WHO KNEW? THE MORE GUNS, THE MORE MURDERS

The largest study of gun violence in the United States, released Thursday afternoon, confirms a point that should be obvious to any human with at least one brain cell: widespread American gun ownership is fueling America’s gun violence epidemic.

The study, by Professor Michael Siegel at Boston University and two coauthors, has been peer-reviewed and is forthcoming in the American Journal of Public Health. Siegel and his colleagues compiled data on firearm homicides from all 50 states from 1981-2010, the longest stretch of time ever studied in this fashion, and set about seeing whether they could find any relationship between changes in gun ownership and murder using guns over time.

Since we know that violent crime rates overall declined during that period of time, the authors used something called “fixed effect regression” to account for any national trend other than changes in gun ownership. They also employed the largest-ever number of statistical controls for other variables in this kind of gun study: “age, gender, race/ethnicity, urbanization, poverty, unemployment, income, education, income inequality, divorce rate, alcohol use, violent crime rate, nonviolent crime rate, hate crime rate, number of hunting licenses, age-adjusted non-firearm homicide rate, incarceration rate, and suicide rate” were all accounted for.

No good data on national rates of gun ownership exist, so the authors used the percentage of suicides that involve a firearm (FS/S) as a proxy. The theory, backed up by a wealth of data, is that the more guns there are any in any one place, the higher the percentage of people who commit suicide with guns as opposed to other mechanisms will be.

With all this preliminary work in hand, the authors ran a series of regressions to see what effect the overall national decline in firearm ownership from 1981 to 2010 had on gun homicides. The result was staggering: “for each 1 percentage point increase in proportion of household gun ownership,” Siegel et al. found, “firearm homicide rate increased by 0.9″ percent. A one standard deviation change in firearm ownership shifted gun murders by a staggering 12.9 percent.

To put this in perspective, take the state of Mississippi. “All other factors being equal,” the authors write, “our model would predict that if the FS/S in Mississippi were 57.7% (the average for all states) instead of 76.8% (the highest of all states), its firearm homicide rate would be 17% lower.” Since 475 people were murdered with a gun in Mississippi in 2010, that drop in gun ownership would translate to 80 lives saved in that year alone.

Of course, the authors don’t find that rates of gun ownership explain all of America’s gun violence epidemic: race, economic inequality and generally violent areas all contribute to an area’s propensity for gun deaths, suggesting that broader social inequality, not gun ownership alone, contributes to the gun violence epidemic. Nevertheless, the fact that gun ownership mattered even when race and poverty were accounted for suggests that we can’t avoid talking about America’s fascination with guns when debating what to do about the roughly 11,000 Americans who are yearly murdered by gunfire.

Americans have a gun worshiping problem. It will be extraordinarily difficult, maybe impossible, to cure. Like convincing an ardent biblical creationist that Darwin had it right.

For all the fervent Second Amendment uber-gun hugger folks - that we see in the news daily with their anger towards; a black President , at government , at the poor hordes that will try to kill them for their canned goods and squirrel pelts - when the collapse comes, and anybody that tries to have a conversation about our gun culture, "is infringing on my second amendment rights", you folks should be wearing protective head-gear while trolling the earth, as you freaks are a special kind of stupid!

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

Zimmerman, "Another Sandy Hook Waiting To Happen"

Police Chief Steve Bracknell, who is responsible for the Florida town where George Zimmerman resides, agreed in a series of emails that Zimmerman is a “ticking time bomb” and another “Sandy Hook” waiting to happen.

Bracknell expressed his views in response to two emails from Santiago Rodriguez, who reached Bracknell through a contact form on the police department’s website. Bracknell confirmed the emails’ authenticity and subsequently tried to distance himself from the remarks.

Rodriguez’s first email was an extended, and sometimes angry, critique of how the Lake Mary Police Department handled their response to the recent altercation between George Zimmerman, his wife and his father in law. Rodriguez told Bracknell that he had a responsibility to charge Zimmerman because he was another “Sandy Hook… waiting to happen.” Bracknell responded with a detailed defense of the police department’s conduct, but explicitly endorsed Rodriguez’s comments on Sandy Hook.

[Ellipses are from the original email.]

Asked to elaborate on his email, Bracknell attempted to distance himself from Rodriguez’s comments, saying he did not agree and was “referring to the fact that [Zimmerman] seems to be involved in incidents” involving firearms.

In his second email, Rodriguez called Zimmerman a “ticking time bomb” who will snap “sooner or later.” Again, Bracknell agreed.

The full email exchange between Rodriguez and Bracknell is available here.

The police are still deciding whether or not to charge Zimmerman in connection to the incident. They are attempting to recover video of alleged assault that Zimmerman’s wife, Shellie, recorded with her iPad. Zimmerman’s attorney, Mark O’Mara, acknowledged that Zimmerman broke the iPad into pieces before the police arrived. According to witnesses, Zimmerman also punched his father-in-law in the nose.

In her call to 911, Shellie Zimmerman told the police that Zimmerman was threatening her with his gun. “I don’t know what he’s capable of. I’m really, really scared,” Shellie said.

Zimmerman told police at the scene that he did not have a gun, according to Bracknell and a police department spokesman. O’Mara, however, insisted on CNN that he did have a gun on him during the entire incident. Bracknell said that one of them isn’t “telling the truth.”

What is not in dispute is that Zimmerman, despite his legal troubles and the police chief’s concerns, is still permitted to carry a concealed weapon in the State of Florida. In Florida, unlike other states like New York and New Jersey, authorities have no discretion over whether to grant or revoke concealed carry permits. Dr. Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, recently told Salon, “You’ve got all kinds of George Zimmermans and everything in between there who fall through the cracks of our exclusions. But if you ask any reasonable person how comfortable they are with an individual like that running around with a concealed, loaded gun, the vast majority would say they are not.”

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

DON'T YOU JUST HATE IT WHEN AN EXECUTION GETS IN THE WAY OF YOUR FUNDRAISER

FLORIDA ATTY GEN PAM BONDI

Earlier this year, in a land littered with palm trees, pristine beaches and radical tea baggers, an Attorney General and Governor Skeletor pushed for a bill that would speed up executions. The bill, Florida’s Timely Justice Act, restricts ‘frivolous’ appeals by death row inmates and sets competency standards for lawyers. Florida Attorney General, Pam Bondi, was one of the most staunch advocates for the bill’s passage and supported Skeletor’s decision to sign it into law. Opponents of the bill said that it could cause innocent people to be put to death. After all, sometimes it takes years and years for a person to be exonerated; Seth Penalver for example sat on Florida’s death row for eighteen years before he was set free. Bondi and other supporters of the law said that it is all about getting justice for the families. Nothing is more important than seeing justice done….well, nothing except campaign fundraisers, that is.

On August 19th Rick Scott informed the Florida State Prison Warden John Palmer that he would be moving Marshall Lee Gore’s execution 6 p.m. Sept. 10 to 6 p.m. Oct. 1 at the request of the Attorney General. On August 20th Molly McFarland, the deputy press secretary for the Attorney General’s office, said that the September execution date conflicted with a previously scheduled event but did not say what that was.

MADDOW Video courtesy of MSNBC

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The event that Bondi felt was so important that she must delay the execution of a man convicted of murdering two woman was a ‘hometown campaign kickoff’ at a waterfront home in Tampa. Bondi’s press team was quick to explain away the rescheduling and try to make it seem like a responsible decision on Bondi’s part:

In light of the seriousness of any execution, it was very important to Attorney General Bondi that she be available personally to carry out her office’s duties in the execution process,” McFarland said in an email. On Friday, Jennifer Meale, a spokeswoman for Bondi, reiterated that the fundraiser was on the calendar before Gore’s execution had been planned for the same night.

Rick Scott, however, sensing the media shit storm that was about to rain down made sure to be very clear he had no idea why Bondi wanted the execution moved:

“Her office contacted my office and asked for a postponement, and that’s what we did. No, I did not know (the reason). We set the date,the attorney general’s office asked for a postponement, so we went along with that … When another Cabinet officer asks for something, we try to work with them.”

On Monday Bondi issued a press release in an attempt to smooth the feathers she ruffled with her selfish move:

“As a prosecutor, there was nothing more important than seeing justice done, especially when it came to the unconscionable act of murder,” Bondi said. “I personally put two people on death row and, as attorney general, have already participated in eight executions since I took office, a role I take very seriously.”

“The planned execution of Marshall Lee Gore had already been stayed twice by the courts, and we should not have requested that the date of the execution be moved.” 

Nothing is more important than justice being served, except of course collecting money from donors so that you can be reelected. The contrariness, that Bondi pushed and pushed to get the Timely Justice Act signed into law and then actually pushes an execution back to accommodate her campaign schedule? The whole point of the law was to get justice for the families of the victims.

It doesn't matter if you believe in the death penalty or not, this is one more very clear example of how the American Taliban could give two shits about their duties as public servants.

Congratulations Pam Bondi, you are today's worst person in the world!


NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

MY CITY OF RUINS

On the twelfth anniversary of September 11, 2001, we leave you with Bruce Springsteen's tribute to the World Trade City attacks.

Having lost many personal friends in this attack.......May We Never Forget!

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

THE SOUTHERN FAMILY

SOUTHERNERS APT TO BE MORE RACISTS STUDY SHOWS

White Southerners are one of the great outliers in American politics. President Obama polled significantly worse with white voters in the South than he did with whites in swing states. One survey of working class white voters found Obama only 4-8 points behind Romney in the majority of the country, while he polled 40 points behind Romney among Southern white working class voters. And a new study by political scientists Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell and Maya Sen suggests that there may be a simple explanation for this divide — slavery.

The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution banned slavery nearly 150 years ago, yet this study suggests that the legacy of slavery continues to drive voters in areas that once housed large numbers of slaves to vote Republican:

Drawing on a sample of more than 39,000 southern whites, we show that whites who currently live in counties that had high concentrations of slaves in 1860 are on average more conservative and express colder feelings towards African Americans than whites who live elsewhere in the South. That is, the larger the number of slaves in his or her county of residence in 1860, the greater the probability that a white Southerner today will identify as a Republican, express opposition to race-coded policies such as affirmative action, and express greater racial resentment towards African Americans. We show that these differences are robust to a variety of factors, including geography and mid-19th century economic conditions and political attitudes. We also show that our results strengthen when we instrument for the prevalence of slavery using local measures of the agricultural suitability to grow cotton. In fact, our findings indicate that in the counterfactual world where the South had no slaves in 1860, the political views of white Southerners today would be indistinguishable from those of similarly situated white Northerners.

The authors offer several potential explanations for how a human rights atrocity banned more than a century ago can continue to drive political attitudes today. Among them, the authors suggest that “the sudden enfranchisement of blacks was politically threatening to whites, who for centuries had enjoyed exclusive political power. In addition, the sudden emancipation of blacks substantially undermined whites’ economic power by suddenly increasing blacks’ wages and threatening the plantation economy.” These two factors, according to the author of the study, “led Southern white elites to promote localized anti-black sentiment by encouraging violence towards blacks, propagating racist norms and cultural beliefs, and, to the extent legally possible, pushing for the institutionalization of racist policies (such as Jim Crow laws). In turn, these racially hostile attitudes have persisted as each successive generation has, to some degree, inherited the attitudes and beliefs of the previous generation.”

.....In turn, these racially hostile attitudes have persisted as each successive generation has, to some degree, inherited the attitudes and beliefs of the previous generation..

"You've Got To Be Carefully Taught," (Lyrics from South Pacific, 1949).
You've got to be taught to hate and fear,
You've got to be taught from year to year,
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid.
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

This certainly holds true in most Southern Teabaggistan states (all southern red states), where the Civil War didn't end, it is just in intermission.

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

BREAKING: GEORGE ZIMMERMAN IN CUSTODY FOR GUN THREAT TO FAMILY MEMBER

Trayvon Martin shooter George "twinkie guzzler" Zimmerman is under police investigation for a possible domestic battery following a fight with his wife and her family on Monday afternoon. According to news channel WKMG Local 6, police are “trying to determine what exactly happened” but they report a gun was present. The Associated Press reports that Zimmerman allegedly violently threatened his estranged wife, Shellie, and her father first with a knife, punched the father-in-law in the nose, and pulled out his gun at her parents’ house in Lake Mary, Central Florida, just days after Shellie filed for divorce.

In her 911 call, Shellie said, “He continuously has his hand on his gun and he keeps saying ‘get closer.” She continued, “I’m really really afraid. I don’t know what he’s capable of. I’m really, really scared.”

The family is considering whether to press charges, and no arrest has been made yet.

In the meantime, Zimmerman’s brother, Robert, has tweeted:

Zimmerman has had documented instances of domestic violence before, including a restraining order from his ex-fiancee.

Since Zimmerman was acquitted for shooting and killing Martin, he has gone shopping for a new firearm from the manufacturer that made the gun that killed Martin. He has also received speeding tickets from police, and revealed he had a gun stored in his car glove compartment at the time. An Ohio gun group raised over $12,000, which they sent Zimmerman to purchase the new gun.

Under Florida law, Zimmerman’s alleged actions likely amount to “aggravated assault,” a third degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Additionally, if Zimmerman is convicted of this felony, he would be legally barred from owning a gun.

Stay tuned for further developments.

NFTOS 

STAFF WRITER

AL ASSAD MAKES CASE, TAUNTING OBAMA

BASHAR AL ASSAD TAUNTS OBAMA ON CBS

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made his case to CBS News’s Charlie Rose in an interview that aired on Monday against an American-led military strike on his country in response to his government’s alleged chemical weapons use.

Assad charged that the United States and the international community have no evidence that forces linked to his government used chemical weapons. He later seemed to try to push Congress toward voting against a resolution to give President Obama authorization to attack Syria, arguing, as some like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) have, that any U.S.-led military action against the Syrian government would help al Qaeda:

Assad Asks Congress To Vote Against War





White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said on Sunday that the intelligence on whether Assad’s forces were responsible for the attack isn't in dispute. “Every member of Congress I’ve spoken to accepts the intelligence that they carried out this attack,” he said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “And so what we need now is to communicate very clearly what is expected of him. And what is expected of him is to live up to the prohibition now, almost a hundred years old, against using these dastardly weapons to gas women and children.”

Assad also said in the CBS interview that the Obama administration is no different from the Bush era. “They are operating the same doctrine with different accessories,” he claimed.

The Syrian president also said the U.S. and its allies should expect some kind of retaliation to an attack and suggested it might be carried out by non-state Syrian allies like Hezbollah. “You should expect everything. Not necessarily from the government. It’s not only the government are not the only player in this region. You have different parties, you have different factions, you have different ideology. You have everything in this region now. So you have to expect that,” Assad said.

Despite the fact that his forces started the civil war in Syria with its brutal and violent crackdown on peaceful protesters more than two years ago, Assad also later disputed that he’s the aggressor, likening himself to a doctor saving a patient. “A doctor who cut the leg to prevent the patient from the gangrene, if you have to, we don’t call him butcher, we call him doctor. And you– thank you for saving the lives. When you have terrorism, you have a war. When you have a war, you always– you always have innocent lives that could be the victim of any war.”

Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Sunday that the Saudis offered support for an American strike on Syria and during a press conference with Kerry, Qatar’s foreign minister called for foreign intervention “to protect the Syrian people.”

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in a statement on Saturday that the chemical weapons attack in Syria was “blatant violation of international law, a war crime and a crime against humanity” and that the evidence “seems to indicate strong evidence that the Syrian regime is responsible.” The E.U. statement called for action but did not endorse a military strike. Most European countries have said they want some kind of United Nations process to play out and want U.N. weapons experts to report on their findings in Syria, a process that could take weeks, before deciding whether to support an attack.

Meanwhile, Obama is set to make his case to the American people and Congress this week in a series of interviews and speeches. As it stands right now, it appears that the White House has an uphill climb to get Congress on board, or at least the House. According to a NFTOS's preliminary tally, more than 200 lawmakers in the House are against military action or lean toward not supporting it.



NFTOS

STAFF WRITER

SCREW SYRIA, BENGHAZI MATTERS MORE

Figuring out what to do about a tyrant slaughtering thousands of his own people is less important than pursuing the discredited Benghazi attack investigation, according to Sen. RWNJ Ted Cruz .

On ABC’s This Week Sunday morning, Cruz argued that the attention being paid to Syria’s humanitarian crisis is distracting from counter-terrorism efforts. Though Cruz himself acknowledged earlier in the interview that Syria’s civil war is creating a global al-Qaeda hub, the Senator suggested that a renewed focus on terrorism would demand more investigation into the Benghazi attack that that took place on September 11, 2012:

One of the problems with all of this focus on Syria is it’s missing the ball from what we should be focused on, which is the grave threat from radical Islamic terrorism. Just this week is the one year anniversary of the attack on Benghazi. In Benghazi, four Americans were killed, including the first ambassador since 1979. When it happened, the President promised to hunt down the wrongdoers, and yet a few months later, the issue has disappeared. You don’t hear the President mention it. Now it’s a phony scandal, we ought to be defending U.S. national security and going after radical Islamic terrorists.

TED "BRYLCREEM A LITTLE DAB WILL DO YA" CRUZ

Though Congressional Talibangelicals have aggressively pushed a number of investigations into the events at Benghazi — Speaker of the House John Boehner was described in May of this year as being “obsessed” with the issue — the lengthy inquiries have turned up no real evidence of wrongdoing on the Obama Administration’s part.

Just last week, while the White House and Congress jockeyed intensely over authorization for a war in Syria, federal prosecutors filed formal charges against Ahmed Abu Khatallah, a Libyan militia leader allegedly tied to the Islamist group Ansar al-Shariah, over his alleged participation in the Benghazi attack.

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

HEALTHCARE NORTH CAROLINA STYLE

On Wednesday, residents of Belhaven, North Carolinian's got a taste of how cantankerous the GOP is to the opposition of the Affordable Care Act - and how it will affect them personally when executives at Vidant Health System unanimously voted to shut down the local Vidant Pungo Hospital within six months. Vidant officials said the move was necessary as a consequence of North Carolina’s refusal to participate in Obamacare’s optional Medicaid expansion.

Belhaven is a small town of 1,688 where more than 55 percent of the population is African-American and approximately 28 percent of residents live in poverty. Vidant Pungo bills itself as “a private, not-for-profit 49-bed acute care hospital on the waterfront in Belhaven” that “provides medical care to patients in eastern Beaufort and Hyde counties, serving approximately 25,000 people with a service area of approximately 1,260 square miles.” In those counties, more than 19 percent and 25 percent of residents respectively live below the poverty level, according to the latest census data.

Since safety-net hospitals that serve regions with high numbers of poor and uninsured people often have patients who can’t afford to pay for their care, they usually have to rely on the government to pick up some of the tab for uncompensated medical treatment to stay financially viable. But Obamacare reduced reimbursements to these so-called “disproportionate share hospitals” (DSHs) — one of which is Vidant Pungo — since the law originally intended all states to expand Medicaid for every American living up to 133 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. If things had unfolded that way, these hospitals wouldn't need the additional government payments since their patients would finally be able to pay for their own care through Medicaid.

But the Supreme Court ruled the expansion to be optional last summer. That’s why hospitals have intensely lobbied state officials to expand Medicaid, since the combination of uninsured patients and reduced federal reimbursements could spell financial doom for them. Unfortunately, at least 21 states with GOP governors or legislatures — including North Carolina — opposed to the health law have refused generous federal funding to expand Medicaid eligibility.

The federal government took steps in May to soften the blow to DSH by tying how much states’ reimbursements for uncompensated care will be cut with their un-insurance rates — i.e., the larger uninsured population a state has, the less its DSH funding will be cut. But this is merely a fiscal band-aid, not a permanent solution. And as Vidant Pungo’s imminent shuttering demonstrates, some hospitals simply aren’t willing to risk the uncertainty.

Expanding Medicaid would cut North Carolina’s un-insurance rate by more than 48 percent.

North Carolina, the land of the dinosaurs, where IQ's are lower than the freezing point of water. The American Taliban only knows how to vote no, and would veto peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to their own mother when starving to death.

Keep voting tea bagger America, keep voting tea bagger!

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

VIRGINIA TO CANCEL VOTER REGISTRATIONS

Cross posted from thinkprogress:

With two months until Virginians decide which of two polar opposites — Terry McAuliffe and Ken Cuccinelli — will be their next governor, tens of thousands of voters could be removed from the rolls in a statewide purge.

Approximately 57,000 Virginians have been flagged as being registered in another state, and counties are removing some from the voter rolls without any notice or opportunity to rebut the claim. Before conservatives lose their marbles that this is clear and irrefutable evidence of voter fraud, it’s worthwhile to consider how voter registration works. Each state maintains its own roll rather than a nationwide system. When Joe America, who had been registered in Richmond, moves to Philadelphia and registers there, he’s not required to cancel his Virginia registration before enrolling in Pennsylvania. The process for removing registrations of people who have moved elsewhere varies from state to state, but generally involves periodic comparisons of lists between states to flag and remove people like Joe America who have moved elsewhere.

Clearly, given the decentralized 50-voter-roll system we currently have, there’s a need for the lists to be periodically cleaned up. But there are a number of issues that make Virginia’s current purge of up to 57,000 voters problematic.

First and foremost, as multiple county registrars explained, voters whose registrations are being cancelled aren't being given any advance notice. Rather than being mailed a warning letter asking if they still live in Virginia, they are being sent notices that their registration has been cancelled effective immediately. If the cancellation is in error, the letter says to contact the registrar and get it worked out. It’s not measure twice, cut once. It’s cut first and be ready with tape for the mistakes.

Second, according to at least one voter’s experience, the list contains some serious errors. One Accomack County voter, writing on the blog Blue Virginia under the pseudonym rodentrancher, detailed her experience having her registration wrongly cancelled. Though she’d lived and registered in South Carolina in 2009, she had moved to Virginia last year and re-registered there. Even so, her file was flagged as a duplicate and she received a letter last week informing her that her registration was cancelled. If she hadn't seen the letter, or had the foresight to call the county registrar who sent her a new registration form, she would have been effectively disenfranchised from the November election.

The list of 57,000 duplicate registrations was given by the state Board of Elections to county registrars in August. “We were told by the state board that this is a legitimate list and we should process them accordingly,” Patricia White, General Registrar of Accomack County, said. Still, as Don Palmer, Secretary of the Virginia Board of Elections, emailed, “the final decision is up to each of the 133 local registrars based on voter history and activity.” Palmer was appointed by Transvaginal Bob McDonnell in 2011.

Some county registrars are going over the list with a fine-tooth comb in an effort to prevent errors. “We’re not taking the list at face value,” Gary Scott, Deputy Registrar of Fairfax County.

Finally, the current purge is being conducted exceedingly close to the upcoming election. The deadline to register in Virginia is October 14, less than six weeks away. That leaves little room for error. A purge in March gives voters, campaigns, and the state eight months to ensure that people who were improperly unregistered are given their Virginia voting rights back. When asked why the Board of Elections didn’t conduct this purge at an earlier time, Palmer wrote that August “was the first opportunity” they had after reviewing “data from other states and insertion of primary election voter history.”

In the 2009 election, approximately two million Virginians cast a ballot. If all 57,000 registrations that were flagged are ultimately cancelled, that would represent approximately three percent of all votes, a potentially decisive factor in a close election.

This link can verify your registration. [all 50 states].

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

YOU AGAIN?

In the last few minutes of her MSNBC show Wednesday night, Rachel Maddow took a look at some of the architects of the Iraq War who have been coming out of the woodwork over the last few weeks to weigh in on the Syria debate. Maddow had a strong message for people like Donald Rumsfeld, who have questioned President Obama’s decision: “Your opinion is no longer required.”

Maddow argued that the reason President Obama is having such a hard time convincing Americans that we should intervene in Syria because Bashar al-Assad has used WMD’s is “because of of the way the other guys broke that argument by misusing it, by lying when they made it.” And now, “the Bush Administration is staging a real time reunion” to weigh in on Syria.

The host proceeded to show how nobody is asking former FEMA chief Michael Brown for hurricane advice or Lance Armstrong to give his opinion on steroid use in sports. “You would not seek their advice, their counsel, their wisdom on the thing that ended their careers,” Maddow said.

She concluded her show with this plea:

“If you’re an architect or a conspirator or one of the primary actors in the Iraq War–in arguably the grandest and most craven foreign policy disaster in American history–your opinion is no longer required on matters of war and peace. Please enjoy painting portraits of dogs or something. Painting portraits of yourself in the bathroom, trying to get clean. Please enjoy the loving comfort of your family and loved ones, and your god. But we as a country never ever need to hear from you about war, ever again. You can go now.”

YOU AGAIN

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

IOWA SLIPS A MICKEY ON ITS RESIDENTS

Right as the Labor Day weekend began, Iowa officials took steps to severely limit reproductive health access for women in the state. Although that move went largely unnoticed before the three-day weekend, it could end up having a huge impact on the future of abortion care for people across the country.

On Friday, Iowa’s Board of Medicine voted to eliminate the largest telemedicine abortion program in the country. That means doctors in the state won’t be allowed to use video technology to prescribe abortion-inducing drugs to rural and low-income women who don’t have the means to travel to the nearest clinic — even though they've been safely doing so for the past five years.

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland has been operating its telemedicine abortion program since 2008, and there’s no reason it should have come under any kind of particular scrutiny this summer. Studies have repeatedly found that it’s a safe method of delivering reproductive care, and patients are just as satisfied after speaking with a doctor over a video conference as they are after making an in-person trip to a clinic. Nonetheless, the Board of Medicine has been considering banning the practice for the past several months — and the Friday vote makes it official.

“This decision is a political attack aimed at restricting access to abortion in Iowa. Proponents of this rule aren't against telemedicine technology; they are against safe, legal abortion and are unjustly targeting our system with no scientific information or evidence to back their claims,” Planned Parenthood of the Heartland’s president, Jill June, said in a statement.

Indeed, telemedicine technology is becoming increasingly common. An estimated 10 to 12 million Americans use it each year to remotely receive care from a medical professional, and the U.S. government now relies on the practice to treat chronically ill veterans. Of course, opponents of telemedicine abortion typically aren't opposed to the practice in general — they just don’t want it to be used for abortion. It’s yet another way that the anti-choice community is attempting to segregate abortion care from the rest of reproductive health services.

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland has been somewhat of a pioneer when it comes to telemedicine abortion care. A few other Planned Parenthood affiliates have begun to offer the services, but Iowa has been home to the largest program. It’s been difficult to expand into other states largely because anti-choice lawmakers have worked to cut off the possibility. Over the past several years, states have rushed to enact bans on telemedicine abortions even if those services weren't actually offered yet — effectively curtailing the potential medical advances in abortion care before they've even had a chance to get off the ground.

That’s a serious problem because telemedicine programs may represent the next battleground for abortion rights. Iowa has touted its program as an effective way of restoring health care access for poor and rural women who don’t live in counties with Planned Parenthood clinics, and wouldn't be able to make the trip to the nearest one. That’s becoming an unfortunate reality for low-income women in states across the country. Thanks to a mounting pile of state-level restrictions on abortion, clinics are being forced to close their doors and patients are being forced to travel hundreds of miles to get the care they need. For many poorer women, that represents too big of an expense — and women’s ability to access an abortion is becoming directly proportional to her economic privilege. Telemedicine abortion services could help address some of those regional and economic disparities. But now that Iowa has moved to ban it, there may be little hope for the fledgling programs in other states.

In a public hearing last week, health care professionals condemned Iowa’s medical board for rushing to throw out a program that has been largely successful. Since 2008, Iowa’s telemedicine program has helped an estimated 3,000 rural women end a pregnancy within the first trimester. OB-GYNs suggested that the Board of Medicine — which has been stacked with anti-abortion members over the past two years — was simply pursuing a political agenda. Now that the Board has officially voted, critics say their worst fears have been confirmed.

“It’s extremely alarming that the Board of Medicine, which is duty bound to make evidence- based medical decisions, rushed to judgment without reviewing evidence gathered by their own staff,” June’s statement points out. “This undermines the concept and integrity of the Board of Medicine and health care in Iowa as we know it.”

This new Republican outreach program, that of choke and puke politics - hating and punishing everything non-white male, continues to be a huge success.[sarcastic]

NFTOS

STAFF WRITER

WHY UNIONS?

The sad reality this Labor Day is that many American workers aren’t enjoying the basic tenets of the American dream: a livable wage and benefits to match. Income inequality is skyrocketing, while worker wages stagnate and more and more people leave unemployment for low-wage, part time jobs.

There’s no coincidence here. As this video from the Economic Policy Institute outlines, the trend of declining unionization and rising income inequality mimic each other :

Another chart from the Center for American Progress backs up that point, showing how the income of the richest one percent has risen, as middle class incomes drop:

Across the country in the last few weeks, strikes by fast food workers have illustrated that fair workplace treatment is still out of reach for some Americans. The strikes have become a massive rallying cry for a union and a wage raise in a time when labor disputes and walk-outs are at an all-time low. This chart illustrates just how rare it is to see a strike like the fast food workers’:

But, like many workers, fast food employees could greatly benefit from the ability to collectively bargain. After all, their minimum wage jobs have actually become worth even less as time goes on. While those one percent of top earners are seeing a great spike in their incomes, the low-wage worker is feeling deflated. Their wages haven’t kept up with the US inflation rate, as this chart from Bloomberg News illustrates:

This evidence all amounts to a sad status quo for some American workers. And it’s something to remember each and every Labor Day, a day meant to celebrate the back-breaking work that makes this country run.

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MEET NEO NAZI RICHARD SCHMIDT

NEO NAZI NUTCASE RICHARD SCHMIDT

Federal agents were tracking Ohio resident Richard Schmidt’s imports of counterfeit sports jerseys when they stumbled upon his arsenal of 18 guns, more than 40,000 rounds of ammunition, and bulletproof body armor. Besides the arsenal, he had lists of Jewish and black leaders in Detroit, MI. He is also an ex-felon who killed a Hispanic man and wounded two others 24 years ago.

Yet before December, no one even noticed that Schmidt, 47, was amassing weapons illegally, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Instead, federal investigators zeroed in on his sports memorabilia shop around September 2011, tracking his shipments of knock-off jerseys from China for over a year before they discovered the cache of firearms.

Schmidt plead guilty to federal gun charges and the counterfeit racket last month, and will be sentenced in October. But many connected to the crime are still scratching their heads over how an ex-felon with ties to white supremacist groups was able to get his hands on so many guns.

“I can’t tell you how he got all those guns and ammunition,” U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach told the Plain Dealer. “It’s not that I won’t tell you; it’s that I can’t. This is somebody who should never have had one gun, one bullet. But he had an entire arsenal.”

Schmidt is technically banned from possessing a gun for the rest of his life. In 1989, he pulled a gun on three men during a traffic argument, killing one man and wounding the other two. He was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and served 12 years in prison.

Scott Kaufman, the head of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, was spooked after discovering he was on Schmidt’s list. “For a convicted violent felon to amass an arsenal with 40,000 rounds of ammunition with no red flags popping up is problematic,” he told the Plain Dealer. “No matter where you stand on the gun issue, it makes you wonder. The moment I saw my name in this guy’s notebook, I freaked out.”

Indeed, Schmidt might have been able to stockpile firearms so easily thanks to decades of hard work by the the gun lobby. Combating calls for stricter background checks on private gun sales, the National Rifle Association insisted the bill would create a national registry of gun owners which would be used to confiscate weapons and enact tyranny. This fearmongering has also hobbled federal law enforcement agents, who are forbidden from keeping any records of gun purchases. That means individuals like Schmidt can potentially avoid background checks when they purchase firearms, or they can obtain guns through a straw purchaser that law enforcement cannot track because any records revealing the purchaser’s activities would have been destroyed. It was luck that Schmidt was caught before he could wreak havoc — but Americans won’t get so lucky every time.

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GOOD-BYE MARK KESSLER!

GUN HUGGER MARK KESSLER SENT PACKING FOR GOOD

Mark Kessler, the Gilberton Police Chief who became a sensation after his profanity-laden anti-libtard John Kerry-hating pro-gun YouTube videos went viral, had his suspension extended indefinitely by the Gilberton City Council on Friday.

Kessler was unable to meet with the city for a resolution due to his attorney’s scheduling conflict. The Council voted to keep Kessler’s suspension, but hoped to resolve the matter soon, so as not to keep paying an off-duty police chief.

KESSLER

At a previous council meeting, some of Kessler’s gun-toting supporters showed up; they were absent this time around.

In addition to angry speeches about the United Nations and the Second Amendment, Kessler is seen in his videos not only firing automatic weapons at pictures of Secretary of State John Kerry and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, but also at council vice-president Eric Boxer and council president Daniel Malloy.

Kessler maintained that his videos are political speech, but a movement has gathered 23,000 signatures to have him removed from office. “You can’t have a police chief that intimidates at least half of the population,” the group’s executive director Michael Morrill said.

Everyone say good-bye to Mark, you fifteen minutes of fame have expired asshat! Hopefully you are never ever a man of law again, whether it be Podunk chief of Gilberton Pa, department of one, or any other department.

I wonder who's WMD he'll use now, now that he doesn't have access to Gilmerton's arsenal?

Kessler and his kind are the reasons for stricter gun laws, the next headlines of Mark Kessler, mass murderer.

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Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

MITCH "THE TURTLE" MCCONNELL THINKS WOMEN ARE STUPID

A press release distributed by Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) campaign at a “Women for Team Mitch” event on Friday brags about the Senate Minority Leader’s support for the Violence Against Women Act, even though McConnell voted against the measure in 1994, 2012, and 2013.

“Mitch was the co-sponsor of the original Violence Against Women Act — and continues to advocate for stronger polices to protect women. I am proud to call him my senator,” the document quotes a voter as saying.

Joe Sonka, a staff writer for Louisville’s Alt-Weekly first tweeted a copy of the release, hinting at the contradiction and noting that McConnell didn't address women’s issues at the event or take any questions from women. Former Congresswoman Anne Northup, a spokesperson for the campaign, also told Sonka that McConnell supported bills like the Lilly Ledbetter Act and Paycheck Fairness Act — both of which McConnell voted against — “make the workplace more difficult for women.”

McConnell has embellished often on his voting record in the past, insisting that he voted against VAWA because he sought a stronger version. During the event, McConnell’s wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, also claimed that her husband supports increasing cancer screenings and check-ups for women, even though he is campaigning on repealing the Affordable Care Act, which specifically increases women’s access to preventive medicine.

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RACIST GOP CIRCA 2013

GOP RACISTS DAVID MARSTERS

David Marsters, a conservative candidate for a town position in Sabattus, Maine, was surprised by a visit from the Secret Service after he posted an article on his Facebook about President Obama along with the words “Shoot the ni**er.” But even after the Secret Service visit, Marsters continues to defend his comment as freedom of speech — although he deleted the original posting.

“They didn't see no pictures of Obama with bullet holes in his head,” Marsters said. “It’s not a threatening statement, in my opinion. People take it out of context as a threat.” Marsters maintains his comment isn’t racist, because “white people are ni**ers, too.” In addition to subscribing to the conspiracy that Obama faked his birth certificate, Marsters has pushed for a town law to require a gun in every house.

Marsters told the Bangor Daily News that he is worried Obamacare will take his and his wife Mary’s health insurance away at a time she has been in and out of the hospital. “I’m pissed off at the system, OK,” he said. “We’re about to lose our benefits because of this asshole.”

Losing spousal insurance is a common myth about Obamacare. For example, the headlines blamed Obamacare when UPS recently announced it would cut 15,000 spouses of employees from insurance coverage. However, experts note that Obamacare simply provides an excuse for UPS to cut its overall health costs. Indeed, this type of cost-shifting was a trend long before Obamacare became law. UPS’ move actually only affects spouses who have jobs that provide coverage, which will become more common when Obamacare fully kicks in.

The health care law, in fact, is good news for Marsters’ wife. If either did lose insurance, they would be able to purchase individual plans on the statewide market, while subsidies could help reduce the cost. And because of Obamacare, insurance companies cannot discriminate based on Mary or Marsters’ pre-existing conditions.

Despite the vitriol surrounding the law, its individual provisions are actually quite popular among conservatives. Yet sometimes they only realize how Obamacare protects them when they or loved ones fall ill.

Congratulations David Marsters, you are today's asshat of the day!

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Roger West

THAT AWKWARD MOMENT WHEN YOUR NOT A RACIST BUT YOU FAIL TO SPEAK AT THE MLK 50TH ANNIVERSARY

Watching the events of the day, these are the notes that I took - and my synopsis 50 years later.

Can you guess how many GOP speakers took part in today's celebration of the March on Washington?

The 50th anniversary of the March On Washington has given the country a chance to reflect on how far we have come, and yet how much further we still have left to go toward achieving Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream.

MSNBC yesterday discussed the great reluctance for all conservatives to recognize the reality that we have not solved all of the racial problems in America, and to often they label any discussion of the subject as “race baiting.”

Earlier this year, Justice [Supreme being] John Roberts demonstrated this sort of thinking in his opinion justifying the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act when he wrote, ”the conditions that originally justified these measures no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions.” As we have seen in the subsequent months, there are many in said jurisdictions who would beg to differ - differ the ignorance and subjective discrimination from the Supreme Beings.

Julian Bond, chairman emeritus of the NAACP, and Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative discussed today the importance of conveying the lack of racial equity to these special tin foil hat patriots, once known as the conservatives. Bond noted this continued denial was evident even in today’s events commemorating the march, noting “what’s really telling is the podium behind me today, how many tea baggers will be there…They asked a long list of "conservatives" to come, and to all men and woman asked, they all said no…The fact that they seem to want to get black votes…they’re never ever going to get them this way.”

This current brand of the "conservative" is a disgusting lot! In reality, as long as they continue this path of ignorance - it will be an eternity before they ever occupy the oval office again!

RELATED:

Every Republican That Was Asked Refused to Attend March On Washington Event

Republican leaders asked to speak at March on Washington anniversary, declined

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Roger West

“Tell Them About the Dream, Martin.”

Mahalia Jackson Singing At Jackson Speech

We all know about the 1963 march on Washington where Martin Luther King, Jr. galvanized the multitudes with his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Most did not - nor do they now know how this great speech came to be, that is until now.

Clarence Jones, the adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. who co-wrote an early draft of the "I Have A Dream Speech," recounted the story Monday of how King delivered the most famous part of the speech spontaneously.

Jones was part of a Television Critics Association panel Monday about PBS's "The March." Denzel Washington provides the narration for director John Akomfrah's PBS film about the 1963 March on Washington. It airs on Aug. 27, the eve of the 50th anniversary of the march.

The day culminated in King's address to hundreds of thousands of people at the Lincoln Memorial, and millions watching him on television for the first time.

"Very few people know -- most people do not know -- that the speech that he gave was not the speech that he had intended to give," said Jones, author of the books "What Would Martin Say?" and "Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech That Transformed a Nation."

The speech might have turned out very differently if not for an exhortation from King's favorite gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson, Jones said.

"As he was reading from the text of his prepared remarks, there came a point when Mahalia Jackson, who was sitting on the platform, said, 'Tell them about the dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream," Jones continued.

"Now I have often speculated that she had heard him talk in other places talk and make reference to the dream. On June 23, 1963, in Detroit, he had made very express reference to the dream.

"When Mahalia shouted to him, I was standing about 50 feet behind him... and I saw it happening in real time. He just took the text of his speech and moved it to the left side of the lectern. ... And I said to somebody standing next to me: 'These people don't know it, but they're about to go to church.' I said that because I could see his body language change from the rear. Where he had been reading, like giving a lecture, but then going into his Baptist preacher mode.

"Had there been anyone else -- anyone else -- who had shouted anything to him -- I think he would have been a little taken aback. I'm not so sure he would have departed from the text of his speech. But Mahalia Jackson was his favorite gospel singer. When Mahalia said that it was almost like a mandate to respond."

To know that the greatest speech ever spoken was adlibbed, only makes the speech that much more phenomenal!

And now in the famous words of Paul Harvey......"now you know the rest of the story"

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Roger West

ROBERTS RULE OF ORDER

KU KLUX KOURT ROBERTS COURT

Voting has consequences, far beyond the eight years of a President. Supreme Court justices can reside for eons - the current sitting Supreme beings have proven that law has little relevance to their decisions made - where political ideology takes the forefront rather than case law. Often the case, historically speaking, the Supreme Court is well behind the times.

If Supreme Courts over time are arranged like boxes of chocolates, the Roberts Court defies the myth that you never know what you’re going to get.

The most basic requirement of any Supreme Court decision involving the application of the Constitution is to explain how the Constitution's text and meaning command the result the Court reaches. By that standard, Shelby County v. Holder is a colossal failure. In the majority opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, the Court struck down a core provision of the Voting Rights Act – a statute that has ensured protection of the right to vote for millions of Americans – without ever explaining what provision of the Constitution rendered this iconic, landmark statute unconstitutional.

In an interview with the New York Times’ Adam Liptak, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg offered a grim assessment of the Court where she so often finds herself leading a four justice dissent — the Roberts Court is “one of the most activist courts in history.”

As an historic matter, this is a pretty staggering claim. The Supreme Court in 1905 handed down a decision called Lochner v. New York that is now widely taught in American law schools as an example of how judges should never, ever behave. Lochner treated any law improving workplace conditions or helping workers to obtain an adequate wage as constitutionally suspect. And Lochner was hardly an anomalous moment in the Court’s history.

Thirteen years after Lochner the Supreme Court struck down federal child labor laws in a decision that is also widely taught as an example of inexcusable judicial activism. In 1895, the Supreme Court rendered the country virtually powerless against monopolies and other powerful combinations of corporate power, and then it held an income tax on the wealthiest Americans unconstitutional just a few months later. The Supreme Court has, with rare exception, been a largely malign force in American history.

There is, however, one important way in which the Roberts Court is distinguishable from the Courts that decided cases such as Lochner. Laws such as the Sherman Antitrust Act and the first federal ban on child labor arose as lawmakers with struggling with many of the negative side effects of the Industrial Revolution. The birth of the railroad and the dawn of mass production massively improved the American standard of living, but they also enabled monopolists to thrive and they resulted in mass exploitation of the working class. The Supreme Court in this era did not so much tear down established rights as it stood for a status quo that favored capital over labor and the rich over the rest of the nation.

The Roberts Court, by contrast, has actively rolled back existing laws protecting workers, women and people of color. The Nineteenth Century Supreme Court blocked America’s first meaningful efforts at racial equality, but the Roberts Court stole from minority voters rights that they had enjoyed for decades. The Lochner Court strangled basic protections for workers in their crib, but the Roberts Court takes fully matured protections for workers and carves them up a piece at a time. And, while Lochner Era courts acted out in the open, undermining human rights in published opinions. the Roberts Court pushes an alternative, corporate-run arbitration system that operates largely in secret.

None of this is to say that the world we live in now is worse than the world our great-grandparents lived in under the Lochner Court — if the Roberts Court’s goal is to bring us back to this era, they are currently shy at least one vote. Nevertheless, the Roberts Court is unusually willing to take from ordinary Americans rights they have enjoyed for a very long time. The Supreme Court has a long history of standing athwart history yelling stop. This Supreme Court, however, wants to shift history into reverse.

Conservatives like to make fun of decisions that abandon the Constitution in favor of penumbras and emanations, but that is all Chief Justice Roberts offers in the majority of his rulings.

With Roberts over seeing the Supreme Beings, with Scalia and the inept pubic hair conspirator Clearance Thomas on the bench, be scared, be very very scared!

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Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

IT'S IN THEIR NATURE

SCORPION AND THE FOG, IT'S IN THEIR NATURE

On Face the Nation this Sunday, Colin Powell, former Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, warned his fellow Republicans that the continuing push to restrict voting rights is going to “backfire” and harm the Republican Party:

These kinds of procedures that are being put in place to slow the process down, and make it likely that fewer Hispanics and African Americans might vote I think is going to backfire, because these people are going to come out and do what they have to do in order to vote and I encourage that.

Powell went on to describe just how damaging these laws may be as the country’s demographics shift:

Here’s what I say to my Republican friends: The country is becoming more diverse. Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, African Americans are going to constitute a majority in a generation. You say you want to reach out, you say you want to have a new message, you say you want to see if you can bring some of these voters to the Republican side. This is not the way to do it. The way to do it is to make it easier to vote and then give them something to vote, they can believe it. It’s not enough to say just we have to have a new message. We have to have a substance to that new message.

Voting rights were an integral demand of the March on Washington 50 years ago, but the American Taliban has been pushing a variety of restrictions at the state level and are now emboldened by a Supreme Court ruling invalidating part of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Powell remarked that these state laws “in some ways makes it a little bit harder to vote,” such as requiring ID, restricting voting hours, and making it harder for students to cast a ballot.

Since the Supreme Court decision that struck down the section of the VRA that forced states with histories of disenfranchisement to get clearance from the federal government on changes to voting, at least six states have renewed their efforts to pass voting restrictions, including voter ID measures, redrawing districts so that minority voting blocks could have their power weakened, and others. North Carolina became the first to enact a law, with a measure that some have described as “the worst voter suppression law” in the country. It requires strict voter ID to cast a ballot, reduces the number of early voting days by a week, eliminates same-day voter registration during early voting, and makes other severe changes. Powell previously warned that North Carolina’s law is the kind that “turns people away” from the radical Party.

While proponents of these measures purport to be worried about rampant voter fraud, on Sunday Powell remarked, “Nothing substantiates that, there isn't widespread abuse.” In fact, zero of the 17 suspected fraud cases in Boulder, CO were found to exist, and there have been many failures for those attempting to find evidence of widespread voter fraud. A person is 39 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit fraud.

Voting restrictions aren't the only way the Talibangelicals are screwing up their effort to reach out to minority voters, however. They've voted to deport DREAMers, boycotted Spanish-language TV, argued for self-deportation, reacted poorly to the Trayvon Martin ruling, and used racially insensitive language, among other things.

The GOP is not going to change, it is their nature.

The Scorpion and the Frog:

A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the.
scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The
frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion.
says, "Because if I do, I will die too."

The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream,
the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of.
paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown,
but has just enough time to gasp "Why?"

Replies the scorpion: "Self Destruction, Its my nature..."

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Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

‘God Help Us’ If Ted Cruz Becomes President

Howard Dean excoriated Candy Crowley’s interview with Ted Cruz on CNN Sunday morning, calling it “a very long interview with very little content,” and saying “God help us” if Cruz ever became more than a U.S. Senator.

Cruz had pitched allowing people to buy health insurance across state lines as one of the policies he would put in place instead of Obamacare.

“I don’t want the Texas insurance commissioner being up here in Vermont,” Dean said. “We have had universal health insurance for all our kids for twenty years. They have 22% of their children uninsured in Texas. I don’t want anything to do with Texas’ health care system in Vermont and I don’t want our people buying Texas health insurance.”

“So these are crazy ideas from the far right,” Dean said. “He’s a slick spokesman and god help us if he gets to be anything more than the senator from Texas.”

Ted Cruz constitutes an important reminder that, before there was the Bolivar Movement and South American socialism, there were Hispanic macho strongmen, dictators, extremecon zealots and slick-grifting demagogues.

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Editor-In-Chief

Roger West