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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

Monday, November 30, 2015

FIORINA SPEWS MORE BULL SHIT ON PLANNED PARENTHOOD

Female conservative lunatic and presidential candidate Carly Fiorina doubled down on her assertion that Planned Parenthood was harvesting fetal parts for profit, while at the same time stating that linking the shooting at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood to anti-choice activists was “typical left-wing tactics.”

Appearing on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, the deposed HP CEO stated that, since Planned Parenthood was no longer going to transfer fetal part to medical researchers, it was a tacit admission of guilt.

Fiorina has been under fire for claiming she saw “a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain,” in the highly edited videos created by anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress. Fact checkers have repeatedly said no such video exists. This, however, has not deterred Fiorina from repeating it.

Speaking with Wallace, Fiorina blasted critics of her over the top rhetoric when it comes to abortion, saying, “It is so typical of the left to begin demonizing the messenger because they don’t agree with your message.”
“The vast majority of Americans agree. What Planned Parenthood is doing is wrong,” Fiorina asserted. “And that is why the vast majority of Americans are prepared, not only to defund Planned Parenthood, but also to stop abortion for any reason at all after five months.”
“So, what I would say to anyone who tries to link this terrible tragedy to anyone who opposes abortion, or opposes the sale of body parts, is this is typical left-wing tactics.”



Fiorina did not address comments made by the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooter, Robert Lewis Dear, who reportedly told police investigators “no more baby parts” after he was apprehended for killing three — including a police officer — as he shot up the health clinic.




NFTOS
STAFF WRITER

Sunday, November 29, 2015

PRO LIFE CONSERVATIVE WING NUT KILLS THREE IN "NO MORE BABY PARTS" RAMPAGE

ROBERT LEWIS DEAR "PRO-LIFE" MURDERER!


Robert Lewis Dear allegedly killed three people and injured 9 others yesterday at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In the hours after the shooting little was known about Dear or his motivations.

Saturday evening, those motivations began to come into focus. NBC News and the Washington Post reported that, after the shooting, Dear told law enforcement officials “no more baby parts.”

The phrase clearly references a series of videos released by the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion advocacy group. The videos alleged that Planned Parenthood was illegally selling body parts from fetuses for profit. These allegations were untrue and the videos relied on deceptive editing.

CONSERVATIVE TWITTER ACCOUNT "RISKYS TOP" PROVING WHY THE REAL TERRORISTS ARE THE AMERICAN TALIBAN AKA THE REPUBLICAN WING NUT

Still, the videos have become a rallying cry for the right, including the Republican presidential candidates. In August, Marco Rubio said, “what’s happening at Planned Parenthood, what’s being revealed in these videos, is atrocious, it’s grotesque, it’s barbaric.” Rubio later accused Planned Parenthood of pushing women into getting abortions “so that those tissues can be harvested and sold for a profit.” He told TMZ that people should be more “fired up” about the Planned Parenthood video.

Speaking on the Senate floor in September Ted Cruz declared that “we are now a nation that harvests the body parts of little baby boys and girls. It is the very definition of inhumanity to treat children like agriculture, to be grown and killed for their body parts, to be sold for profit.”

NBC News cautions that Dear’s motivations could be multifaceted and the alleged shooter “also mentioned President Barack Obama in statements.”








NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

Saturday, November 28, 2015

ADAM KINZINGER NO ORDINARY IDIOT

While police were still involved in a shoot-out with man who invaded a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood office, a Republican lawmaker attacked the organization saying he would expect an apology if the shooter didn't turn out to be an anti-abortion terrorist.

Appearing on CNN, right wing nut job Adam Kinzinger took offense at a statement issued by CEO of Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountains, Vicki Cowart — who said that the clinic might have been targeted by an extremist — and stated that he would be expecting an apology if she was proved wrong.

Before police apprehended Robert Lewis Dear — who killed three and wounded nine at the women’s health clinic in Colorado — Cowart, released a statement saying, in part: “We don’t yet know the full circumstances and motives behind this criminal action, and we don’t yet know if Planned Parenthood was in fact the target of this attack. We share the concerns of many Americans that extremists are creating a poisonous environment that feeds domestic terrorism in this country. We will never back away from providing care in a safe, supportive environment that millions of people rely on and trust.”



Kinzinger found Cowart’s statement unsettling.
“When I heard that statement, I thought that was very premature. We may find out this person was targeting Planned Parenthood, “the conservative lawmaker said. “If we find out he was not targeting Planned Parenthood, I would fully expect an apology from the Planned Parenthood director for saying that.”
He then went on to attack Planned Parenthood over the discredited videos produced by an an anti-abortion group that claimed the health organization was “harvesting” fetal parts for profit.
“Regardless, if somebody is targeting Planned Parenthood, it’s not indicative of what folks that are opposed to what some of the practices Planned Parenthood commits,” Kinzinger said. “We saw these barbaric videos and that is something many of us have a legitimate concern about. That doesn't mean we’re gonna take guns and walk into Planned Parenthood clinics.”
Congratulations Adam Kinzinger you are today's asshat of the day, enjoy numb nuts!




NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

Friday, November 27, 2015

FUCKFACE VON CLOWNSTICK TURNS TO CONSPIRACY GROUP FOR HIS BS

For the past several days, Fuckface Von Clownstick [AKA Donald Trump] has claimed that “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey were celebrating the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11.

The claim has been thoroughly debunked by multiple fact checkers. The New Jersey Attorney General investigated rumors of such celebrations immediately after the attack and found them to be “bogus.” Simply put, it did not happen.

Nevertheless, Trump is sticking to his story. On Wednesday night, Trump tweeted this to support his point:



Trump links to Infowars.com, a conspiracy website that pushes the idea that 9/11 was an inside job.

According to Infowars, the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary was a hoax, FEMA is setting up concentration camps and Andrew Breitbart was assassinated to prevent the release of damaging information about Barack Obama.

Even Infowars’ article doesn't support Trump’s claim that thousands of Muslims were celebrating on 9/11. It’s simply a woman who claims she saw a “pocket” of Muslims celebrating. Similar claims were investigated and found not to be credible.

Trump’s tweet came on a day when he also publicly mocked a reporter’s physical disability.

His antics, however, do not seem to be hurting his standings in the polls. Trump currently leads the Republican primary by 8 points and holds leads in the key early states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.






NFTOS
Blogger-In Chief
Roger West

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

400 DAYS LATER

After a prolonged legal battle, Chicago police released a video of one of their officers, Jason Van Dyke, shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times Wednesday.

The video shows McDonald carrying a small knife, walking away from Van Dyke before the officer opens fire. The entire shooting took about 15 seconds, and McDonald was lying on the ground for 13 of them. An officer appears to kick at McDonald’s body after shooting him.



Van Dyke was finally charged with first degree murder more than a year after the shooting. Though State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez has had the video for a year, the charges came days after a judge ordered the police to release the damning footage. City leaders quickly started scrambling to do damage control ahead of the release, realizing the video’s contents would inflame longstanding rage against Chicago PD’s rampant abuses. Chicago police killed more people than any other comparably sized police departments from 2010 to 2014.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel prefaced the release with a lengthy press conference urging people to stay calm. “I believe this is a moment that can build bridges of understanding rather than become a barrier of misunderstanding,” he said, while Superintendent Garry McCarthy said he understood people “had a right to be angry.”

An attorney for McDonald’s family said in April that the video “starts out as an unjustified shooting, and it turns into some kind of statistic execution.”






NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

“All Lives Matter’ Means ‘Shut Up, Ni*ger”

The activist who was seen being attacked by a mob of Donald Trump supporters late last week said he was made to feel unwelcome even before the assault in an interview published by Think Progress on Monday.

“It was just a sea of white faces,” Mercutio Southall Jr. said. “A lady kicked me in the stomach. A man kicked me in the chest.

They called me ni**er, monkey, and they shouted ‘All lives matter’ while they were kicking and punching me. So for all the people who are still confused at this point, they proved what ‘all lives matter’ meant. It means, ‘Shut up, ni**er.'”

The assault on Southall was captured by a CNN reporter during a Trump rally in Birmingham, Alabama. The candidate can be heard saying, “Get him the hell out of here.”

A day later, Trump said it was “absolutely disgusting” for Southall to chant “Black lives matter” and argued that “Maybe he should have been roughed up.”

According to Southall, he and two friends started chanting the movement’s name after an unidentified white attendee swatted one friend’s phone out of his hand after he said, “We want to show [Trump] he’s not welcome here” during an online live-stream from the event.

However, Southall said, Trump supporters avoided them leading up to the incident.
“There was like a six feet space on either side of us,” he said. “The message was: this was not our town. This was not our place.”
Southall said he has not decided whether to sue the people who beat him. Local police, who have described him as an “agitator,” have stated that they would not charge neither the attackers nor Southall and his friends. Authorities have said that Southall did not respond when they asked him whether he would file a complaint.

Southall expressed skepticism that the police would take him seriously if he did.
“I was being choked right in front of a Birmingham Police officer and all he did was try to stop me from hitting the man who was choking me,” he said. “But I’m supposed to trust y’all now?”




NFTOS
STAFF WRITER

Monday, November 23, 2015

WATERBOARDING FOR REFUGEES?

Fuckface Von Clownstick aka Donald Trump said over the weekend that he would reauthorize the use of enhanced interrogation techniques in order to protect Americans from terrorism.
“When the Syrian refugees are going to start pouring into this country, we don’t’ know if they’re ISIS, we don’t know if they’re a Trojan Horse,” Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. “I want to see a database and other checks and balances. We want to go with watch lists, we want to go with databases, and we have no choice.”


“It could be the great Trojan Horse of all time,” he continued. “When I look at the [immigration] line, I see all strong powerful men. And I see very few women, and I see very few children. There’s something strange going on. And if you look at what’s happening in Europe, a lot of bad things are happening in Europe.”
After pointing out that a majority of the Syrian refugees were, in fact, women and children, Stephanopoulos wondered if Trump would bring back waterboarding, which was banned by President Barack Obama.
“We have to be strong,” the candidate insisted. “You know, they don’t use waterboarding over there, they use chopping off people’s heads, they use drowning people.”
“I would bring it back, I think waterboarding is peanuts compared to what they do to us,” he opined. “I would absolutely bring back interrogation and strong interrogation.”


 NFTOS
STAFF WRITER

Sunday, November 22, 2015

SNL PUNKS THE CONSERVATIVES AT THANKSGIVING

With the holidays just around the corner, the cast of Saturday Night Live has the perfect solution to ending contentious political arguments with crazy distant relatives over Thanksgiving dinner.

Called “A Thanksgiving Miracle,” the sketch parodies a holiday dinner gone wrong when one family member says, “I’m thankful our governor is keeping those refugees out,” which sets off a series of uninformed and ultimately racist comments.
“I saw an ISIS today in the A&P, when I was picking up the yams,” one woman states as her niece rolls her eyes and explains, “No you didn’t, Aunt Cathy. That was an Asian woman.”

VIDEO COURTESY OF NBC



From there it goes downhill with family bickering as Aunt Cathy asks the only black member of the dinner party, “Why is it that your ‘friends’ keep antagonizing the police?”

Having had enough, a little girl gets up from the table and goes to a boombox and introduces the one thing in the world that can bring everyone together: Adele singing “Hello.”





NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West


Saturday, November 21, 2015

TRUMP AND MUSLIM DATABASES....TROUBLING TIMES



DID TRUMP JUST SUGGEST THAT MUSLIM DATABASES ARE NEEDED?


Last night Rachel Maddow throttled Donald Trump and his campaign on Friday for refusing to debunk his apparent support for special “databases” and identification for US Muslims.
“Donald Trump is deep now into blaming the media for this whole scandal. Blaming the media for us reporting that he’s campaigning on the idea of watchlists and databases to register American Muslims,” she said. “And I know it’s fashionable and politically smart to blame the media, but this is important. And somebody’s gotta report this out. Somebody’s gotta do something other than standing there, agog, disbelieving that this is really the top tier of the Republican contest to try to be the next president of the United States of America.”
The real estate mogul said on Twitter that Yahoo News’ Hunter Walker introduced the notion of a Muslim database during their interview on Friday, while also endorsing the idea of a “watch list.”

VIDEO COURTESY OF MSNBC




But Maddow noted that Trump has never said that he would refuse to implement such a policy if elected. As NBC reported last night, he said exactly the opposite and called it “good management.”

That lack of a definitive stand has opened Trump up to criticism from not only Democrats, but fellow Republican candidates, as well as both Muslim and Jewish groups.

On Friday, the Republican front-runner called into Fox News and complained that he was actually trying to respond to another reporter, while calling for a database for Syrian refugees. Maddow also pointed out that Trump made reference to an unidentified “thing we should start thinking about.”
“What exactly is the thing we should start thinking about?” she asked. “Could you please be clear about that? In the immortal words of Justin Bieber, ‘What do you mean?'”




NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

Friday, November 20, 2015

ARE THEY CHRISTIANS OR TERRORISTS?

Stephen Colbert harshly rebuked Republicans who are refusing to allow Syrians to seek refuge in the U.S. from their nation’s brutal civil war.

The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the GOP-backed American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act — or ASAFEA — to suspend Obama’s program to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees in the next year and then intensify the process of screening them.
“Under the law (ASAFEA), no one with a name like that will be allowed into the country,” Colbert said.
He mocked Donald Trump, the presidential frontrunner, for suggesting that Syrians accustomed to “130-degree” temperatures would become angry if they were forced to live in colder climates, such as Minnesota.
“Yeah, it’s a tough call for the refugees — do I want to stay in a war zone where my family faces almost certain death, or do I want to go somewhere where I have to put on a jacket before I go to the mall?” Colbert said.
Every single Republican presidential candidate has spoken out against accepting Syrian refugees, and President Barack Obama ridiculed them for being as afraid of “widows and orphans” as they are GOP debate moderators.
“I don’t think the president is being entirely fair here — it’s not the little kids that concern the candidates, it’s adults who might come also,” Colbert said. “But since you brought it up, Mr. President, why shouldn’t we be scared of 3-year-olds? You think you can’t negotiate with terrorists? Try negotiating with a 3-year-old. They play hardball.”



Two candidates, Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz, have suggested limiting refugees to Christians only, saying that “there is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror.”
“That’s right, Christians have never committed acts of terror,” Colbert said, showing a photo of Ku Klux Klan members rallying around a burning cross. “I’m sure these guys right here are just campers roasting marshmallows. You can tell they’re campers because they’re each wearing one-man tents.”
Bush insisted that refugees should be able to easily prove they’re Christians, but he simply shrugged and repeated himself when asked exactly how they would do that.
“If you want to know if somebody is Christian, just ask them to complete this sentence,” Colbert said, quoting from Matthew 25:35. “Jesus said I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you — and if they don’t say welcomed me in, they are either a terrorist or they are running for president.”
Hence why the GOP is called the American Taliban! NEWSROOM AMERICAN TALIBAN






NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

Thursday, November 19, 2015

ROANOKE MAYOR AMPS UP HIS IGNORANCE


One Virginia mayor is justifying temporarily halting his city from taking in Syrian refugees because President Franklin D. Roosevelt once “felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.”

Citing recent attacks in Paris, the bombing of a Russian airliner, and threats to the nation’s capital, Roanoke Mayor David Bowers requested for local and non-governmental agencies to “suspend and delay” assistance, noting that he was “convinced that it is presently imprudent to assist in the relocation of Syrian refugees to our part of Virginia.”


Two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Roosevelt passed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forced removals of 110,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps around the country. At the time, Charles Fahy, an U.S. official appointed by Roosevelt, deliberately deceived the Supreme Court by hiding a report from

the Office of Naval Intelligence which found that Japanese Americans on the west coast didn’t pose a military threat. That report found no evidence that Japanese Americans were disloyal or were spies, as many rumors suggested at the time.

The internment of Japanese people remains one of the most controversial and arguably constitutionally low points in American history. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan (R) signed the Civil Liberties Act to compensate and formally apologize to more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent who were incarcerated in internment camps during World War II.

Though Bowers likely needs to brush up on his World War II history, he’s only just one of many reactionary lawmakers who have objected to the resettlement of Syrian refugees in recent days. The decision isn’t up to him, however. Over the past two years, the U.S. has admitted about 1,800 Syrian refugees, though President Barack Obama has stated that he would allow about 10,000 more in the 2016 fiscal year. What’s more, refugees actually undergo a tedious, years-long screening process to properly vet their legal status.

Bowers’ statement conflicts with the position that Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe has taken for his state to continue to accept refugees. In a tweet, the Virginia Democrats called the comments “disgraceful.” And State Sen. John S. Edwards told the Washington Post, “What the hell did he say that for? I’m surprised; I’m with the governor and the president on this.”

Rep. Mike Honda, who was raised in an internment camp, issued a sharp rebuke to Bowers’ statement, saying that he knows “firsthand how that dark moment in our nation’s history led to repercussions that have resonated over the years.”
“The Japanese and Japanese Americans interned after the bombing of Pearl Harbor was an outrage, as was turning away Jews at our borders who were fleeing German persecution,” Honda added. “We cannot allow this to happen again and reverse the progress we have made in the last several decades.”
Japanese-American actor George Takei, who was also interned for four years as a child, said, “It is my life’s mission to never let such a thing happen again in America. If you are attempting to compare the actual threat of harm from the 120,000 of us who were interned then to the Syrian situation now, the simple answer is this: There was no threat. We loved America. We were decent, honest, hard-working folks. Tens of thousands of lives were ruined, over nothing.”

According to Buzzfeed, Bowers was removed from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s Virginia Leadership Council.





 NFTOS
STAFF WRITER

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

NRA FUNDED WING NUT SAYS REFUGEES CAN’T BE LET IN BECAUSE GUNS ARE TOO EASY TO GET

A Texas state legislator wants the U.S. to stop allowing Syrian refugees into the country. His reasoning: They might be able to buy guns in his state.

Rep. Tony Dale made this argument in a television interview on Monday and in letters to Texas’ U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz and U.S. Reps. Michael McCaul and John Carter R.
“While the Paris attackers used suicide vests and grenades,” Dale wrote, “it is clear that firearms also killed a large number of innocent victims. Can you imagine a scenario were a refugees is admitted to the United States, is provided with federal cash payments and other assistance, obtains a drivers license and purchases a weapon and executes an attack?” He urged the lawmakers to “do whatever you can to stop the [Syrian refugee] program.”
But Dale is one of the Texas legislature’s most fervent gun-rights advocates. Two weeks ago, he tweeted his National Rifle Association membership renewal. In accepting an “A” rating from the group and the Texas State Rifle Association’s PAC in 2012, he observed: “Perhaps no right is more fundamental than the right to keep and bear arms.” And his campaign website vows his fealty to the Second Amendment, saying it “isn’t just an archaic document,” a “guarantor of all of our other freedoms.” And he and his colleagues in the state legislature have blocked mandatory background checks for all gun purchases.

This not the first time Dale has raised concerns about non-citizens in Texas. “I’m not saying all of these people are bad, but there are certainly people from countries of concern,” he said in March, explaining the need for legislation to create special drivers licenses for “foreigners.”

The NRA frequently claims that restrictions on gun purchases are unnecessary because “criminals don’t legally purchase firearms.” But in reality, a comprehensive analysis by Mayors Against Illegal Guns found that most guns used in recent mass shootings were purchased legally.

While those applying for refugee status must complete “the most stringent security process for anyone entering the United States,” those attempting to purchase guns through private sales at gun shows in Texas and many other states are not required to undergo any background checks whatsoever. Virtually none of the millions of refugees admitted into the United States since 1980 have become terrorists, but the U.S. leads the world in mass shootings — almost all of which are perpetrated by people born in America.

Only an NRA funded GOP wing nut … could he be this stupid. If guns are too easy for refugees to get, doesn't the same apply for the "responsible gun hugger?. Congratulations Tony Dale, you are today’s asshat of the day.






NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

UNFORTUNATE FOR THE RIGHT WING GOVERNORS, STATES CANNOT OVERRULE THE GOVERNMENT ON REFUGEES…THAT IS ACCORDING TO THE US CONSTITUTION

More than 23 state governors have come out against President Obama’s plans to relocate several thousand Syrian refugees within the United States. Some have pledged to actively resist settlement of these refugees. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott R, for example, signed a letter to Obama that begins “as governor of Texas, I write to inform you that the State of Texas will not accept any refugees from Syria in the wake of the deadly terrorist attack in Paris.” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal R issued an executive order instructing all “departments, budget units, agencies, offices, entities, and officers of the executive branch of the State of Louisiana” to “utilize all lawful means to prevent the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the State of Louisiana while this Order is in effect.”

The problem for Jindal, Abbott and the other governors opposed to admitting refugees, however, is that there is no lawful means that permits a state government to dictate immigration policy to the president in this way. As the Supreme Court explained in Hines v. Davidowitz, “the supremacy of the national power in the general field of foreign affairs, including power over immigration, naturalization and deportation, is made clear by the Constitution.” States do not get to overrule the federal government on matters such as this one.

Just in case there is any doubt, President Obama has explicit statutory authorization to accept foreign refugees into the United States. Under the Refugee Act of 1980, the president may admit refugees who face “persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion” into the United States, and the president’s power to do so is particularly robust if they determine that an “unforeseen emergency refugee situation” such as the Syrian refugee crisis exists.

This power to admit refugees fits within the scheme of “broad discretion exercised by immigration officials” that the Supreme Court recognized in its most recent major immigration case, Arizona v. United States. Indeed, in describing the executive branch’s broad authority to make discretionary calls regarding immigration matters, Arizona seemed to explicitly contemplate the circumstances that face President Obama today. The United States may wish to allow a foreign national to remain within its borders, the Court explained, because the individual’s home nation “may be mired in civil war, complicit in political persecution, or enduring conditions that create a real risk that the alien or his family will be harmed upon return.”

Moreover, the Court explained, America could suffer severe foreign policy consequences if the executive does not enjoy broad discretion over immigration matters. “The dynamic nature of relations with other countries,” Justice Anthony Kennedy explained in his opinion for the Court in Arizona, “requires the Executive Branch to ensure that enforcement policies are consistent with this Nation’s foreign policy with respect to these and other realities.”

Hines offered a similar warning about the close tie between immigration and foreign relations, explaining that immigration policy must be set by the national government and not by 50 different state governors because the entire United States can suffer when a foreign nation reacts adversely to our treatment of immigrants. “Experience has shown that international controversies of the gravest moment, sometimes even leading to war,” Justice Hugo Black wrote in his 1941 opinion for the Court, “may arise from real or imagined wrongs to another’s subjects inflicted, or permitted, by a government.” Thus, the Court concluded, “the regulation of aliens is so intimately blended and intertwined with responsibilities of the national government that where it acts, and the state also acts on the same subject, ‘the act of congress, or the treaty, is supreme; and the law of the state, though enacted in the exercise of powers not controverted, must yield to it.'”

To be clear, states still retain the power to deny their own resources to the federal government, so they could potentially make settlement of refugees more difficult than it would be if the states cooperated. Nevertheless, an act of Congress — the Refugee Act of 1980 — has given Obama broad discretion to allow refugees to be admitted into the United States. The states of Texas, Louisiana and others must yield to that act.



[Cross-posted from thinkprogress]




NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

Monday, November 16, 2015

LINDSEY GRAHAM PROMISES THAT ISIS WILL NEVER HIT AMERICA

Republican wing nut and presidential candidate Lindsey Graham said on Sunday that the Paris terrorist attacks will happen in the United States if America doesn’t rally the world, form an army, lead it, go into Syria, and destroy ISIS.
“Obama’s strategy against ISIL isn’t working,” Graham told Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union. “We don’t have until the next election to deal with ISIL. There is a 9/11 coming, and it’s coming from Syria if we don’t disrupt their operations inside of Syria.”
“What you see in Paris is coming to America, and if I’m commander in chief, it will not happen, I promise you,” he added.



As Tapper noted, Graham and former Senator Rick Santorum are the only two Republican presidential candidates who advocate a ground war in Iraq and Syria.

When asked by Tapper whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump was better prepared to take on ISIS, Graham responded that he was better prepared than both of them.

Hillary Clinton seems to be disconnected from what you need to do. She won’t embrace boots on the ground. Mr. Trump’s position regarding Syria has always been delusional.

I’m not worried about them, I’m worried about me and my homeland. I have a plan. Please, for God’s sakes, wake up to the threats we face. Hit them before they hit us. Fight them in their backyard, not our backyard. Their people are ready to be led.

America must lead, and we must have boots on the ground as part of a regional army. We need 10,000 American forces in Iraq, not 3,500. if we don’t do these things soon, what you see in Paris is coming to America, and if I’m commander in chief, it will not happen, I promise you.

This rhetoric is nothing new for Graham, who has based his entire presidential campaign an aggressive military strategy. When he announced his candidacy in June, Graham said that Americans will be “killed here at home” unless Obama sends ground troops into Iraq and Syria to defeat the terrorist threat.
“I want to be president to defeat the enemies that are trying to kill us,” he said when he at the time. “Not just penalize or criticize them or contain them, but defeat them.”
Graham’s poll numbers have remained low throughout his run for president. He was polling at under 1 percent in November, which disqualified him from even the undercard stage at the most recent Republican debate.






NFTOS
STAFF WRITER

Sunday, November 15, 2015

"WHY DO THEY HATE US"?

A tenebrous Bill Maher pressed his Real Time panel to explain the unfolding terrorist attack in Paris Friday night by posing a simple question: “Why do they hate us?”

Maher, whose distaste for Islam is well documented and led to extraordinary exchange with actor Ben Affleck who told him his hatred of the religion was “gross” and “racist,” was relatively subdued — possibly because of the ongoing horror in Paris.
“We don’t have every bit of information, the last body count I heard was over 150,” Maher explained to the panel made up of Dylan Rattigan, Jay Leno, and Michael Steele. “When the Charlie Hebdo thing happened the week after everybody said ‘Je suis Charlie.’ But not really. They didn’t really stick with them… I’m gonna ask you this question that people asked after 9/11, because I don’t think we really know the answer: Why do they hate us?”

VIDEO COURTESY OF HBO






NFTOS
Blogger-In Chief
Roger West


Saturday, November 14, 2015

" A WHITER SHADE OF FRAIL"

Bill Maher last night pointed out in his New Rules segment, that pasty white folk, you still have it pretty good.

VIDEO COURTESY OF HBO






NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

Friday, November 13, 2015

TRUMP DISPAYS HIS IGNORANCE YET AGAIN

Donald Trump has joined the chorus of presidential candidates reacting to anti-racism protests at the University of Missouri (Mizzou), which culminated this week with the resignation of both the university’s president and chancellor.

Asked by Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo about the protests — spurred by a number of racist incidents on campus including a swastika drawn on a bathroom wall in feces — Trump said they were “disgusting.”
“I think it’s disgusting. I think it’s disgusting,” he said. “I think the two people that resigned are weak, ineffective people. … Trump should have been the chancellor of that University. Believe me. There would have been no resignation.”



The Mizzou protests are being led by a campus group called Concerned Student 1950, named after the first year that black students were admitted to the college. The group asserts that the university hasn’t done enough to handle racist incidents and discrimination on campus. To protest, graduate student Jonathan Butler began a hunger strike, and the black members of the school’s football team refused to play or practice until Butler ate.

The resignation of the president and chancellor was one of the group’s demands. But there are more — the demands also include increasing black representation among university staff, increasing funding for social justice and mental health centers, and improving retention for minority students, who are more likely to drop out.

On Thursday, Trump called those demands “crazy.”
“Their demands are like, crazy,” he said. “The things that they’re asking for, many of the things that they’re asking for, many of those things are like, crazy.”
Trump is not the first presidential candidate to react negatively to the anti-racism protests. On Wednesday, neurosurgeon Ben Carson called the protests “infantile.” On Thursday, Gov. Chris Christie reacted by blaming President Obama and the Black Lives Matter movement for “stripping people of hope.”





NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

Thursday, November 12, 2015

IN YET ANOTHER “BAD APPLE” STORY - POLICE TASE BLACK MAN REPEATEDLY –AN THEN HE DIES

Linwood Lambert was not under arrest. Nevertheless, in an encounter resembling another high-profile incident where a woman in police custody was repeatedly tased by police and then died, Lambert died under suspicious circumstances after he was repeatedly hit by police stun guns.

Two years ago, three police officers discovered Lambert in a Virginia motel, where he was behaving delusionally, most likely due to the fact that he’d been using cocaine. They handcuffed him and put him in a squad car, apparently intending to bring him to a hospital to receive medical care. But Lambert never made it inside the hospital — or, at least, he never made it inside alive.

Video obtained by MSNBC’s Ari Melber shows Lambert kicking out the police car’s window and then running from the car to the emergency room door. The officers chase him to the hospital entrance, where they begin discharging their stun guns on him. At one point, while Lambert is lying on the ground, an officer is overheard telling him “every time you get up, I’m going to pop you.” Then they shackle Lambert’s legs, and lead him back into the police car, where they tase him again. While he is in the car, an officer tells the bound man that he will be tased another time unless he sits up.



In total, Melber reports, three officers discharged they tasers 20 times in about a half-an-hour of their encounter with Lambert.

After police shackled Lambert at the hospital door they arrested him and drove to the jail. By the time they arrived, however, Lambert was unconscious. The officers checked his pulse, attempted CPR and called for an ambulance, which took him back to the same hospital where he was tased. By the time he made it inside the hospital, his heart rate had already flatlined.

Lambert’s official autopsy show that the cause of death was “cocaine intoxication,” although the same autopsy shows that he had “less than 0.01 mg/L” of the drug in his blood, a low (if not impossible) level for an overdose. All three of the officers involved in this incident have since been promoted.

Lambert’s sister, Gwendolyn Smalls, has filed a $25 million suit against the police. The video became public after a court order required police to provide it to Smalls.





NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

BEN GHAZI OR BEN CARSON?

U.S. Conservative wing-nut and presidential candidate Ben Carson is under attack for “embellishing” key elements of his biography, lashed out at critics during a debate on Tuesday and said he did not like being “lied about.”

Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, has faced a series of reports in the past week casting doubt on his stories about his violent outbursts as a youth and a scholarship he said he was offered to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
“I have no problem with being vetted,” Carson said. “What I do have a problem with is being lied about and having that put out there as true.”
Carson, 64, was in the spotlight in the fourth Republican presidential debate, having risen to the top of opinion polls. He questioned why Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton had not been subjected to a similar level of media scrutiny.
“We have to start treating people the same and finding out what they really think,” he said. “People who know me know I’m an honest person.”
He spoke during a debate among leading Republican presidential candidates about economic policy. Several agreed they would oppose raising the federal minimum wage, saying it would hurt small businesses and reduce jobs.

With income inequality looming as an election issue, thousands of protesters took to the streets across the United States earlier in the day to demand a $15-an-hour minimum wage for fast food workers.
“Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases,” Carson said. “I’m interested in making sure that people can enter the job market.”
All of the Democratic presidential candidates including Clinton, 68, have called for an increase in the minimum wage. The federal minimum wage is now $7.25.

But Republican real estate magnate Donald Trump, 69, said a rise in the minimum wage would put businesses in the United States at a disadvantage with foreign competitors.
“We are a country that is being beaten on every economic front,” Trump said. “We cannot do this if we are going to compete with the rest of the world.”
Tuesday’s debate comes at a critical time in the race for the Republican nomination in the November 2016 election, with Carson and Trump fighting to hold their spot atop the polls and Florida Senator Marco Rubio trying to build on the momentum of his last strong debate performance.

Carson has faced a rough week of scrutiny about whether he embellished key aspects of his biography, while Rubio, 44, is under pressure to show he can fight off recent criticism of his inexperience as he tries to unseat fellow Floridian Jeb Bush as a favorite of the party’s mainstream.

Rubio also said he would oppose an increase in the minimum wage.

“If you raise the minimum wage, you are going to make people more expensive than machines,” said Rubio, who has not led opinion polls in any early voting state, and lags Bush, a 62-year-old former governor, and others in fund-raising.

In an earlier debate on Tuesday involving four lower-polling Republican candidates, several accused the Federal Reserve of keeping U.S. interest rates low for political reasons and one called for replacing Fed chair Janet Yellen.

“The Fed should be audited and the Fed should stop playing politics with our money supply,” New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal tried to distinguish himself by repeatedly attacking Christie and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee for failing to cut government spending during their tenures as governors.

Christie declined to take the bait, turning the debate back again and again to the need for Republicans to rally around a nominee who can defeat Clinton.

Clearly from all these debates one thing is certain, none of these wing-nuts are worthy of having access to nuclear key codes!




NFTOS
Blogge-In-Chief
Roger West


Tuesday, November 10, 2015

CHRISTIE VETOES VOTING BILL

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie vetoed legislation Monday that would have added 1.6 million new voters to the state’s rolls and made New Jersey the third state in the country to adopt automatic voter registration.

After sitting on the “Democracy Act” for almost five months, the governor and Republican presidential candidate vetoed his second voting rights-related bill in three years, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Christie has previously said that he does not support making it easier for residents of his state to vote.
“In New Jersey, we have early voting that are available to people,” he said in June. “I don’t want to expand it and increase the opportunities for fraud.”

But Analilia Mejia, the director of New Jersey Working Families, which spearheaded the initiative to have lawmakers introduce the legislation - said earlier this year that the bill would not be “reinventing the wheel.”
“Most of these things have been moved and adopted in other states successfully,” she said. “It’s just mind-bending that a governor of a state would be against every single one of his citizens having full ease and access to participate in the voting process.”
New Jersey currently ranks 39th in the country in both percentage of eligible voters who are registered and percentage of voters who actually case a ballot, according to NJWF. The state does not allow in-person early voting, but requires citizens who want to cast an absentee ballot early to apply for one at an election official’s office. New Jersey also does not permit online voter registration, something that is allowed in 33 other states.

The Democracy Act would have also solved another problem plaguing New Jersey elections — the need to accommodate non-English speakers. Currently materials only have to be printed in Spanish if 10 percent of the county or voting districts speaks it as their primary language, but the bill would require election materials to be made available to voters in multiple languages without other stipulations, according to NJ Advance Media.

NJWF said in June that if Christie vetoes the legislation, the group plans to bring the issue directly to the voters on the next ballot. The move wouldn’t be unique for New Jersey voters — most notably, they previously acted without the governor’s support to raise the minimum wage through a constitutional amendment.

California and Oregon are the only two states that currently have automatic voter registration but iVote, a group led by President Obama’s 2012 voter turnout director, has said it will spend $10 million on a push to make voter registration automatic nationwide.

[cross-posted from thinkprogress]




NFTOS
STAFF WRITER


Monday, November 9, 2015

Carson Blames ‘Secular Progressive Movement” For His Lies

Current Republican presidential front-runner Ben Carson has faced heightened media scrutiny in the past week as the accuracy of numerous stories from his 1990 book, Gifted Hands, are called into question — a scrutiny Carson attributes to the “secular progressive movement.”

The latest controversies stem from whether his recollection of being admitted to West Point was true, if he indeed attempted to stab someone, whether he did actually protect white students from violence during the riots following Martin Luther King Jr.’s murder, and if he was voted the “most honest student” at Yale University.

In an interview with NBC News’ Chris Jansing on Meet The Press Sunday, Carson blamed the “secular progressive movement” for many of the stories reporting on claims made in Gifted Hands. However, the most prominent articles calling his stories into question have come from Politico and the Wall Street Journal, both of which are owned by conservatives: Robert Allbritton and Rupert Murdoch.

Carson said the news stories are coming out now because he is considered a threat to “the progressive, the secular progressive movement in this country.”
“I’m a very big threat because you know they can look at the polling data, they can tell that I’m the candidate who’s most likely to beat Hillary Clinton,” Carson told Jansing.
Last week, Politico reported that Carson never applied or was admitted to West Point. Carson never explicitly said he applied to West Point but said he was offered a “full scholarship.” Carson said he met with Gen William Westmoreland, who offered a scholarship to then 17-year-old Carson. West Point said they do not offer full scholarships, according to the report.

There were also questions of whether or not Carson’s story that he attempted to stab someone is actually true, as it has changed substantially over the years, and students do not recall Carson’s recollection of protecting white students from violence in the aftermath of the Martin Luther King Jr. murder.

In his interview with Jansing, Carson was asked about his account that he was accepted into West Point. Carson said he had nothing to apologize for, that the media should focus on “big major scandals,” and that he wanted to talk about policy issues and threats facing the U.S., such as cyber attacks and the electrical grid.

After Jansing asked if Carson attempted to stab his own brother, Carson did not confirm or deny whether his brother was the man in the story.
“We spoke to Steve Choice, I don’t know if you remember him, you went to grade school with him,” Jansing said. “He said that the only time he remembers you having a temper is, and I’m going to quote him here: ‘They came flying out of the house, Benny was slim — a skinny ass. Curtis worked out. Pumped up. Can’t see why he was running from Ben, unless he knew something we didn’t.’ Was your brother afraid of you?”
“Uh, I don’t think he was afraid of me. But he certainly knew about my temper,” Carson said.
When asked if his brother was the person he attempted to stab, Carson answered, “I’m not giving any information about who the person was that I tried to knife… I won’t say it was, I won’t say it wasn’t.”

When Jansing asked if he was trying to protect his brother by leaving his name out of the story, Carson said, “I would not want anybody actually to be put under the microscope because of my doing.”

The media scrutiny Carson received last week was not confined to his 1990 book, however. Other major news stories included Carson claiming that the pyramids were built to store grain in a 1998 Andrews University commencement address and his remarks over undocumented immigrants’ children born in the U.S. Carson said it was “not intended” for children of undocumented immigrants to have birthright citizenship.


[Cross-Posted from thinkprogress]




NFTOS
STAFF WRITER

Sunday, November 8, 2015

ANOTHER "EMBELLISHMENT" FROM CARSON

IS ANYTHING OUT OF THIS MANS MOUTH THE TRUTH?


It's getting hard to tell what the truth is when it comes to Ben Carson opening his mouth. In as many days days, he’s getting hard pressed for "stories" he has made about his past - which just don’t seem to align with reality.

Now the Wall Street Journal has gone back to fact check a claim Carson made last month, in which he says he shielded white students from rioting after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. The Journal could find no evidence the event occurred.

“It may have happened, but I didn't see it myself or hear about it,” Gregory Vartanian, a white high school classmate of Carson’s who was on ROTC with him and is now a retired U.S. Marshal, told the Journal.

In Carson’s account to the Journal last month, black students unleashed fury and grief over the slaying of King on white classmates at Detroit’s Southwestern High. As a junior, Carson had a key to the biology lab because he worked there part-time. Carson claimed he hid a few frightened white students inside to shield them from the unrest. He could not recall any of their names.

None of the half-dozen former classmates of Carson or his high school physics teacher could recall white students hiding from rioting the in the biology lab when interviewed by the Journal — though they all remembered the riot itself.

Barry Bennett, Carson’s campaign manager, told the Journal there was no evidence Carson’s claims aren't true.
“There’s no facts saying they are not true. We are guilty until proven innocent,” he told the paper. “You have no reason to believe that they are not true. There’s no evidence to point to the fact that they are even questionable.”
Carson’s past has been increasingly raising eyebrows. Recently he came under fire for standing by a bizarre personal theory supported by no scientists that the Egyptian pyramids were built by the biblical figure Joseph in order to store grain.

His claims to have been offered full scholarship to the elite military academy West Point were also called into question since West Point does not give out scholarships and all who attend do so free of charge.

Other unraveling claims include one Carson made about being a knife-wielding, troubled youth and his relationship with Christian-run firm Mannatech, which hawks bogus herbal cures to the faithful.

Its would seem to this blogger that the only thing Carson is good at is pathological lying.

Fact is, the wing nuts asked for Brian Williams' head when he "embellished", why is this tea baggers lies not held to the same accountability?





NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West


Saturday, November 7, 2015

CAPTAIN CARNIVAL BARKER AND CRAZY MCSLEEPY PANTS

Bill Maher closed his show out on Friday by ridiculing a Republican electorate demanding that their next presidential candidate have as little political experience as possible.

“Experience? Knowing things? Republicans avoid that stuff like a gay son,” Maher said.



If Ben Carson is so proud of his own lack of experience, he argued, he should let someone with no medical training operate on his brain.

“Given some of the shit that comes out of his month, I think someone already has,” he added.

Maher went so far as to say that seeing Carson and Donald Trump — or “Crazy McSleepy Pants” and “Captain Carnival Barker,” respectively — topping Republican voter polls caused him to shift his stance on wanting a shorter election season.

Unlike French or British voters, Maher said, Americans are “far too dim and distracted” to vote responsibly without having a longer election season to help them winnow out the candidates.
“If our election season was just two months long, Trump would have won already in a landslide,” Maher said. “But time is our greatest ally against idiot candidates. Already you’re seeing people tiring of Trump because he has three pieces of schtick: ‘I’m great,’ ‘Mexico’s laughing at us,’ ‘constipated toddler face.'”
 


NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

Friday, November 6, 2015

OREGON COUNTY JOINS GUNS OVER PEOPLE SOCIETY

If the sheriff of Coos County, Oregon thinks any state or federal gun control law violates his 2nd Amendment right, he doesn’t have to enforce it, according to an ordinance passed this week by county voters.

Sixty-one percent of voters in rural Coos County voted to pass the “2nd Amendment Preservation Ordinance,” which also prohibits local enforcement of Oregon’s new background check law. That law requires universal background checks for gun purchases in the state — even for private sales.

Coos County is just west of Umpqua Community College, an Oregon university that was rocked by a mass shooting last month. The ordinance had been put on the ballot before the shooting, but after Oregon’s governor signed the new background check bill into law.

Here’s an excerpt of the ordinance:



Some text in the “2nd Amendment Preservation Ordinance,” which passed with 61 percent of the vote in Coos County, Oregon on Tuesday.

CREDIT: CO.COOS.OR.US

It’s not clear, however, whether the ordinance can be legally implemented. Charlie Hinkle, a constitutional law expert in Portland, Oregon, told the Huffington Post that local governments and officials are not allowed to decide “what laws are constitutional.”

“That’s why Kim Davis went to jail,” he reportedly said, referring to the Kentucky county clerk who was jailed after refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses, despite the fact that the Supreme Court said that same-sex marriage is a fundamental civil right across the country. Hinkle said Coos County’s sheriff may face similar court hearings and possibly jail time if he refuses to comply with the laws in his state.

For what it’s worth, even Coos County’s current sheriff admitted that the new measure likely won’t be implemented smoothly, if at all.
“I’m not sure the courts would agree with that concept,” he told The Oregonian last month. “I would just bet there would be some legal challenges to it.”
Other counties in the state have passed similar measures, but they’ve largely been symbolic — a way to show support for gun rights in the southeastern and western parts of the state, where gun ownership is above average.

Indeed, outside of more liberal areas like Portland, Oregon is home to a large number of gun rights supporters. Memorably, many of them protested president Obama’s visit to Umpqua Community College following the mass shooting last month, angry about his calls for stricter gun laws following the tragedy.






NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West


Thursday, November 5, 2015

EX POLICE OFFICER DANIEL HOLTZCLAW WHO REPEATEDLY RAPED BLACK WOMEN WHILE AN OFFICER GETS ALL WHITE JURY

PURPORTED SERIAL RAPIST DANIEL HOLTZCLAW



The trial of Daniel Holtzclaw, a former Oklahoma City police officer charged with 36 counts of rape, sexual battery, and forcible oral sodomy of 13 black women, began on Tuesday. But there’s one glaring problem: there are no black women on the jury. In fact, there are no black people at all.

Holtzclaw worked for the city for three years. While on duty, he targeted poor black women with criminal records. According to Police Chief Bill Citty, Holtzclaw preyed on the victims by initiating traffic stops or approaching women for jaywalking.
“Traffic stops, some of the individuals were actually just walking,” the chief admitted in 2014. “Walking in their neighborhood and they were stopped, you know, searched, threatened in some way with arrest or something to that extent. And as a result of that, actually coerced them into providing sexual favors to him.”

One of those women was 17-years-old when Holtzclaw raped her. The anonymous teen had an outstanding warrant for trespassing, which the officer used as a reason to approach her in front of her mother’s house. Holtzclaw allegedly said that the girl was also concealing drugs, before he groped her breasts, pulled down her underwear, and raped her on her mother’s porch.

Holtzclaw, a former college football star, maintains his innocence. All of the alleged victims will come forward and testify during the trial.

But none of the 12 people responsible for determining his fate are black. Only four of them are women. All of them are white.

Racial bias in the jury selection process is at the center of a Supreme Court case that was heard on Monday. Four potential jurors in a capital punishment case in Georgia — all of whom are black — were struck from the jury pool. Evidence showing that the four were explicitly disqualified because of their race surfaced later on. Before that, an all-white jury sentenced the defendant to die.

It is illegal to eliminate potential jurors on the basis of their race, but discrimination in the selection process is a common problem across the country.






NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

AND THE REST OF THE STORY…….HE TOOK HIS OWN LIFE

Officials will announce on today that an Illinois police lieutenant believed to have been shot and killed actually took his own life, WMAQ-TV and other Chicago outlets reported on Tuesday night.

Fox Lake Lieutenant Joseph Gliniewicz’s death in September sparked a manhunt stemming from his request for backup as he pursued three “suspicious men” in the small community near the border between Illinois and Wisconsin.



The 52-year-old officer was found on Sept. 1 with fatal gunshot wounds in a remote area of the community. No arrests have been made in connection with his death, and investigators have already stated that Gliniewicz was shot twice with his own gun.

The Lake County Sheriff’s Office refused to comment on the reports on Tuesday, saying that the cause of the 30-year veteran’s death would be revealed during a press conference on Wednesday morning.

As the Daily Dot reported at the time, conservative media outlets used Gliniewicz’s death of an example of what they called a “war on cops,” which they have blamed at times on the Black Lives Matter movement while also complaining that officers were afraid to do their jobs because of the increase in citizens recording their interactions with the public.






NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West


Tuesday, November 3, 2015

“FERGUSON EFFECT”

Trevor Noah took aim at what has been described as the “Ferguson Effect” on Monday, sarcastically telling viewers that police are merely afraid of being treated unfairly because of whom they are and how they look.
“People following them around with cameras watching everything they do, suspicious that they’re always afraid to break the law, leaving police afraid to even get out of their cars for fear that someone might whip out a phone and brutally film them. Who can imagine how that must feel?” he said. “If you listen carefully, all the police are saying is, ‘Phones down, don’t shoot.'”
The term has been used to explain violent crime increases in some US cities, arguing that officers have been cowed into not doing their jobs “proactively” for fear that they would be recorded by witnesses and subsequently accused of using excessive force.

Last week, FBI Director James Comey described it as “a chill wind blowing through American law enforcement,” a statement that led to him being rebuked by President Barack Obama. Earlier in the day, Obama told NBC News that Comey was using “anecdotal” evidence, and that there was no statistical evidence backing up his theory.





Similarly, Noah cited a study by the American Psychological Association that stated that it is “too soon” to blame any crime increases on increased scrutiny of police, since crime has been declining for the past 20 years.

“But these are just facts,” Noah warned. “They don’t count. It doesn’t matter what the facts are. The only thing that matters is how the police feel.”






NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

Monday, November 2, 2015

RADICAL BEN CARSON SEEKING TO END DEBATES AS WE KNOW THEM

Ben Carson is seeking to rally Republican candidates to end most actual debating at future Republican debates. Instead, candidates would spend most of their time taking turns delivering speeches.

Carson’s campaign is convening a meeting of various campaigns on Sunday night. The campaigns will discuss Carson’s proposal, which includes “a minimum of five minutes for opening and closing statements with all major declared GOP candidates on stage.” There are currently 14 candidates that have regularly been appearing in debates. Giving them five minutes each for opening and closing statements would take 140 minutes, which is more than the total time for a typical two hour debate.

Carson also would like to reduce the total number of debates, calling them a distraction from campaigning.

Another suggestion from the Carson team is “to strip the cable and broadcast television network sof the rights to carry the debates and instead air them over the Internet, perhaps via Facebook or YouTube.” This could actually create more time for debate by eliminating commercials.

The meeting comes on the heels of the CNBC debate, which was broadly criticized as chaotic. The candidates have subsequently claimed that the questions by CNBC moderators were biased and inaccurate.

CNBC focuses almost exclusively on business concerns and one of the questioners at the debate launched the Tea Party with a rant on the network. The questions challenged by the candidates were actually accurate.

Ted Cruz has subsequently called for all future debate moderators to be registered Republicans. Cruz suggested Sean Hannity or Rush Limabugh.

Under pressure from the campaigns, the Republican Party has “suspended” a debate with NBC News in February. In a letter from RNC chair Reince Priebus wrote, “The CNBC network is one of your media properties, and its handling of the debate was conducted in bad faith… the network is an arm of your organization, and we need to ensure there is not a repeat performance.”




On CNN, Congressman Keith Ellison said it was a standard tactic for Republicans to claim the media outlets are liberal in the hope that they overcompensate.

Some Republican candidates, including John Kasich, have distanced themselves from criticisms about debates, saying challenging questions are simply part of the process.

The next Republican debate is scheduled for November 10 on Fox Business.






NFTOS
STAFF WRITER

Sunday, November 1, 2015

TO STAB OR NOT TO STAB?

Attempting to dismiss questions about a reported incident in his youth when he claimed he attempted to stab a friend, aspiring GOP presidential contender Ben Carson blamed reporters for getting the story wrong, reports the Washington Post.

After Gideon Resnick of the Daily Beast pointed out that Carson’s story of attempting to stab a friend when he was 14 has evolved over the years, Carson said the story changed because reporters “record it in different ways.”

According to Carson, the retelling of the story is a like a game of “telephone.”
“For one thing, it happened 50 years ago — half a century ago,” Carson explained. “For another thing, when people record what I’ve said, they record it in different ways. When you’ve got something from 50 years ago that’s told by many different people, it’s sort of like the party game where you whisper to people sitting in a circle. When it gets to the original person, it’s very different.”

The problem for Carson is that the accounts of his story have varied depending upon which of the books he personally authored someone is reading.

As Resnick noted, Carson wrote in “Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence,”: “One afternoon when I was fourteen, I argued with a friend named Bob. Pulling out a camping knife, I lunged at my friend. The steel blade struck his metal belt buckle and snapped.”

Depending upon which book of Carson’s you are reading, Carson ran away afterward in shame, his best friend ran away in fear, it happened in two different homes or at school, and either a pocketknife or a camping knife was used. In yet another version, the knifing victim is identified only as a classmate instead of his good friend “Bob.”

Each recounting does lead to Carson finding God afterwards.





NFTOS
STAFF WRITER