August 22, 2014

VIDEO of the beautiful couple:

On the Road: couple finally together after 26-year prison separation

Published on Jan 17, 2014

As part of our continuing series "On the Road," Steve Hartman meets Mark and Mia Schand, who prove one of the most famous teachings about love -- that it is patient, endures all things and never loses hope.

Lotta tears here, too.

August 22, 2014

Newer posts above give a state department tweet source, which I trust. So it's likely true, I only

posted that because the source links said it was 'unconfirmed.' And I don't think this is the end of any of this.

At any rate, the guy's no Osama Bin Laden, there will be ten more to take his place. So I can't celebrate this as the end of ISIS, or even a strategic victory.

Just one of many who will be killed, whether he himself was specifically targeted or his position was, IDK. Just didn't want anyone to be shocked if he did pop up again. And as I said, there will be ten more to take his place.

Another article I read that I was going to make an OP out of, cites a general saying the real issue at play here are the 20 million displaced Sunnis in Syria and Iraq. He said that until their needs are addressed, this will keep the fires going.

IMO, among those tens of millions, a sufficient number will join ISIS to create a new homeland, and then go on to repay those they see as the authors of their plight. Or maybe not, as they might stop being warriors and start doing constructive things, but I rather doubt that to be the case right away. They've got a hate fest going on, just as many groups historically. The Visigoths didn't sack Rome just on a whim.

Europe is probably the place on Earth with more wars than we have ever imagined. Europe and the Middle East have been pushing empires back and forth for millenia.

Some think this must be all of America's doing, ascribing a supernatural quality I call the new American exceptionalism to all that is going on in the world. Instead of our being the 'best' we are supposed to fit in a box of being the 'worst.' Thus we're still exceptional.

We are just a flash in the pan in world history. We just think we are more powerful and significant because this is our time and we've been taught we're special and our technology is advance. We're not 'gods.'

We are the most recent world actor, nothing is new and the world did not need us to teach it to be cruel and murderous. That's in our DNA.

We have simply been in a post WW2 system built to prevent another such event. I've read up on what the costs to the now widely hated Allied nations are and we lost a much larger percentage of people, civilian and military, and expended more resources, than the Axis powers did. I keep bringing up this graph to remind me of why we are in the UN, NATO, or why a nuke program began:



The world has been and is now, a mess. Security only lasts for a while, and is an illusion. Many of us want to return to a garden that never existed. But we keep trying.

Just a few thoughts.

August 22, 2014

951-Riverside, you've just been cited on Crooks and Liars:

http://crooksandliars.com/2014/08/watch-rant-officer-who-shoved-don-lemon

There is big money behind all of this, as shown in this picture, widely posted:



...The latest evidence comes in the form of this billboard recently installed inside the subway station that serves the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. The billboard was paid for by the Oath Keepers, a "patriot" group founded in 2009 not long after President Obama took office. The controversial organization, founded by a former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) staffer and associated with former militia leaders, encourages members of the military and law enforcement to swear an oath of loyalty to the Constitution, and not necessarily to the Commander in Chief. The Oath Keepers pledge to essentially turn on the US government if they think they're being ordered to do things that they think are unconstitutional, such as, for instance, taking people's guns away.

They arrived on the scene with much fanfare and were often staples at tea party and Second Amendment rallies organized around opposition to the tyrannical Obama administration. Their ranks are filled with Birthers, Truthers, and others who see black helicopters lurking at every turn. Their highest profile associates have been people like Mike Vanderboegh, the former Alabama militia leader who urged followers to throw bricks through the windows of Democratic offices to protest the passage of healthcare reform. (Some actually did.) But the Oath Keepers have since dropped out of the limelight, the dictatorship they were preparing for never quite materializing.

But the group has reemerged with a new project, which involves billboards like the Snowden one at the Pentagon Metro station. The Oath Keepers initially set out to put up billboards around military bases to "Educate Troops About Their Oath Bound Duty to Refuse Unconstitutional Orders," and to "counter the propaganda of the domestic enemies of the Constitution," according to their website. So far this year, they've installed one near the Twenty Nine Palms Marine base in California, with plans to target Ft. Hood, in Texas, and Ft. Rucker in Alabama.

The first billboard went up last year across from Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, in response to a retired Army colonel who enraged tea partiers and gun activists with a paper he wrote describing a hypothetical scenario in which the military might have to intervene on US soil. The hypothetical involves an "extremist militia motivated by the goals of the “tea party” movement" that takes over a town in South Carolina and starts an insurrection. The "tea party insurrectionists" in the paper sound a lot like the Oath Keepers, who took great offense to the paper and responded with a billboard screaming, "Colonel 'Red Coat' Benson, The Tea Party is Not the Enemy. Soldiers! Honor Your Oath. Refuse To Fire On Americans..."

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/07/oath-keepers-heart-snowden

Thanks for this thread. That guy is awful and it's scary to think he has any power at all.

August 22, 2014

George Zimmerman Redux: Soon To Be Faux Noise Consultant on Race Relations.

http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/?p=10149

August 21, 2014

General Martin Dempsey vs. John McCain on this:

...(General) Dempsey, an Iraq veteran, has long been sceptical of US military involvement in the Syrian conflict, citing among other reasons the threat to US pilots from dictator Bashar al-Assad’s air defences. He has frustrated those who advocated American involvement in the two neighbouring wars, such as hawkish Republican senator John McCain, who in June called on Obama to fire Dempsey, saying he “has done nothing but invent ways for us not to be engaged.”

Echoing the White House’s stated position, Dempsey said the US needed “a coalition in the region that takes on the task of defeating Isis over time,” something the administration this week has put effort into broadening and strengthening. But the group’s ultimate defeat, the general said, would only come “when it is rejected by the over 20 million disenfranchised Sunnis that happen to reside between Damascus and Baghdad.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/21/isis-us-military-iraq-strikes-threat-apocalyptic/print

While no doubt not all of the 20 million displaced people support ISIS, that is a significant number of refugees. And is why this isn't going away any time soon. And no, I don't:

August 21, 2014

Many people aren't part of the groups who will be hurt. I'm finding more and more that some

only care about their favorite celebrities and disdain real people whom the Democratic Party platform represents. Which means they don't respect those ideals or us lesser mortals, either.

Obviously, the status quo in the HoR isn't hurting them so they'll stay home. If the GOP takes the Senate and repeals the ACA, cuts off the COLA for SS, reduces payments for SS and Medicare and repeals the Medicaid expansion, they don't care. They don't need it to live.

The great organizing tool that an online place can be is destroyed by those who arrogantly mock anyone who doesn't agree with every word from their idols.

Who are invariably rich, white and privileged males who never had to live on the level many people live on. They feel free to discuss us like a herd of cattle they feel entitled to have culled, more and more. No empathy for us but cheers for them are the rule of the day.

No empathy for the lesser people is allowed, we are supposed to bow down to them as our 'betters' as they insult and degrade our very existance. The steadfast support for them and refusing to listen to us is getting old quick.

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

August 21, 2014

Now let's see who approves of voting for Democrats in November.

Note icon if needed:

August 21, 2014

I know. What's the saying? Those who can do, do so, those who can't stand by and criticize doers.

Just remember that people who are out to hurt others can gain nothing of value from their actions, all they can do is create misery.

Misery is easy to create. It's the tool of the maliciously lazy.

Happiness takes work, it is the reward for a a life being well lived.

Make the choice to not let others steal your hard earned joy.

Take the negative energy they fill you with and create something beautiful.

~ Anonymous

August 21, 2014

For BOG Members: President Obama Addresses ISIS' James Foley Beheading Video - 8/20/2014

Published on Aug 20, 2014

'No Just God Would Stand for What They Did'. Obama Calls for a 'Common Effort to Extract ISIS Cancer'

BREAKING NEWS -

Obama: US will confront Islamic State extremists, despite threats to Americans.

James Foley killing:
Obama vows 'relentless' response

President Obama delivers statement on slain journalist James Foley: "One thing we can all agree on is that a group like ISIL has no place in the 21st century."

Obama: "No faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just god would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day..."

James Foley:



(CBC) President Barack Obama addressed the U.S. public Wednesday about the killing of American journalist James Foley, vowing a "relentless" effort to stop ISIS.

In a horrifying act of revenge for U.S. airstrikes in northern Iraq, militants with the extremist group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria beheaded American journalist James Foley — and are threatening to kill another hostage.

"Jim was taken from us in an act of violence that shocked the world," Obama said. "No just God would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day."

Obama spoke in televised remarks from Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, where he's vacationing with his family, a day after the militants released a video showing the U.S. journalist being beheaded.

The president said the group's victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith could justify its actions. "A group like [ISIS] has no place in the 21st century."

The U.S. military pressed ahead with its campaign, conducting nearly a dozen airstrikes in Iraq since Tuesday. The White House must now balance the risks of adopting an aggressive policy to destroy ISIS against resisting any action that could result in the death of another American.

Obama will also confront the potentially necessary step of pursuing ISIS in Syria, where the U.S. has resisted launching airstrikes or deploying significant American firepower. The president was scheduled to make a midday statement Wednesday about Foley's killing.

U.S. officials confirmed a grisly video released Tuesday showing ISIS militants beheading Foley. Separately, Foley's family confirmed his death in a statement posted on a Facebook page that was created to rally support for his release, saying they "have never been prouder of him."

"He gave his life trying to expose the world to the suffering of the Syrian people," said the statement, which was attributed to Foley's mother, Diane Foley. She implored the militants to spare the lives of other hostages. "Like Jim, they are innocents. They have no control over American government policy in Iraq, Syria or anywhere in the world."

Foley, 40, from Rochester, N.H., went missing in northern Syria in November 2012 while freelancing for Agence France-Presse and the Boston-based media company GlobalPost. The car he was riding in was stopped by four militants in a contested battle zone that both Sunni rebel fighters and government forces were trying to control. He had not been heard from since.

1st time ISIS killed U.S. citizen

The beheading marks the first time ISIS has killed an American citizen since the Syrian conflict broke out in March 2011, upping the stakes in an increasingly chaotic and multilayered war. The killing is likely to complicate U.S. involvement in Iraq and the Obama administration's efforts to contain the group as it expands in both Iraq and Syria.

The group is the heir apparent of the militancy known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, which beheaded many of its victims, including American businessman Nicholas Berg in 2004.

The video released on websites Tuesday appears to show the increasing sophistication of ISIS's media unit and begins with scenes of Obama explaining his decision to order airstrikes.
It then cuts to a balding man in an orange jumpsuit kneeling in the desert, next to a black-clad militant with a knife to his throat. Foley's name appears in both English and Arabic graphics on screen. After the captive speaks, the masked man is shown apparently beginning to cut at his neck; the video fades to black before the beheading is completed. The next shot appears to show the captive lying dead. The video appears to have been shot in an arid area; there is no vegetation to be seen and the horizon is in the distance where the sand meets the grey-blue sky.

At the end of the video, a militant shows a second man, who was identified as another American journalist, Steven Sotloff, and warns that he could be the next captive killed. Sotloff was kidnapped near the Syrian-Turkish border in August 2013; he had freelanced for Time, the National Interest and MediaLine.

Sorry if that is a bit confused but it is the way the video description reads, looks like a collection of quotes and headlines from several sources not fully listed. Very tough news and disturbing in efforts to calm things down and leave the area.

It's a trivialt thing perhaps, but I'm bothered as it's the first time I've heard Faux call Obama 'President.' It all seems so surreal to me, but what do I know, I'm not there and not in the military, nor am I in any government position.

And the RWers and the Libertarians are set on destroying his reputation and authority to stop this in any way that does NOT make them richer.

August 21, 2014

When the KKK is your fan club, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.