CREEPY UNCLE SAM

THE CREEPY KOCH BROTHERS AND THEIR VERSION OF UNCLE SAM

I have said too many times to count, that nothing is beyond the pale of the slimy sloth aptly named the conservative.

The below video, courtesy of the Koch Whores, is, well, just watch for yourself. Prepare yourself for 62 seconds of pure, unadulterated WTF-ery.


CREEPY UNCLE SAM FROM THE KOCH WHORES

The very model, the foundation of the ACA was birthed by the once GOP Presidential loser, "keep your Mittens off me Romney." Why the ACA is diabolical under Obama and a success under Mittens you ask - this is the unlettered conservative we have come to know and love.

The facts are the World Health Organization who ranks the world's health care systems, ranked the USA 37th. Many of the higher ranked systems, you guessed it, were indeed single payer and government run systems.

MADDOW CREEPY UNCLE SAM

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Let me see if I have this correct, the GOP has mandated internal vaginal ultrasounds without blinking an eye, but is against mandating health insurance for all? How does that make sense? It doesn't!

Speaking of the definition of imbecile: Let's face it readers, if you're gullible and stupid enough to believe this Koch Brother's commercial, and you do choose not to get insurance, then you deserve everything you get. Why not take it a little further and not get car insurance, home insurance or better than that, decline life insurance as well!

An intelligent person who does stupid things is still stupid, also known as " a stupid is as a stupid does".

David and Charles Koch, you two brothers win the asshats of the decade award. Congratulations asshats!

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

GUNS OVER PEOPLE: KEEP THE SECOND AMENDMENT, SCREW THE REST OF THEM

On the heels of yet another senseless mass shooting, Jon Stewart posed a question: why are conservatives so eager to throw away all the amendments to keep the country safe… except the second one.

Stewart found it odd how someone with mental health and legal issues was able to legally own a gun and even pass a background check “with flying crazy.”

But more importantly, Stewart wanted to know why no form of gun control whatsoever seems to be acceptable. He called out conservatives from Senator John Cornyn to Fox News’ Eric Bolling for seemingly having no issue being lenient when it comes to most of the Constitution but being very gung-ho about guns. Stewart could only conclude, “With guns, the Constitution is ironclad, but with terrorism, it’s a list of suggestions.”

GOP Loves Second Amendment and The Rest Are Just ‘Suggestions’ Part 1
Video courtesy of Comedy Central

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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GOP Loves Second Amendment and The Rest Are Just ‘Suggestions’ Part 2
Video courtesy of Comedy Central

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

These videos are yet another hilarious take on the GOP hypocrisy – not that it’s anything we didn't already know.

The holier-than-thou Conservative patriots apply their own interpretations as they pick and choose parts of the Constitution – just as they pick and choose verses of the Bible – and then ignore or make exceptions to other parts of those same documents to fit the needs of their agenda.

This is the problem you have when you literally worship words written centuries ago and assume they are infallible, or applicable as written in today’s real world.

I played these videos for a Guns Over People nut prior to posting my blog today. He went absolutely batshit crazy. After fifteen minutes of pure unadulterated madness and seething blather, I suggested that perhaps if I played the clips at half-speed for him, that maybe he would understand what was being argued. This GOPer, a bona fide 'Fox News Listener' - I told him it must be tough for him to understand adult conversations. Its been three hours and I've heard nothing but crickets.

Yesterday we mentioned about Fox and Friends, their newest idiot, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, and how this RWNJ suggested that video games and guns in said video games be monitored. And I got to thinking, if you think we need gun control in video games, but not in real life, it's time for you to relinquish your rights to breathing.

An example of just how archaic and useless some parts of the constitution are, look at the 3rd amendment:

"No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."

The Constitution needs to be placed in a historical context. The authors of the constitution, didn't see into the future. Adhering to documents that are as old as Methuselah - without edits to reflect the times - are as useless as used toilet paper.

The second amendment was written with powered muskets in mind, not weapons that can shoot multiple rounds. I have written a plethora of times on the mindset of the American Talibaner - where only the first and second amendments are of value, I doubt, and would bet the farm that not a single solitary tin foil hat society member could tell you what the reaming amendments are.

The Guns Over People only show up to bitch when a big liberal voice like Jon Stewart attacks the second amendment - the need for gun control is obvious - but the GOP is so obsessed and OCD with the second amendment, that the remaining - the majority of Americans end up feeling like puppies that have been sodomized with a shotgun!

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

ELIZABETH HASSELBECK ENTERS THE GALACTALLY STUPID CLUB

Hasselbeck "Footwear Designer" Now Fox News Subject Matter Expert 

New Fox & Friends host Elisabeth Hasselbeck on Tuesday suggested that “the left” was trying to make Monday’s mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard about “gun control,” when what the country really needed was a registry to track video game purchases.

“You know, certainly, this topic has already taken a turn again, the left’s already making this about gun control,” Hasselbeck said.

Co-host Steve Doocy noted that 34-year-old Aaron Alexis was thought to have taken a shotgun onto the Navy Yard and then possibly used it to acquire a handgun and an AR-15 assault rifle from someone at the facility.

“Is this about gun control or is this about a guy who has a history of drinking a lot, playing video games a lot and a few shooting incidents?” co-host Brian Kilmeade asked.

“One thing that happens often in a situation as tragic as this is we start to spread blame where it possibly doesn't belong, right?” Hasselbeck remarked. “I think we all know where the blame truly belongs, and that would be right in Alexis’ hands.”

“But you talk about this guy’s background, as we look into it,” Kilmeade continued. “He’s got a friend, who said, ‘Yeah, he had an obsession with video games, shooting video games. In fact, he would come over and he would be playing so long — these video games, these shooting games — we’d have to give him dinner, we’d have to feed him while he continued to stay on them.’”

“Are more people susceptible to playing video games?” Hasselbeck wondered. “Is there a link between a certain age group or [demographic] in 20- to 34-year-old men, perhaps, that are playing these video games and their violent actions?”

“What about frequency testing?” she added. “How often has this game been played? I’m not one to get in there and say, monitor everything, but if this, indeed, is a strong link, right, to mass killings then why aren't we looking at frequency of purchases per person? And also, how often they’re playing and maybe they time out after a certain hour.”

“You go to your room!” Doocy quipped.

If this wasn't so tragic id be laughing my ass off. Ignorance can be forgivable, taking pride in it cannot. I would tell Ms. Hasselbeck that its "better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."

The meme of the Guns Over People - anything to deflect the reality that more guns equals more murders, and its the ease of access to WMD's, not video games that are the culprit for mass murder shootings.The facts are, a "lone good guy with a gun" has never once in the history of mass murder ever stopped that individual from mass murder.

An argument could be made that there's been a significant increase in the number of mass shootings since the launching of the Fox News Channel. Is there a link between Fox News and gun violence? Perhaps instead of monitoring video game players, we should monitor Fox News viewers.

If ever there was an argument for smacking idiots in the head with a brick when they spread their stupidity........It's not the hours spent playing video games that is the problem, it's the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the NRA glorifying, protecting, and perpetuating the gun culture in this country.

NFTOS Editor-In-Chief Roger West was asked during a debate this week, "How about parents not buying those games for their children?":

"How about not letting kids smoke, drink, watch sexual content movies, watch violent movies. I am sorry, this instance, nor the thirty other mass shootings had little or nothing to do with playing games! Why do we placate other non-related bullshit into the calculus of gun violence? Columbine was done prior to FPS games, what's the excuse for that one? Kids watching Wiley Coyote trying to kill the road runner with Acme products?

Blame the source, and that source is the preponderance and overwhelming thunder of the Gun drums! Nothing else, to suggest anything else, only continues to fuel the fire of mass shootings - which also spreads the ignorance of the issue at hand - and this issue is enacting laws which restricts "the so called responsible" gun huggers from getting weapons with the intent of killing the masses."

Elizabeth Hasslebeck is a perfect match for Fox & Friends News, dumber than a box rocks and full of more shit than Christmas turkey. Maybe because Hasselbeck just showed up on the  Fox & Friends set- that she is just trying to earn her stripes as Fox News's bullshit artist extraordinaire.

Maybe the best solution is that we start registering, arresting and incarcerating the Galactally Stupid?

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

JUST ANOTHER MASS SHOOTING IN AMERICA, NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ON!

Here we go again, yet another mass shooting, this time at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., claiming the lives of 13 people including the suspect.

George Zornick, of The Nation, called the scenario “the latest iteration of a now-familiar US news event,” which is a very sad commentary of our time. It’s hard to think that when he said “a now-familiar US news event,” he meant anything other than this has become frighteningly familiar, which is something that should never have been allowed to happen. His piece focuses on the U.S.’s growing gun problem, and how the NRA and their ilk, both in and out of Congress, fight against even reasonable measures in the face of these awful tragedies.

For instance, following the Sandy Hook tragedy, Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX), Governor of Virginia Bob McDonald, Governor of Texas Rick Perry, and others, issued statements to the effect that, had the teachers been armed, lives could have been saved that day. NRA President Wayne LaPierre also said something to that effect, and blamed violent video games for the escalating mass shootings here.

The NRA also proposed having armed guards at every school, which is something that may or may not be effective. Gunmen have cut down trained police officers before, Columbine High School had an armed guard with 15 years service in the Jefferson County sheriff’s department, who was unable to stop the shooters.

Known gun zealot Ted Nugent weighed in on the Aurora movie theater shooting, predictably suggesting that if moviegoers had been armed, lives would have been saved, despite strong evidence and even demonstration that the ability to accurately pull a concealed weapon, aim it, and fire it without also getting hit and without hitting innocents isn't something that can be done remotely well without extensive and ongoing training. To say nothing of the fact that James Holmes was wearing quite a bit of body armor.

After Sandy Hook, Ann Coulter weighed in on school shootings, saying that the way to stop them is more laws that allow concealed carry. She cited a study done by economists William Landes of the University of Chicago, and John Lott, of Yale University, who looked at mass shootings from 1977 to 1995, and says they found no evidence that waiting periods, stronger background checks, and other things touted by Democrats as “reasonable gun control measures” had any effect. However, apparently, they did find that concealed carry laws do have an effect. This reason is two-fold: One, the criminals won’t know who’s packing and who isn't, and will therefore be less likely to actually commit their crime. And two, people will be armed and able to take down a shooter before he fires off more than a couple of rounds.

The right-wing media is already pushing an agenda for even weaker gun laws, chanting the familiar, and frankly maddening, refrain that more guns there could and would have stopped this. According to MediaMatters, Fox News’ Martha MacCallum said that people aren’t allowed to carry weapons on a military base and that the shooters targeted the area because of that. That statement ignores research that only 23% of mass shootings occur at gun-free zones, according to author Matt Gertz.

Some random blogger thoughts:

What's the answer? I can think of many solutions for reigning in the Americans who favor guns over everything else, but unfortunately, there are not enough "patriots" that are willing to stand up to the four million strong of the NRA. Which is frightening in itself, where this organization can bully 316 million Americans.

One such solution, education, The Prevention Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public about violence (and other issues), advocates approaching the issue from a public health perspective. One thing they support is the CDC’s restored funding to conduct research into violence, something the NRA opposes because they fear the studies will scare people into supporting stronger gun laws.

What can we expect when we live in a country where its harder to get a job, harder to vote, and harder to get healthcare than it is to purchase a weapon of mass destruction? At what point readers, do we get serious with gun laws? Americas narcissistic view of self preservation is irrational, stupid, ignorant and reckless - another mass shooting, and another chance to do absolutely nothing about gun safety and violence.

Praying for the victims is an empty gesture and does nothing to actually aide the problem......you want to help you say, then get off your ass and do something that will prevent the next shooting -  to those that say today is not the day to debate gun control, you're right, the day to do it was yesterday.

Another mass shooting, and conservatives immediately rush to say that there weren't enough guns on site. But the reality is, an armed citizen has never ever stopped a mass shooting in 30 years - yet we all know, all to well, that somewhere out there, this very moment, Wayne LaPierre revises his usual speech to explain how the NRA is the real victim in all these mass shootings!

So quiet is the night, as the Guns Over People, the bully pulpit, and the NRA ponder how they can keep screaming about Benghazi and ignore the Navy Yard massacre all in the same breath!

Congratulations NRA, you are once again today's worst organization in the world!



NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

KENTUCKY SCIENCE DENIERS BE ADVISED

FACTS AND SCIENCE ELUDES THE GOP

Last Wednesday, a Kentucky review committee voted down the state’s plan to incorporate new federal science education guidelines into its curriculum. But Kentucky’s governor is making sure the committee doesn't get the last word on science education in his state.

Gov. Steve Beshear (Democrat) said Wednesday that he plans to implement the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) “under his own authority,” despite the Kentucky legislature’s Administrative Regulation Review Subcommittee’s 5-1 decision that the standards are deficient. The governor’s announcement will ensure the standards will move forward for the time being — they could still be killed by Kentucky’s general assembly when it returns in January, but the governor would then have the option to veto that decision.

Kentucky’s path to implement the NGSS — which are voluntary guidelines that, if adopted by states, provide standards for science education that include the teaching of climate science and evolution — has been a rocky one. The state Board of Education approved the standards this June, but since then, the state’s Tea Party along with religious and family-based groups have lobbied hard against the adoption of the rules — lobbying that Robert Bevins, president of Kentuckians for Science Education, a group that supports the NGSS, said resulted in the subcommittee’s vote against the standards.

Kentucky’s Senate Education Committee’s chairman Mike Wilson has also taken issue with the standards, saying in a May op-ed they included “troubling assumptions” on the topics of climate change and evolution. Those assumptions included the NGSS’s statements that “human activities, such as release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature” and “outcomes predicted by global climate models strongly depend of the amounts of human-generated greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere each year.”

Only five other states so far — California, Vermont, Maryland, Kansas and Rhode Island — have approved the NGSS, which represent the first major overhaul of science education in the U.S. in more than a decade. The standards are facing big challenges in some other states — in 2012, Texas Board of Education Chair Barbara Cargill said there was a “zero percent chance” the state would approve the guidelines. Texas updated its science education standards in 2009, an overhaul which resulted in a curriculum that required students to learn the “strengths and weaknesses” of all scientific theories, notably Darwin’s theory of evolution. And this month in Texas, state-appointed textbook reviewers are pushing the state to go even further in downplaying the legitimacy of largely scientifically-agreed upon topics like climate change and evolution.

Lisa Hoyos, co-founder and director of Climate Parents, a group that’s been vocal in its support of NGSS and testified in support of the standards in front of the Kentucky state legislature earlier this year that the group was thankful for the governor’s support of NGSS and was planning to continue to monitor the situation in the state. The group also organized a petition in Kentucky in support of the standards, which Hoyos said garnered about 6,000 signatures and many comments from parents and grandparents urging the state legislature to adopt the standards.

“A very small percentage of kids are actually receiving climate change education in their public school experience, and at the same time climate change is clearly something that is going to affect every child not even over the course of their lifetime but in their immediate future,” she said. “We need to prepare our kids to build a low-carbon economy and they need to know the basics about climate change in order to do that.”

Ignorance can be forgivable Kentucky, taking pride in it cannot!

Congratulations, Gov. Steve Beshear, you are today's hero of the day!

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

BREAKING: ACTIVE SHOOTING IN WASHINGTO NAVAL YARD

UPDATED: 9/16/13 15:17

Gunman identified as Aaron Alexis, 34, originally of Fort Worth, Texas
12 KILLED.

Police were seeking an active shooter on Monday morning in Washington, DC, after someone apparently opened fire at the headquarters of the Naval Sea Systems Command in Navy Yard, the shore facility of the U.S. Navy. Shots continued late into the morning as the gunman apparently barricaded himself inside a room in the building where the shooting took place.

NBC’s Washington affiliate reports that at least 10 were injured in the shooting. A press release from the U.S. Navy added that “emergency personnel are on scene and a ‘shelter in place’ order has been issued for Navy Yard personnel.”

One dispatch from a local Fox News affiliate identified a “Male gunman – large shot gun – still on the loose – 4th floor of Navy Yard building.” According to ABC, however, the gunman had an assault rifle.

A Twitter user who identified himself a Congressional staffer posted this photo on Twitter, of a purported victim of the shooting:

CREDIT: Twitter user @timjhogan

The shooting took place at one of the Navy Yard buildings — 197 — at 8:20 am EST Monday morning. About 3,000 people work in the building, according to the U.S. Navy’s twitter feed.

Flights were grounded from DC’s National airport Monday morning as police continued to try to capture the gunman.

This is a breaking news item and we will update as more information becomes available.

NFTOS

STAFF

MORE GUNS, EQUAL MORE MURDERS, EQUALS MILLIONS IN HOSPITAL CARE

Following yesterday's blog; a story about the biggest study ever conducted about guns.

Emergency room and inpatient procedures related to firearm injuries cost $629 million in 2010 alone, according to a new study by the Urban Institute. Since a large majority of these injuries afflicted poor males from low-income regions, U.S. taxpayers subsidized over half the costs of the treatments through public insurance programs.

Victims of gun violence are almost exclusively men aged 15 years and older, with American males between the ages of 15 and 34 comprising 69 percent of firearm assault injuries. Women constituted just nine percent of gun injuries across all ages.

Researchers found that the average emergency room visit for a gun injury ran $1,126, while an inpatient visit cost $23,497 — $14,000 more than the average cost of all inpatient stays in 2010.

These injuries were also concentrated in low-income regions with high numbers of uninsured Americans and Medicaid beneficiaries. In fact, over half of all the injuries occurred in zip codes in the lowest income quartile, while just seven percent occurred in areas with the highest incomes. That means that many of these hospitalization costs had to be covered by taxpayers through public insurance and assistance to hospitals that serve large numbers of the uninsured:

Earlier research has also found gun violence to be a costly enterprise for the health care system and taxpayers. An extensive Center for American Progress (CAP) report on gun violence found that three types of violent crime involving guns — homicide, robbery, and aggravated assault — cost taxpayers $3.7 billion per year in higher medical costs, lost work productivity from injuries, and spending on police and the courts.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has concluded that nonfatal gun injuries and gun-related deaths ultimately cost the U.S. $5.6 billion in medical spending every year. That number goes up to $64.6 billion when accounting for lost productivity due to the injuries.

NFTOS

STAFF WRITER

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