Growing Number Of Conservatives Seem Utterly Unaware That Obama Is Attacking ISIS...

While the U.S.-led coalition to defeat the so-called Islamic State has launched around 5,000 airstrikes against the extremist group, with Central Command posting daily updates on new airstrikes targeting the organization also known as ISIS or ISIL, several Republican politicians appear to believe that the U.S. is not at all engaging in a fight against group.

The same politicians will readily praise the leaders of Egypt and Jordan for launching airstrikes against the terrorist group, while then criticizing President Obama for not following in their footsteps, even though the U.S. is responsible for the vast majority of the airstrikes carried out by the anti-ISIS coalition. Of course, many Republicans and Democrats have expressed legitimate criticisms of the administration’s strategy to defeat ISIS, but some Republicans are acting as if the administration is not at all engaged in fighting the group, whose momentum has been blunted since the airstrikes began.

As Jon Stewart noted, Fox News pundits deny the facts about America’s anti-ISIS airstrikes “even when that fact is spelled out directly next to their face.”

- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/growing-number-conservatives-seem-utterly-unaware-obama-attacking-isis#sthash.u7ce2cWG.dpuf


Just thought I'd throw this out there...

This Is What Poverty Looks Like

by Dawn Meehan



I recently read an article by Babble blogger Alice Gomstyn about Sonya Romero-Smith, a kindergarten teacher in Albuquerque who helps her students that are living in poverty. The first questions she asks them each morning are: “Did you eat?” and “Are you clean?” It shocked a lot of people — but not me.

I happen to be one of those educators, working in a title 1 middle school in a very high-poverty area. When I say “poverty” here, I’m not talking about a family whose dad has been laid off from his job or a family going through divorce or sickness. I’m not talking about a sudden, temporary, or even long-term shortage of money. I’m talking about families who have lived in poverty for generations. Families who don’t know anything but poverty. Generational poverty is very different from families experiencing hard times — mainly because they often view education as a stressor, and school a place they do not belong, making it extremely difficult to end the cycle.

<snip>

At the beginning of the year, I used to say things to my students like, “At least it’s Friday, right? You’ve got to love the weekend! Do you have any plans?” I said this until one too many students told me, “I’d rather be at school.” I was incredulous at first. What kid would rather be at school instead of at home on the weekend? And then I learned. A kid who doesn’t eat over the weekend. A kid whose dad is back in jail. A kid whose mom will spend the days off somewhere leaving that student to care for his four younger siblings with no food or diapers in the house. A kid whose mom’s drugged-up boyfriend will yell and hit. My students don’t look forward to days off school, they dread them.

<snip>

A couple of years ago, a student had to be transported from school to the hospital via an ambulance. His parents didn’t get to the hospital for seven hours because they had no transportation. For seven hours this student was sick and alone without his family there.

<snip>

When you read that more than half of U.S. Public School students are living in poverty, you think that these kids just don’t have a lot of money. But it goes so far beyond a lack of money. The effects are remarkably pervasive, creeping into every area of a student’s life. It’s hard to learn when basic needs aren’t being met. And it’s hard to care for a child who acts out, swears more than Eminem, disrupts your class, tells you off, and starts fights. The educators who take the time to talk to, listen to, sympathize with, and understand their students’ situations are the ones who make a difference. The ones who remember that the kids who need love the most will ask for it in the most unloving of ways, change lives.

more: http://www.babble.com/parenting/this-is-what-poverty-really-looks-like/?

An unrepentant whitewash of murder and occupation, American Sniper shouldn’t be up for any Oscars

Hollywood at War

An unrepentant whitewash of murder and occupation, American Sniper shouldn’t be up for any Oscars tonight.
by Stephen Maher

Great art is always ambiguous. Rather than giving us answers, it forces us to ask new questions; complexity is its hallmark. None of this applies to American Sniper, a truly abhorrent film that cannot be confused with art, much less great art.

Yet I suspect that the already deafening praise the film has received will only grow as Chris Kyle’s image as a national “war hero” is amplified both by Bradley Cooper’s Oscar nomination and the ongoing trial of Kyle’s murderer, Eddie Routh, a veteran struggling with severe mental health problems who Kyle had reached out to after returning home.

When not articulated within hawkish narratives emphasizing the glory or necessity of war, the very real suffering of so many returning soldiers is largely framed within the familiar dovish critique of American imperialism — repeated by American Sniper — which casts the war as a misguided expenditure of “our” lives and resources.

My antipathy for American Sniper isn’t an unthinking revulsion toward any film I perceive to be conservative. It is certainly possible for reactionary films to be so skillfully and intelligently constructed that they are great works, even if the way they deal with their subject matter and the conclusions they draw from it are revolting.

Consider, for example, many of Lars von Trier’s mind-bending but often misogynist films, such as Dogville; or Stanley Kubrick’s artful affirmation of the bourgeois family in Eyes Wide Shut; or John Ford’s Stagecoach, a film that glorifies the massacre of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, but which was so well technically executed that Orson Welles claimed to have seen it forty times while making Citizen Kane.

As in countless countries, and in countless wars, American Sniper attempts to construct a war hero for us to worship that is beyond politics. What we get instead is a hackneyed paean to brutish masculinity, and a film whose banality is lessened only by the shock of its whitewashing of the crimes of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq — even as it adopts a “dovish,” critical attitude toward the war.

more: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/02/american-sniper-war-violence-oscars/

“My first impulse is to call you a dumb Obama ass-licking c**t”: “American Sniper” fans tell me off

I dared criticize "American Sniper." You'd be horrified by the response from aggressive, deluded "patriots"
Sophia A. McClennen

We knew early on that critiquing the film was risky business since it would be followed with immediate and intense attacks. This was evident when Seth Rogen and Michael Moore experienced severe public backlash in response to less-than-favorable tweets about the movie. In a return of the “with us or against us” logic that framed the Bush administration’s response to 9/11, the film suddenly stood in for patriotism in general. If you critiqued the film, you hated the country, the military and your own freedom. And those that you had offended were going to make you pay for it.

It was just this sort of narrow thinking that I had in mind when I wrote a piece critical of the film for Salon. I suggested that the film suffered from two key flaws—delusion and aggression—and that both of those flaws had been present in public appearances by “American Sniper” director Clint Eastwood. Most important, I connected them to a hostile tendency common to a highly vocal sector of the GOP.

Little did I know that whatever my piece may have lacked in its assessment of the film, it would be the film’s defenders that would perfectly prove my point. Within minutes of the piece going live, my email inbox and Twitter feed began to light up with negative comments. Many of those early ones I deleted, but I soon realized that keeping them and analyzing them would be a useful exercise in understanding the hate speech that is threatening the health of our democracy. (You can access our full data analysis of the messages here.)

more: http://www.salon.com/2015/02/20/my_first_impulse_is_to_call_you_a_dumb_obama_ass_licking_ct_american_sniper_fans_tell_me_off/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Training Tea Party Activists In Guerilla Internet Tactics

Three Muslim College Students Slain in Shooting Near UNC Chapel Hill

Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, has been charged by Chapel Hill, NC police with three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of three Muslim college students, who were all shot in the head at an apartment complex near the University of North Carolina campus. All three were pronounced dead at the scene.

According to WRAL, Hicks turned himself to police Tuesday night. He's accused of shooting and killing Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife, Yusor Mohammad, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19.

Barakat, the Charlotte Observer reports, was a doctoral student at UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Dentistry; his wife and sister were students at North Carolina State University.


http://newsfeed.gawker.com/three-muslim-college-students-slain-in-shooting-near-un-1685160166?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Cave juror on the loose

Hi Skinner,

I thought I'd bring this to your attention. Juror #2.... Not democratic and kind of scary.

Just an FYI.

On Wed Feb 4, 2015, 01:09 PM you sent an alert on the following post:

The problem is..
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6178972

REASON FOR ALERT

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.

YOUR COMMENTS

Personal attack by a nutter

JURY RESULTS

A randomly-selected Jury of DU members completed their review of this alert at Wed Feb 4, 2015, 01:12 PM, and voted 5-2 to HIDE IT.

Juror #1 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Completely off-topic. OP is about ISIS, not guns.
Juror #2 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Alerter, if you have a problem with the Bill of Rights, you are free to expatriate to another country. Voting to leave.
Juror #3 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #4 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: newb gun-nut trolls are the worst.
Juror #5 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: This one seems to have taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque
Juror #6 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: "99.9% Of MY country"?! Go back to Discussionist/The Cave/Freeperland/Insigificant-Conservative-Land
Juror #7 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Enjoy your stay, however brief it may be.

The minimum wage - why is it and what is it for?

I'm currently debating with people that think the minimum wage is strictly for kids as a way to make spending money.

Whereas I was under the impression that it was the minimum one needed for basic survival and vividly recall that people could live - meagerly - but on their own and that one could pay for college working minimum wage jobs. Now, this was way back in the 1970's before Ronald Reagan.

These days people act as if one should be thankful for being paid for work done at all, let alone being paid to be able to survive and get better educated. Are there instances in history of mass layoffs because of raising the minimum wage?

I find it interesting when people quibble about service workers habits, getting orders correct and such - when they're paid peanuts - as if there's incentive to do good work or care in first place.

I think this is a subject that needs to be discussed.

So, what is the purpose of the minimum wage? Are low-wages a means of motivation?

You tell me and thank you for listening.

The Real American Sniper: Why Chris Kyle Wasn’t A Hero

The following words are not meant to spit on the grave of Chris Kyle, but rather address a reality that may be unpleasant for many to hear. Chris Kyle was not a hero. He did not protect America or keep it safe. He killed a lot. He also, apparently, lied a lot as well. Sometimes truth lies beyond the lens of star-spangled glasses and once you have the courage to look beyond a constructed work of fiction, you may realize that the facts do not align with your belief system. It may not be easy, but sometimes the truth is harsh. If we, as a people are genuinely in pursuit of truth and the justice that follows, we must distance ourselves from the warm feelings that certain narratives provide and search objectively without the blinders that provide us comfort.

Kyle’s story takes place in Iraq, his weapon and astute aim followed along with him. The former Navy SEAL and bronco rider was responsible for 160 confirmed deaths – 255 if you include unconfirmed kills – while he was stationed in the land that was once ancient Babylon. How can it be said that a single person he killed was on behalf of protecting the American way of life or its freedoms when Iraq nor its people were ever a threat to either? Kyle was a member of an invading force. To protect someone or something, an outside threat must first be made, otherwise what is labeled as protector is actually an aggressor.

No matter your thoughts surrounding the events on 9/11, one thing that is for certain is that Iraq was not involved. Saddam Hussein never attacked the United States, nor did it appear that he ever had plans to do so. Hussein’s regime, although not innocent of crimes in its own country, was not a threat to the United States or its citizens. And despite the Bush administration’s assertion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, they didn’t.

It may be brutal to hear, but the facts dictate that none of the people that Chris Kyle killed were a threat to America, its freedoms, or its way of life.

So who or what was the Texan protecting?

<snip>

American Sniper, the movie based on his words, makes Kyle appear as if he was conflicted by the scores who were killed by his marksmanship. Unfortunately for his legacy, his actual words tell a different story.

“I wondered, how would I feel about killing someone? Now I know. It’s no big deal”

Another quote from Kyle’s book describes his thoughts on the Iraqi people,

“Savage, despicable evil. That’s what we were fighting in Iraq. That’s why a lot of people, myself included, called the enemy ‘savages’…. I only wish I had killed more.”

The sniper also described his chosen profession of killing by saying,

“You do it until there’s no one left to kill. That’s what war is. I loved what I did… I’m not lying or exaggerating to say it was fun.”

Kyle also relays his lack of regret by saying,

“There’s another question people ask a lot: Did it bother you killing so many people in Iraq? I tell them ‘No.’ And I mean it.”


As far as the moral ambiguity that he dealt with, Kyle said

“I have a strong sense of justice. It’s pretty much black-and-white. I don’t see too much gray.”

The last passage from American Sniper that I will list truly demonstrates Kyle’s lack of heroism:

“A teenager, I’d guess about fifteen, sixteen, appeared on the street and squared up with an AK-47 to fire at them. I dropped him. A minute or two later, an Iraqi woman came running up, saw him on the ground, and tore off her clothes. She was obviously his mother. I’d see the families of the insurgents display their grief, tear off clothes, even rub the blood on themselves. If you loved them, I thought, you should have kept them away from the war. You should have kept them from joining the insurgency.”

The insurgency that the sniper is referring to is the local Iraqi insurgency that would have never existed if the United States hadn’t invaded Iraq to begin with. These “insurgents” weren’t making their way overseas to hurt Kyle’s family, so where does his malice towards the child he killed in cold blood come from?

more: http://theantimedia.org/the-real-american-sniper/