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
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USE THIS BAG WHEN GETTING FACTS FROM LISTED NEWS SOURCES
Republican politicians, conservative talk show hosts, conservative authors, and all Fox News media types - are all very capable of convincing their unlettered followers of bullshit they emit. From Benghazi, to Presidential birth certificates, the heaping pile of steaming dog shit that oozes from these media outlets - is exponentially massive.
Republicans often talk about the media's "liberal bias", and while MSNBC promotes a progressive message during their prime time line-up, the news organization often tags themselves with the slogan "lean forward." But at least they are honest about their positions and their reporting.
NFTOS has covered numerous Faux News stories [and other right wing-nut news sources] - where the "fair and balanced" aficionados, at best, have had a problem with facts - frequently stretching the limits between fact and fiction. [If you use NFTOS search engine you shall see 8 pages of bullshit labeled to Fox News].
Faux News is not the only conservative information source that struggles with telling the truth. Below is a list of 50 bullshit artists, a guide if you will - a who's who of conservative news fecal matter masters.
Why are "contemporary" Republicans so full of shit? How did the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and General Eisenhower get taken over by such lying, thieving, self-serving scoundrels?
To often is the case, that the radicals on the right try to demonize anyone who is willing to tell the truth. The real truth however is, that the majority of the right wing-nut media outlets (TV, radio, internet, print) are owned by big corporations [Koch Whores] who try to protect the radical conservative archaic ideology. From big news outlets to small time blogs, there are many places that you want to avoid when trying to get good news and information.
The Republican inquisition over the attacks against Americans in Benghazi has never really gone away, but it appears as though in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing and the House Oversight Committee’s Benghazi hearings this week there’s renewed psycho-histrionics over Benghazi.
Back in October as a bit of a refresher — especially since it appears as if no one, including and especially the traditional press, intends to ask any of these obnoxious, opportunistic liars about why they’re so obsessed by this one attack yet they entirely ignored the dozen-plus consulate/embassy attacks that occurred when George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were allegedly “keeping us safe.”
The Benghazi attacks (the consulate and the CIA compound) are absolutely not unprecedented even though they’re being treated that way by Republicans who are deliberately ignoring anything that happened prior to Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009:
January 22, 2002. Calcutta, India. Gunmen associated with Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami attack the U.S. Consulate. Five people are killed.
June 14, 2002. Karachi, Pakistan. Suicide bomber connected with al-Qaida attacks the U.S. Consulate, killing 12 and injuring 51.
October 12, 2002. Denpasar, Indonesia. U.S. diplomatic offices bombed as part of a string of “Bali Bombings.” No fatalities.
February 28, 2003. Islamabad, Pakistan. Several gunmen fire upon the U.S. Embassy. Two people are killed.
May 12, 2003. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Armed al-Qaida terrorists storm the diplomatic compound killing 36 people including nine Americans. The assailants committed suicide by detonating a truck bomb.
July 30, 2004. Tashkent, Uzbekistan. A suicide bomber from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan attacks the U.S. Embassy, killing two people.
December 6, 2004. Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Al-Qaida terrorists storm the U.S. Consulate and occupy the perimeter wall. Nine people are killed.
March 2, 2006. Karachi, Pakistan again. Suicide bomber attacks the U.S. Consulate killing four people, including U.S. diplomat David Foy who was directly targeted by the attackers. (I wonder if Lindsey Graham or Fox News would even recognize the name “David Foy.” This is the third Karachi terrorist attack in four years on what’s considered American soil.)
September 12, 2006. Damascus, Syria. Four armed gunmen shouting “Allahu akbar” storm the U.S. Embassy using grenades, automatic weapons, a car bomb and a truck bomb. Four people are killed, 13 are wounded.
January 12, 2007. Athens, Greece. Members of a Greek terrorist group called the Revolutionary Struggle fire a rocket-propelled grenade at the U.S. Embassy. No fatalities.
March 18, 2008. Sana’a, Yemen. Members of the al-Qaida-linked Islamic Jihad of Yemen fire a mortar at the U.S. Embassy. The shot misses the embassy, but hits nearby school killing two.
July 9, 2008. Istanbul, Turkey. Four armed terrorists attack the U.S. Consulate. Six people are killed.
September 17, 2008. Sana’a, Yemen. Terrorists dressed as military officials attack the U.S. Embassy with an arsenal of weapons including RPGs and detonate two car bombs. Sixteen people are killed, including an American student and her husband (they had been married for three weeks when the attack occurred). This is the second attack on this embassy in seven months.
A few observations about this timeline. This initial list was quoted from an article on the Daily Kos which actually contained several errors and only 11 attacks (the above timeline contains all 13 attacks). Also, the list above doesn't include the numerous and fatal attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad during the Iraq war — a war that was vocally supported by Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Fox News Channel.
Speaking of Graham, a search was done on each attack along with the name “Lindsey Graham” in the hopes of discovering that Graham had perhaps commented about the attacks or raised some questions about why the administration didn't prevent the attacks or respond accordingly to prevent additional embassy attacks. No results. Of course. Now, this could mean the search wasn't exhaustive enough. But one thing’s for sure: neither Graham nor any of his cohorts launched a crusade against the Bush administration and the State Department in any of those cases — no one did, including the congressional Democrats, by the way.
This leads us to the ultimate point here. Not only have numerous sources previously debunked the Benghazi information being peddled by the Republicans and Fox News (for example, contrary to what the Republicans are saying, yes, reinforcements did in fact arrive before the attack on the CIA compound), but none of these people raised a single word of protest when, for example, American embassies in Yemen and Pakistan were attacked numerous times. Why didn't the Bush administration do something to secure the compounds after the first attacks? Why didn't he provide additional security?
Nearly every accusation being issued about Benghazi could have been raised about the Bush era attacks, and yet these self-proclaimed truth-seekers refused to, in their words, undermine the commander-in-chief while troops were in harm’s way (a line they repeated over and over again during those years).
So we’re only left to conclude the obvious. The investigations and accusations and conspiracy theories are entirely motivated by politics and a strategy to escalate this to an impeachment trial. In doing so, the Republicans have the opportunity not only to crush the president’s second term, but also to sabotage the potential for a Hillary Clinton presidency.
Even if they never arrive at that goal, they have in their possession a cudgel formed of horseshit — a means of flogging the current administration with the singularly effective Republican marketing/noise machine, including the conservative entertainment complex. Very seldom does this machine fail to revise history and distort the truth. Ultimately, they don’t even need a full-blown impeachment proceeding when they have a population of way too many truthers and automatons who take all of these lies at face value — not to mention dubiously sourced chunks of “truth” proffered by radio and cable news conspiracy theorists who, if nothing else, are masters at telling angry conservatives precisely what they want to hear: that the probably-Muslim president is weak on terrorism. And so they’ll keep repeating “Benghazi-Gate, Benghazi-Gate, Benghazi-Gate!” without any regard for history or reality. Like always.
Jon Stewart took on the big Congressional hearing on Benghazi, and specifically on how it’s become the latest way Faux News has gone all-out in covering a potential Obama administration scandal while wondering where the rest of the media is. But Stewart pointed out that no one else is quite on board because everyone’s basing their outrage on speculation, and, frankly, “the denizens of Bullshit Mountain have cried wolf before.”
Stewart pointed out how Faux News has repeatedly highlighted how each different testimony in the past few months would be the big game-changer on Benghazi, and this one would be no different. He pointed out that there was already an accountability report released, and that the GOP seems to be more outraged about this attack than any attack on Americans abroad during the Bush administration.
Stewart also reminded viewers that pretty much every potential Obama administration scandal has been described as worse than Watergate, with one Teapublican congressman saying Benghazi is worse than Watergate plus Iran Contra times ten. But Stewart had to point out that the reason no one else is as outraged as Fox is that while they’re “at DefCon ‘this definitely happened,’” no one actually knows what happened, and so everyone’s just speculating. Stewart mocked all the speculation, saying “if dingleberries were diamonds, I could open a Kay Jewelers in my pants.”
Stewart said that Faux News has a “history of hysteria,” and they may be proven right when more facts come out, “but the denizens of Bullshit Mountain have cried wolf before.”
That dipshit Darrell will next be on HLN to connect both the Jodi Arias case and the Cleveland kidnappings to President Obama and Hilary Clinton.
Faux News is pissed off because both the Arias case and the kidnappings are taking away their thunder.
We at NFTOS are guessing the GOP wing nuts didn't get what they where looking for out of this hearing.
Republicans insist Benghazi is the worst cover-up since whatever the last thing was that was worse than Watergate.
Based on all the people on Fox attacking Hillary right now, she must be doing very well in the polls.
We did a story yesterday about Benghazi, and the important fact to take from that story is that under G.W. Bush ten embassies where attacked and 60 Americans died. Where was the American Taliban then?
Republicans are touting today’s House Oversight Committee hearing as a potential final nail in the coffin of the Obama administration’s continuing cover-up of what really happened the night a diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya was attacked last September. In truth, the event is sure to be a rehash of previously debunked finger-pointing and yet another round of political posturing surrounding the tragic death of four Americans.
The GOP’s star witness at today’s hearings is the former Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya, Gregory Hicks, who the right-wing has labeled the main Benghazi “whistle-blower.” Hicks is expected to give testimony before the paneldetailing what he believes could have done above and beyond the efforts the administration expended the night of the attack, actions he claims could have saved lives:
“If we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split,” Hicks told House Republican investigators.
Hicks is also expected to explain to the panel that a team of special operations forces was told not to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi prior to the second wave of the attack. According to an excerpt of Hick’s testimony “[Col. Gibson] got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, ‘you can’t go now, you don’t have the authority to go now.’ And so they missed the flight … They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.”
More Embassy Attacks happened under this guy than any other and not one GOP inquiry.
Republicans are latching onto Hicks’ testimony about the lack of military response during the attack as evidence of the administration’s negligence in protecting diplomats overseas and a resulting cover-up to avoid scrutiny. “We were certainly misled at every step of the way,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), one of the loudest voices on Benghazi, said on Monday to a surprisingly skeptical panel on Fox News.
The military has repeatedly said, however, that there were simply no air assets close enough to Benghazi that would have arrived in time to make a difference. Hicks himself admitted during his pre-hearing testimony that the nearest fighter jets were at Aviano Air Base in southern Italy, hours away from Libya with no tanker assets available for refueling purposes.
And while Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) during the Senate’s last hearing on the military’s response to Benghazi scolded the Pentagon for not having assets available at the Souda Bay naval base in Crete, Greece, the fact remains that even the hour and a half from the island to Benghazi would have been too late to save Ambassador J. Christopher Stephens and communications specialist Sean Smith. Both died during the first wave of the attack, less than an hour after the Pentagon was first notified.
Likewise, despite what Fox News reports have said, U.S. forces based in Europe as part of U.S. Africa Command would not have arrived until after the second wave of attacks, which took place at the CIA annex in Benghazi hours after the first, had finished.
“The United States military, as I’ve said, is not and frankly should not be a 911 service, arriving on the scene within minutes to every possible contingency around the world,” then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told the Senate Armed Services committee in February. That hasn’t stopped conservatives from railing against the lack of cavalry riding into Benghazi at the last minute, which in turn ignores the valiant efforts from the CIA’s response team that saved lives the night of the attack.
Much of what’s to be discussed today was already covered in the State Department’s Accountability Review Board report, which was overseen by former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Michael Mullen and former Ambassador Thomas Pickering. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from trying to tear down the Board’s findings. Instead, the House GOP released its own report with a focus on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, claiming that their findings contradicted her testimony that she was unaware of requests for additional security in Libya.
Attacking Clinton seems to be theraison d’être of today’s hearings, despite lacking the authority order Defense Department assets into the field. “They’re no longer going after the White House, perhaps because the president’s not running for reelection, and they’re going after the former secretary of state, perhaps because she will be,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, explained. And, much like the rest of today’s hearing, going after Clinton in relation to Benghazi is in itself nothing new.
Let's face it readers, this is the smoking gun that wasn't, this is more about discrediting the next President of the United States, AKA Hilary Clinton.
The facts are, more embassy attacks occurred under G. W. Bush than any other President, and in the same breath - during these attacks not one GOPer stood up and bitched, nor did they hold a "House oversight committee hearing".
Instead of wasting time with this hearing, why are these same tea baggers not holding hearings on sequestration, jobs, global warming, housing, wall street?
When NRA asshat Wayne LaPierre is the voice of reasoning in a convention, you know that the attendees are some pretty loony characters. Yes, unless you have been living under a rock, the Guns Over People [Formally the GOP] met in Texas for their yearly gun hugging get together fest.
Understanding this freak show for what it was, Jon Stewart last night eviscerated the National Republican Association, [Formally known as the NRA].
Stewart opened Monday night’s edition of The Daily Show by looking back at the weekend’s NRA convention and its not-so-singular focus on guns. With Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin and others in attendance, Stewart realized, “this is the same lineup, with the same laundry list of conservative grievances, that we saw at CPAC a month and a half ago.”
Depending on which American Taliban'er was speaking at the convention - the degrees of tyranny against the United States varied.
Based on Beck’s warnings against tyranny, the “government is the bad guy.” But based on LaPierre’s praise of the Boston police, “government is the good guy.” By the end of the segment, Stewart said he believes we all want the same thing: for “bad guys not to have guns.” While he and other Democrats want background checks, it appears some on the right want to “wait for a bad guy to draw and then draw faster.”
But if that’s the case, he said, “stop pretending that background checks are the last barrier standing between a free America and Obama-sponsored government mom rape.”
The full throated lunacy of the NRA has been abound since the Newtown massacre, and America’s mighty proponent of deadly weaponry here, there and everywhere, including in bars and kindergartens, announced that they are prepared to offer meaningful contributions.
Don’t get your hopes up.
The only “meaningful contributions” the NRA has ever made to public safety have been malignant ones — most notably, the millions of dollars by which the organization buys influence in the House, Senate and state capitals.
What can be learned or taken away from this convention you ask? We learned that the NRA and the Guns Over People freaks need to be "Well Regulated"!
The National Republican Association, once known as the National Rifle Association, is telling gun owners should store a gun in their kids’ room, according to a ‘Home Defense Concepts’ seminar offered at the National Rifle Association’s Annual Meeting, comments that came just days after the fatal shooting of a two-year-old at the hands of her five-year-old brother.
The course was taught by Rob Pincus, who owns the popular firearm instruction company I.C.E. Training. Pincus argued that, in the event of a home invasion, parents would instinctually run to their children’s room anyway, they might as well have a gun stored there to kill two birds with one stone:
PINCUS: How about putting a quick-access safe in your kids’ room? Good idea or bad idea? We have an emotional push-back to that. Here’s my position on this. If you’re worried that your kid is going to try to break into the safe that is in their bedroom with a gun in it, you have bigger problems than home defense. [Laughter] If you think that the kid who’s going to try to break into the safe because it’s in their room isn't sneaking into your room to try to break into stuff, you’re naive and you have bigger problems than this. So let’s settle that issue and think about it. In the middle of the night, if I’m in the bathroom or getting a glass of water or in the bedroom or watching TV in the living room, if that alarm goes off and the glass breaks and the dog starts barking, what’s the instinct that most people are going to have, in regards to, “am I going to run across the house to get the gun, or am I going to run over here to help the screaming kid?” And if I’m going to go to the kid anyway, and I have an extra gun and an extra safe, why not put it in their closet?
Defensive gun use against home invasions are extremely rare. Many of the statistics commonly cited by the NRA and its allies are based on mathematically impossible calculations, and the best available evidence suggests that almost all criminals hit in gunfire were shot by other criminals.
However, children are wounded and killed by accidental gunshots with horrifying frequency. Roughly 900 kids were killed in gun suicides or accidents in 2010. A Center for Disease Control study of 30,000 incidents of children killed by accidental firearm dischargefound kids 0-4 were 17 times more likely to be killed in a gun accident in the states with the four highest levels of gun ownership than those with the four lowest (the figure was 13 times for kids aged 5-14).
Related, a RAND Institute study found that only 39 percent of parents who own guns kept their guns “locked, unloaded, and separate from ammunition.”
Pincus teaches an intruder defense course in schools around the country.
Rob Pincus and The National Republican Association you are - and shall always be, the worsts person in the world.
SNL takes another turn giving the dolts at Fox & Friends the respect they deserve!
This is the type of skit, I could watch over and over again never tiring of it - for if you can't make fun of these idiots, then what else do we have?
SNL
There's enough material on Fox every day that Saturday Night Live could make an entire hour out of all of their programming and not just mocking Fox & Friends. For that matter, if anyone wanted to devote an entire network to mocking them -- they would never run out of material as well. There are so many things wrong with the crap that network pumps out on a daily basis that the list is endless.
NFTOS Staff Writer Steve "Damn Nazi Liberal" Chevapravatdumrong
On Thursday night’s MSNBC's All In, host Chris Hayes tackled the difficult story of Caroline Sparks, the Kentucky two year-old who was accidentally shot and killed by her five year-old brother on Tuesday. It’s a story that stands alone in a clearing amid the forest of the issues we think about when it comes to guns; there’s no background check, or waiting period, or assault weapons ban that could have prevented it. There’s no bad guy. Standing before a hunting graphic emblazoned with the words “The Sickness,” an uncharacteristically fired-up Hayes delivered a commentary that challenged the foundational assumptions we make about gun culture when we talk about firearms regulation.
Hayes began the segment by describing the current state of play in the fight for gun reform, and the likely celebratory goings-on at the annual NRA convention in Houston this week. He urged attendees of that conference to “spend time tonight, tomorrow and all through this conference, thinking about and talking about Caroline Sparks, a 2-year-old Kentucky toddler accidentally shot to death this week by her 5-year-old brother. Not with a gun the 5-year-old found laying around somewhere, with his own gun.”
As it turns out, 5 year-old Kristian Sparks shot and killed his sister with something called a Crickett rifle, a gun manufactured by Keystone Sporting Arms, LLC, and marketed to young children.
Most of us have/had young daughters, and many of us live in the city, where gun violence has run amuck. Before you get angry with us liberals for challenging this sacred sick gun culture, keep in mind that our right to not be shot by you gun huggers, way out weighs your right to gun hug.
YOUNG TURKS
That doesn't mean no one should own a gun, but it is clear that gun ownership is going terribly wrong for far too many people, and so, just as gun huggers resent liberals like myself and Chris Hayes, maybe they could look around at what’s happening, and entertain the possibility that they are not infallible, and even if they were, shit still happens. Most caring Americans don’t want anyone to die from gun violence - especially not people who didn't sign up for the risks of gun ownership.
As the Boston area was gripped by the manhunt that followed the Marathon bombings late last week, the opinion pages of the Concord Monitor just up the road in New Hampshire were consumed with another subject: Senator Kelly Ayotte’s vote against legislation to expand background checks for gun purchases. The paper’s lead editorial Sunday decried Ayotte’s rationale for opposing the bill as “utter nonsense” and an “abomination.” The letters to the editor section is riddled with anti-Ayotte broadsides, the tenor of which are conveyed by their headlines: “Ayotte’s vote should propel her out of office.” “Beyond disappointed.” “Ayotte did not represent her New Hampshire constituents.” “Enabler of murderers.” “Ayotte’s ‘courage.’” “Craven pandering.” “Reckless vote.” “Illogical vote.”
Jon Stewart took offense to the crossing of the "red line" issue of Syria - in its potential usage of chemical weapons against its own people. Stewart focused mostly on the Republican response to this unacceptable red line crossing, calling out their militaristic attitude for not having learned anything from Iraq. Stewart highlighted a few similarities between the current situation with Syria and the one almost ten years ago from Iraq, and found it odd that Republicans haven’t realized they might want to exercise more caution this time around.
Stewart mocked the U.S.-imposed red line, saying “You can come up to the line… [but] you cross that line, mister, you are grounded!” But now that the line has been crossed, what’s the next step? Stewart noticed a lack of clarity from the White House on exactly what happened, using a Dr. Seuss poem to put things into perspective.
However, what Stewart found more interesting was how the GOP has been criticizing Obama for not getting more involved in Syria, and tore into Lindsey Graham for suggesting giving the right weapons to the right people, by pointing out that could be solved with background checks. But Republicans like Graham and John McCain don’t want boots on the ground, and Stewart couldn’t help but wonder how the hell that’s supposed to happen if the U.S. is going to arm the rebels and then consequently asking for those arms back. When Graham suggested international involvement, Stewart quipped that we may as well just send in Latvian troops.
But any action is going to run into roadblocks at the U.N., and Stewart found it awkward that any potential intervention in Syria relies on “convincing Vladimir Putin that it’s bad to poison people.” Stewart called out GOP senators and George W. Bush for not learning any lessons from Iraq, suggesting “that little misadventure made us a little more cautious” about how we handle red lines.
Over the last several days, the Syrian crisis has exploded back into the news. As the U.S. debates how to respond to the now two-year long struggle, here’s the what you need to know:
How this all began
The current crisis in Syria began in 2011, with civilian protests launched during a wave of pro-democracy sentiment known as the Arab Spring. Those protests were met with harsh repression from the Syrian government under the leadership of President Bashar al-Assad. Assad’s regime continued to crackdown on protesters, eventually resorting to massive human rights abuses including torture, disappearances, extrajudicial executions and detention of medical patients. In response, civilians began to take up arms against the Syrian government, transforming a peaceful movement to increase democratic freedoms into an all-out civil war. Since the beginning of the conflict, more than 70,000 Syrians have died.
Who’s doing the fighting
Over the past two years, the make-up of the Syrian opposition has shifted considerably. In the beginning, the opposition was composed mostly of civil society leaders and Syrian citizens with a small armed group taking shape across the border in Turkey. Since then, the rebels have spawned an entire network of loosely affiliated groups fighting against the Assad regime — and each other at times. Instead of hiding across the border, rebels now openly control a large swath of territory in the north and west of the country as the Syrian government continues to push back.
While many of the rebel groups are secular, recent months have shown aninflux of foreign fighters into the country, seeking to impose a harsh version of Islam upon Syria once the Assad regime falls. The U.S. has labeled one such group — Jabhat al-Nusra — a terrorist group for its close ties to Al Qaeda. These murky connections between the rebels and jihadis have proved difficult for Western governments seeking to effect the situation on the ground.
The effect on the Syrian people and the region
As time wore on in the conflict, the Syrian government unleashed more and greater violence was against civilians, including the use of armored vehicles, fixed-wing aircraft and mortars against whole neighborhoods. Making matters worse, rebels arenow accusedof taking part in atrocities as well.
This has all led to a massive humanitarian crisis in Syria and the surrounding region. As of March,more than one million Syrians have fled into the neighboring countries of Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, placing a massive strain on those states’ governments. According to the United Nations, over 4.25 million Syrians are now internally displaced within the country.
Did Syria use chemical weapons?
Whether or not the Syrian government utilized chemical weapons against its people is the primary reason Syria has exploded back into the news. Last week, the United States announced that it has evidence that chemical weapons were used in Syria, namely sarin. That revelation comes with several caveats, however: the chain of custody of the evidence the U.S. hasisn’t clear, nor is exactly how the samples obtained were exposed to the chemical. The U.S. government has also not declared definitively whether or not it was the Assad regime that used sarin, an act that would cross a “red-line” the administration set forth as an action that would spur greater intervention.
The United States’ response
The Obama administration has declared several times that the Assad regime’s days are numbered and that the Syrian president must go. So far, however, the United States has stuck with its policy of providing humanitarian aid — more than $385 million worth to date — to Syria’s civilians and providing “non-lethal aid” to the opposition. That includes arecent decisionto provide items such as night-vision goggles and bullet-proof vests to the rebels. The United States is also heavily involved in coordinating the flow of weapons to Syria from Gulf states while not providing such arms itself.
The question that remains is whether a greater U.S. intervention is necessary, and if so in what form. The range of possible responses under consideration range from directly providing arms to the Syrian opposition to establishing a No-Fly Zone in Syria to protect civilians and give the rebels cover to operate. The debate does not evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, with members on both sides advocating for swift action in Syria and members of both parties urging caution in proceeding forward. Even hawks like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), however, are coming out against the idea of American boots being on the ground in Syria.
The current policy towards Syria does not appear to be in the U.S.’ best interests, however. “It is time for a change in policy,” CAP experts said in a report on the situation in Syria released in February. “The United States needs to increase its assistance to the Syrian opposition with the goal of supporting an alternative opposition government that is better organized than at present.” Several CAP experts also last week released a series of recommended courses of action for the U.S. to lead the way in responding to the Assad regime’s possible use of chemical weapons. Such actions include coordinating with NATO and regional allies to provide a major humanitarian aid push for Syrian refugees and calling an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to put the onus on Russia to stand by the Syrian regime publicly in the aftermath of a likely chemical weapons attack.
Looking back, O’Connor said, she isn’t sure the high court should have taken [Bush v. Gore].
“It took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue,” O’Connor said during a talk Friday with the Tribune editorial board. “Maybe the court should have said, ‘We’re not going to take it, goodbye.’”
The case, she said, “stirred up the public” and “gave the court a less-than-perfect reputation.”
“Obviously the court did reach a decision and thought it had to reach a decision,” she said. “It turned out the election authorities in Florida hadn’t done a real good job there and kind of messed it up. And probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day.“
If nothing else, Bush v. Gore demonstrates how justices who are determined to reach a certain result are capable of bending both the law and their own prior jurisprudence in order to achieve it. In Bush, the five conservative justices held, in the words of Harvard’s Larry Tribe, that “equal protection of the laws required giving no protection of the laws to the thousands of still uncounted ballots.”
The Court’s decision to hand the presidency to Bush stunned many legal observers, some of whom were O’Connor’s fellow justices. Retired Justice John Paul Stevens once recounted a story where he ran into fellow Justice Stephen Breyer at a party while a relatively early phase of the case was pending before the Court. According to Stevens, “we agreed that the application was frivolous.”
Indeed, Bush’s own lawyers were skeptical of the legal theory that ultimately made up the basis of the Court’s decision in Bush. As Ben Ginsberg, a top lawyer on Bush’s presidential campaign, explained in 2006, “just like really with the Voting Rights Act, Republicans have some fundamental philosophical difficulties with the whole notion of Equal Protection.”
And, yet, O’Connor and four of her fellow Republicans joined together to embrace a particularly aggressive reading of Equal Protection — at least so long as it could put George W. Bush in the White House.
Jon Stewart seamlessly blasted Fox News’ sudden turnaround against the U.S. Constitution in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing. The host went right down the nation’s Supreme Law, and picked out several rights that the constitution-obsessed Fox wants revoked for bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Stewart started with the debate over reading the suspect his Miranda rights and questioned Fox hosts who didn’t seem to pay attention in government class.
Is there any constitutional right that Faux doesn’t want to strike in the wake of Boston? That’s what Stewart wondered as he juxtaposed the 3,400 terrorism deaths in this country over the past 30 years with the nearly million gun deaths before playing a long montage of Faux personalities worshiping the right to bear arms.
Yes, it turns out there’s only one amendment in our constitution’s pantheon that is exempt from statistical analysis or emotional freak-out-itude, and it is the second. So god help us if the Muslims ever decide to form a well regulated militia.
In a Faux News world, a bombing means the end of our rights.
Just amazing, since 2010 we have had 41,515,549 million visitors to NFTOS.
Now three years into this, I am not sure how much longer we do this.
I started NFTOS because I was seeing two things that pissed me off greatly, one was a bunch of pasty white racist attacking my President - two, the shift from the GOP, from true conservatism to the now radical American Taliban. Our intent is/was to give factual information to the big bang stories of the moment.
I have heard from many of these 41.5 million viewers, some assholes, most great caring Americans. [Guess who the assholes where?]
While I am on the fence whether to continue with NFTOS, re-align it, or hand it down to the next fired up progressive, I can assure my readers that I have enjoyed the experience immensely! I have learned many things, things about my country, people who call themselves "patriots", and those whom claim "Christianity"! The latter two I find many who talk the talk, but those whom shall never walk the walk!
To all our loyal readers, and to the drive by readers, we thank you very much for making our site a part of your reading day!
The five living presidents will meet in Texas on Thursday to dedicate the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. And while Bush and his aides are using the occasion to soften the 43 president’s image and solidify his legacy, a recounting of Bush-era policies — from his deregulation of Wall Street to the invasion of Iraq — greatly undermine the new rosy narrative of the Bush years:
Authorized the use of torture:
Though the US Code bans torture, Bush personally issueda memorandum six days after the September 11th attacks instructing the CIA that it could use “enhanced interrogation techniques” against suspected terrorists. The methods included waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and “stress positions.” A recently-released bipartisan committee concluded it was “indisputable” that these techniques constituted torture, and that the highest authorities in the country bore responsibility for the creation of a torture programs at Guantanamo Bay and CIA “black sites” around the world.
Politicized climate science:
Bush’s“do-nothing” approach to climate change prevented the U.S. from pursuing meaningful action. Though he claimed that global warming was a serious problem that was either a natural phenomenon or caused by humans, the administration routinely edited scientific reports to downplay the threat of climate change, censored CDC testimony that climate change was a public health threat, and promoted climate denying studies financed by Exxon Mobil. At the end of the Bush presidency, a top intelligence adviser warned the incoming president that climate change was a massive destabilizing national security threat that would lead to “Dust Bowl” conditions in the Southwest.
MADDOW BUSH LIBRARY
Ignored Afghanistan to launch a war in Iraq:
Rather than consolidating gains after the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Bush and his neoconservative allies pushed for removing Saddam Hussein from power, kicking off a war that led to one mistake after another. Ten years later, the war is estimated to have costt up to $6 trillion and resulted in the death of more than100,000 Iraqis, 4,000 Americans and another 31,000 wounded. Meanwhile, Afghanistan saw a resurgence of the Taliban after Bush shifted resources to Iraq.
Botched the response to Hurricane Katrina:
Bush appointed Michael Brown — a man whose only real qualifications were political connections and a sting at the International Arabian Horse Association — to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 2003 and he preceded to undo everything the Clinton Administration had done to make FEMA functional, botching the response to 2004′s Hurricane Frances so badly as toprompt calls for his firing. But Bush kept Brown on board and, as a detailed timeline of the response to Hurricane Katrina demonstrates, neither man took the storm seriously until it was too late. Bush, who famously said “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job” midway through the crisis, thus presided over the most deaths due to a single natural disaster in the United States since 1900.
At the turn of the century there was perhaps no greater hope for finding cures to illnesses ranging from Alzheimer’s to diabetes than ongoing stem cell research. But months after taking office, Bush eliminated all federal funding for any new research involving stem cells, citing a religious objection to the use of embryos — even though the embryos in question were byproducts from couples undergoing in vitro fertilization and would have been destroyed by IVF clinics regardless. Twicemore during his presidency, Bush vetoed legislation that would have restored funding.
Required Muslim men to register with the government:
Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Bush’s Attorney General, John Ashcroft, instituted an anti-terrorism program to register all male immigrants between 18 and 40 years old from 20 Arab and South Asian countries. Thousands of innocent men came forward to register, only to be rounded up for minor visa violations. Roughly 1,000 men and boys in the process of applying for permanent residence were arrested and confined in standing-room-only centers, enduring invasive strip searches and beatings by guards. Many were deported, while others were held for months after their immigration cases were resolved, without a shred of evidence they had any links to terrorism.
On Bush’s first day in office he reinstated a rule that prevented any non-profit doing work overseas from using any of their own, private money to fund family planning services. This so-called “Global Gag Rule” posed a serious threat to international maternal health, but it also cut off funding for HIV/AIDS initiatives, child health programs, and water and sanitation efforts.
Supported anti-gay discrimination:
In 2004, President Bush endorsed the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA), which would have banned same-sex couples from marrying in the U.S. Constitution. The Massachusetts Supreme Court had just ruled in favor of marriage equality, and Bush hoped to block the ruling from taking effect because “a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization.” Though the FMA failed numerous times in Congress during Bush’s tenure, he exploited the issue of same-sex marriage toturn out conservative voters for the 2004 election. That year, 11 states added constitutional amendments outlawing same-sex marriage.
Further deregulated Wall Street:
Under Bush, federal agencies eliminated regulations on predatory lending, capital requirements, and other Wall Street practices, allowing banks to engage in riskier and more destructive practices that contributed to the financial crisis that started on his watch. Bush’s Treasury Department also pushed for even further deregulation that would have given Wall Street more oversight over its own practices even after the housing collapse had begun.
Widened income inequality:
The per-person benefits of Bush’s tax cuts accrued to the top one percent of Americans, asthe rate for capital gains dropped to 15 percent. The CBO found that federal income taxes dropped far more as a percentage of the one percent’s income than for any other group after 2000.
Undermined worker protections:
Under Bush, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, whose mission is to protect safe working conditions, issued 86 percent fewer rules or regulations and pulled 22 items from its agenda of proposed safety and health rules. The office’s funding and staff were also consistently reduced. Meanwhile, funding for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency charged with helping workers who claim discrimination against their employers, was similarly low and staffing fell even as the number of complaints increased,leading to a rising backlog of cases.
Ideological court appointments:
Bush filled the federal bench with ideologues, including two lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court. These conservatives believe that corporations should be able to buy and sell elections, ruled against equal pay for equal work, and have sought toundermine a woman’s right to choose.
Presided over a dysfunctional executive branch:
A 2008analysisby the Center for Public Integrity documented more than 125 executive branch failures over Bush’s two terms. These included government breakdowns on “education, energy, the environment, justice and security, the military and veterans affairs, health care, transportation, financial management, consumer and worker safety,” and others. “I think we’ll look back on this period as one of the most destructive periods in American public life . . . both in terms of policy and process,” Thomas E. Mann, senior fellow at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution observed, noting “genuine distortion in the constitutional system, an exaggerated sense of presidential power and prerogative and acquiescence by a Republican Congress in the face of the first unified Republican government since Dwight Eisenhower.”
Barbara Bush said yesterday that she thinks there have been enough Bush's in the White House, while I couldn't agree more, why didn't she say this 2000?
Rachel Maddow opened her show last night taking on the conspiracy theories coming out of the woodwork to claim the Boston Marathon bombing was an inside job by the U.S. government designed to strip Americans of their liberties. Ordinarily fringe conspiracists wouldn't be worth giving credence to, but Maddow noticed how the conspiracies and those pushing the conspiracies are being embraced by elements of conservative media, including one of the most influential sites on the internet. Maddow argued that influential conservative media now are just abandoning all pretense and “full-on embracing the conspiracy theorists.”
MADDOW
Maddow brought up the false flag, government destruction theories being pushed by InfoWars and its star figure, Alex Jones. You remember Alex Jones, the crazy guy who went ballistic on Piers Morgan? Well, he’s been out in full force again, but this time it’s coupled with an endorsement by none other than Matt Drudge.
Let it be clear readers, the asshat named Drudge; as Maddow says, "Drudge isn't just some fringe guy, he’s in charge of perhaps the most influential conservative website on the internet."
With regards to Alex Jones, he is clearly off his rocker, having written about this douche bag numerous times, he is the guy who bashes his country in one breath and in the next is the first when in a situation - to have his testicle tucked under his posterior hiding behind the government he despise so much. [See Maddow's clip of Jones touting a bizarre NASA conspiracy involving multitudes of dead astronauts.]
But the madness is not just limited to Jones, and Maddow showed off the ramblings of one teapublican New Hampshire state representative who posted a link to Jones’ conspiracy on Glenn Beck‘s Facebook page. This is an elected official who thinks it’s worth asking if the government bombed Boston.
Glenn Beckistan is barely a step up from Alex Jones, and Faux News - just a tick mark above Beckistan, all of their fans are the same sort of preppers and doomers - the unlettered dimwits that we all have come to know and love and see on Faux News on a daily basis.
If this wasn't enough, four teapublican congressmen wrote a letter to Homeland Security to request they investigate what basically amounts to another conspiracy theory. The American Taliban [GOP] has always coddled this ideal, but now it’s slowly seeping into more mainstream outlets. The American Taliban embraces conspiracy theories like a crack head does crack.
Faux News is no angel in this process, and while I wish I could say they have taken the right-wing nut jobs to a new low - but we need to realize that nothing is beneath these unlettered sociopaths, nor is there anything beyond their pale.
Matt Drudge, Alex Jones, Glenn Beck and Fox News, you are today's asshats of the day.
Tenn. State Senator's [Stacey Campfield] poor judgement in humor
Tennessee State Sen. Stacey Campfield (R) took to his personal blog Sunday to mock U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), suggesting that she and other reformers should now be focusing on a ban on pressure cookers. And when criticized for his insensitivity to the Boston Marathon victims, Campfield doubled-down on the claims, crying “double standard.”
Campfield’s original post featured a photo of a pressure cooker, similar to that used by the Boston Marathon bombers, and the title “assault pressure cooker.” Campfield captioned the post, “Here comes Feinstein again.”
In a Monday follow-up, titled “Inappropriate? Me? Never.” Campfield wrote:
Really? If my post was inappropriate talking about “crock pot control” then where is the outrage from the left when they push for gun control after the Sandy Hook shooting? Im sorry if I exposed your double standard…. Well, not really.
Campfield has a long history of questionable comments and actions. Earlier this month, he proposed cutting welfare benefits for kids with poor grades and attacked an eight-year-old critic as a “prop.” Last January, he falsely claimed that HIV/AIDS came from the LGBT community, citing a 1988 advice column from a Christian apologetic website. He also authored Tennessee’s odious “Don’t Say Gay” bill, compared homosexuality to “shooting heroin, ”threatened to reduce funding for the University of Tennessee over their sex education week programming, and was a plaintiff in a 2009 “birther” lawsuitdemanding President Obama’s birth certificate.
Tennessee State Sen. Stacey Campfield, American Taliban douche bag extraordinaire, you are today's worst person in the world!
The death toll and injury count in the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion that took place last Wednesday continues to rise, with 35-40 dead and 60 still unaccounted for. Recovering from the disaster will likely take a lot of time and resources, and President Obama has already pledged federal assistance through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other agencies.
Some Texas Congressmen have also requested aid to help the victims and the town rebuild. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said he is “working to ensure that all available resources are marshaled to deal with the horrific loss of life and suffering that we've seen.” Rep. Bill Flores (R-TX) has said that he, plus Senators Cruz and John Cornyn (R-TX), are working with Congressional leaders to extend necessary assistance. Cornyn has also said there isfunding under his subcommittee for chemical site security standards and infrastructure protection.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz lambasted the Sandy Aid package, voting against the measure in January. Cruzissued a statementexplaining that he voted against the aid because it included a number of spending measures that were not related to disaster relief, including “Smithsonian repairs, upgrades to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration airplanes, and more funding for Head Start.”
After Flores voted against the Sandy aid package, he justified his vote by saying the package was “too large” and did “more than meet the immediate needs of Sandy victims.”
On top of seeking funding for West, Texas, John Cornyn has also requested drought relief and disaster aid for wildfires in the past.
Funding would have also been useful in preventing the blast in the first place. The plant has been victim of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) under-funding as it hadn't been inspected since 1985. Yet Flores voted for the 2011 House Republican budget, which would have reduced OSHA by $99 million, and alsovoted to pass the Budget Control Act, which has also decreased funding for OSHA’s inspections.
