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When Roger West first launched the progressive political blog "News From The Other Side" in May 2010, he could hardly have predicted the impact that his venture would have on the media and political debate. As the New Media emerged as a counterbalance to established media sources, Roger wrote his copious blogs about national politics, the tea party movement, mid-term elections, and the failings of the radical right to the vanguard of the New Media movement. Roger West's efforts as a leading blogger have tremendous reach. NFTOS has led the effort to bring accountability to mainstream media sources such as FOX NEWS, Breitbart's "Big Journalism. Roger's breadth of experience, engaging style, and cultivation of loyal readership - over 92 million visitors - give him unique insight into the past, present, and future of the New Media and political rhetoric that exists in our society today. What we are against: Radical Right Wing Agendas Incompetent Establishment Donald J. Trump Corporate Malfeasence We are for: Global and Econmoic Security Social and Economic Justice Media Accountability THE RESISTANCE

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Sarah Palin: "A Disgraceful Political Opportunist And A Morale Coward"

Sarah Palin choose to give us her expertise on military and mission.



"The Reagan Doctrine" Mr. Hannity....

Saint Ronnie Reagan lost 276 marines in the Lebanon bombing and retreated; sold weapons to the Iranians after they held American hostages, supported the Nicaraguan death commandoes, and invaded Granada. Bush Senior got us into Gulf War 1, Clinton got us into the Balkans, Bush Jr. ignored warnings about Al Qaeda and running airplanes into buildings...until 9/11, got us into Gulf War 2 (Iraq) and into Afghanistan and never did find Osama Bin Laden.




NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

Friday, May 30, 2014

THE TEA IS JUST NOT THAT INTO WOMEN




Women aren't invited to the tea party this year.

National Tea Party organizations play a major role in Republican primary elections, helping boost far-right candidates with money, volunteers, and attention. These groups include Tea Party Express, Tea Party Patriots, Senate Conservatives Fund, FreedomWorks, and Club for Growth, the last two of which existed before the 2009 rise of the Tea Party but nonetheless share a virtually identical mission in GOP primaries.

However, much like the Republican Party they aim to take over, the Tea Party has its own woman problem.

Of 80 candidates who were endorsed or funded by national Tea Party groups so far this election cycle, just four were women. Two of those four — Katrina Pierson and Karen Handel — have already lost their primaries, while Joni Ernst is leading in the Iowa Republican Senate primary and Mia Love is the Republican nominee in Utah’s fourth congressional district.

Though the overall number of Republican women running for Congress has dropped this year, the Tea Party is not supporting the vast majority who have thrown their hat in the ring. The Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University has identified 74 women running or likely to run this cycle. In addition, the Tea Party has been heavily involved in recruiting candidates to run for office, and thus bear some responsibility if they find a dearth of conservative women candidates.

What’s more, multiple women currently serving in Congress have faced attack ads from the Tea Party. Club for Growth has spent money to defeat Reps. Martha Roby and Renee Ellmers , both of whom were elected with Tea Party support in 2010.

Conservatives and the Republican Party as a whole have developed a reputation for attacks on women. This was especially evident in recent election cycles where two Republican Senate nominees, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, both lost to Democrats in red states after espousing their views on rape and abortion. The party’s “war on women” image is also reflected in the gender gap among voters. In 2012, women voted for President Obama by a 55-44 margin, whereas men opted for Mitt Romney 52-45, an 18-point gender gap.

National Republicans have expressed concern about the ongoing problem their party has with women. “We recognize that we need to speak to single women under 35,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said recently. “It’s a demographic issue that we want to do better with.” Indeed, following their loss in the 2012 presidential election, Republicans released an autopsy that determined acknowledged “the Party’s negative image among women” and the “growing unrest within the community of Republican women frustrated” by that fact. The GOP establishment created several outreach arms ahead of the midterms specifically to pitch women and non-white voters. Many of these efforts have thus far gone awry.

However, concern over the party’s anti-woman image seems yet to have sunk in with Tea Party activists. Given the Tea Party’s continued control of the Republican Party’s policies and base, until it begins recruiting and endorsing more women candidates, it will continue alienating huge swaths of voters





NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

Thursday, May 29, 2014

NRA'S PREY AND PARANOIA

NRA'S VERSION OF RESPONSIBLE GUN HUGGER


The gun industry has a problem. Despite the United States having a reputation for being a “gun-loving” country, interest in gun ownership is actually declining, fairly dramatically in fact. Nearly half of American households had a gun in the '70s, but since then it’s sloped downward. Now only 34 percent of American households own a gun. Demographic changes are a huge factor, with younger Americans showing very little interest in gun ownership. Only 23 percent of people under 30 live in households with a gun, down from 47 percent in the 1970s. How does the gun industry keep selling guns and making money when the customer base for guns appears to be rapidly shrinking?

It seems the industry has figured out an ingenious solution to the problem: Convince people who are interested in guns to buy more guns. Indeed, having a bunch of highly invested repeat customers might make for an even more profitable strategy than simply trying to get a gun into every household. Convincing the small number of gun lovers in the United States to create individual arsenals has kept gun sales numbers high. The result is that gun ownership is becoming a highly concentrated activity. Nearly half of gun owners own four or more guns. Twenty percent of gun owners—around 7 percent of Americans overall—own a whopping 65 percent of the guns in this country.

The gun industry has clearly figured out how to make a lot of money convincing a small number of Americans to own a whole bunch of guns. Unfortunately, the result is a subculture of gun fanatics whose combination of masculine insecurities, paranoia and hostility to their fellow Americans make them quite possibly the people you least want to be around, armed and dangerous. Sadly, the most recent mass shooting in California that left 6 people murdered is all too good an example of this, as the shooter, Elliot Rodger, was quite open about his masculine insecurities and power fantasies.

The gun industry, through its direct marketing and through industry front organizations like the NRA, has settled on a marketing scheme they’ll never openly admit to but which is completely evident in their press releases, advertisements and other marketing materials. They target men who have high levels of insecurity when it comes to issues of masculinity and power, and suggest that buying guns will make them feel powerful and manly and chase those insecurities away.

The centerpiece of the pitch is the fantasy of putting down a home invader. Anxious men are encouraged to believe there’s a high chance that someone will break into their home—their castle—for some raping and pillaging, and that they can play the role of the brave and stalwart hero by shooting the invader. (A corollary pitch is the power fantasy of armed resistance to some vague government “tyranny,” where the insecure man gets to imagine himself as a brave resistance fighter, his masculinity put beyond a shadow of a doubt as he gets to play at being a revolutionary.)

That a gun in the household is far more likely to cause an accident, or be used for suicide or interpersonal violence than to fend off a home invader doesn’t matter. It’s a fantasy of masculinity, used to paper over insecurities, and facts cannot compete.

That these power fantasies used to sell multiple guns are explicitly masculine is hard to dispute. For one thing, gun manufacturers don’t really try to hide it. The Bushmaster rifle Adam Lanza used to murder elementary school children in Newtown, Connecticut was advertised in magazines with the tagline, “Consider your man card reissued.” Doesn’t get more blunt than that in admitting that the customers are concerned about not being masculine enough and the gun is being sold as a panacea.

Other ads collected by Mother Jones show the same anxieties: Guns being sold with promises that they will make you more soldier-like, more powerful, and even more sexually vigorous. Between these ads and the NRA-stoked fantasies of shooting down a home invader, the pitch to men is obvious: You may be a soft-handed, khaki-wearing suburbanite, but with this expensive arsenal at home, you will be The Man. No wonder men are three times as likely to own guns as women.

In the world of masculine power fantasies, women exist merely as objects with which to prove your manhood, either by protecting them from the imaginary hordes of rapists at the door or by having them around showing skin to demonstrate how heterosexual the men are. Women who speak up for themselves or, God forbid, actually disagree with the manly men are disruptive to the power fantasy and regarded as human garbage.

That’s what Mark Follman of Mother Jones found out when he investigated the trials facing female gun control proponents. Women who speak out, in favor of the mildest of gun restrictions like background checks and improving the child safety features on guns, face unbelievable amounts of misogynist vitriol from gun lovers. Follman spoke to one woman, who is wheelchair-bound after a shooting, who has had men spit in her face, tell her she should have died from being shot, and shot her with waterguns to mock how easy it would be to murder her.

He also chronicled the way one group, Open Carry Texas, flaunted its misogynist fantasies proudly by shooting up a female mannequin they named after the group Moms Demand Action. “They positioned the figure with her hands raised in surrender, naked from the waist up. Afterward, they posed with the bullet-riddled mannequin, her arms blown off and her pants down at her ankles.” Masculine dominance restored in a group outing of fantasies about sexual abuse and murder of women who dare to disagree with you.

Shortly after Follman published his expose, the mostly male members of Open Carry Texas decided that they needed to treat the suburban sprawl of the Dallas area to a display of their masculine fantasies. They descended on a local Chipotle to eat burritos while showing off their comically huge assault rifles, an action that Moms Demand Action immediately denounced. The display was so pathetic that it really takes the edge of fear off the realization that it’s so easy for people with such a zeal for drama to buy as many guns as they want. The whole thing was such a perfect distillation of what gun marketers want: A group of middle-aged American men, made deeply insecure by the bland suburban strip mall safety of places like Chipotle, react by buying a bunch of guns in a desperate bid to feel more powerful and important. The guys are assholes, yes, but more fundamentally, they are dupes.

If the fetish object of masculinity for these uptight, insecure men was harmless, we could all just point and laugh (and make their insecurities worse, no doubt) and get on with our day. But the fetish objects in question are deadly. It’s not just the now semi-frequent occurrence when an Adam Lanza or James Holmes or Elliot Rodger takes those power fantasies to the next level, shooting up a public place to show the world he’s an expert dealer of death. It’s also in the outrageous accidents that happen every day because people treat guns like toys. It’s the thousands of people who would still be with us today, except that they had easy access to a gun while experiencing a suicidal moment (which usually passes, if the person survives the attempt, which is less likely with guns). It’s all the people who are murdered by someone who lost his temper and had easy access to a weapon. Convincing a bunch of highly insecure people to stockpile weapons makes money for the gun industry, but for the rest of us, it’s nothing but trouble.


Cross posted from Alternet.com



NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

MAYA ANGELOU

To a true inspiration, you will be surely missed.


Courtesy of William J. Clinton Presidential Library




Farewell to one of America's greatest voices.




NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

"NOTHING HAS CHANGED SINCE SANDY HOOK"

Following his impassioned words against the NRA during Saturday afternoon’s press conference, Richard Martinez, father of Chris Martinez, one of the people Rodger Friday evening, spoke to CNN about his loss and what he plans to do to help prevent even more incidents like this one.
“He’s our only child and he died on Friday. I’m 61 years old now. I’ll never have another child and he’s gone,” Martinez said through tears. “So the reason I’m doing this to try to see if we can do anything to make my son’s death mean something. Because that’s all we have got.”
Martinez castigated the media for focusing on the shooter while ignoring the victims. “If there’s all these things in the media about the shooter, and there’s nothing about the victims, then it sends the wrong message and the people need to understand that real people died here,” he said.

When he was asked about Congress’ lack of action on guns following the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Martinez asked in return, “What kind of message does it send to the world when we have such a rudderless bunch of idiots in government? I can’t tell you how angry I am it’s just awful!”

He continued, growing more heated and hysterical with every word:

“What has changed? Have we learned nothing? These things are going to continue until somebody does something, so where the hell is the leadership? Where the hell are these people we elect to Congress that we spend so much money on? These people are getting rich sitting in Congress, what do they do? They don’t take care of our kids.

My kid died because nobody responded to what happened at Sandy Hook. Those parents lost little kids. It’s bad enough that I lost my 20-year-old, but I had 20 years with my son, that’s all I’ll have. But those people lost their children at six and seven years old. How do you think they feel? And who’s talking to them now? Who is doing anything for them now? Who is standing up for those kids that died back then in an elementary school? Why wasn’t something done? It’s outrageous!”





As the video shows, Martinez continued to rail against a system that he believes failed to protect his son along with so many others....CNN choose to cut away for commercial.




NFTOS
Editor-In -Chief
Roger West

Monday, May 26, 2014

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY






I am an American Soldier.
I am a Warrior and a member of a team.
I serve the people of the United States, and live the Army Values.
I will always place the mission first.
I will never accept defeat.
I will never quit.
I will never leave a fallen comrade.
I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough, trained and proficient in my warrior tasks and drills.
I always maintain my arms, my equipment and myself.
I am an expert and I am a professional.
I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy, the enemies of the United States of America in close combat.
I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life.
I am an American Soldier.




NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

Sunday, May 25, 2014

"CRAVEN POLITICIANS AND NRA"




Richard Martinez rails against the NRA, "Stop The Madness"!




I'm starting to think the NRA isn't up to the task of protecting us. They keep missing mass shooters and hitting unarmed black kids!

The NRA will go silent for the mandatory 72 hours like they do after all mass shooting incidents, and then they shall release a statement.." if only more students had guns"....rinse and repeat.

To the gun huggers I say: "Life is perverse in the sense that, the more you seek security, the less of it you have." When gun huggers say guns aren't the problem, mental illness is, our response should be....they're both problems and we aren't doing shit about either of them.

The real Benghazi - 33 mass shootings in America in the last nine years. I wonder if the Guns Over People, the right wing regime, will they demand eight investigations into the corrupt gun culture in our society? Something tells me no.

There is a promising note today, its 9:48 AM EST and we haven't had a "good guy with a gun" in America conduct any mass shootings, but then again it is still early.

I see humans, but no humanity.




NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West


Saturday, May 24, 2014

JESUS CHRIST VISITS SARAH SILVERMAN

Jesus Christ visits Sarah Silverman to discuss women’s reproductive rights.






NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West


Friday, May 23, 2014

IMPEACH MARK HERRING

Says radical tea bagger Bob Marshall.

Virginia Del. Bob Marshall is a longtime opponent of LGBT equality, and he’s now calling for the impeachment of Attorney General Mark Herring , primarily for his refusal to defend the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. Marshall filed the resolutions seeking an inquiry for Herring’s impeachment last week, but in a new email to supporters, he outlined his reasons for doing so. “Removing all standards against same sex or sodomy ‘marriage,’” he explained, is “to the detriment of children and the well-being of society.”

According to Marshall, “Mark Herring’s actions constitute a radical structural alteration in our representative form of government.” In addition to objections that Herring has chosen not to defend the state’s marriage ban, a decision that is not unprecedented, Marshall also claims he “usurped legislative authority” by inviting undocumented immigrants (DREAMers) to pay in-state tuition rates at Virginia state school.

Marshall’s attacks include something that Herring did not actually even do. According to the email alert, Herring publicly announced that he is allowing same-sex couples to file joint tax returns, but Herring has made no such announcement. Just before leaving office, Herring’s predecessor Ken Cuccinelli issued a legal opinion specifically banning recognition of same-sex couples’ marital status for income tax returns. The opinion illuminates a conflict between Virginia’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and state law requiring that taxes be collected at the state level in the same way that they are at the federal level, which would require recognizing same-sex couples’ marriages. Though Gov. Terry McAuliffe is investigating reversing this precedent, Herring has not issued a contradicting opinion of his own.

In the email, Marshall also extended a threat to impeach judges who might overturn bans on same-sex marriage. Rulings based on the 14th Amendment’s equal protection “make no sense,” he argued, because when that Amendment was ratified, “sodomy was a felony in nearly every state.”

A long reputation of anti-gay comments precedes Marshall’s impeachment attempts. In 2012, he opposed the appointment of openly gay Judge Tracy Thorne-Begland because “sodomy is not a civil right.” In a 2011 letter attacking Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley  for supporting marriage equality, Marshall compared homosexuality to pedophilia, prostitution, polygamy, necrophilia, and bestiality. He believes that homosexuality is a “disordered behavior” and after the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” he tried to ban “active homosexuals” from joining the Virginia National Guard.

As of publication, Marshall’s public petition to rally support for Herring’s impeachment has garnered 110 signatures, one of the most recent of which was from “FuckYou Bob.”




NFTOS
STAFF WRITER

Thursday, May 22, 2014

THE DISGUSTING TROGLODYTE THAT IS ALLEN WEST

FORMER CONGRESSIONAL ASSHAT ALLEN WEST


We all remember what Republicans and Saxby Chambliss did to former Senator Max Cleland, a disabled war hero when they ran against him in 2002. They ran ads picturing Cleland and Osama Bin Laden together to denounce his patriotism which is unconscionable considering Cleland won the Bronze and Silver Stars in Vietnam while also losing both legs and his right forearm in service to his country.

We now move to the present and former Iraq war torturer Alan West who is going Cleland on Rep. Tammy Duckworth, who has lost both her legs in the Iraq war also by saying she's not loyal to her country. This isn't the first time she's been attacked for her military service by Tea Party Republicans.




Allen West, you are today's worst person in the world!

Mr. West is no relation to this blogger.




NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

ACCORDING TO FAUX NEWS, ITS ALL OBAMA'S FAULT

Just ask Megyn Kelly:

Fox News’ Megyn Kelly had conservative filmmaker and author Dinesh D’Souza on her show for his first interview after he pleaded guilty to breaking campaign finance law. Calling it a sympathetic interview would be an understatement, because Kelly used nearly the entire time to suggest that President Obama is the real person to blame.

“The Obama administration gets to call one of its top critics a convicted felon,” Kelly began the segment. “Is this what they wanted all along?” In January, D’Souza was indicted for illegal donations to a Republican’s campaign, where he used fake donors to exceed donation limits.
“Your defense in this case was not I didn't do it,” Kelly said. “It was, I didn’t do it with intent, I didn’t do it with the right requisite of mind, and it’s selective prosecution of the government who doesn’t go after anybody for this kind of crime except coincidentally one of the president’s biggest critics.”





An array of Fox News hosts have come to the conservative activist’s defense in the past, including Sean Hannity calling him a “victim,” The Five panning the charges as liberals “rediscovering their inner Stalin,” and Neil Cavuto calling it “conservatives under attack.” But that was before D’Souza pleaded guilty himself to the charges in federal court, admitting he “knew that causing a campaign contribution to be made in the name of another was wrong and something the law forbids.” Kelly’s interview only made one passing mention of the fact that D’Souza had actually knowingly broke the law. Kelly asked him, “why’d you do it.”

“I shouldn't have done it,” he said.




NFTOS
STAFF WRITER

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

NO JAIL TIME FOR MAN WHO DRUGGED AND RAPED WIFE


David Wise was convicted of six felony counts for drugging his wife, raping her in her sleep, and videotaping the rapes. But he won’t spend a day in jail.

Wise was sentenced by an Indiana county judge to eight years of home confinement, and the remaining 12 years of his 20-year sentence suspended. Prosecutors asked for 40 years in prison. His former wife, Mandy Boardman, called the sentence “unfathomable.” “I never thought that he would be at home, being able to have the same rights and privileges as I do,” she told the Los Angeles Times.

Boardman recalled years in which there would be powder residue in her drink. She would wake up with a half-dissolved pill in her mouth. After she found videos of sexual encounters on Wise’s cell phone and confronted him, he wrote in an email to her, “I was taking advantage of you in your sleep and you kept coming to me and telling me it was NOT ok. I needed to stop.” The rapes went on for more than three years unbeknownst to Boardman.

Marion Superior Court Judge Kurt Eisgruber declined to explain his reasoning, particularly because Boardman is appealing the sentence. But he did ask Boardman to forgive Eisgruber during the sentencing hearing, saying, “I hope that you can forgive him one day, because he’s obviously struggled with this and struggled to this day, and I hope that she could forgive him.” He is running for re-election unopposed this November.

Wise was convicted on one count of rape and five counts of criminal deviate conduct. These are each Class B offenses carrying sentences of six to 20 years in Indiana. The recommended sentence is ten years. But a judge may sentence an individual concurrently for multiple offenses, and he may choose to suspend parts of that sentence in many circumstances.

During Wise’s eight years of home detention, he will be monitored by a GPS device and permitted to leave home for work, or other limited travel allowances. Particularly as prison populations explode and questions emerge about the conditions of prisons, home detention is viewed as a useful alternative for those who can be monitored remotely without threatening public safety.

But Wise’s sentence is one of a number of recent cases involving rape or sexual assault in which defendants have been given sentences far less stringent than recommended for the crime, and not proportional to sentences for other offenses. In a recent Texas case, a judge sentenced a defendant who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl to just 45 days in prison, followed by mandatory volunteer service at a rape crisis center. In a Delaware case, the wealthy heir of a chemical magnate was sentenced to only probation and no jail time for sexually abusing his 3-year-old daughter. In Montana, teacher got 30 days in jail for raping one of his students. And another man in Alabama received only probation for raping a teen.

These sentences stand in contrast to mandatory minimum sentences that start at five or ten years in jail for even low-level drug offenses, and ratchet up from there. Home detention is not an option for these offenses, nor is probation, suspension, or volunteer alternatives. But even in the context of sex offenses, many others are drastically over-sentenced. After Hayes County, Texas, prosecutors seized on a 2011 law intended to curb sex trafficking, a man who slept with a 14-year-old he met on eHarmony was sentenced this week to life in prison without the option for parole. The girl initially lied about her age on the online dating site, although Robert Ritz, a prison guard, continued to see her even after he learned she was a minor. Even the law’s author said the sex trafficking statute was improperly applied to this case, and intended to target commercial exploitation. Life without parole is the harshest U.S. sentence short of execution, and the number of U.S. prisoners serving that sentence has increased 22 percent since 2008.

Many more U.S. prisoners are sentenced to a life behind bars with the possibility of parole. While David Wise is likely to never again see the inside of a jail cell (he spent some time in jail while awaiting trial), one in nine U.S. prisoners are serving life sentences.





NFTOS
STAFF WRITER


Monday, May 19, 2014

WANNA BE AZ RIGHT WING NUT JOB CLAIMS DEMOCRATS ARE 99 PERCENT RESPONSIBLE FOR MASS SHOOTINGS


RIGHT WING NUT JOB GARY KIEHNE




A Republican congressional candidate in Arizona recently asserted that 99 percent of mass shootings in the United States had been carried out by Democrats.

At a Republican District 1 primary debate in Florence on Saturday, candidate Gary Kiehne was asked how he was going to "protect our gun rights" after other states had passed new background checks and other laws following the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.

The candidate declared that "without our gun rights," President Barack Obama "would be after us pretty hard."

After bragging that he probably had "more guns and ammo than any one of my competitors," Kiehne urged Americans to stand up for gun rights.
"It's totally ridiculous if you look at all of the fiasco's that of occurred, 99 percent of them have been by Democrats pulling their guns out and shooting people," he added. "So, I don't think you have a problem with the Republicans."
"But I can assure you that if you don't have a firearm, you ought to go buy one."


NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

Sunday, May 18, 2014

ENCRYPTION

WEB ENCRYPTION


People have started taking Edward Snowden’s advice on using Web encryption to shield their movements online, according to a new study. After the former U.S. National Security Agency contractor leaked documents on the government’s surveillance programs, encrypted web traffic has more than doubled worldwide.

In March, Snowden told a room full of tech industry workers at the SXSW Interactive conference that the only way people can protect themselves from government surveillance was to use Web encryption. He said that the United States didn’t even know all the documents he had because “encryption works.” And it looks like people worldwide are heeding that advice.

According to a recent study by broadband network equipment company Sandvine, Americans started using encryption over 60 percent more often after the NSA leaks, using SSL for nearly 4 percent of all peak Internet traffic. But Web users in Europe and Latin America bested Americans’ privacy efforts by encrypting websites three- and five-times more than before, respectively.

The uptick in encryption use aligns with growing public concern for privacy online and elsewhere. In recent years, almost all Web users have taken steps to minimize their digital footprints, such as clearing their browser history and cookies. But encryption adoption is still low, with only 14 percent of American Web users saying that they've encrypted their communications, according to a Pew study published in September.

Another possible contributor to the surge in encryption use could be from changes in the tech industry. Internet companies such as Google and Facebook have been automatically turning on encryption for their sites. Google recently announced that it would begin encrypting all Chinese Web traffic as part of its global encryption project. The move would cripple the country’s infamous censorship program, as well as those in Saudi Arabia and Vietnam, by blocking government’s ability to home in on users searching for banned terms or content.

Encryption makes it so that any one “listening in” on a user’s online activity can only see the website’s domain name, not the exact page. Any website can be encrypted simply by manually typing “https” instead of “http” before the web address, but it’s often not a default setting. Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook all started using default encryption for email and messages in response to the NSA leaks.

The study also comes on the heels of the Heartbleed bug discovered in April that left thousands of encrypted websites — up to 70 percent worldwide — vulnerable to hackers. The flaw, which the NSA exploited, was a part of the encryption coding that shields online traffic and went undiscovered for two years exposing millions of passwords, credit card and other personal information. Yet even after people heard about the Heartbleed bug, only 61 percent took action and changed their passwords, suggesting there is still more work to be done to convince people to protect their information.




NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

Saturday, May 17, 2014

DERELICTION OF HAPPINESS

BENGHAZI, BENGHAZI, BENGHAZI.

Bill Maher schools the right wing nut job.


Episode 318 by BillMaher1956



NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

Friday, May 16, 2014

SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION....IS A FLOP

EPIC FAIL FOR THE RIGHT WING NUT JOB


The rally of 10-30 million right wing nut jobs were to descend on Washington to overthrow the Federal Government, but a funny thing happened on the way to the forum........

When Col. Harry Riley announced his plan for an Operation American Spring, he sought to evoke the same kind of populist uprising that toppled regimes in the Middle East, protests that were collectively given the moniker Arab Spring.

And while the photos that poured in from Tahrir Square were incredible, depicting tens of thousands of people in the streets, the pictures from American Spring were…less so impressive.

THE REVOLUTION THAT WASN'T




The “second American revolution” got off to a slow start in Washington, DC on Friday, falling roughly 9,999,950 people short of their goal of 10 million angry, constitution-weilding participants. (That was the low-end estimate. They were prepared for upwards of 30 million).

The few who did make it to Washington, D.C came with a laundry list of grievances, ranging from Benghazi, to Obamacare, to President Obama’s birth certificate, to general lawlessness.
“Our main goal is to return our government to the constitutional government,” said Marty Church, a protestor who traveled to Washington, D.C from the Maryland suburbs. “The whole administration is based on lies,” added Fred Lachance, another protester from Maryland
Benghazi’s a lie and a cover-up,” said Church. “And if you’re lying about something as stupid as that, what else are you lying about?”

Wiley Drake, a pastor and talk radio host from California, knows the truth behind the Benghazi cover-up.
“What caused Benghazi was a kidnapping gone awry from Barry Soetoro,” he said, referencing the name Birthers have ascribed to Obama based on a widely-circulated (and hastily photoshopped) Columbia University student ID. “He was going to kidnap Mr. Stevens, and he got killed in the process. That’s what really happened, that’s the truth.”

When pressed to cite other breaches of the constitution, one protester referred us back to Operation American Spring’s website, which offers little more than an outline of the group’s three-phased mission (Phase 2 calls for 1 million of the 10 million gathered to camp out in Washington, D.C. until their demands are met).

Those demands — removing Obama, Biden and Nancy Pelosi from the federal government — are not achievable ones even according to many of the attendees. “It’s a good goal, but it’s not a realistic goal,” said Lachance. Others, though, were more optimistic.
“The Obama administration is lawless, and we want him out,” said Carrie “Beth” Koncar, who led a small group up from Georgia. “And basically that is the goal here, for the resignation of Obama, Biden, Pelosi. The Lord God is behind this, the Lord is the breath in this. He puts kings and kingdoms in their places, and he takes them down.”
As for the paltry turnout, several attendees could barely contain their dismay at the low-key affair. “I took a day off from work to come down,” said Art Skillman. “Where they are, I don’t know.”

Right wing nut jobs, you are today's worst persons in the world.





NFTOS
Editor-In-Cheif
Roger West


Thursday, May 15, 2014

FCC DELAYS NET NEUTRALITY FOR 120 DAYS





THE UNITED STATES FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION
(FCC) has voted to delay adopting a policy on net neutrality for 120 days.

In a heated debate that saw several protests including one observer physically removed from the chamber, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler announced that there will be a 120 day consultation and response period - an indecisive result that came as a shock to many.

The commission will listen to arguments for and against the adoption of either Section 706 of the Open Internet Act of 2010, which promotes competition among internet service providers (ISPs), or their reclassification under Title II of the Telecommunications Act of 1934 as "telecommunications services".

Wheeler began by telling the assembly, "There is one internet. Not a fast internet. Not a slow internet, one internet," an emphatic exclamation that emphasized his publicly held belief that the end of net neutrality will not, in fact, be the result of his proposal.

Wheeler said that it is unacceptable that any internet user should be provided an internet connection slower than what they had paid for, saying that the solution might come by allowing the leasing of unused capacity. This risks end users being denied the maximum speed their ISP is capable of delivering, to ensure that there is enough 'spare' capacity to offer to paying content providers. In other words, fast and slow lanes via the back door.

Several commissioners admitted in their remarks that they did not believe that the decision should be made today, saying that it was being rushed, and some even said that five non-elected officials had no right to decide on behalf of the entire American people.

The vote was split three votes to two in favor of a 60 day consultation period, followed by 60 days for the FCC to develop its response.

The INQUIRER will be following the fallout of the FCC vote and will present a full review of the decision tomorrow.




NFTOS
STAFF WRITER

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Just When You Think "Turd blossom" [Karl Rove] Couldn't Be Anymore Disgusting , He Exceeds Himself.

KARL "TURD BLOSSOM" ROVE BEING RETURNED TO THE ASYLUM


Karl Rove, the heir apparent to Lee Atwater, who has a history of anal raping political opponents, is now trying to say he never used the phrase "brain damage' when discussing Hillary Clinton at an LA Speaking event last week, but only pointed out that she had serious health issues. He joined his home network, Fox News and refuted the claims made from Rupert Murdoch's tabloid NY Post. But did he really? He repeated used the term "serious health episode," over and over again while talking to host Bill Hemmer and them immediately pivoted on to smear her because of her age.



Turd Blosom, you are today's worst person in the world!




NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

Monday, May 12, 2014

'The Endarkenment'

Rep. Alan Grayson has always spoken out against the crazy, anti-intellectual side of the GOP party.





Grayson explains that politicians like Cruz understand what their actions will cost the American government and the taxpayers, but don't care. This past Sunday, Senator Marco Rubio joined the ranks of Ted Cruz , Louis Gohmert and many others as a disbeliever in truth and facts when he denied that climate change was influenced by mankind and said scientists were all wrong when asked if climate change was threatening cities in Florida.

To some Christian conservatives, climate change is nothing more than a sign of the approaching "end of times", but for Rubio, it's just outlandish nonsense - but to people who objectively consider the calculus of the evidence, it's a threat to our planet's entire existence.




NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

Sunday, May 11, 2014

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY




From NFTOS, to all mothers out there, Happy Mothers Day!




NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Friday, May 9, 2014

NOT ALL FAMILY MEMBERS ONBOARD WITH BENGHAZI WITCH-HUNT

A member of one of the victims of the Benghazi tragedy’s family reached out to Congress recently in support of a speech railing against the newly formed special committee in the House of Representatives, countering the conservative narrative that all of their investigations are being done in the name of the victim’s relatives.

Last week, Speaker of the House John Boehner announced that after months of refusing, he would approve with moving forward to create a select committee designed specifically to investigate the attack against a diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya in Sept. 2012. “I intend for this select committee to have robust authority, and I will expect it to work quickly to get answers for the American people and the families of the victims,” Boehner said in a statement announcing the committee.

At a news conference denouncing the committee’s formation on Friday, however, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters that family members of two of the four Americans who died the night of the attack had reached out to oppose the formation of the committee. “They have called us and said: Please don’t take us down this path again,” the former Speaker said. She did not offer further details on which of the families had contacted Congress.

One of those is the family of former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods. “A family member from the maternal side of Tyrone Woods’ family called Rep. Slaughter yesterday while she was on the floor to express support for the Congresswoman’s position”. Slaughter’s office declined to offer more details out of respect for the family. Woods was present the night of the attack in the Central Intelligence Agency’s annex in Benghazi and was one of the security forces that responded to the original attack against the diplomatic outpost. Woods, along with fellow CIA security contractor Glen Doherty, died under mortar fire the night of the attack.

The speech that was Woods’ relative supported was delivered on the House floor on Thursday, when the New York Democrat said that Congress has “bottomed-out on Benghazi.” In lamenting the Republican politicizing of the issue, and recent fundraising initiatives, Slaughter asked why more wasn’t being done to prevent the next tragedy on Benghazi’s scale. “What the families of the victims and Americans want is to ensure it never happens again,” she said. “But we’re doing nothing in to ensure that.”

That it was the maternal side of Woods’ family who reached out is notable as Woods’ father has been active in speaking out on conservative media outlets about the administration’s handling of the attack since the days after his son was killed. Charles Woods early on repeated the claim that “the White House Situation Room was watching our people die in real time, as this was happening,” which he first heard on right-wing media and has since been debunked.

As recently as a few days ago, Woods disagreed with the family member who contacted Slaughter. “The people of the United States as well as the families need to know what actually happened,” he told Sean Hannity, calling the select committee “an answer to prayer.”





NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Bogus Benghazi Hearings

Hillary Clinton called BS on the new Benghazi committee put together by Speaker John Boehner to go over the same material about as the old one did.


ABC US News | ABC Business News


Even Chuck Todd denounced this new phony committee: Benghazi Select Committee Currently "Looks Like Nothing More Than A Partisan Stunt"






NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West





Wednesday, May 7, 2014

TREY GOWDY, HYPOCRITE, AND PROFITEER FOR BENGHAZI

TREY GOWDY, TODAY'S WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD



The top Republican leading the House Select Committee on Benghazi is urging his colleagues against using the issue as a fundraising ploy, but the congressman has himself discussed the supposed Benghazi scandal at fundraisers and campaign events.

House Speaker John Boehner last week finally relented to the House GOP caucus’s right wing and agreed to appoint a special committee to launch more investigations into the Obama administration’s handling of the September, 2012 attack, and tasked Rep. Trey Gowdy to lead the panel.

Gowdy on Wednesday called on other Republicans to refrain from fundraising off Benghazi because he said the issue “transcends politics.” Yet just minutes prior to his comments, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) sent out a fundraising email using Gowdy and his committee as the hook. “You’re now a Benghazi Watchdog. Let’s go after Obama and Hillary Clinton,” it says, offering readers an opportunity to donate.

Gowdy later said the NRCC should stop the campaign. “I cannot and will not raise money on Benghazi,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

But that hasn’t always been the case. Last September, Gowdy attended a “barbecue fundraiser” for Rep. Mick Mulvaney in Indian Land, SC and according to local newspaper the Lancaster News, Gowdy talked Benghazi with attendees:
Gowdy addressed the issue of “phony scandals,” in which the government is describing the scandals surrounding the IRS and NSA as fake, or phony. 
Referring to the scandal surrounding the murders of four American citizens in the Benghazi attacks, Gowdy said this is not the case. 
“It is a scandal,” he said. “But it is not a phony scandal.” 
Gowdy said these scandals begin to chip away at the public’s trust in their government. 
“There is nothing phony about (citizens) not trusting the people they put in positions of leadership,” he said.

Two weeks later, Gowdy spoke at a campaign event for Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) where he, according to the Greenville News, praised Graham on Benghazi (accessed via LexisNexis):
Friday morning at Furman, Gowdy shared the credit on the Benghazi issue with Graham, telling students, “There is no one in Congress who has done more on the issue of Benghazi than your senior senator.” 
Gowdy also said [Rep. Jason] Chaffetz has done more than anyone else in the House to hold Obama accountable on Benghazi. Gowdy and Chaffetz attended a private fundraiser for Chaffetz at a Greenville home Thursday night.

Given that the House Republican efforts so far to bring down the Obama administration on Benghazi have come up empty, it’s unlikely that Gowdy’s committee will reveal anything new.

Thus, the reality is that for Republicans and their right-wing media and Tea Party allies, the Benghazi tragedy that resulted in four Americans and a U.S. Ambassador being killed is at this point nothing more than a way to raise money.





NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Monday, May 5, 2014

WHAT SEPERATION BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE

SCOTUS RULES IN FAVOR OF PRAYER AT PUBLIC MEETINGS


WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court today ruled that a town in upstate New York may begin its public meetings with a prayer from a “chaplain of the month.”

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in the 5-to-4 decision, said “ceremonial prayer is but a recognition that, since this nation was founded and until the present day, many Americans deem that their own existence must be understood by precepts far beyond that authority of government to alter or define.”

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan said the town’s practices could not be reconciled “with the First Amendment’s promise that every citizen, irrespective of her religion, owns an equal share of her government.”

Town officials said that members of all faiths, and atheists, were welcome to give the opening prayer. In practice, the federal appeals court in New York said, almost all of the chaplains were Christian.

Two town residents sued, saying the prayers ran afoul of the First Amendment’s prohibition of government establishment of religion.


Okay, so next we'll sacrifice a goat and two chickens to ensure a good harvest.



NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

Sunday, May 4, 2014

"WAR CRIMINAL" WITHDRAWS FROM RUTGERS SPEACH

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATIONS WAR CRIMES


From my birth place:

After faculty at two branches of Rutgers University in New Jersey called on the University administration to rescind an agreement with Condoleezza Rice to speak at its commencement this year, calling her a “war criminal,” Rice has withdrawn from the engagement.

Faculty on both the Newark and New Brunswick campuses pointed to Rice’s role in the Bush Administration’s efforts to persuade the nation of the supposed need to invade Iraq, and to her role in trying to justify the use of torture, they asserted that she is not a fit speaker for the University’s commencement ceremony.

The New Brunswick resolution stated that, as a public institution of higher education, the University had a responsibility to inform students about historical events, not pretend they never happened.

The faculty at the Rutgers campus in Camden voted not to join the protest.

In response, the President of the University stated that they had received even letters from high school students arguing for both sides, some threatening to withdraw applications if the University failed to, or did, withdraw the invitation. He characterized the debate as a free exchange of ideas in the context of civil discourse in keeping with the traditions of great universities.

Rice’s contract with Rutgers provided for $35,000 payment and an honorary doctorate as her compensation for her address.

In withdrawing from the agreement, Rice was gracious. She wrote,
“I am honored to have served my country. I have defended America’s belief in free speech and the exchange of ideas. These values are essential to the health of our democracy. But that is not what is at issue here. As a Professor for thirty years at Stanford University and as its former Provost and Chief Academic Officer, I understand and embrace the purpose of the commencement ceremony and I am simply unwilling to detract from it in any way.”

Rice served as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State in the administration of George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. She was the first African American woman to hold both positions. She was also the first woman and first African American to serve as Provost at Stanford University, a position she took in 1993 after twelve years as a professor of political science there.

Because of her positions in the Bush Administration, she is closely linked to his catastrophic foreign policy.

Some 50 students held a sit-in at the University’s main administration building to protest Rice as commencement speaker. Faculty planned a teach-in to facilitate discussion of the controversy.

The University President, responding to Rice’s withdrawal, said the University stood behind the invitation, but respected her decision.

This is only the beginning, as I have a feeling history will not be kind to anyone from the "liars club".





NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

Friday, May 2, 2014

TRAP AND SHOOT





Seventeen-year-old Diren Dede lost his life Sunday, while in Missoula, Montana on a high school exchange program from Germany. He was shot dead at the home of Markus Kaarma, after Kaarma set a trap for intruders by intentionally leaving the garage open and placing a purse in clear view.

After motion sensors detected someone in the garage, Kaarma shot Dede. And while he has since been charged with first degree murder, he is already invoking a Stand Your Ground-like defense.

Kaarma is not the first to claim he was justified in killing someone after setting a trap. A Minnesota jury rejected Byron Smith’s argument that he was standing his ground when he made it look as though he wasn’t home, and waited in the basement with food and water until two teen intruders descended, and he shot them dead. Audio recorded by Smith depicted him toying with the victims after he shot them, according to the New York Daily News, saying “you’re dead.” He also likened them to “vermin.”

Both men said they had been victims of burglaries, and were aiming to protect themselves. And while Kaarma may fail in his attempt to claim that eliciting an intruder constitutes self-defense even under expansive self-defense laws that remove any duty to retreat, the emergence of traps is the latest example of the sort of vigilante justice individuals are attempting to justify under expansive self-defense doctrines.

While Stand Your Ground laws have proliferated since Florida passed its notorious law in 2005, the self-defense law that predated it was known as the Castle Doctrine, and authorized deadly force to protect one’s home. These laws derive from the old English common law concept that individuals have a right to defend their own home. But in many states, the Castle Doctrine has since been expanded both by statute and by court decisions to encompass more behavior, and courts in many states presume that fear was reasonable when if an individual is unlawfully entering one’s home.

Montana is no exception. An NRA-backed law passed in 2009 not only added a Stand Your Ground provision; it also expanded the Castle Doctrine that allows self-defense inside the home. While it once only authorized deadly force against an intruder who was acting in a “violent, riotous, or tumultuous manner,” the new law allows deadly force by an individual who “reasonably believes” the force is necessary to prevent assault or a forcible felony. The 2009 law also shifted the burden of proof and presumes that the shooter is innocent, according to Gary Marbut, a Montana gun lobbyist who has written model state laws.

Since the shooting Sunday, state lawmaker Ellie Hill has already proposed a bill to repeal some provisions of that law. More than two years after the shooting of Trayvon made these laws famous, not a single state has successfully repealed a provision.





NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

Thursday, May 1, 2014

IDIOTS VS DUMBASSES

MILITIAMAN GETTING READY TO FEND OFF DRONES OR OATH KEEPERS.


It was the imminent drone attack that finally did it!

It's like "Threes Company" but with sweaty, heavily armed men and code names.


Paranoid rumors are not only common at gatherings of Patriots," they're practically the entire raison d’etre for them. So when a wild and paranoid rumor began circulating – that Attorney General Eric Holder was preparing a drone strike on the armed militiamen who gathered at Cliven Bundy’s ranch in Nevada – it unleashed a rift within the camp, which is brimming with fear, rage, testosterone and firearms.

Vicious infighting among those remaining at the camp – estimated at less than a hundred – broke out a little more than two weeks after heavily armed militiamen forced federal agents to back down from a planned roundup of Bundy’s illegally grazing cattle from public lands. After vowing to stay on and protect Bundy – who then stumbled on the national stage with an outpouring of racist commentary – the remaining “Patriots,” who have been raising fear levels among local residents, have begun feuding. And it has been revealing.

Apparently, someone within one of the major factions at the camp, the Oath Keepers, relayed word of the imminent drone attack to his leaders. Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes responded by pulling his people out of what they called “the kill zone” (the area the supposed drone would be striking). When the other militiamen learned that the Oath Keepers had pulled out, they were outraged.

As you can see in the video above, the angry militiamen – led by a Montana “Patriot” named Ryan Payne, who has been acting as the spokesman for the militiamen at the ranch – held an impromptu gathering at the camp to discuss the situation. They openly talk about shooting Rhodes and other Oath Keepers leaders – because in their view, the Oath Keepers’ actions constituted “desertion” and “cowardice” – and describe how “the whole thing is falling apart over there.” At the end, they vote unanimously to oust the Oath Keepers, or at least its leadership, from the Bundy Ranch camp.

The Bundy Ranch terrorists are ready to shoot each over rumors of a drone strike you say, maybe these fucking nut jobs will take themselves out via a circular firing squad - and this problem now fixes itself. One can only hope.





NFTOS
Editor-In Chief
Roger West