HAPPY MOTHERS DAY

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




NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

BUGGED, "SPEAKING YOUR MIND"

Bill Maher discusses the 4th amendment and your right to privacy.



Episode 317 by BillMaher1956

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

NOT ALL FAMILY MEMBERS ONBOARD WITH BENGHAZI WITCH-HUNT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

Bogus Benghazi Hearings

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


ABC US News | ABC Business News


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






NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

TREY GOWDY, HYPOCRITE, AND PROFITEER FOR BENGHAZI

TREY GOWDY, TODAY'S WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD

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

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

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

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

But that hasn’t always been the case. Last September, Gowdy attended a “barbecue fundraiser” for Rep. Mick Mulvaney in Indian Land, SC and according to local newspaper the Lancaster News, Gowdy talked Benghazi with attendees:

Gowdy addressed the issue of “phony scandals,” in which the government is describing the scandals surrounding the IRS and NSA as fake, or phony. 

Referring to the scandal surrounding the murders of four American citizens in the Benghazi attacks, Gowdy said this is not the case. 

“It is a scandal,” he said. “But it is not a phony scandal.” 

Gowdy said these scandals begin to chip away at the public’s trust in their government. 

“There is nothing phony about (citizens) not trusting the people they put in positions of leadership,” he said.

Two weeks later, Gowdy spoke at a campaign event for Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) where he, according to the Greenville News, praised Graham on Benghazi (accessed via LexisNexis):

Friday morning at Furman, Gowdy shared the credit on the Benghazi issue with Graham, telling students, “There is no one in Congress who has done more on the issue of Benghazi than your senior senator.” 

Gowdy also said [Rep. Jason] Chaffetz has done more than anyone else in the House to hold Obama accountable on Benghazi. Gowdy and Chaffetz attended a private fundraiser for Chaffetz at a Greenville home Thursday night.

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

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

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

WHAT BENGHAZI IS AND IS NOT

Jon Stewart gives us the facts on Benghazi

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

WHAT SEPERATION BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE

SCOTUS RULES IN FAVOR OF PRAYER AT PUBLIC MEETINGS

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

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

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

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

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

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

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

"WAR CRIMINAL" WITHDRAWS FROM RUTGERS SPEACH

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATIONS WAR CRIMES

From my birth place:

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

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

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

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

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

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

In withdrawing from the agreement, Rice was gracious. She wrote,

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

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

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

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

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

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

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

NEW RULES: KNOW WHEN ITS OVER

Episode 316 by BillMaher1956

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

TRAP AND SHOOT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

IDIOTS VS DUMBASSES

MILITIAMAN GETTING READY TO FEND OFF DRONES OR OATH KEEPERS.

It was the imminent drone attack that finally did it!

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


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

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

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

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

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

NFTOS
Editor-In Chief

Roger West

CONSEQUENCE-FREE SPEECH

The video speaks for itself.

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

ONE RACIST DOWN, MANY MORE TO GO

SAY GOOD BYE TO RACIST DONALD STERLING

New NBA commissioner Adam Silver took swift and very powerful actions on LA Clipper owner Donald Sterling over his racists comments. Silver lowered the boom and banned him for life from the NBA, fined him 2.5 million dollars, which is the maximum allowed under NBA rules and is urging the Board of Governors to make him sell the team. No matter what the owners decide, Sterling's lifetime ban will stick.

I can imagine soon - that the "baggers" will ooze from the woodwork, blaming Obama and Holder for denying this filthy pile of steaming crap his 1st Amendment Rights

The NBA has stepped up and done what little will do, they stood up to a disgusting racist and said, not on my watch. Finally, an organization with testicular fortitude!

Donald Sterling, you are NFTOS "Dick" of the year! Congratulations asshat!

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

MICHAEL GRIMM, GOP BULLY, THUG, AND APPARENT CRIMINAL IN FBI CUSTODY

MICHAEL GRIMM, BULLY, THUG, AND MAJOR ASSHAT

U.S. Congressman Michael Grimm (TEA BAGGER-NY) is in federal custody. No, not for threatening to kill a reporter. No, not for walking into a nightclub with a gun and threatening to pull the trigger. No, not for having sex in a bar bathroom. Instead, for this:

Grimm is believed to be facing charges related to a private business deal that he made prior to being elected to Congress that involved an Upper East Side health food restaurant.

He's expected to be arraigned in federal court later Monday.

Grimm was indicted on Friday. Today he's in custody. There is no word yet on whether Cliven Bundy's militia will be sending reinforcements to Grimm's defense making sure his Constitutional freedom to break as many laws as he damn well pleases.

Here's a link to the indictment.

Michael Grimm, may your stay in federal prison be a harsh one asshat!

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

HOW CAN THIS BE? THE SUPREME COURT RULED RACISM DOESN'T EXIST ANYMORE

KU KLUX KOURT

Donald Sterling, the owner of the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers, told his girlfriend not to post pictures on Instagram of herself with black people and not to bring black people to his basketball games, according to an audio recording posted by TMZ.

In the recording, Sterling and his girlfriend are fighting over a picture she posted to Instagram of herself with NBA legend Magic Johnson, and Sterling demands that she stop “broadcasting” that she associates with black people. Sterling tells his girlfriend: “You can sleep with [black people]. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask you is not to promote it on that … and not to bring them to my games.”

Later, he makes the point specifically about Magic Johnson, telling her that “it’s too bad you can’t admire (Johnson) privately…bring him here, feed him, fuck him, I don’t care. You can do anything. But don’t put him on an Instagram for the world to see so they have to call me. And don’t bring him to my games. OK?”

Sterling’s comments about Johnson follow a long argument about his girlfriend — who says in the recording that she is half-black and half-Mexican — not understanding the cultural differences between white, black, and Hispanic people. At one point, Sterling asks her if she gets “a benefit” from associating with black people, and calls her “stupid” when she asks why the race of the people she associates with matters. Sterling doesn't answer when she asks if it would have been different had it been Larry Bird in the photo.

When it comes to race, the comments aren't even the most troubling incident in Sterling’s time as the Clippers owner. In 2006, he was sued in a housing discrimination lawsuit that alleged that Sterling wouldn’t rent apartments to black families in Beverly Hills and other LA neighborhoods. The suit alleged that Sterling had once said that “black tenants smell and attract vermin.”

Former Clippers executive (and NBA player) Elgin Baylor sued Sterling in 2009, alleging that the owner discriminated against him based on his age and race.

The NBA didn't take action against Sterling in either instance, even though there is precedent for doing so: in 1993, Major League Baseball suspended Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott for a full season for comments she’d made about black and Jewish people.

More than three-quarters of the NBA’s players are black, and the league has a larger share of minority fans than any of other major sports leagues. The NBA can’t take away Sterling’s team. But it needs to do something, especially because it has already let Sterling off the hook so many times before.

Congratulations Donald Sterling, you are both today's worst person in the world and our asshat of the day.

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

HOW DO REPUBLICANS WIN IN NOVEMBER?

NEW RULES 4/25/14



Episode 315 by BillMaher1956

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

COMITATUS

Rachel Maddow points out that Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s racist remarks are unsurprising in the context of his apparent adherence to the philosophy of the Posse Comitatus and Sovereign Citizen movements, rooted in post-Civil War reconstruction.




NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief 

Roger West

LET THE RECORD SHOW, GOP AND DARRELL ISSA ARE FULL OF SHIT

JUST THE FACTS DARRELL ISSA

A series of IRS documents, provided to journalists under the Freedom of Information Act, appears to contradict the claims by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and his House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that only Tea Party organizations applying for tax-exempt status “received systematic scrutiny because of their political beliefs.” The 22 “Be On the Look Out” keywords lists, distributed to staff reviewing applications between August 12, 2010 and April 19, 2013, included more explicit references to progressive groups, ACORN successors, and medical marijuana organizations than to Tea Party entities.

The IRS provided the heavily-redacted lists - after nearly a year-long search. From the earliest lists through 2012, the “historical” section of the lists encouraged reviewers to watch out for “progressive” groups with names like “blue,” as their requests for 501(c)(3) charitable status might be inappropriate. Their inclusion in this section suggests that the concern predates the initial 2010 list.

Explicit references to “Tea Party,” included in the “emerging issues” section of the lists, also began in August 2010 — but stopped appearing after the May 10, 2011 list. From that point on, the lists instructed agents to flag all political advocacy groups of any stripe. The documents instructed the agents to forward any “organization involved with political, lobbying, or advocacy” applying for 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) status be forwarded to “group 7822″ for additional review. Groups under both categories are limited in the amount of of lobbying and political activity each can undertake.

Other types of groups received explicit scrutiny for longer than “progressive” or “Tea Party” organizations. These included applicants involved with “medical marijuana” but not “exclusively education” (19 appearances in the “watch list” section of the lists), which were to be forwarded to a “group 7888″ and groups believed to be possible successor-groups to ACORN, the now-shuttered Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (12 appearances on the “watch list” section). Those applications were also to be elevated to managers for further review. All 22 documents also flagged applicants with Puerto Rico addresses and certain types of “Testamentary Trusts.”

Last year, the IRS acknowledged that it had improperly flagged groups applying for tax-exempt status for additional scrutiny if they contained common Tea Party keywords in their applications. Rather than addressing the very real problem of political committees masquerading as 501(c)(4) groups to evade public disclosure laws, this approach instead delayed the process for several groups purely on the basis of their names. President Obama and members of both parties in Congress all agree that the IRS acted improperly in singling-out certain groups for more scrutiny than others.

In Issa’s committee’s recent report, “Debunking the Myth that the IRS Targeted Progressives,” the Republican majority staffers wrote that while the Be On the Lookout lists’ language was “changed to broader ‘political advocacy organizations,’ the IRS still intended to identify and single out Tea Party applications for scrutiny.” The report goes to great lengths to distinguish the different types of scrutiny provided to each of these types of flagged group. But the actual IRS records indicate that at least some additional scrutiny was required for groups of all types that had names that sounded political — and that the explicit heightened scrutiny for left-leaning groups was even longer-standing than for Tea Party groups.

IRS disclosure manager Bertrand Tzeng noted, in a letter, that these 22 released documents “constitute the set of criteria that were used by IRS employees and which were produced to the investigating congressional committees.” Tzeng added that while his office has been informed that “draft versions of some of these documents may also exist, we understand that such drafts would be exempt from disclosure under FOIA exemption” as simply part of the agency’s deliberative process.

the lists.

NFTOS

Staff Writer

Steve "Damn Nazi Liberal" Chevapravatdumrong

"'ACTING IMPERIALISTICALLY"

Rick Perry is stumping for the Oath Keeper vote by claiming the Bundys were pushed into the position of using force because it's the Bureau of Land Management that's acting outside the law.

Rick Perry was on Fox News discussing the recent dustup between anti-federal government zealots and the BLM, including this unfounded report that the BLM is going to confiscate privately owned lands in Texas.

He's obviously looking to secure the Oath Keeper and Militia vote by claiming the Bundys were forced into the position of using force because it's the Bureau of Land Management that's acting outside the law.

Everyone knows that Bundy is lying about his claims of "ancestral rights" on his property since his family didn't own the land until 1948. And we also know that he's violating multiple court orders and has refused to pay grazing fees for decades while all the other ranchers are doing just that.

Rick Perry has no problem with armed militias running around with guns, threatening federal officials. Who knew?

NFTOS
STAFF WRITER

Steve "Damn Nazi Liberal" Chevapravatdumrong

DISGUSTING AD TACTICS

If you want to run for office some day, you better not believe that everyone is entitled to legal counsel before the government locks them away. Or, at least, that’s the message sent by a new Republican Governors Association ad targeting Vincent Sheheen, a former prosecutor who now represents civil and criminal clients in private practice. Sheheen is a Democratic candidate for governor against incumbent Nikki Haley.

The RGA’s ad attacks Sheheen for “defend[ing] violent criminals” and ends with the tagline “Vincent Sheheen protects criminals not South Carolina.”




The implication of this ad is that Sheheen is somehow unfit for public office because he once provided legal counsel to people accused of crimes. Indeed, the ad lists several serious crimes, including sex offenses and child abuse, that Sheheen’s clients were accused of committing. It is likely that many of these clients are very, very bad people.

But in the American justice system, we do not presume that anyone is guilty of a crime until after they have received a trial where they were represented by counsel — indeed, we afford all criminal defendants a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Moreover, as the Supreme Court explained more than half a century ago, the right to a trial often means little unless criminal defendants enjoy the right to counsel. Without an attorney, Justice Hugo Black wrote in 1963, an innocent man “faces the danger of conviction because he does not know how to establish his innocence.”

Sheheen’s clients may very well have committed horrible crimes. But we do not lock people away in prisons in the United States until their guilt has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. This is how we protect innocent men and women from winding up in those same prisons alongside the guilty.

This ad is at least the second time in as many months that Republicans lashed out at an attorney because he stood up for a person accused of a serious crime in court. Last month, every single Senate Republican who voted joined with a handful of Democrats to vote down Debo Adegbile, who was nominated to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. The fact that Adegbile once signed a brief arguing that a convicted cop killer was unconstitutionally sentenced to die played a major role in the campaign against him. A panel of predominantly Republican judges eventually held that this death sentence was, indeed, unconstitutional.

NFTOS

Staff Writer

Steve "Damn Nazi Liberal" Chevapravatdumrong

S.E.CUPP KNOWS THE NRA

NOT:

ABC This Week, April 20, 2014. While attacking New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's attempt to fight the NRA on gun control, pundit S.E. Cupp pretends that the group is not lobbying for the interest of the gun manufacturers, despite evidence to the contrary.




Ms. Cupp, A Sarah Palin geek with glasses, yet a better command of the English language . The Goober's version of an intellectual.

NFTOS

Staff Writer 

Steve "Damn Nazi Liberal" Chevapravatdumrong

HAPPY RESURRECTION DAY

NFTOS leaves you this glorious day with a little funk from a old favorite of mine:

Mother's Finest.
THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE"








NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West & STAFF

Harry Reid: 'If These People Are Patriots, We're In Trouble'

AMERICAN TERRORIST AIMING AT COPS AT BUNDY PROTEST

America's "American Taliban" in action.




Harry Reid will not stand down either, get em Harry!

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

CLINTON GRANDCHILD, A CAMPAIGN PLOY, OR ANOTHER OBAMA DIVERSION?

Maybe this is not a Hillary ploy - but one of Obama's diabolical schemes to create another diversion from Fast and Furious, IRS scandals and the worst terrorist event in our time, the dreaded Benghazi attack.

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

"Women Need To Be Paid Less So They Can Find Husbands"

Phyllis Schlafly - Radical Right Wing Nut Job

On Sunday, Rep. Marsha Blackburn sought to advance the GOP’s re-branding effort among female voters by suggesting that Republicans have long “led the fight for women’s equality.” The statement came just days after Republicans voted down the Paycheck Fairness Act and sought to downplay the problem of equal pay for equal work by suggesting that Democrats were using the issue to distract from Obamacare.

Now three days later, a prominent member of the Republican movement further undermined the party’s campaign to appeal to women voters by suggesting that the current pay gap isn’t wide enough. In an op-ed published by the Christian Post, Phyllis Schlafly — the founder of the Eagle Forum — maintained that increasing the pay gap will help women find suitable husbands:

Another fact is the influence of hypergamy, which means that women typically choose a mate (husband or boyfriend) who earns more than she does. Men don’t have the same preference for a higher-earning mate. 

While women prefer to have a higher-earning partner, men generally prefer to be the higher-earning partner in a relationship. This simple but profound difference between the sexes has powerful consequences for the so-called pay gap. 

Suppose the pay gap between men and women were magically eliminated. If that happened, simple arithmetic suggests that half of women would be unable to find what they regard as a suitable mate. 

Obviously, I’m not saying women won’t date or marry a lower-earning men, only that they probably prefer not to. If a higher-earning man is not available, many women are more likely not to marry at all.

The best way to improve economic prospects for women is to improve job prospects for the men in their lives, even if that means increasing the so-called pay gap.

Schlafly has long been crusader for “traditional values” within conservative movement and the Republican party, serving as a member of the National GOP Platform Committee as recently as 2012 and as a delegate to the National Convention. Her Eagle Forum PAC has also donated thousands to prominent Republicans like Eric Cantor, Michele Bachmann, Steve King, and Ted Cruz.

Since losing the presidential election in 2012, Republicans have repeatedly tried to enhance the GOP’s appeal beyond its traditional white male voting base. In 2013, the Republican National Committee published a widely discussed “autopsy,” promising to “addresses concerns that are on women’s minds in order to let them know we are fighting for them,” and held training sessions advising candidates to simply avoid talking about rape. Schlafly’s comments appear to undermine that effort.

Phyllis Schlafly, you are today's worst person in the world. Congratulations!

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

ABORTION BAN OVERTURNED

A federal judge permanently struck down North Dakota’s six-week abortion ban on Wednesday. The so-called “fetal heartbeat” measure, which used to represent the harshest ban in the nation, had already been temporarily blocked from taking effect while the legal challenge against it proceeded.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland ruled that the law is “invalid and unconstitutional” and “cannot withstand a constitutional challenge,” pointing out that Roe v. Wade guarantees the right to abortion up until the point of viability.

Six week abortion bans seek to ban abortion after a fetal heartbeat can first be detected, even though that typically occurs so early that some women don’t even realize they’re pregnant yet. This type of restriction is so radical that many Republicans won’t sign onto it, signaling the beginning of a larger split within the anti-choice community. Although lawmakers in at least five different states considered fetal heartbeat bans this year, none have been able to advance.

Arkansas is the only other state that’s been able to pass a harsh abortion restriction based on the fetal heartbeat framing. After widespread outcry, that measure ended up being amended to a slightly less restrictive 12-week ban — but it hasn't fared any better in the courts. Last month, a federal judge struck it down.

The decision is a victory for women in North Dakota, who face huge barriers to abortion services. There’s only one abortion clinic left in the state, which has been struggling to remain open amid anti-choice attacks. Thanks to the hostile environment surrounding reproductive rights, many women in the state actually assume that conservative lawmakers have succeeded and abortion is already illegal.

Although abortion rights supporters have recently won several legal victories against harsh bans, it’s important to remember that other serious threats to women’s access to abortion often fly under the radar. States have successfully enacted a complex web of restrictions targeting clinics and providers that don’t grab as many headlines as more obviously harmful laws do. That’s why anti-choice groups tend to split over six-week abortion bans — the leaders of the movement know they’ll have more success with an incremental strategy to chip away at abortion rights when no one is looking.

“The court was correct to call this law exactly what it is: a blatant violation of the constitutional guarantees afforded to all women. But women should not be forced to go to court, year after year in state after state, to protect their constitutional rights,” Nancy Northup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement. “We hope today’s decision, along with the long line of decisions striking down these attempts to choke off access to safe and legal abortion services in the U.S., sends a strong message to politicians across the country that our rights cannot be legislated away.”

NFTOS

STAFF WRITER

BUNDY RANCH TERRORISTS

With the withdrawal of agents of the BLM and their contractors from Gold Butte and the release of the cattle already rounded up, the right wing “militia” supporters of Cliven Bundy have declared victory over the “tyrannical” U.S. government. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) however, disagrees.

“Well, it’s not over,” Reid told KRNV-TV on Monday. “We can’t have an American people that violate the law and then just walk away from it. So it’s not over.”

While Reid declined to speculate further on the next move, BLM has said it will return to the courts, although that route has proven ineffective against this family, who for the last 20 years, have defied both the BLM and the courts.

Meanwhile, Cliven Bundy and his two sons, defiant as ever, appeared on Fox News with Sean Hannity who asked Cliven for a response to Reid’s remarks

“I don’t have a response for Harry Reid, but I have a response for every county sheriff across the United States,” Bundy said. “Disarm the federal bureaucrats.”

There you have it, a true supporter of the Constitution, as are all of the thugs who traveled across the country to confront and intimidate law enforcement officers doing their job last week.

Bundy claimed that he and the “patriots” who supported him had so badly frightened the federal agents that they backed down.

“Let me tell you how they backed down,” he told Hannity. “They backed down, they run and got on the freeway and went to Mesquite and grabbed their stuff and moved out of the state, now, the state, towards the state of Utah. Utah county sheriffs finish this job that [Sheriff Douglas] Gillespie didn’t do, take the guns away from these federal bureaucrats.”

Cross-Posted from Crooks & Liars



NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

NOT SO GOOD NEWS FOR ACA NAY-SAYERS

Premiums for health care insurance in the Affordable Care Act are lower than the federal government had anticipated, the Congressional Budget Office reported on Monday when it revised its cost estimate for the health care law. The nonpartisan office now believes that the ACA will cost the government $5 billion less than projected in 2014 and $104 billion less for the 2015-2024 period. It also found “no clear evidence” that premiums will surge in 2015, noting that “enrollees in the future will be healthier, on average, than the smaller number of people who are obtaining such coverage in 2014.” The agency estimated that the national average premium for individual silver policy plans would increase by $100 that year.

The CBO attributes the additional savings to government, relative to the CBO’s last assessment from February 2014, to lower-than expected premiums, which in turn lowered the cost for exchange subsidies, and higher-than expected revenues from the excise tax on high-premium insurance plans.

“Despite projecting that slightly more people will receive insurance coverage through exchanges over the 2015–2024 period than they had anticipated previously,” the report says. “CBO and JCT project that costs for exchange subsidies and related spending will be $164 billion (or 14 percent) below the previous projection, mainly because of the downward revision to expected exchange premiums.” The office also predicted that plans offered in the exchanges will provide wider provider networks and higher reimbursement rates to providers as enrollment increases. “That pattern will put upward pressure on exchange premiums over the next couple of years, although CBO and JCT anticipate that the plans’ characteristics will stabilize after 2016,” it found.

The office also concluded that the law’s so-called shock absorbers — reinsurance payments that are distributed to insurers that attract high-cost enrollees — “reduced exchange premiums this year by approximately 10 percent” and will “reduce premiums by smaller amounts in 2015 and 2016.” CBO found additional savings in Medicaid, revising downward government spending per adult enrolled in the program.

Ultimately, 12 million more nonelderly people will have health insurance in 2014 as a result of the law. Twenty-six million more “will be insured each year from 2017 through 2024 than would have been the case without the ACA,” the CBO concluded.

NFTOS

STAFF WRITER

Meet The 'New Republican Party'

Meet the new Republican party... same as the old Republican party.

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

CALL OF THE RILED

Bill Maher ended his show Friday night going after right-wing talk radio and how, as he views it, the industry purely exists to “bitch” about the government where they can have a “greater effect on influencing stupidity outside of government,” and tear down any Republican who isn’t “the single biggest prick in the room.”

Maher was spurred on by the odd decision of Congressman Mike Rogers to resign for a position in talk radio, and Maher couldn’t figure out why someone who wants to have a bigger impact on policy would leave the very institution where policy is actually made.

“The GOP has kind of become talk radio, an echo chamber where people are not interested in actually legislating or compromising or fixing America, just in screeching about how liberals have ruined it. So why not do it on the radio? The money’s better. And no one can see your toupée.”

Maher argued that this “lucrative business of bitching about government” is so determined to take down any impure Republican that the only one they truly idolize is Ted Cruz, because as Maher put it, he views public office as “just a higher form of talk radio.”



Episode 314 by BillMaher1956

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

GRAZING IN THE GRASS

“We provide armed response,” according to a Montana militia member named Jim Lordy. Lordy traveled to Nevada in order to support a local rancher for believes that he should not have to follow federal court orders. When he arrived there, he told a local reporter that “we need guns to protect ourselves from the tyrannical government.”

Lordy belongs to a militia group called Operation Mutual Aid, which provides “defense of public and private property, lives, and liberty to exercise God-given rights, seen plainly in the laws of Nature, and codified in the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, at the request of such parties in need of such defense,” according to a website associated with the group. Although only three militia members had arrived at the Nevada ranch by late Wednesday, when the latest reports came out, other militia groups reportedly “inundated the rancher's household with calls and pledges to muster at the site.”

The Oath Keepers, a right-wing law enforcement organization that warns about the government “disarming the American people” and “blockading American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps,” also announced that it will send people to support the defiant rancher.

This conflict arises out of rancher Cliven Bundy’s many years of illegally grazing his cattle on federal lands. In 1998, a federal court ordered Bundy to cease grazing his livestock on an area of federal land known as the Bunkerville Allotment, and required him to pay the federal government $200 per day per head of cattle remaining on federal lands. Around the time it issued this order, the court also commented that “[t]he government has shown commendable restraint in allowing this trespass to continue for so long without impounding Bundy’s livestock.” Fifteen years later, Bundy continued to defy this court order.

Last October, the federal government returned to court and obtained a new order, providing that “Bundy shall remove his livestock from the former Bunkerville Allotment within 45 days of the date hereof, and that the United States is entitled to seize and remove to impound any of Bundy’s cattle that remain in trespass after 45 days of the date hereof.” A third federal court order issued the same year explains that Bundy did not simply refuse to stop trespassing on federal lands — he actually expanded the range of his trespassing. According to the third order, “Bundy’s cattle have moved beyond the boundaries of the Bunkerville Allotment and are now trespassing on a broad swath of additional federal land (the “New Trespass Lands”), including public lands within the Gold Butte area that are administered by the BLM, and National Park System land within the Overton Arm and Gold Butte areas of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.” The third order also authorizes the federal government to “impound any of Bundy’s cattle that remain in trespass.”

On Saturday of last week, the government hired wranglers to round up Bundy’s livestock. As of Wednesday, they’d impounded a total of 352 cattle. That’s when a tense standoff broke out between a group of Bundy’s supporters and federal rangers armed with stun guns and police dogs. In one video, a ranger tackles Bundy’s sister away from a moving vehicle (she later admitted that she was blocking the path of government trucks shortly before this incident). Another video shows rangers using a stun gun on a protester immediately after he kicks a police dog.




Bundy, for his part, claims that “our Constitution didn’t provide for anything like the federal government owning this land.” He’s wrong. The Constitution provides that “the Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States.”

Congratulations both oath keepers and Cliven Bundy, you are today's asshats of the day.

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

With the first enrollment period of Obamacare successfully concluded, despite its disastrous roll-out, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is resigning.

Mr. Obama accepted Ms. Sebelius’s resignation this week, and on Friday morning he will nominate Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to replace her, officials said. 

The departure comes as the Obama administration tries to move beyond its early stumbles in carrying out the law, persuade a still-skeptical public of its lasting benefits, and help Democratic incumbents, who face blistering attack ads after supporting the legislation, survive the midterm elections this fall. […] 

The president is hoping that Ms. Burwell, 48, a Harvard- and Oxford-educated West Virginia native with a background in economic policy, will bring an intense focus and management acumen to the department. The budget office, which she has overseen since April of last year, is deeply involved in developing and carrying out health care policy. 

“The president wants to make sure we have a proven manager and relentless implementer in the job over there, which is why he is going to nominate Sylvia,” said Denis R. McDonough, the White House chief of staff.

Administration officials told The New York Times that the decision was Sebelius's and she wasn't being forced out, that she had been talking with President Obama about her future and about this transition since last month. “What was clear is that she thought that it was time to transition the leadership to somebody else,” McDonough told the paper.

NFTOS

STAFF WRITER

HATRED OF THE LOST ARK

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart took on the likes of Glenn Beck and his buddies over at Faux "news" to task for their carping about the new Noah movie, and the complaint that it's "not a documentary.

" STEWART: So you're telling me, the movie about a man who lives to 950 and loads two of every animal onto a 350 cubit long boat... you're telling me that film won't qualify to submit in the documentary category. That's outrageous. I guess what they're trying to say is this version is a bit different than what's from in the Bible."

Video Courtesy of Comedy Central

N FTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

AS ONLY MITCH MCCONNELL CAN

MITCH "THE TURTLE" MCCONNELL

On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch "The Turtle" McConnell honored Equal Pay Day — a day that symbolizes the amount of time it takes women to earn what men make in a year — by accusing Democrats and President Obama of a “never-ending political road show” that merely blows “a few kisses” to their voter base.

“Instead of focusing on jobs, he launched into another confusing attack on the left’s latest bizarre obsession,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “Just think about that. The percentage of Americans in the workforce is at an almost four-decade low, and Democrats chose to ignore serious job-creation ideas so they could blow a few kisses to their powerful pals on the left.”

McConnell argued the fact that women still earn 77 percent of what men make should take a backseat to more serious Republican priorities. These priorities typically include building Keystone XL pipeline and repealing Obamacare (which Republicans have attempted more than 50 times).

Leading up to Democrats’ latest push for equal pay, Republicans have claimed that the gender wage gap is a “myth” and that it is “condescending” to discuss. But the reality is that women still earn less even when they achieve the same education and job level, with gender discrimination accounting for as much as much as 40 percent of their pay gap.

In the past, McConnell’s voting record against women has not stopped him from taking credit anyway. He once touted the Violence Against Women Act to women voters, although he opposed it in both 1993 and 2012. McConnell has also opposed both the Lilly Ledbetter Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act. And the very health care law that McConnell wants to repeal prevents insurance companies from charging women more and ensures contraception coverage.

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

'God Almighty Is A Hater' Too

Televangelist Pat Robertson on Monday blasted "gay activists" for forcing out Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich after it was discovered that he backed the California Proposition 8 effort that stripped LGBT people of their marriage rights.

"Here this man at Mozilla, Eich, had given $1,000 about six or seven years ago -- $1,000 -- to a proposition," Robertson explained. "And somebody came around and said, 'Will you contribute?' And he said, 'Here's a grand, get off my back.' I mean, that's probably all that it amounted to." 

"But instead of that, he's being forced out by gay activists, who said that was hate speech to say that the union between a man and a woman is marriage -- that's hate speech."

The TV preacher continued: "Well then, the Bible then is full of hate. If that the way it is, then God almighty is a hater. If that's the way they want to define it. And I, of course, don't agree."

Robertson said that this is the reason that the Internal Revenue Service should not force non-profit groups to disclose donors.





NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West