raise their taxes. The good news is that young people are waking up and realizing that the Libertarian hustle the billionaires are feeding them is just that - a hustle. Just like Tea Partiers are waking up to their having been had by billionaires who want to privatize their Social Security. Hopefully, soon, America will regain its sanity and we'll go back to viewing cranky billionaires the way my Dad's generation did - as Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower did - when Eisenhower referred to their ilk as "small in number and stupid" They're not stupid any more, and if we really value American traditions, we really must push back on this kind of power and influence in American politics.

I have no problem with that and the facts there can be easily proven. He has a Wikipedia page that has a lot about him:



Thomas Carl "Thom" Hartmann (born May 7, 1951) is an American radio host, author, former psychotherapist,[2] entrepreneur, and liberal political commentator. His nationally syndicated radio show, The Thom Hartmann Program, began in March 2003, and airs in the United States. It has 2.75 million listeners a week, and is one of the top progressive talk radio programs.[3]

Hartmann's 2002 article, "Talking Back To Talk Radio",[4] became part of the original business plan of Air America Radio, and he started his radio program out of his home in Vermont in March 2003. He moved to the network on February 19, 2007. On March 1, 2009, Hartmann moved syndication of his show to the former Jones Network, now owned by Dial Global. The radio show is also broadcast on community/non-profit stations via Pacifica Radio and Free Speech TV. In 2008 Hartmann started a daily TV show, The Big Picture. The show began on Free Speech TV, and has also been shown on the RT news network since 2012.

I suspect his syndication of his show is why he is not being forced to toe the party line for Putin.

Many more interesting things at the link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thom_Hartmann

Some links say he is now being listened to in 55 million households. Not a fringe guy, he's a regular liberal and progressive.

He always posts this link in reference to overturning Citizens United:

https://movetoamend.org/

His show are on in more than one place, not just RT:

The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann on RT TV & FSTV "live" 9pm and 11pm check for local listings at:

http://www.thomhartmann.com/tv

He can be heard on iTunes as a podcast:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-big-picture-with-thom/id409140538#

He provides a venue that would not otherwise be given by corporate media, for one of the most popular Democratic senators at DU:

Brunch with Bernie on the Thom Hartmann Show

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/brunch-with-bernie-on-the-thom-hartmann-show

I have no problem with him and with the sorry state of media in this country, our voices are being silenced. AFAIK, Hartmann is not a Putin supporter. His concern is the USA. America is in deep trouble, on the verge of losing everything.

Hope that is the kind of information you and others are looking for to make a decision about him. I don't watch RT, put don't mind downloading podcasts about things of interest from his show. Of course I have all the ones from the White House to see what is going on, since the media refuses to give him voice. Obama has not ignored anything, but looking at media, you'd think he was on a permanent vacation.

Gotta go.

May 23, 2014

No, we only want to deny speech to pieces of paper. Go back to making more paper dollies, you idjit!

Carnival Cruz believes that money is speech. The more money you have, the more you get to speak. If you don't have money, STFU, right?

May 23, 2014

But it's easier than working locally to get that supermajority. It's unpopular to some.

Meanwhile, as they were 'bored':



That'll make life interesting.

May 23, 2014

He has a professional page just like a person:

Secretariat



Born: 29-Mar-1970
Birthplace: Doswell, VA [1]
Died: 4-Oct-1989
Location of death: Paris, KY [2]
Cause of death: Euthanasia [3]
Remains: Buried, Claiborn Farm, Paris, KY

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: Not Human
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Racehorse

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Greatest race horse of all time

[1] Meadow Stud Farm, Doswell, VA.

[2] Claiborn Farm, Paris, KY.

[3] Euthanized due to laminitis, a hoof condition.

Autopsy (link at page)

http://www.nndb.com/people/212/000023143/