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
On CNN last night, several panelists on Don Lemon’s show rolled their eyes when Trump advocate Kayliegh McEnany attempted to say that the candidate had prayed his “grabbing a woman’s p*ssy” comments away and it was time to move on.
After guest Maria Cardona pointed out that the GOP presidential nominee has yet to make an unconditional apology, McEnany took offense — then played the Jesus card.
“We can all stand here in judgment and say he didn’t apologize when in fact he did five times now, and it was heartfelt,” she frantically explained. “And Dr. Ben Carson came out today and he said, ‘I saw him pray for forgiveness before the debate.’ You have James Dobson saying he’s a recent Christian and recently accepted Christ into his life. You have Sam Clovis, his co-campaign chair, saying he’s a witness to his faith conversion. This is someone who is a changed person, and he’s apologized for it. I’m not going to stand in judgment. On the is panel, we can be self-righteous or we can forgive.”
VIDEO COURTESY OF CNN
Given a chance to respond, former Bernie Sanders campaign spokesperson Symone Sanders — who grimaced through McEnany’s ‘holier than thou spiel’ — had a few things to say.
“First of all, Donald Trump only apologized because the tape came out and people found out he was saying it,” she began. “Let’s not forget that he led with, ‘These are just words.’ Well, words have power, first of all. Secondly, these aren’t just words. He described predatory sexual behavior that women all across this county can identify with.”
“Let’s not bring Jesus down on into the gutter where Donald Trump and his thugs are,” she continued. “Let’s leave the Lord out of this one. I think Donald Trump definitely has to own up to these actions and he’s not helping himself or the party.”
A once Orange Hitler campaign adviser tried to tell Republican Ana Navarro how upset he felt about her calling Donald Trump a racist — and she proceeded to rain the wrath of hell on him.
During a panel on CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, former Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo said it was “outrageous” that Navarro would accuse Donald Trump of attacking Mexicans from the very first day of his campaign.
VIDEO COURTESY OF CNN
Navarro then pointed out that Trump not only accused the Mexican government of intentionally sending “rapists” into the United States, but he also said that Judge Gonzalo Curiel was unqualified to oversee the case against Trump University because of his “Mexican” heritage.
Caputo didn't back down, however.
“Ana, for you to sit here and call Donald Trump a flat-out racist is outrageous,” he said.
“Well let me do it again, and let me do it in two languages,” she shot back. “Es un racista — he is a flat-out racist, and it’s what he’s played on for 16 months. He is a bigot, he is a racist, he is a misogynist. He has said horrible things about women. He has said horrible things about immigrants, about Hispanics. He has yet to say one good thing about immigrants, and for your to shake your head and tell me that I’m the outrageous one, that’s what outrages me.”
As Navaro spoke, Caputo was left defenseless and could only rolls his eyes. Typical of one who is left defending a shit stain racist.
“Number one, Donald Trump pays more in taxes in one year than most people pay in a lifetime,” Bauer claimed, before the panel erupted screaming foul. Trump should pay a lot in federal income tax, but he doesn’t. For most people, when you have a lot of money, you generally pay a larger percentage in taxes. If Trump only earned poverty wages, he would pay less in taxes. As it currently stands, Trump appears to pay little to nothing in federal income taxes if the forms are any indication.
“When people say he didn’t pay tax, that’s not true. He pays hundreds of millions of dollars,” Bauer continued.
“You think that issue is a winning argument?” Bolduan asked.
“Absolutely,” Bauer argued. “Number one, you say 22,000-plus people currently employed by Donald Trump. Over $9.5 billion in annual revenues. So there’s a lot of people that may say you say he’s not paying income taxes but I have a job because of him. Everybody has down years. For Hillary Clinton to talk about what kind of business man is he, she wrote off $700,000 and all she does is give political speeches.
So, no, she doesn’t know what it’s like to have things you can appreciate. To say he wrote off 18 years is incorrect. That’s what, by law, he has. That’s how long he has to use that write-off. That’s not what he wrote off. This is totally a misnomer. It’s the media not clearly stating what’s happening.”
VIDEO COURTESY OF CNN
“We would love to know exactly,” Bolduan noted about Trump’s taxes.
Matt Schlapp wondered how Clinton was able to go from poverty after leaving the White House to being a millionaire while serving in public office. Clinton files her tax returns jointly with her husband former President Bill Clinton. After leaving the White House, while his wife was in the Senate, Clinton toured the country doing paid speeches and also published an autobiography. The book My Life led the bestseller list for quite awhile and Clinton was given a record-breaking advance for over $10 million.
Former Bernie Sanders press secretary Symone Sanders broke in trying to be a voice of reason, “The story here is the Republican nominee for president has gamed the tax system, gloated about it in the first presidential debate and is now out here actively trying to spin it into something good for the American people.”
Clinton surrogate Bakari Sellers brought up the charitable giving for the candidates. Bauer tried to make it a big deal that the Clintons give to their own foundation, but that is a double edge sword as Trump hasn’t donated to his foundation since 2008.Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold is still searching for any charity that has received any donations from Trump, so far he hasn’t found any.
“I love hearing Matt and Andre spin themselves about this,” Sellers grinned. “Because the fact is if Donald Trump was making all of this money, why is he stiffing the contractors who worked every single day?”
Bauer got a little unruly and Bolduan shouted his name several times before resorting to to holding her arms out to stop everyone from speaking.
New York requires a certification process before any charity can solicit $25,000 or more. Trump’s didn’t do this. Had the foundation registered, however, there likely would have been audits and investigations into the spending and some of the dealings that are now being revealed. They did manage to file the required IRS reports.
The New York Attorney General has opened an investigation into the foundation, but it is unclear if these new findings will be part of the investigation.
The foundation has received over $2.3 million from businesses owing Trump or his company money, however, they were instructed by Trump or his company to pay the foundation instead. The Trump Foundation also solicited small-dollar donations from supporters under the guise that the money would be donated to a veterans charity. The website advertised that the donations totaled $1.67 million.
On two different occasions, the foundation was used to settle legal disputes. In 2007, it dolled out $100,000 for a suit involving Mar-a-Lago Club. Just five years later it paid $158,000 to Martin Greenberg on the same day he settled a lawsuit against Trump’s golf courses. Most recently, Trump’s foundation made a donation to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s campaign just four days before her office decided not to participate in a lawsuit against Trump University.
The Trump Foundation has also purchased paintings of Trump, one of which is hanging in his hotel property. The campaign claimed that the resort is merely “storing” the painting. Trump also purchased a signed Tim Tebow helmet with the foundation’s money.
While Trump may have initially been the only donor in the 1990s, he began soliciting and scoring major donations in the early 2000s and never filed the appropriate paperwork. According to the law soliciting money means “to directly or indirectly make a request for a contribution, whether express or implied, through any medium.”
Trump admitted earlier this year that he doesn’t know whether or not his foundation has broken the law. When accusing Hillary Clinton and her family’s foundation of impropriety, Trump demanded a special prosecutor be appointed.
When pressed on the issue during an interview, son Eric (Uday) Trump shut it down.
A company controlled by Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, secretly conducted business in communist Cuba during Fidel Castro’s presidency despite strict American trade bans that made such undertakings illegal, according to interviews with former Trump executives, internal company records and court filings.
Documents show that the Trump company spent a minimum of $68,000 for its 1998 foray into Cuba at a time when the corporate expenditure of even a penny in the Caribbean country was prohibited without U.S. government approval. But the company did not spend the money directly. Instead, with Trump’s knowledge, executives funneled the cash for the Cuba trip through an American consulting firm called Seven Arrows Investment and Development Corporation. Once the business consultants traveled to the island and incurred the expenses for the venture, Seven Arrows instructed senior officers with Trump’s company—then called Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts—how to make it appear legal by linking it after-the-fact to a charitable effort.
The payment by Trump Hotels came just before the New York business mogul launched his first bid for the White House, seeking the nomination of the Reform Party. On his first day of the campaign, he traveled to Miami where he spoke to a group of Cuban-Americans, a critical voting bloc in the swing state. Trump vowed to maintain the embargo and never spend his or his companies’ money in Cuba until Fidel Castro was removed from power.
He did not disclose that, seven months earlier, Trump Hotels already had reimbursed its consultants for the money they spent on their secret business trip to Havana.
At the time, Americans traveling to Cuba had to receive specific U.S. government permission, which was only granted for an extremely limited number of purposes, such as humanitarian efforts. Neither an American nor a company based in the United States could spend any cash in Cuba; instead a foreign charity or similar sponsoring entity needed to pay all expenses, including travel. Without obtaining a license from the federal Office of Foreign Asset Control before the consultants went to Cuba, the undertaking by Trump Hotels would have been in violation of federal law, trade experts say.
Officials with the Trump campaign and the Trump Organization did not respond to emails seeking comment on the Cuba trip, further documentation about the endeavor or an interview with Trump. Richard Fields, who was then the principal in charge of Seven Arrows, did not return calls seeking comment.
But a former Trump executive who spoke on condition of anonymity said the company did not obtain a government license prior to the trip. Internal documents show that executives involved in the Cuba project were still discussing the need for federal approval after the trip had taken place.
OFAC officials say there is no record that the agency granted any such license to the companies or individuals involved, although they cautioned that some documents from that time have been destroyed. Yet one OFAC official, who agreed to discuss approval procedures if granted anonymity, said the probability that the office would grant a license for work on behalf of an American casino was “essentially zero.”
‘He’s a Murderer’
Prior to the Cuban trip, several European companies reached out to Trump about potentially investing together on the island through Trump Hotels, according to the former Trump executive. At the time, a bipartisan group of senators, three former Secretaries of State and other former officials were urging then-President Bill Clinton to review America’s Cuba policy, in hopes of eventually ending the decades-long embargo.
The goal of the Cuba trip, the former Trump executive said, was to give Trump’s company a foothold should Washington loosen or lift the trade restrictions. While in Cuba, the Trump representatives met with government officials, bankers and other business leaders to explore possible opportunities for the casino company. The former executive said Trump had participated in discussions about the Cuba trip and knew it had taken place.
The fact that Seven Arrows spent the money and then received reimbursement from Trump Hotels does not mitigate any potential corporate liability for violating the Cuban embargo. “The money that the Trump company paid to the consultant is money that a Cuban national has an interest in and was spent on an understanding it would be reimbursed,’’ Richard Matheny, chair of Goodwin’s national security and foreign trade regulation group said, based on a description of the events by Newsweek. “That would be illegal. If OFAC discovered this and found there was evidence of willful misconduct, they could have made a referral to the Department of Justice.”
Shortly after Trump Hotels reimbursed Seven Arrows, the two companies parted ways. Within months, Trump formed a presidential exploratory committee. He soon decided to seek the nomination of the Reform Party, which was founded by billionaire Ross Perot after his unsuccessful 1992 bid for the White House.
Trump launched his presidential campaign in Miami in November 1999. There, at a luncheon hosted by the Cuban American National Foundation, an organization of Cuban exiles, he proclaimed he wanted to maintain the American embargo and would not spend any money in Cuba so long as Fidel Castro remained in power. At the time, disclosing that his company had just spent money on the Cuba trip, or even acknowledging an interest in loosening the embargo, would have ruined Trump’s chances in Florida, a critical electoral state where large numbers of Cuban-Americans remain virulently opposed to the regime.
“As you know—and the people in this room know better than anyone—putting money and investing money in Cuba right now doesn’t go to the people of Cuba,’’ Trump told the crowd. “It goes to Fidel Castro. He’s a murderer, he’s a killer, he’s a bad guy in every respect, and, frankly, the embargo must stand if for no other reason than, if it does stand, he will come down.”
‘Its Stock Price Had Collapsed’
By the time Trump gave that speech, 36 years had passed since the Treasury Department in the Kennedy administration imposed the embargo. The rules prohibited any American person or company—even those with operations in other foreign countries—from engaging in financial transactions with any person or entity in Cuba. The lone exceptions: humanitarian efforts and telecommunications exports.
The impact of the embargo intensified in 1991, when the collapse of the Soviet Union ended its oil subsidies to the island and triggered a broad economic collapse. By 1993, Cuba faced extreme shortages and Castro was forced to start printing money solely to cover government deficits. Three years later, the U.S. Congress passed the Helms-Burton Act, which codified the embargo into law and worsened Cuba’s economic decline. With many financial options closed off, Cuba attempted to find overseas investment to modernize its tourism industry and other businesses.
The first signs that American policy might be shifting came in March 1998, when President Bill Clinton announced several major changes. Among them: resuming charter flights between the United States and Cuba for authorized Americans, streamlining procedures for exporting medical equipment and allowing Cubans in the U.S. to send small amounts of cash to their relatives on the island. However, Americans and American companies still could not legally spend their own money in Cuba.
That fall, as critics pressured Clinton to further loosen the embargo, Trump Hotels saw an opportunity. Like the communist regime, the company was struggling, having piled up losses for years. In 1998 alone, Trump Hotels lost $39.7 million, according to the company’s financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Its stock price had collapsed, falling almost 80 percent from a high that year of $12 a share to a low of just $2.75. (After multiple bankruptcies, Trump severed his ties with the company; it is now called Trump Entertainment Resorts and is a subsidiary of Icahn Enterprises, run by renowned financier Carl Icahn).
The company was desperate to find partners for new business which offered the chance to increase profits, according to another former Trump executive who spoke on condition of anonymity. The hotel and casino company assigned Seven Arrows, which had been working with Trump for several years, to develop such opportunities, including the one in Cuba.
On February 8, 1999, months after the consultants traveled to the island, Seven Arrows submitted a bill to Trump Hotels for the $68,551.88 it had “incurred prior to and including a trip to Cuba on behalf of Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc.”
The 1999 document also makes clear that executives were still discussing the legal requirements for such a trip after the consultants had already returned from Cuba. The government does not provide after-the-fact licenses.
“Under current law trips of the sort Mr. Fields took to Cuba must be sanctioned not only by the White House but are technically on behalf of a charity,’’ the bill submitted to Trump Hotels says. “The one most commonly used is Carinas Cuba.”
The instructions contain two errors. First, while OFAC is part of the executive branch, the White House itself does not provide licenses for business dealings in Cuba. Second, the correct name of the charity is Caritas Cuba, a group formed in 1991 by the Catholic Church, which provides services for the elderly, children and other vulnerable populations in the Caribbean nation. Caritas Cuba did not respond to emails about contacts it may have had with Trump Hotels, Seven Arrows or any individuals associated with them.
The invoice from Seven Arrows was submitted to John Burke, who was then the corporate treasurer of Trump Hotels. In a lawsuit on a different legal issue, Burke testified that Trump Hotels paid the bill in full, although he denied recognizing the document.
‘Totally False’
The Cuba venture was one of two assignments given to Seven Arrows at that time, and the second has already emerged as an issue in the GOP nominee’s bid for the presidency. Trump Hotels also paid the consulting firm to help develop a deal with the Seminole tribe of Florida to partner in a casino there. Knowing that the Florida governor and legislature opposed casino gambling in the state, Trump authorized developing a strategy to win over politicians to get the laws changed in an effort named “Gambling Project.” The law firm of Greenberg Traurig was retained to assemble the strategy. A copy of the plan prepared by the lawyers showed the strategy involved hiring multiple consultants, lobbyists and media relations firms to persuade the governor and the legislature to allow casino gambling in the state. The key to possible success? Campaign contributions.
The plan states “the executive and legislative branches of Florida government are driven by many influences, the most meaningful of which lies in campaign giving.” For the legislature, it recommends giving to “leadership accounts” maintained by state political parties, rather than to individual lawmakers, because “this is where the big bucks go and the real influence is negotiated.” Records show that Seven Arrows also incurred $38,996.32 on its work on the Gaming Project, far less than it spent for the Cuba endeavor.
Aside from deceiving Cuban-Americans, records of the 1998 initiatives show that Trump lied to voters about his efforts in Florida during that period. At the second Republican presidential debate in September, one of Trump’s rivals, Jeb Bush, said the billionaire had tried to buy him off with favors and contributions when he was Florida’s governor in an effort to legalize casino gaming in the state. “Totally false,’’ Trump responded. “I would have gotten it.”
The documents obtained by Newsweek give no indication why the $39,000 spent on Seven Arrows’ primary assignment—arranging for a casino deal with the Seminole tribe—was so much less than the $68,000 expended on the Cuba effort. The former Trump executive could not offer any explanation for the disparity.
Though it has long been illegal for corporations to spend money in Cuba without proper authorization, there is no chance that Trump, the company or any of its executives will be prosecuted for wrongdoing. The statute of limitations ran out long ago, and legal analysts say OFAC’s enforcement division is understaffed, so the chances for an investigation were slim even at the time.
And perhaps that was the calculation behind the company’s decision to flout the law: the low risk of getting caught versus the high reward of lining up Cuban allies if the U.S. loosened or dropped the embargo. The only catch: What would happen if Trump's Cuban-American supporters ever found out?
Story in its entirety from Newsweek and Kurt Eichenwald
Much like his leader, Cheeto Jesus's most visible defender has admitted that he lied about his military experience and his college background after first stating that his church website had been hacked and someone else had posted the false information.
Pastor Mark Burns has been at the forefront of pushing the candidacy of Trump with black voters only, to create more controversy by first tweeting out a cartoon of Hillary Clinton in blackface before later lashing at cable TV host, asking about her “heritage”after she asked him on the cartoon.
Pressed by CNN host Victor Blackwell, Burns first admitted that he did not graduate from North Greenville University with a Bachelor of Science degree, before taking offense at the line of questioning and stating he thought the interview was for a profile and was off the record.
“I didn't agree to that,” Blackwell said before again pressing Burns on his bio.
“This is not fair at all,” Burns replied. “I thought we were doing a profile and all of a sudden you’re here to try to destroy my character.”
“I’m not here to destroy your character,” Blackwell replied.
VIDEO COURTESY OF CNN
As part of their investigation, CNN stated that Burns only attended the university for one semester and that his claim that he served in six years in the Army Reserve was also false, with the pastor only serving a short stint in the National Guard.
Burns later released a statement on saying he had “overstated some details” in his biography because, as a young man, he wanted to be taken seriously as a pastor starting up his new church in Greenville, South Carolina.
In his statement, Burns also said he was under attack because “I am a black man supporting Donald Trump for president.”
Burns, just one of many whom follow this asshat - who seem to suffer from pathological liar syndrome.
According to the New York Times yesterday, companies belonging to Trump have at least $650 million in debt, more than twice the amount shown in public filings made by his presidential campaign.
The paper employed a property information firm to search publicly available data on more than 30 US properties connected to the Republican candidate, including offices and golf courses.
In addition to the $650 million liabilities, “a substantial portion of his wealth is tied up in three passive partnerships that owe an additional $2 billion to a string of lenders,” the Times said about debt that could significantly affect Trump’s wealth.
The billionaire tycoon campaigns on what he says is his spectacularly successful real estate record, claiming to be worth $10 billion and citing his business acumen as his major qualification for the presidency.
However, he has dismissed mounting pressure even from within his own party to disclose his tax returns or allow an independent valuation of his assets.
Trump’s campaign filings show his businesses owed at least $315 million, the Times noted, saying they appear to be accurate and that Trump was not required to disclose all of his business activities.
While the paper does not outright accuse Clownstick of any wrongdoing, the investigation “underscored how much of his business remains shrouded in mystery.”
The investigation “also found that Clownstick's fortunes depend deeply on a wide array of financial backers, including one he has cited in attacks during his campaign,” the Times said.
His lenders include one of the largest banks in China — which the Republican candidate accuses of being a US economic foe — and the investment bank Goldman Sachs, which he says influences his Democratic White House rival Hillary Clinton.
As president, the Times said, Clownstick would be able to make decisions that would have a major influence on his business empire and net worth.
Fuckface Von Clownstick, again has made a big to-do about building a giant wall between the United States and Mexico, made a bizarre claim during his victory speech on Saturday.
“I have thousands and thousands of Hispanics… I lead with the Hispanics. I’m leading in every poll with Hispanics,” Clownstick said. “They love me, I love them.”
He then went on to accuse China of theft and other countries of taking advantage of the U.S. and promising to repeal Obamacare.
The real estate mogul beat out his rivals to win the South Carolina primary on Saturday with 33 percent of the votes, followed by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at 22 percent. Ted Cruz came in third at 21.7 percent as of 6 p.m. Pacific. The contest saw rival Jeb Bush suspending his campaign.
Clownstick is in no way in a favorable position with Hispanic voters, according to The Hill. Over three-fourths of Hispanic Americans have an unfavorable opinion of him. Roughly 80 percent of that group view him unfavorably.
Clownstick also said during his speech that he would make Mexico pay for the wall he plans to build, a crowd-pleasing tactic he uses, according to the New York Times.
As only this asshole can, Fuckface Von Clownstick [Donald J Trump] used a debunked story about US Gen. John Pershing supposedly executing Muslim prisoners to portray himself as being willing to pursue terrorists more aggressively, MSNBC reported on Friday.
Clownstick cited the story during a speech in Charleston, South Carolina, telling supporters they could “read it in the history books.” In fact, according to the fact-checking site Snopes.com, the story — as he presented it — originated online in 2001.
The real estate magnate said that Pershing ordered the execution of Muslim prisoners in the Philippines.
“He took 50 bullets, and he dipped them in pig’s blood,” Clownstick said. “And he had his men load his rifles and he lined up the 50 people, and they shot 49 of those people. And the 50th person he said ‘You go back to your people and you tell them what happened.’ And for 25 years there wasn’t a problem, OK?”
According to Snopes, the incident is not mentioned in biographies of Pershing. Other accounts of his actions while serving as governor for the country’s Moro Providence depict Pershing as wanting to minimize casualties and only threatening to use the “pig’s blood” punishment.
On Friday, Clownstick also returned to his criticism of water-boarding, which he has described as “minimal, minimal, minimal torture.”
“Can you imagine these people when they sit around at night, eating whatever they’re eating, and talking about the United States that they’re actually worried about waterboarding as being a little bit cruel?” Clownstick said. “And these people chop off heads. These people must think we are the dumbest and the weakest and the stupidest people on Earth.”
Less than a month after taking office, Kentucky’s newly elected Republican Gov. Matt Bevin reversed a move by his Democratic predecessor that had restored the voting rights of about 140,000 former felons.
Those impacted - who are overwhelmingly African American and lower income, had already completed their felony sentences but remained permanently disenfranchised. The order excluded those convicted of violent crimes, sex crimes, bribery or treason.
Bevin’s move Tuesday night goes against promises he made during the campaign to keep the restoration of voting rights in place. He even told reporters in November that he would stand up to his own party on the issue and convince them it was the right thing to do. Now, thanks to his order, tens of thousands of Kentuckians will not only lose the opportunity to regain their voting rights, they will also be permanently unable to serve on a jury, run for office, or obtain a vocational license.
The only explanation Bevin offered for the reversal is that he believes “it is an issue that must be addressed through the legislature and by the will of the people.”
Kentucky is one of a tiny handful of states where former felons have to individually petition the governor to restore their civil rights after they have fully completed their sentences — a process that can be arbitrary and humiliating. As a result, one in five African Americans in the state are disenfranchised. Studies have found that ex-felons who have their voting rights restored feel more invested in their communities and are less likely to end up back in the criminal justice system.
In another executive order this week, Bevin reversed former Gov. Beshear’s move to raise the state’s minimum wage for government workers and contractors to $10.10 an hour, bringing it back down to $7.25 an hour. About 800 state workers who have already gotten raises will be able to keep them, but new hires will now have to start at the lower pay rate. In the order, Bevin hinted that he would prefer the state have no minimum wage at all: “Wage rates ideally would be established by the demands of the labor market instead of being set by the government,” he said.
Bevin also used his new executive power to grant the wish of Kentucky clerk Kim Davis to remove all clerk names from marriage licenses to accommodate religious objections to same-sex marriage. Though all gay and straight couples retain the right to marry, thanks to the Supreme Court, LGBT rights groups in the state lament the governor’s move. “It’s a clear signal to Kim Davis and her camp that if you object to doing portions of your job — even if you’re an elected official — the executive branch will give you an out,” said Chris Hartman with the Fairness Campaign.
Others claim the governor is overstepping his legal bounds and inviting lawsuits by making unilaterally changes to the state marriage license form.
Bevin, who has previously said he believes legalizing same-sex marriage could lead to parents marrying their children, was swept into office in November in an election marked by dismally low voter turnout. Less than a third of the state’s eligible voters cast a ballot. Had the state’s former non-violent felons been able to vote, they could have easily swayed the election.
Matt Bevin, even with Trump being the ass that is Fuckface Von Clownstick, you sir are this week’s worst person of the week! Congrats numbnutz, you earned it!
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.
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!
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.
Before his termination on Thursday, the unidentified officer, who was on his way to becoming a full-time member of the Massachusetts State Police (MSP), claimed he crashed his car because a white male fired several shots at him in Millis, Massachusetts. Residents of the town were on high alert after the incident, and schools were shut down for safety precautions. But a ballistics report conducted after the alleged shooting concluded the bullets discovered in the officer’s vehicle actually belonged to him. Investigators are also looking into whether or not the officer torched his vehicle as well.
The former officer now faces criminal charges. His motive for lying has not been determined.
The fabricated story comes in the midst of media hysteria over the “war on cops.” In response to a string of officer murders (eight have been killed in 10 days), pundits have argued that “incendiary, anti-police rhetoric” has inspired a wave of cop killings. Fox News has gone so far as to call Black Lives Matter organizers — whose mission is to put an end to violence against black bodies that is largely perpetrated by police — a murder movement and hate group. It has also zeroed in on anti-police acts, such as Arby’s employees’ refusal to serve an officer in Florida.
Police officers have also said they are too concerned about public backlash to fulfill their duties, resulting in the so-called “Ferguson Effect.” The theory, which gains momentum every time an officer is killed, says there is an uptick in violent crime because officers are too weary to do their jobs.
In reality, while officer deaths are tragic and should be cause for concern, the number of police fatalities pales in comparison to the number of people killed by police every year. More than 1,000 people were killed by officers in 2014, compared to 126 officers who were killed in the line of duty. Fifty of them were shot — up from a record-low number of firearm deaths the year before, but still below the decade average. In fact, the number of officers killed by firearms annually has experienced a downward trend since the 1970s, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
This year, 83 officers have died in the line of duty— 24 by gunfire. Motives for the killings in the last ten days have yet to be determined, and so far, no one has cited Black Lives Matter as the driving force.
ERIC ENGBERG SAYS BILL O HAS SOME EXPLAINING TO DO
CNN's Brian Stelter spoke to former CBS correspondent Eric Engberg about his recent post questioning of Bill O'Reilly's version of events on his reporting in Argentina. Stelter asked Engberg at the end of the segment if he had a vendetta against O'Reilly and whether this was about a personal dispute.
ENGBERG: No. He's the one that started the personal dispute by saying that we were all hiding in our hotel rooms... By the way, I do have this personal dispute with him. He's not a real reporter and he was not in a combat zone that night. This was not a combat zone. Not even close.
Most humans with an IQ above 3 were aware of this but it's nice to hear someone say it on cable news. Engberg's description of O'Reilly is most definitely devastating hit to the blowhard.
Engberg on Facebook : Did Fox News bloviater Bill O'Reilly commit Brian Williams type fabrications when he claimed he had been in a "combat situation" while working as a reporter for CBS News during the Falklands War in 1982? Did he pad his resume' as he was laying claim to personal knowledge about what happens in war? The issue has arisen because the "Mother Jones" magazine Washington bureau chief David Corn has written a story, largely based on recollections of CBS News senior staffers, comparing O'Reilly's statements about his war experience to the fabrications which sent NBC anchor Williams into a six-month suspension.
I can provide some eyewitness information on this matter because I was one of the correspondents in Buenos Aires with O'Reilly and the rest of the rather large staff of CBS News people who were there "covering" the war. To begin with "covering" is an overstatement of what we were doing. Corn is correct in pointing out that the Falkland Islands, where the combat between Great Britain and Argentina took place, was a thousand miles away from Buenos Aires. We were in Buenos Aires because that's the only place the Argentine military junta would let journalists go. Our knowledge of the war was restricted to what we could glean from comically deceitful daily briefings given by the Argentine military and watching government-controlled television to try to pick up a useful clue from propaganda broadcasts. We -- meaning the American networks -- were all in the same, modern hotel and we never saw any troops, casualties or weapons. It was not a war zone or even close. It was an "expense account zone."
O'Reilly, freshly hired by CBS, arrived in Buenos Aires a few days before the British expeditionary force defeated the Argentine occupiers. He was, as he is today, full of brio and confidence. I remember him asking me how I liked my assignment. When I said I was tired of living in a hotel and wanted to go home he said, "Call your agent." Back in those days calling your agent to complain about the company's decision-making would have been a career-ender, but he didn't seem to understand matters of the CBS internal secret wooglies, which included the rule that you did as you were told. I should have known he was headed for trouble, but I just thought he was a rookie who would learn. Yeah, right.
Within a couple of days of his arrival the British Army and Marines had completed their land assault on the Falklands capital and forced the Argentines to surrender. The Argentine public, who had been living under a murderous, corrupt military government for years, were driven into the streets of their capital by rage over the loss of a war they had been repeatedly told their army was winning. As night fell after the surrender statement, several thousand people gathered in the streets around the presidential palace to protest. All the members of the CBS reporting staff and all the two-person camera crews we had in Buenos Aires were sent in to the street. I believe there were four or five crews. The reporters, as I remember, were O'Reilly, Chuck Gomez, Charles Krause, Bob Schieffer and myself. Somewhere it has been reported that O'Reilly has claimed he was the only CBS News reporter who had the courage to go into the street because the rest of us were hiding in our hotel. If he said such thing it is an absolute lie. Everyone was working in the street that night, the crews exhibiting their usual courage. O'Reilly was the one person who behaved unprofessionally and without regard for the safety of the camera crew he was leading.
The CBS bureau chief in Buenos Aires, Larry Doyle, an ex-Marine LRRP, was something of a legend among CBSers because of his personal courage and his knowledge about how to do your job without exposing yourself to undue danger. Early that night in Buenos Aires he assembled the camera crews in our hotel newsroom and instructed them to refrain from using the lights on their cameras while around crowds. Television lights attracted potentially violent people and also made the camera-person an easier target for demonstrators throwing rocks. We all knew that the Argentine public was angry at the U.S. for supporting Britain in the war, so American journalists might become a target for mob violence. So, O'Reilly has been correct in describing the situation in Buenos Aires as somewhat dicey for reporters. If he was nervous, I can see why.
The riot around the presidential palace was actually short-lived. It consisted mostly of chanting, fist-shaking and throwing coins at the uniformed soldiers who were assembled outside the palace. I did not see any police attacks against demonstrators. According to Doyle, O'Reilly returned to the hotel in a rage over the fact that his cameraman wouldn't turn on the lights to photograph angry crowds. Doyle defended the cameraman and chewed out O'Reilly for violating his instructions on lights. When Doyle looked at the tape shot by O'Reilly's cameraman he saw that the video included stand-ups -- on camera description by the reporter -- which O'Reilly had ordered the cameraman to shoot -- with his light on. Doyle was further upset by this tape, which clearly showed that his orders on lights had been unilaterally violated by O'Reilly. The issue here was safety.
CBS was doing a late night re-cap of the Falkland's story. As always the Buenos Aires bureau had no combat video footage to offer, so our part of the special would be the demonstrations, which had been well covered by three or four camera crews, including the one working with O'Reilly. All that footage was blended into the main story, narrated by Schieffer, who had been in Buenos Aires for weeks as the anchor on the scene. When Doyle informed O'Reilly that Schieffer would be doing the report, which would not include any segment from O'Reilly, the reporter exploded. "I didn't come down here to have my footage used by that old man," he shouted. Doyle was stunned. First O'Reilly had defiantly ordered a cameraman to disregard his orders on using lights, and now he was claiming the right to do a story the producers had decided should be done by the senior correspondent on the scene, Schieffer. This confrontation led the next day to O'Reilly being ordered out of Argentina by the CBS bosses. Doyle had told them O'Reilly was a "disruptive force" who threatened his bureau's morale and cohesion.
I remember looking on a monitor at the long stand-up O'Reilly ordered his crew to shoot, which was never used on the air. He shot this description in the middle of a clearly angry, chanting crowd. As a reporter I wondered why he would think he needed video of himself standing in the middle of the crowd when his own crew and others had taken plenty of good crowd pictures that didn't have O'Reilly standing in the middle of the frame blocking the action. You don't shoot a long stand-up when you have plenty of good pictures of the event you are covering. What O'Reilly was doing was in the realm of local news. I didn't know at the time that he had also violated the bureau chief's order on use of lights, but I wondered why would any correspondent would imperil his colleagues by turning on lights during a riot.
O'Reilly has said he was in a situation in Argentina where "my photographer got run down and hit his head and was bleeding from the ear on the concrete and the army was chasing us." The only place where such an injury could have occurred was the relatively tame riot I have described above. Neither Doyle, who would have been immediately informed of injury to any CBS personnel, nor anyone else who was working the story remembers a cameraman being injured that night. No one who reported back to our hotel newsroom after the disturbance was injured; if a cameraman had been "bleeding from the ear" he would have immediately reported that to his superiors at the hotel. This part of O'Reilly's Argentina story is not credible without further confirmation, and O'Reilly should identify the cameraman by name so he can be questioned about the alleged injury.
The gunfire reported by O'Reilly is equally suspicious. One of our camera crews reported that they believed the Argentine police or army had fired a few rubber bullets at the crowd. That was the only report we received of weapons being fired that night. The crowd had been confined to a relatively small area around the president's palace. It wasn't like there were protests going on all over the city. I did see soldiers armed with rifles on guard around the presidential palace. But they did not take aim at the crowd and I heard no gunfire. No one I talked to as the crowd was breaking up told me they heard gunfire. O'Reilly's claim that the army fired weapons into the crowd is not supported by anyone's recollection. Had that happened, I believe, the riot would have escalated into an uncontrollable attack on government buildings all over the capital. Nothing like that happened. Actually, the military chiefs, yielding to the public outcry over the war's outcome, were willing to give up their offices, which they did the next day.
I am fairly certain that most professional journalists would refer to the story I have just related as "routine reporting on a demonstration that got a little nasty." O'Reilly, in defending himself yesterday against Corn's "Mother Jones" piece, said "We were in a combat situation in Buenos Aires." He is misrepresenting the situation he covered, and he is obviously doing so to burnish his credentials as a "war correspondent," which is not the work he was performing during the Falklands war. I don't think it's as big a lie as Brian Williams told because O'Reilly hasn't falsely claimed to be the target of an enemy attack, but he has displayed a willingness to twist the truth in a way that seeks to invent a battlefield that did not exist. And he ought to be subject to the same scrutiny Williams faced. He also ought to be ashamed of himself. By the way, "Old Man" Schieffer seemed to do okay as a TV journalist in the years (and there were plenty) after O'Reilly claimed to have been "big footed" by him. Maybe "Old Schieffer" called HIS agent.
Bill O is going down. It's only a matter of time now. His chapstick will soon lose its affect and his only value – his lasting grip to Fox is losing its hold. Everything he regurgitates should be dissected and torn apart. His number is up. We should be biding Bill O a fond adieu very soon - good riddance asshat!
DAVID CORN EXPOSES BILLO AS LIAR PHOTO BY DNOKEYHOTEY
Yesterday David Corn published a scathing piece in Mother Jones about the ridiculous combat lies of Bill O'Reilly. An excerpt:
In April 2013, while discussing the Boston Marathon bombing, O'Reilly shared a heroic tale of his exploits in the Falklands war:
I was in a situation one time, in a war zone in Argentina, in the Falklands, where my photographer got run down and then hit his head and was bleeding from the ear on the concrete. And the army was chasing us. I had to make a decision. And I dragged him off, you know, but at the same time, I'm looking around and trying to do my job, but I figure I had to get this guy out of there because that was more important.
Yet his own account of his time in Argentina in his 2001 book, The No Spin Zone, contains no references to O'Reilly experiencing or covering any combat during the Falklands war. In the book, which in part chronicles his troubled stint as a CBS News reporter, O'Reilly reports that he arrived in Buenos Aires soon before the Argentine junta surrendered to the British, ending the 10-week war over control of two territories far off the coast of Argentina. There is nothing in this memoir indicating that O'Reilly witnessed the fighting between British and Argentine military forces—or that he got anywhere close to the Falkland Islands, which are 300 miles off Argentina's shore and about 1,200 miles south of Buenos Aires.
Fox News host Bill O’Reilly angrily denounced a Mother Jones report on Thursday questioning his statements regarding his reporting during the Falklands War in 1982.
“It’s a hit piece,” O’Reilly told Politico. “Everything I said about what I reported in South and Central America is true. Everything.”
“This Just In: O'Reilly resorts to spin and name-calling. Stay classy”
"To me, the issue here is whether a media figure and journalist like Bill O'Reilly, who claims to be a truth teller, can get away without answering questions about specific statements he's made, and hide behind name calling," Corn told the On Media blog on Thursday. "I would encourage anyone else who covers this story to get Bill O'Reilly to answer those questions - if not to me, than to anyone else."
NBC BRIAN WILLIAMS APOLOGIZING FOR LYING FOR 12 YEARS
Brian Williams, NBC golden boy has a problem. It appears Brian has a problem with facts and truth from his own life. His job is to present the facts, yet all we got for 12 years was a fairy-tale story:
WASHINGTON — NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams admitted Wednesday he was not aboard a helicopter hit and forced down by RPG fire during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a false claim that has been repeated by the network for years.
Williams repeated the claim Friday during NBC’s coverage of a public tribute at a New York Rangers hockey game for a retired soldier that had provided ground security for the grounded helicopters, a game to which Williams accompanied him. In an interview with Stars and Stripes, he said he had misremembered the events and was sorry.
The admission came after crew members on the 159th Aviation Regiment’s Chinook that was hit by two rockets and small arms fire told Stars and Stripes that the NBC anchor was nowhere near that aircraft or two other Chinooks flying in the formation that took fire. Williams arrived in the area about an hour later on another helicopter after the other three had made an emergency landing, the crew members said.
“I would not have chosen to make this mistake,” Williams said. “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.”
Williams made the claim while presenting NBC coverage of the tribute to the retired command sergeant major at the Rangers game, and the fans giving the soldier a standing ovation.
“The story actually started with a terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG,” Williams said on the broadcast. “Our traveling NBC News team was rescued surrounded and kept alive by an armor mechanized platoon from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry.”
Williams and his camera crew were actually aboard a Chinook in a formation that was about an hour behind the three helicopters that came under fire, according to crew member interviews.
That Chinook took no fire and landed later beside the damaged helicopter due to an impending sandstorm from the Iraqi desert, according to Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Miller, who was the flight engineer on the aircraft that carried the journalists.
“No, we never came under direct enemy fire to the aircraft,” Williams said Wednesday.
Unfortunately Williams is no different than those I bash at Faux News [the liars club].
How does one go about misrepresenting themselves at such an event? I’ll tell you, deliberately and purposefully. In defense of Williams, Don't be too hard on yourself big guy. The whole fucking "war" was one colossal bullshit story, why should your heroics there be any exception?
Robert McCulloch In His Pompous Ignorance Says Has No Regrets Letting Non-Credible Witnesses Testify:
After the news broke that a witness lied under oath to the grand jury that did not indict Officer Darren Wilson of the death of Michael Brown, St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch had admitted that while she should not have testified, he didn’t regret letting her onto the panel.
“Clearly some were not telling the truth,” he said to local radio station KTRS 550, referring to Sandra McElroy, known as “Witness 40.” McCulloch acknowledged that this “lady clearly wasn’t present,” and that “she recounted a story right out of the newspaper,”
Video Courtesy of MSNBC
However, “early on I decided that anyone who claimed to have witnessed anything would be presented to the grand jury,” and therefore he let McElroy testify.
Earlier this week, The Smoking Gun revealed that not only was McElroy nowhere near the neighborhood where Brown was shot by Wilson on the day of his death, but that McElroy had an extensive history of lying to police about witnessing high-profile cases. She also has a history of mental illness, and admitted to the grand jury that a car accident left her with faulty memory. Nevertheless, her testimony was not only allowed, but cited by many as credible proof that Wilson’s story was correct — despite evidence that she was simply repeating media reports of his account.
McCulloch was heavily criticized for his handling of the Brown case, specifically for taking it to a grand jury in the first place, and in an unprecedented move, releasing all the available evidence to the public after the grand jury failed to indict Wilson.
Fact: McElroy was the only witness with a record of lying to the police about being a witness to shootings. Yes, she is pathological with lying to police. She was disproved by the feds and McCullough put her on the stand anyway. McElroy's testimony muddied the waters.
McCullough's job was to present factual evidence, either for or against. His job was to work ethically without malice aforethought. McCulloch operated more like Wilson's defense attorney rather than being an impartial entity.
This prosecutors malfeasance ebbs into the absurd. McCulloch should be stripped of his elected office and he should be disbarred from ever being able to operate in the court of law again, that is unless he himself is being prosecuted for his wrongs. Sleep well Robert McCulloch, sleep well.
They ultimate suborned perjury.
Robert McCulloch, congratulations Einstein, you are today's worst person in the world.
A bombshellinvestigative report at The Smoking Gun claims to have unmasked “Witness 40″ as Sandra McElroy, and alleges she was nowhere near the scene of the fatal shooting of unarmed black teen Michael Brown by a white police officer, as she testified under oath. Darren Wilson, the officer who shot Brown was not indicted in a controversial grand jury decision in late November, sparking nationwide protests. Wilson described Brown as a hulking menace ready to kill him with his bare hands. Some witness testimony supported this while many others described Brown as surrendering as he was shot.
Fox News' Sean Hannity's favorite witness has come under scrutiny. In meticulous detail, the report eviscerates her credibility as a witness. The Smoking Gun says that it uncovered her identity through social media messages, statements in her testimony and details of her life, and that she then confirmed that she was the witness. The report explains that McElroy,
“…waited four weeks after the shooting to contact cops. By the time she gave St. Louis police a statement on September 11, a general outline of Wilson’s version of the shooting had already appeared in the press. McElroy’s account of the confrontation dovetailed with Wilson’s reported recollection of the incident.”
The report describes how McElroy’s testimony was essentially a description of information already available in the media due to leaks by the Ferguson Police Department. This amounted to a rehash of Wilson’s testimony that Brown reached into his car and punched him, and that he later rushed him. Her alleged reason for being in the neighborhood raised red flags with investigators, but was used in grand jury testimony anyway,
“McElroy’s tale was met with skepticism by the investigators, who reminded her that it was a crime to lie to federal agents. When questioned about inconsistencies in her story, McElroy was resolute about her vivid, blow-by-blow description of the deadly Brown-Wilson confrontation. ‘I know what I seen,’ she said. ‘I know you don’t believe me.’
When asked what she was doing in Ferguson–which is about 30 miles north of her home–McElroy explained that she was planning to ‘pop in’ on a former high school classmate she had not seen in 26 years. Saddled with an incorrect address and no cell phone, McElroy claimed that she pulled over to smoke a cigarette and seek directions from a black man standing under a tree. In short order, the violent confrontation between Brown and Wilson purportedly played out in front of McElroy.
Despite an abundance of red flags, state prosecutors put McElroy in front of the Ferguson grand jury the day after her meeting with the federal officials. After the 12-member panel listened to a tape of her interview conducted at the FBI office, McElroy appeared and, under oath, regaled the jurors with her eyewitness claims.”
After providing this testimony, she returned to the grand jury the next day with a spiral bound notebook, supposedly containing her observations that she wrote down after the shooting. When presenting the notebook, she changed her story.
WHO KILLED MICHAEL BROWN Video courtesy of Mark Fiore
“Before testifying about the content of her notebook scribblings, McElroy admitted that she had not driven to Ferguson in search of an African-American pal she had last seen in 1988. Instead, McElroy offered a substitute explanation that was, remarkably, an even bigger lie.
McElroy, again under oath, explained to grand jurors that she was something of an amateur urban anthropologist. Every couple of weeks, McElroy testified, she likes to ‘go into all the African-American neighborhoods.’ During these weekend sojourns–apparently conducted when her ex has the kids–McElroy said she will ‘go in and have coffee and I will strike up a conversation with an African-American and I will try to talk to them because I’m trying to understand more.'”
Her journal entry account of what she was planning to do the day of the shooting is,
“Well I'm gonna take my random drive to Florissant. Need to understand the Black race better so I stop calling Blacks Niggers and Start calling them People.”
The report details legal trouble she has run into in the past, including writing fraudulent checks. Once when she was in bankruptcy court, her lawyer asked to be removed from her case because McElroy
“repeatedly used profanity when speaking with Counsel’s secretary which escalated to the use of racial slurs.”
After local police rescued a boy held captive for years, McElroy called local media and claimed to have told police where the boy was. Police stated,
“The Kirkwood Police Department has investigated her allegation and we have no record of any contact with Mrs. McElroy in regards to Shawn Hornbeck. We have found that this story is a complete fabrication.”
The report describes that McElroy testified that she has a faulty memory stemming from a 2001 car accident in which she was launched through the windshield. She was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder when she was a teenager, and not has not taken medication to treat it for 25 years.
Before she spoke to police and claimed to have witnessed the shooting, she made comments on social media logically inconsistent with the perspective of someone who had seen it. On social media, McElroy posted an image of a police officer standing over Mike Brown’s dead body with a caption that read,
“Mike Brown already received justice so please, stop asking for it.”
Finally, McElroy launched a Facebook page to raise money for Darren Wilson. When questioned about it, she said it was for Ferguson first responders dealing with the riots. But the page claimed to have sent money to the Darren Wilson Trust Fund.
The report is incredibly damning of the entire Justice proceedings of the case. It especially calls into question the conduct and conclusion of the grand jury. If this detailed, researched report is even remotely true, McElroy’s legal history and overt biases should have disqualified her ludicrous story from being taken seriously. She should have been torn to pieces by the prosecutor. And in a regular trial, her testimony would have been demolished under cross-examination. That someone with such a troubled past, whose story was so problematic, was allowed to stand as a witness, virtually unchallenged, is scathing evidence that the grand jury was woefully inadequate. It underscores the validity of the nationwide protests pleading with the nation that something is very wrong in our Justice system.
Racist, bi-polar and not near the murder scene, nothing to see here, move on!
Let's stop focusing on facts for a while and just put our faith in the white police officer. ~Republican Jesus
