CNN THE NEW FOX NEWS?

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD OF CNN

CNN Seemed surprised when a Hip-Hop movie didn’t cause violence - and they ran a segment on Monday reporting that there wasn’t violence at movie theaters during the opening weekend of the hip-hop oriented film Straight Outta Compton.

CNN host Ashleigh Banfield reported, “Some movie theaters were worried about violence when Straight Outta Compton hit the screen. Instead, it only led to longer lines, ticket lines and some big money, too.”

Costello brought on CNN law enforcement analyst Cedric Alexander to discuss the reaction to the film.

“There are some police organizations that are calling on people — members and maybe even beyond their members — not to see this movie because of the message they think it sends,” said Alexander, who was a police officer in the 1980s when the group’s hits first came out. “We really have to get away from this whole ‘f the police’ to ‘support the police.'”

The film tells the story of the group N.W.A., a group from Compton, California that was highly influential in the early days of hip-hop, and included several members that are still famous today, including Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, who also produced the film.

The film earned $56 million on opening weekend, a record for an R-rated film opening in August. Police reportedly patrolled theaters showing the film, but violence failed to materialize.

Universal, the company behind Straight Outta Compton, said they had “not solicited enhanced security for theaters” showing the film last weekend.

Some movie theaters have stepped up additional security screening after 59-year-old John Russell Houser, a white man, shot several at a movie theater in Louisiana at a screening of the Amy Schumer film Trainwreck. Reporting in the Wall Street Journal suggested the increased security was inspired not only by the shooting, but also ongoing racial tensions and “the rap biopic’s gang-oriented subject matter.”

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STAFF WRITER

HUCKABEE PROVES TO BE A THINKER OFF THE BEATEN PATH

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is defending Paraguay’s controversial decision to deny an abortion to a 10-year-old girl who became pregnant after being raped by her stepfather.

Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, the Republican presidential candidate said it was “horrible” that the girl, now 11, was raped. “But does it solve the problem by taking the life of an innocent child?” he asked.




The story of the young girl — given the pseudonym “Mainumby” in legal documents — has captured a good deal of attention, as she recently gave birth after Paraguayan officials prohibited her from getting an abortion. Abortion is illegal in Paraguay, except “in very rare cases when it’s deemed necessary to save a woman’s life.”

Whether Mainumby’s pregnancy posed a threat to her life has been hotly debated, as medical experts say that girls under the age of 15 are more at risk for complications during childbirth. For that reason, Mainumby’s child had to be delivered via Cesarean section.

Paraguay’s policy is similar to what Huckabee and some other Republican presidential candidates say they would support if elected. Huckabee, Sen. Marco Rubio, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker have expressed a desire to ban abortion even in cases when women have been raped, or have been victims of incest.

The position has been unpopular in the past. Only 22 percent of Americans believe abortion should be illegal in cases of rape and incest, according to one Gallup poll.

CNN host Dana Bash appeared to question Huckabee’s position as well, pressing him on whether it would be easy “looking in the eyes of a 10-year-old girl and saying, ‘you had a horrible thing happen to you, and you’re going to have carry it out for the next nine months.”

“No, it isn’t easy,” Huckabee responded. “I wouldn’t pretend it’s anything other than a terrible tragedy. But let’s not compound the tragedy by taking yet another life.”

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Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

TED "THE PANTS SHITTER" NUGENT IS STILL A DOUCHE BAG

Is it conceivably possible that Ted Pedophile Nugent, and the Fox News base, can become any more disturbed? Nugent, appearing in a radio interview on WIBX’s Keeler in the Morning, was asked about the Megyn Kelly/Donald Trump feud. He sided with Trump, then added that Megyn Kelly is mostly useful for masturbation.

Nugent said, “I’m a big fan of Donald Trump because I believe in bold, aggressive, unapologetic truth. Period. And I’m not a fan of Megyn Kelly, although I often turn on Fox just to look at her. Sometimes when I’m loading my magazines, I like to just look at her. And I usually sit naked on the couch dropping hot brass on my stuff.”

Cenk Uygur, host of the The Young Turks, breaks it down. Watch:




Ted Nugent is this weeks douche bag of the week.


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Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

MILLION DOLLAR ADVICE FOR CLINTON

Bill Maher isn't ready to fork over a million dollars for Hillary Clinton's campaign, but would like to give her some advice on how to revive it. During last nights New Rules segment on HBO's Real Time, Maher told his audience that as much as he likes Bernie Sanders, he doesn't believe he's going to end up being the Democratic nominee, and expressed his concern over some of Clinton's recent poll numbers.

VIDEO COURTESY OF HBO







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Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

FOREIGN POLICY GOP STYLE

Foreign policy has taken an important role in the 2016 Republican Presidential primaries. One of the most prominent issues is how to deal with nefarious Islamist movement ISIS, also referred to as ISIL and the Islamic State.

ISIS’ meteoric rise over the summer of 2014 has pushed presidential front runners to take the group as a serious threat – both domestically and internationally. The latest attack — a truck bombing — killed at least 67 people in a Shia neighborhood of Baghdad on Thursday. Republicans have also focused heavily on the ISIS issue because the current administration’s policy has not gone according to plan. The United States’ program to train Syrian rebels has faced numerous setbacks while the bombing campaign that started a year ago has only experienced limited success.

So what alternative plan have the contenders proposed?

Marco Rubio

The Florida senator suggested forming an army of regional powers to fight ISIS.

“The United States should use it position of leadership to pull together a Sunni army, a Sunni ground force made up of Egyptians and Jordanians and Saudis and other kingdoms to go in on the ground [Syria and Iraq] and confront Sunni terrorists,” Rubio told Fox News in March. He said the key was to hit ISIS at its core in Syria and Iraq.

This approach has been touted by various politicians in recent months. In fact, Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi called for that exact thing in February only with one distinction. Rather than fight in Syria and Iraq, Sisi called for forming an Arab coalition to help protect Egypt from the ISIS threat in Libya. Egypt is currently facing serious internal security issues, particularly in Sinai, in addition to the ISIS threat in Libya.

That’s not the only pitfall, though. Back in April, Saudi Arabia formed a coalition to fight the Houthis in Yemen. It quickly went about seeking partners to contribute ground troop. Egypt said no, leaving the relatively small military capacity of the United Arab Emirates to partner with Saudi ground troops and aerial support in Yemen. But an important caveat with the Yemen case is that the Houthis are Zaidi Shia. The people of Gulf Arab powers (all ruled by Sunni monarchs) may have a harder time throwing support behind a campaign that fights fellow Sunnis, even if it is ISIS that they’re fighting. It also doesn’t help that wealthy individuals in some of these Gulf states — mainly Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait — have funneled money to groups like ISIS and the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.

Mike Huckabee

The former Arkansas governor’s plan is pretty simple. “When we have a threat, whether it is ISIS, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranians, whatever it is, we make it very clear that we plan to push back and destroy that threat to us,” Huckabee said in an interview with American Heartland with Dr. Grace. “And we won’t take 10 years doing it, we hopefully won’t even take 10 months, it will be like a 10 day exercise, because the fierceness of our forces would mean that we can absolutely guarantee the outcome of this film. That’s how America needs to operate in the world of foreign affairs, and foreign policy.”

The quick war trope has been trotted out before. Huckabee’s plan entails strong posturing toward America’s enemies followed by decisive military action. However, the United States already has what is widely considered the most formidable conventional army in the history of the world, and still wasn’t able to destroy oppositions firmly entrenched in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also, wiping out groups entrenched among civilian populations around the world in 10 days would rack up millions of civilian deaths, or collateral damage, if you want to take the rose-tinted view.

Chris Christie

In an interview with Sean Hannity in July, Christie focused on empowering regional allies to fight ISIS so that the U.S. wasn’t seen as an occupying force.

“We’ve got the Jordanians, the Egyptians, the Saudis, the Emirates, who all see ISIS as an existential threat to their existence. They don’t want to live under a theocracy,” the New Jersey governor said, even though Saudi Arabia is a theocracy. “We need to be training them down to the battalion level. We need more human intelligence on the ground to let them know where to target ISIS. And we need to stand with them, supply them with the arms they need, the sophistication they need, let them fight the fight there.”

Apart from the idea of forming an army of Arabs to fight ISIS, Christie argues for sending more arms to regional allies. President Obama ended a freeze on military aid to Egypt in March that provides them more than $1 billion. He’s also offered additional military aid to Saudi Arabia. But that doesn’t seem to have had any significant impact against ISIS’ continued reign of terror in Syria or Iraq.

Donald Trump

The real estate mogul also has a seemingly simple solution to defeating ISIS. “I would knock out the source of their wealth, the primary sources of their wealth, which is oil,” he told MSNBC. “And in order to do that, you would have to put boots on the ground. I would knock the hell out of them, but I’d put a ring around it and I’d take the oil for our country.”

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond T. Odierno said Wednesday that he disagreed with the current Republican frontrunner. “The problem we’ve had is we’ve had outcomes, but they’ve been only short-term outcomes because we haven’t properly looked at the political and economic side of it,” he said at a press briefing. “It has got to be three that come together. And if you don’t do that, it will not solve the problem, and that is what I continue to look at.”

Scott Walker

The Wisconsin governor hasn’t laid out much of a plan to date. He did say, however, “If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the globe.”

As Jim Geraghty writes in the National Review: “That is a terrible response. First, taking on a bunch of protesters is not comparably difficult to taking on a Caliphate with sympathizers and terrorists around the globe, and saying so suggests Walker doesn’t quite understand the complexity of the challenge from ISIS and its allied groups.”

Jeb Bush

After struggling with the question of whether or not he would have invaded Iraq in 2003, the former Florida governor has put together a plan more comprehensive than his competitors’. In a foreign policy speech Tuesday, Bush said the key to beating ISIS was to first remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and then unite the various rebel forces to fight ISIS.

This strategy has actually been expressed by a journalist who has done some of the best reporting on ISIS. In an interview this past July, Der Spiegel’s Christoph Reuter told a reporter, “There is no fast victory in Syria. The core problem is as long as Assad is there you will have no united front against Daesh [ISIS]. Once Assad is gone, everyone will be brought together to fight Daesh.”

He added: “Take out the [Assad] family first, which would help reunite the country, as well. In Iraq it’s much more complicated because you cannot change the mood of the Shiites.”

Of course, this is all easier said than done. To date, Assad has received military backing from Russia, Iran, and various Iranian proxies and, despite the recent nuclear deal, that isn’t likely to change.

Clearly none of these men are capable of running a home of four, let alone this country. Foreign policy has never been a forte of The American Taliban, and form these answers - they are not ready from prime time yet.

[Cross-posted from thinkprogress]

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Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

GIVE YOUR ADOPTED KIDS TO A RAPIST….WIN A “COURAGE” AWARD

JUSTIN HARRIS GOP HERO FOR GIVING ADOPTED KIDS TO A RAPIST

You can’t make this shit up!

A so-called family values organization will present an award at a fundraiser for GOP presidential hopeful Ted Cruz to a lawmaker who gave his two adopted daughters away to a rapist.

Arkansas State Sen. Justin Harris, a Republican, will be given the “Power of Courage” award by the Family Council Action Committee, a non-profit that is vocally anti-LGBT, the Arkansas Times reports. The awards will be given out Wednesday evening at a Cruz fundraiser dinner.

Another Republican, Rep. Charlene Fite, will also be honored with the award, which they are being given because they “demonstrated courage by standing strong in faith when situations were tough at the State Capitol and they did so with grace. They are consistently models of their Christian values in their homes, their communities, and their churches.”

According to the Times, Harris used his influence as a lawmaker to pressure state child services to allow him and his wife to adopt two young girls, even though caseworkers said the couple was ill-suited to care for them.

Eight months later, the adoption failed. The Harrises sent the girls to live with family friends. One of the girls was sexually abused by the father, who is now serving a 40-year prison sentence for crimes against children.

Before “rehoming” the girls, the Harrises believed the children were possessed by demons and could communicate telepathically. The Harrises apparently feared the girls and had an exorcist “cast out” the demons. According to the Times, they kept one of the girls locked in a room with no toys or books, monitoring her on closed-circuit television.

While the other child was allowed to roam the house, the girls were separated by an elaborate system of locks and alarms.

The Harrises were not prosecuted because there was no law on the books in Arkansas barring “rehoming” of adopted children at the time. After the case became public, lawmakers quickly made it illegal to do so without court supervision, but the law is not retroactive.

In a press release for the event obtained by the Times, mention of these events is only made obliquely:

Even when opposed by the liberal media, Representative Harris has always held firm and stood tall in his faith. No one can deny Representative Harris’ faith has always led him while serving at the Arkansas State Capitol. In 2015, Harris sponsored the Parental Involvement Enhancement Act, requiring parents to be involved in their children’s decision to terminate life by requesting an abortion. This is now law today.

According to the Times, Harris makes his living running a religious preschool called Growing God’s Kingdom.

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Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

POLICE IN FREDDIE GRAY CASE LEAKING “ARSENAL OF MATERIAL” TO DEFENSE

BALTIMORE — At least one former or current member of the Baltimore Police Department has been "actively working" with defense attorneys for the six officers charged in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray, according to prosecutors — leaking them an "arsenal of material" to use in a "campaign of public relations warfare."

Deputy State's Attorney Michael Schatzow alleged in a recent motion that some of the information leaked to the defense has been true and some false. He warned defense attorneys that they are not entitled to "blindly believe and repeat every piece of information they may have been told by politically motivated sources."

The source of the information was not identified, and Schatzow did not specify what information is believed to have been leaked.

The motion follows others in which defense attorneys have alleged that the prosecution has not provided all of the evidence they are entitled to receive and said that they have conducted their own lengthy investigation of the case as a result — in part by interviewing state witnesses, some of whom are police officers.

On Tuesday, the Police Department directed all questions to Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby, who did not respond to a request for comment.

None of the officers' attorneys responded to a request for comment.

Gray, 25, died in April after suffering a severe spinal cord injury while in police custody. His death was followed by protests against police brutality, and rioting, looting and arson erupted on the day of his funeral. Days after the unrest, Mosby announced charges against the six officers involved in Gray's arrest.

Officer Caesar R. Goodson Jr., the driver of the police van in which Gray was injured, is charged with second-degree depraved-heart murder. Sgt. Alicia D. White, Lt. Brian W. Rice and Officer William G. Porter are charged with manslaughter. Officers Edward M. Nero and Garrett E. Miller face lesser charges, including second-degree assault.

All of the officers have pleaded not guilty. They have yet to appear in court.

Their attorneys and the prosecutors have been litigating the case through a flurry of motions — each side alleging improprieties while also complaining that the other side's arguments have been written with flourishes aimed less at the court than at the news media.

In his latest motion, Schatzow asked the court to sanction defense attorneys for, among other things, using their subpoena power without the court knowing to obtain the text messages of a prosecutor working on the case and making "a knowingly false attack on an esteemed Circuit Court judge's integrity."

The defense has cited the text messages as evidence of "judge shopping" on the part of the prosecutor, who they said went to Judge Timothy J. Doory to obtain a warrant for the officers' cellphones after another judge had denied the request.

More recently, the defense has alleged that prosecutors have withheld information from the police investigation into Gray's death, and that Assistant State's Attorney Janice Bledsoe told police investigators not to pursue information that Gray had a history of participating in "crash-for-cash" schemes — injuring himself in law enforcement settings to collect settlements — so as not to "do the defense attorneys' jobs for them."

They have asked that Mosby's office be removed from the case.

In his motion, Schatzow characterized the defense allegations as obvious attempts, based on information obtained from questionable sources, to sway the jury pool — using the media "like Defense marionettes" in the process.

"This Court's judicial powers and processes have become Defense instruments in a publicly performed symphony of slander, innuendo, and victim-bashing," Schatzow wrote.

Schatzow asked that the court, through sanctions, restrict the defense attorneys' subpoena powers; require that they provide copies of all past subpoenas issued in the case and any information obtained through those subpoenas for a court review; clear the way for prosecutors to seek to quash or seek a protective order over any of that material; and warn the defense that "any future pleadings found to be made in bad faith may result in additional sanctions, including being held in contempt."

He wrote that the defense attorneys should have brought their concerns about missing evidence directly to prosecutors instead of writing about them in motions.

Schatzow acknowledged that after the concerns were raised about missing evidence — including some allegedly contained in the initial police investigation before it was handed over to the state's attorney's office — prosecutors went back to police to determine the facts, going through "the list of allegedly missing items."

"While most of the items do not exist, the investigators turned over to the State's Attorney's Office a few additional materials that they had never previously provided and which were then promptly given to the defense in a supplemental disclosure," he wrote.

A motions hearing is scheduled Sept. 2, though Judge Barry Williams could rule on motions in the case before then.

Jose F. Anderson, a law professor at the University of Baltimore and a former public defender in the city, said Williams might have much to say about the public squabbling between the two sides over evidence and discovery.

"Judges like parties to work these things out privately and among themselves as ladies and gentlemen," he said. "Most circuit judges will not be happy with games being played by either the prosecution or defense with discovery in such a high-profile case."

As for the defense attorneys getting information from a police source, Anderson said that would be "pretty rare" — though the defense attorneys have a right to conduct their own investigation in the case and try to talk to witnesses.

Still, he said, they could have taken concerns with what they found to the prosecution for further discussion without casting "a cloud over the prosecutors' motives" in court filings or giving the impression that they have "additional sources that are not equally sharing information with the prosecutors."

[Crossposted from Baltimore Sun]

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STAFF WRITER

MEGYN KELLY CLAIMS “GOOD JOURNALISM” SAYS SHE WON’T STOP

Bullshit Mountain host Megyn Kelly did not directly address the personal attacks against her by Donald Trump on Monday, but did not back down from pressing the Republican presidential candidate over his history of sexist remarks.

“Trump, the front-runner, will not apologize. And I certainly will not apologize for doing good journalism,” she said. “So I’ll continue doing my job without fear or favor. And Mr. Trump, I expect, will continue with what has been a successful campaign thus far.”

The former reality TV star accused Kelly of having “blood coming out of her wherever” for bringing the issue up at last week’s candidate debate.

He was subsequently disinvited from an event hosted by the conservative site RedState.com, and later demanded an apology from Kelly. Kelly noted the attacks during a short commentary on her show, saying she declined to respond.

“I felt he was asked a tough but fair question. We agreed to disagree,” she said, later adding, “This is a tough business, and it’s time now to move forward.”

CNN reported that Trump and the network’s CEO, had what was described as a “blunt but cordial” conversation on Monday morning.

“We discussed our concerns, and I again expressed my confidence in Megyn Kelly,” Ailes said in a statement. “She is a brilliant journalist and I support her 100 percent.”

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STAFF WRITER

FIORINA SAYS SHE’LL GUT FEDERAL JOBS JUST LIKE AT HP

Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO now seeking the Republican presidential nomination, was grilled Sunday by Fox Chris Wallace about her record of laying off about 30,000 employees over her tenure. Fiorina suggested she would bring the same job elimination approach as president.

Wallace noted to Fiorina that Democrats had successfully defeated former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) in 2012, in part, by highlighting his record of layoffs over his time at Bain Capital and asked how she would avoid the same fate if she were the nominee.

Fiorina responded by pointing out that “not all business people are the same,” just like not all politicians who run for president lose.

She then suggested that “the vast majority of Americans understand that in tough times, sometimes tough decisions have to be made.”

Arguing that “we have never succeeded in shrinking the size of government,” she added: “We have a bunch of baby boomers who are gonna retire out of the federal government over the next five or six year. I will not replace a single one.”




Taken literally, this promise would mean that she would simply leave vacant Supreme Court vacancies, would not appoint any executive officials, and would leave military forces without any commanders should any retirements occur.

But her claim about government size is demonstrably false. According to the Office of Personnel Management, 5,289,000 federal employees were part of the government in President Reagan left year in office (1988). In 2014, that number was just 4,185,000.

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Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

NO HE DIDN'T

Yes he did......

Unfiltered numbnuts Donald Trump, who leads the polls for the Republican presidential nomination by a wide margin, received a series of tough questions during the Fox News debate on Thursday. Notably, Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly confronted Trump about his history of insults about women. Over the years, Trump has referred to women as “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals,” Kelly noted.

Appearing on CNN Friday night, Trump suggested that Kelly asked him “ridiculous questions” because she was on her period. Specifically, Trump said she had “blood coming out of her whatever.”




On Thursday night Trump dismissed concerns that he was a misogynist, saying he didn’t “have time for total political correctness.” “What I say is fun, it’s kidding, we have a good time,” Trump added.





NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

Bill Maher back from summer vacation took on the slaying of an innocent lion and the sick culture wealth.

VIDEO COURTESY OF HBO

Seth McFarlane said the other day: 

"When a child kills an animal for fun, we fear mental illness. When an adult with the capacity to reason does it, we call it "sport.""

Senseless animal killers, you are today's shit stain of the world. There are many of you so enjoy the award asshats.





NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

MEGYN KELLY CORNERS TRUMP ON WOMEN BASHING

Megyn Kelly, one of the moderators during Thursday night’s GOP presidential debate, challenged Donald Trump over his long history of sexist comments towards women. During the first few minutes of the first prime time debate, Kelly pressed Trump on his description of women as “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.”

Trump responded by saying that he only reserved such language for Rosie O’Donnell and went on to defend his language. The business mogul argued that the country is overrun by political correctness and that he is the only presidential candidate who truly speaks his mind.





Vox has a full rundown of Trump’s insults against women, including more details about his long-running feud with O’Donnell.

“We lose to Mexico”, yet Trumps clothing line is in Mexico. Priceless asshat!

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Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

RIGHT WING LADEN FEDERAL APPEALS COURT SAYS NO TO STRICTER VOTER ID LAWS

One day before the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, one of the most conservative federal appeals courts in the country wielded that law to strike down a Texas voter suppression law. A unanimous panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in an opinion written by a George W. Bush appointee, held that Texas’s voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act and must, at the very least, be significantly weakened. Though the court did not accept every argument raised against the state’s voter ID law, and its opinion does not go nearly as far as a trial judge’s decision which also struck down this law, it is a significant blow to the state’s efforts to make voting more difficult.

Voter ID laws are a common obstacle raised, mostly by right-leaning lawmakers, in front of citizens seeking to exercise their right to vote. Though stringent voter ID laws, which require voters to show a photo ID before they can cast a ballot, are often justified as a shield against voter fraud, the kind of fraud these laws target barely exists. A Wisconsin study, for example, found just seven cases of fraud out of 3 million votes cast during the 2004 election — and none of these seven cases were the kind of in-person voter fraud that is prevented by a voter ID law. Similarly an investigation by former Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz (R) found exactly zero cases of in-person voter fraud over the course of several elections.

What voter ID laws do accomplish, however, is they disproportionately disenfranchise groups that tend to prefer Democratic candidates over Republicans. As Judge Catharina Haynes explained in her opinion on behalf of the Fifth Circuit, one analysis determined that “Hispanic registered voters and Black registered voters were respectively 195% and 305% more likely than their Anglo peers to lack” a voter ID in the state of Texas. Indeed, even Texas’s own numbers confirmed that voter ID laws disproportionately impact racial minorities. Their own expert “found that 4% of eligible White voters lacked SB 14 ID, compared to 5.3% of eligible Black voters and 6.9% of eligible Hispanic voters.”

Similarly, low-income voters are much less likely to have ID then their wealthier counterparts. The district court in this case “credited expert testimony that 21.4% of eligible voters earning less than $20,000 per year lack SB 14 ID, compared to only 2.6% of voters earning between $100,000 and $150,000 per year.”

The racial disparities impacting voter eligibility, when combined with other conditions in Texas that tend to produce discrimination against African Americans and Latinos, were sufficient reason for the court to hold that Texas’s voter ID law must be struck down. Yet, while this is certainly a victory for the voters and institutions that challenged this voter suppression law, it is not a total victory.

For one thing, the Fifth Circuit determined that the appropriate remedy in this case may not be a broad injunction striking down the entire law. Rather, if the evidence in this case does not show that Texas acted with a discriminatory intent when it enacted this law, an injunction “reinstating voter registration cards as documents that qualify as acceptable identification under the Texas Election Code” may be appropriate.

More importantly, Haynes’s opinion vacated the trial court’s finding that state lawmakers did, indeed, act with racial discrimination in mind when they enacted this law. Pointing to several pieces of evidence that the district court relied upon which the Fifth Circuit found less compelling, Haynes’s opinion instructs the trial judge to conduct “a reexamination of the probative evidence underlying Plaintiffs’ discriminatory purpose claims weighed against the contrary evidence.” That does not preclude the trial court from determining, once again, that state lawmakers had racial discrimination on their minds when they enacted this law, but it does make it more difficult for that court to reach such a determination.

Should the courts ultimately conclude that Texas did act with a discriminatory purpose, that could have profound implications for the state moving forward. Among other things, it could lead to a court order reinstating the requirement that Texas “pre-clear” all of its voting laws with officials in Washington DC before those laws can take effect — a requirement that was deactivated when five conservative members of the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013.

Ultimately, however, any decision calling Texas’s voter ID law into question must survive two significant obstacles. The first is that the Fifth Circuit is an especially conservative court, and it is likely that Texas will ask a panel of all 15 of the court’s active judges to reconsider this case. The fact that Haynes agreed that the law is problematic should help supporters of voting rights if Texas seeks full court review, but it is no guarantee that a majority of the Fifth Circuit will agree with her.

And, even if Haynes’s conclusion survives contact with the full Fifth Circuit, this case is reasonably likely to be reviewed by a Supreme Court that’s shown skepticism of voting rights claims generally and of the Voting Rights Act in particular.

[h/t thinkprogress]

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STAFF WRITER

CRAIG JAMES, EX FOOTBALLER SAYS HOMOPHOBIC REHTORIC SHOULD NOT HAVE CAUSED HIM TO BE FIRED

Craig James is a former professional football player and longtime sports broadcaster who, in 2012, took time off from his broadcasting career to mount an unsuccessful bid for the United States Senate. During that campaign, according to a lawsuit James filed Monday, he opposed equal marriage rights for same-sex couples, and called upon “Christians” to “stand up” against the advance of marriage equality. Though he briefly worked as a broadcaster for Fox Sports following his campaign, James says he was fired shortly after Fox uncovered his past anti-gay statements.

James now works for the Family Research Council, an anti-gay organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center designates as a “hate group.”

The crux of James’s lawsuit are claims that Fox “discriminated against James because of his religion in violation of the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act.” Yet his complaint (which, admittedly, is only available to the public in a redacted form) cites no actual evidence that Fox’s decision to fire James was motivated by the fact that James identifies as a Christian. Nor does it claim that Fox Sports treated other employees who held similar anti-gay views differently because those employees are not Christian. Rather, James says that “Fox Sports informed James that his short off-the-cuff statement about his beliefs regarding marriage . . . was the sole reason Fox Sports terminated him,” and he does not appear to disagree with Fox’s alleged claim that they were motivated solely by their own opposition to James’s anti-gay statements.

Instead, James attempts a two-bumper bank shot to convert this anti-anti-gay firing into a kind of religious discrimination. James, his lawsuit emphasizes, holds anti-gay beliefs that are motivated byhis religious beliefs, and this, he claims, is enough to protect his job even if Fox would be allowed to fire an employee who made similar statements that were driven by a secular belief.

In other contexts, the Supreme Court has rejected attempts to use cries of religious discrimination to excuse acts of bigotry. Four years after Congress banned whites-only restaurants, for example, the owner of a South Carolina barbecue chain put up a sign protesting that “[t]he law makes us serve n***ers, but any money we get from them goes to the Ku Klux Klan.” He also claimed that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “contravenes the will of God,” and that he should be exempted from having to follow it because of his religious beliefs. The Supreme Court disagreed, in Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, labeling the restaurant owner’s claim “patently frivolous.”

James’s case, however, was filed in Texas court, where the conservative Texas Supreme Court may see things differently than the justices of another era. It also arises under a different area of the law than Piggie Park. James sued under the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act, which, among other things, prohibits discrimination “because of or on the basis of any aspect of religious observance, practice, or belief, unless an employer demonstrates that the employer is unable reasonably to accommodate the religious observance or practice of an employee or applicant without undue hardship to the conduct of the employer’s business.”

There is surprisingly little Texas case law interpreting this particular provision. Nevertheless, Texas civil rights law explicitly tracks “the policies of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its subsequent amendments,” so federal court decisions examining similar cases should inform the Texas judges confronted by James’s case. At least one federal appeals court case, however, suggests that employers are not required to accommodate the anti-gay views of their employees, even if those views are motivated by religion.

In Peterson v. Hewlett-Packard Co., the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit considered a

n employee who posted Bible verses that, among other things, said that men who have sex with men should be “put to death.” Admittedly, this is a more egregious case than the James case, as James was not fired for saying that gay or bisexual men should be executed (when he was later asked about executing gay people, he responded tepidly). Nevertheless, the court in Peterson offered a sweeping dismissal of the idea that an employer is required to accommodate statements that could cause lesbian, gay or bisexual employees to feel unwelcome. It is an undue hardship, the court explained, to inhibit an employer’s “efforts to attract and retain a qualified, diverse workforce, which the company reasonably views as vital to its commercial success.”

James was an unusually visible employee who made his anti-gay statements in an unusually public forum. And James admits that Fox Sports was motivated by similar fears to the ones that concerned the employer in Peterson. He quotes a Fox spokesperson, who reportedly said that James was fired because “we just asked ourselves how Craig’s statements would play in our human resources department” and concluded that “he couldn’t say those things here.”

Nevertheless, the Texas judicial system is unusually conservative, so there is no guarantee that it will not give people like James a special right to make offensive statements about LGBT people with impunity.

Craig, you are today’s asshat of the day. Congrats numbnutz!

[h/t thinkprogress]

NFTOS
STAFF WRITER

SUCCESS FOR TRUMP, LATINOS DESPISE HIM

A new poll from NBC News, the Wall Street Journal, and Telemundo found that Donald Trump is very unpopular with Latinos. This is in spite of Trump’s claims that he has significant Latino support. Trump still holds a wide lead with GOP primary voters ahead of the campaign’s first debate Thursday. He remains in the lead at 19 percent, compared with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at 15 percent and Florida Governor Jeb Bush at 14 percent.

Trump faced controversy from day one of his campaign, when he called Mexican immigrants ‘rapists’ in his announcement speech. The poll found that a majority of Latinos found those remarks to be “insulting and racist.”

NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

JEB SAYS HE’LL CUT CONGRESS’ PAY IF THEY DON'T WHAT HE WANTS

Late last month, Republican presidential candidate and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush cast the Constitution’s model for separation of powers to the winds with a 15 second video centered around one proposal — “If Congress skips votes or hearings Jeb will cut their pay.”

Bush’s proposal to unilaterally cut lawmakers’ pay is unconstitutional. The 27th Amendment provides that “no law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened,” so any law changing congressional pay would not take effect until after the next congressional election. More importantly, the Constitution provides that “Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law,” so Congress itself would have to acquiesce in Bush’s proposal for it to ever become law. “Jeb” does not have the power to “cut their pay” on his own, even if he is elected president.

There is a very good reason, moreover, why the President of the United States does not have this power. As James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers, “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” Yet Bush’s proposal comes close to accumulating both executive and legislative power into one person’s hands. If the president had the power to impose financial sanctions upon lawmakers — even for seemingly legitimate reasons — that power could easily be abused to coerce those lawmakers into supporting an agenda they would otherwise oppose. In our system of government, elected officials are accountable to the voters for their jobs and the benefits that come with that job, they are not accountable to a single man.

It should be noted that Bush’s proposal is somewhat vague. What does it mean, for example, for “Congress” to skip a vote? During the 113th Congress, which completed its final session in January of 2015, members of the House introduced a total of 5884 bills. That suggests that the House would have needed to vote on nearly 20 different bills every single day that it was in session to avoid skipping a vote on one of those bills. It would have been physically impossible for every member of Congress to research each of these bills and cast an informed vote if Congress tried to complete such a task.

In a conversation on Twitter, Vox’s Matt Yglesias suggests a more likely interpretation of Bush’s proposal — that this is really an “effort to squeeze Sen. Marco Rubio & Sen. Rand Paul.” Yglesias suggests that Bush may be proposing that individual members of Congress — not Congress as a whole — should have their pay docked if they miss a vote or a hearing in order to campaign. Thus, “poor Rubio will have to stand on stage and explain that casting votes isn’t an important part of his job.”

This interpretation of Bush’s proposal has some intuitive appeal, although some of that appeal may diminish if voters understand just how often hearings are convened for parochial or even partisan purposes. Should a member of Congress really face personal sanctions, for example, if they fail to attend yet another hearing attempting to transform the tragic deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya into a political liability for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton?

In any event, the Constitution contemplates a very explicit sanction for lawmakers deemed inexcusably absent: those lawmakers will have to stand for election and could be tossed out of office if their constituents are dissatisfied with their performance. Unlike Bush’s proposal, allowing voters to judge their own representatives also does not raise the specter of a president taking financial retribution against lawmakers that displease him.

[h/t thinkprogress]

NFTOS 

STAFF WRITER

SHERIFF REFUSES TO COOPERATE IN JAIL HOUSE NATURAL CAUSE DEATH

The family of a 32-year-old gay man who died in a Texas jail want more answers as to why he was denied his medication that led to the seizures that killed him, reports KTRK.

With Texas lawmakers looking into jailhouse reform in the wake of the recent death of Sandra Bland in Houston, the parents of Jesse Jacobs have come forward to discuss their son’s death after he turned himself into a Galveston jail to serve a DUI sentence, only to die within a week.

The parents of Jacobs, who died in March, want an investigation into what happened in the jail, however the sheriff — on the advice of the Galveston County Attorney– is refusing to turn over video fearing a lawsuit.

Jacobs voluntarily entered jail to serve his 30 days, with the hope that he would only have to stay for 12 days with time off for good behavior. However after being processed, jailhouse medical personnel denied him the prescribed Xanax he had been taking for ten years to treat a severe anxiety disorder. A week after being denied the drug Jacobs began experiencing seizures, a known side-effect of Xanax withdrawal.

Within 24 hours of being admitted to a hospital, Jacobs was dead with medical personnel saying he died from a “seizure disorder,” and Sheriff Henry Trochesset insisting it was natural causes.

“I’m angry,” says Jacobs’ father, also named Jesse. “Because as far as I’m concerned, they executed my son just as sure as if they put a gun to his head and pull the trigger.”

According to Jacobs’ mother, Diane, her son went into jail worried whether he would receive his medication.

“Our son was concerned that he was not going to receive his medication,” Diane Jacobs remembered. “He told us, ‘Mom what will happen, if I don’t receive this?'”

Medical records obtained by KTRK, show that county jail doctors put Jacobs on a different medication, while noting in his medical records that he was “detoxing” from Xanax, which was prescribed by his own doctor.

“Whatever the doctor, the internal doctor said he was prescribed, was what he was given,” said Sheriff Trochesset. “Individuals come into the jail all the time. Some of them are taking medications that they shouldn’t be, or they say they’re suppose to be on certain medications.”

The jailhouse doctors are not part of the sheriff’s unit, and are contracted from an outside vendor.



NFTOS
STAFF WRITER

EXTREMEST HUCKABEE SUGGESTS DEPLOYING MILITARY TO STOP WOMEN FROM GETTING ABORTIONS

Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said at a campaign stop on Thursday that he would consider sending federal troops or the Federal Bureau of Investigation to stop abortions.

During a campaign stop in Iowa, reporters asked Huckabee about a recent controversy over an anti-choice organization‘s efforts to paint Planned Parenthood as a dubious entity that is selling “aborted baby parts” through the release of several heavily edited videos.

Huckabee said he would “invoke the 5th and 14th amendments for the protection of every human being.” The Fifth Amendment states, “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger.” This suggests a Hucakbee presidency would unilaterally make all abortion illegally by deeming all fetuses are people.

He repeated a conservative line that there is now scientific proof that “unborn babies are human beings,” and the Supreme Court may not have known that when they ruled on Roe v. Wade in 1973. Many anti-choicers have pointed to a recent study that said a small percentage of 22-week fetusescan survive outside the womb and have used that as justification for earlier and earlier abortion bans.

“I will not pretend there is nothing we can do to stop this,” Huckabee said. When a reporter asked if hew would use federal troops or the FBI to this end, he said, “We’ll see if I get to be president.”

He cited Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln as his inspiration, saying they were previous presidents who have defied Supreme Court rulings.

YIKES! Mike, you are voted today's asshat of the day. Congrats wingnut, you've earned!




NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

STUDY SHOWS GOOD GUN HUGGERS ARE WORTHLESS AS TITS ON A BULL WHEN ATTEMPTING TO INVOKE SELF DEFENSE

You’ve heard the bullshit a million times: “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” The only problem, it turns out, is that being a “good guy” isn’t good enough.

A new study by researchers at Mount St. Mary’s University shows that proper training and the ability to know how and when to apply lethal force is essential to not only “stopping a bad guy” but not killing yourself and other innocent bystanders. As Christopher Ingraham of The Washington Post reports:

Researchers recruited 77 volunteers with varying levels of firearm experience and training, and had each of them participate in simulations of three different scenarios using the firearms training simulator at the Prince George’s County Police Department in Maryland…

They found that, perhaps unsurprisingly, people without firearms training performed poorly in the scenarios. They didn’t take cover. They didn’t attempt to issue commands to their assailants. Their trigger fingers were either too itchy — they shot innocent bystanders or unarmed people, or not itchy enough — they didn’t shoot armed assailants until they were already being shot at

The study, it should be noted, was funded by a gun reform advocacy group National Gun Victims Action Council, and the sample size of 77 is rather small but the findings are significant and confirm what even the NRA says — more training goes a long way in preventing accidents in the event of emergencies. The researchers released some interesting video showing the difference between how trained professionals respond to crises and how the average Joe does.





The National Gun Victims Action Council considers itself a moderate gun control group advocating for “sane gun control”. They believe the first step to more sane control is requiring training for handgun ownership just as we currently do for the operation of cars and other heavy machinery.



The NRA, for its part, categorically opposes such measures.


[h/t Washington Post]




NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

We Took Turns Fucking A Replica of Reagan’s Eye Socket

Jon Stewart opened The Daily Show on Wednesday by addressing the media furor over his “secret” meetings with President Barack Obama, while mocking Fox News and Politico for hyping the encounters.

“It was a roundtable meeting with the President, Elvis — still alive — Minister [Louis] Farrakhan, and the Area 51 alien,” Stewart quipped. “We opened with the traditional Saul Alinsky prayer, sucked on the blood of the righteous, and took turns fucking a replica of the Reagan eye socket. The real Reagan eye socket is kept in the Smithsonian and is only fucked on Christmas.”

While Politico misidentified Stewart’s executive producer, Steve Bodow, as “Scott Budow,” Stewart said, Fox went out of its way to describe the meetings as Stewart being “summoned” clandestinely, despite the host’s visits being recorded on the official White House logs.

“Something is not a secret just because you don’t know about it,” Stewart chided, saying he agreed to meet with Obama because “If the president tells you to and you don’t, who the f*ck knows what would happen?”

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In reality, the host said, his discussions with Obama played out not unlike his final interview with the president last week: spending the majority of the time arguing over issues like the Affordable Care Act website or the Veterans Affairs Bureau over salmon dishes.

Stewart did confess that, during his tenure leading the show, he had been approached by individuals ranging from “tech giants, to financial captains, to Billy Joel,” all basically asking, “Jon, why are you such an assshole?” — and the meetings with Obama were no different. Among those people, he noted, was Fox News chief Roger Ailes.

“In fact, in my entire tenure here of being yelled at by some very influential and powerful individuals — and Billy Joel — only with one of those people has a phone call ever ended with, ‘This conversation never happened, and if you say it did, I’ll deny it.’ And it wasn’t the fucking president,'” he said, while looking toward a graphic representing Ailes.





NFTOS

Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

JIMMY KIMMEL SLAMS DENTIST LION KILLER

Jimmy Kimmel took aim at the Minnesota dentist who illegally killed Cecil the lion near a national park in Zimbabwe.

The ABC talk show host said Walter Palmer, who owns a dental practice in Bloomington, had quickly become “the most hated man in America who never advertised Jello pudding.”

Kimmel wondered how a person could kill such a beautiful creature as Cecil, who was known for his apparent ease around humans.

“Is it that difficult for you to get an erection, that you need to kill things that are stronger than you?” he said. “If that’s the case, they have a pill for that.”

Kimmel said he wasn’t opposed to hunting on principle, but he said Palmer’s actions were disgusting.

“If you’re some asshole dentist who wants a lion’s head over the fireplace in his man cave so his douchebag buddies can gather around it and drink scotch and tell him how awesome he is, that’s just vomitous,” he said.

Kimmel showed photos of Palmer posing beside many other animals he had slain, including at least one illegal hunt, and said the dentist had “killed half of Noah’s ark.”

He teared up as he urged viewers to turn the lion’s senseless death into something positive by donating to the wildlife conservation group that had been tracking Cecil.

NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

GEORGIA WHITE FOLK RATCHET UP HATE AND STUPID

Witnesses at a birthday party in Douglasville, Georgia over the weekend said that festivities were interrupted when men waving Confederate flags threatened them and used racial slurs.

Cell phone video obtained by the Atlanta Journal Constitution shows police officers holding back people attending a birthday party as white men in trucks with Confederate flags and other flags drive by yelling at them.

“This is a child’s birthday party!” one woman shouts back.

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the woman who posted the video on Facebook said that the men were armed and were on her property. She said that they threatened to “kill y’all n****rs.”





“I don’t mind them riding with their flags but I don’t want them going around threaten[ing] people in their yard like they did mine or harassing folks either,” the woman explained in her Facebook post.

Douglasville Police Chief Chris Womack told the paper that his department would release details about the incident later on Monday.



NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

VIRGINIA’S OWN KEN CUCCINELLI – STILL AN IDIOT

TEA-BAGGER CUCCINELLI STILL LIVING IN A CAVE

Former Virginia Tea bagger andAttorney General Ken Cuccinelli argued on Sunday that many Americans objected to the “Black Lives Matter” movement because it suggested that the lives of black people mattered more than whites and other races.

CNN political contributor Bakari Sellers explained during a panel discussion that the “Black Live Matter” movement had become a hot topic in the Democratic presidential primary because the lives of so many black people had ended during confrontations with police officers.

“You have African-Americans who literally do not get the benefit of their humanity,” he pointed out. “And that’s a problem. You know, in my next interaction — I’m the only person at this table whose next interaction [with law enforcement] may cause them to be a hashtag.”

“And that’s something that we feel, that’s a very deep pain,” Sellers said.

Cuccinelli argued that it was important to add the word “too” to the end of the “Black Lives Matter” slogan.

“Adding t-o-o at the end puts it in a context that makes sense,” the former Virginia attorney general insisted.

“But it’s implicit though,” Sellers noted.

“Well, you may say that,” Cuccinelli replied. “And there’s plenty of reason to understand that. But I don’t think every American hears it that way. They hear, ‘Here we are, yes we have this political motivation that we’re separating out this one category of Americans and saying they matter more than everybody else.’ That’s actually what a lot of people see.”

“We’re saying stop killing us,” Sellers remarked. “We’re saying, my life matters.” 

“I understand that, but that’s why you have the retort,” Cuccinelli opined. 

“No, all lives matter. We’re not leaving these out.”

NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

TEA BAGGER TELLS STATE TO IGNORE ROE V WADE

“The federal courts don’t have the authority to make us kill babies,” according to Oklahoma Republican Party Chairman Randy Brogdon. “Are the Supreme Court justices going to come down to Oklahoma and make us stop?”

Brogdon, a former state senator who once called for Oklahoma to form its own militia separate from that National Guard — and who previously cast doubt upon the Pledge of Allegiance because he objects to the line “one nation, indivisible” — offered his interpretation of the Supreme Court’s lawful authority on Friday. One day earlier, he signed a fundraising email making a similar pitch. “As Chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party, I call on the Governor and legislators to completely end the practice of abortion in Oklahoma,” Brogdon wrote in that email, adding that the state should “[s]hut Planned Parenthood down immediately for their illegal actions, and prosecute the abortion doctors who violate their oath to ‘do no harm.'”

The party chairman’s call to simply ignore court decisions protecting reproductive choice seeks to escalate many of his fellow Republicans’ attacks on legal abortion. Other states, however, have already gone so far in restricting abortion that it’s not clear that Brogdon’s proposal is as much of an escalation as it immediately appears to be.

Mississippi, for example, passed a law that, if upheld by the Supreme Court, will close the state’s last abortion clinic. A similar Texas law seeks to shut down many of the clinics in that state by imposing expensive obligations on clinics and difficult-to-obtain credentialing requirements on doctors who perform abortions. North Dakota enacted a law that could effectively ban abortion six weeks into pregnancy (a federal appeals court recently struck that law down, albeit reluctantly).

These laws, especially the Mississippi and Texas ones, place a premium on the cleverness of abortion’s opponents. These two states passed what amount to sham health laws — laws that appear, on the surface, to be intended to protect women’s health but which actually do little more than limit access to abortion. As one federal judge explained, “there is no rational relationship between improved patient outcomes” and the additional burden the Texas law places on abortion doctors.

Brogdon’s preferred tactic, by contrast, appears to be attacking abortion with a blunt object. He’s not looking for a clever workaround to what remains of Roe v. Wade, he just wants to outright ban abortion and prosecute doctors who perform it.

In the process, Brogdon also appears willing to openly defy court orders protecting reproductive freedom. It would be a major escalation in tactics if a state chose to openly defy the courts. It could also lead to a potentially dangerous struggle between the states and the federal government.

If Oklahoma were to “prosecute the abortion doctors,” as Brogdon suggests, the first question would be whether Oklahoma’s state courts would be willing to go along with this tactic — and whether a jury would be willing to convict based on a law that would almost certainly be struck down by federal courts. Assuming that the state courts did play along, the lawfulness of this conviction would ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court — or, barring that, by a lower federal court upon a petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

The events that would follow, if Oklahoma refused to obey a federal court order commanding them to release the incarcerated physician, could resemble a miniature Civil War. The doctor would remain physically in the state’s custody, most likely in a state prison guarded by state employees. Yet, while Brogdon is correct that the Supreme Court justices themselves wouldn’t “come down to Oklahoma and make us stop,” the federal government is fully capable of mustering superior force against a state that openly defies a court order. Just ask former Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus.

Nevertheless, such a standoff may be acceptable to Brogdon, with his doubts that the United States is, indeed, “one nation, indivisible.

[Cross posted from thinkprogress]

NFTOS 

STAFF WRITER

“LEARN TO SPEAK ENGLISH YOU FUCKING GARBAGE”

….Says New Yorker To MTA employee.

Not much to add except to say, “Holy Fuck, this woman is a first rate racist.” If this was the New York Post comment section it would came to life and started targeting public sector employees.

NFTOS

Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

THOSE “GOOD GUYS WITH GUNS” ARE NEVER AROUND WHEN YOU NEED THEM

A bad guy with a gun opened fire at a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana on Thursday night. As of this writing, two of his victims are dead and at least seven others are wounded. No good guy with a gun rose from the audience to fell the lone gunman as he pumped bullet after bullet into the innocent crowd. The man concluded his rampage by turning his handgun on himself and taking his own life.

Louisiana, the state where this occurred, has some of the weakest — if not the weakest — gun laws in the nation. To give just one example, Louisiana recently enacted an NRA-backed state constitutional amendment providing that “the right of each citizen to keep and bear arms is fundamental and shall not be infringed,” and that “any restriction on this right” will be met with maximal skepticism by the states’ courts. The amendment also stripped out language permitting the state legislature to “prohibit the carrying of weapons concealed on a person.”

Similarly, Louisiana does not require gun dealers to obtain a state license. It does not limit the number of guns that may be purchased at one time. It forbids local governments from regulating firearms. And it has no laws restricting assault weapons or .50 caliber rifles. One study of all 50 states’ gun laws concluded that Louisiana has the laxest gun laws of any state.

The National Rifle Association claims that this absence of gun regulation is a good thing, in part, because it enables armed vigilantes to gun down murderers like the man who perpetrated the shooting in Lafayette. But the high rates of gun violence in Louisiana cut strongly against this conclusion. A 2013 report by the Center for American Progress examined all 50 states according to 10 factors related to gun violence. Louisiana received the worst rating of any state on several of these factors, including overall firearm deaths from 2001-2010, firearm homicides in 2010, and firearm homicides among women from 2001-2010. The report also rated Louisiana the worst state overall when all 10 factors were aggregated.

Nor is Louisiana, with its lax gun laws and high rates of gun violence, an outlier. To the contrary, the report concluded that “the 10 states with the weakest gun laws collectively have a level of gun violence that is more than twice as high — 104 percent higher — than the 10 states with the strongest gun laws.”

[Cross-posted from thinkprorgess]

NFTOS

STAFF WRITER

MEET JOE MASCIA

A candidate running for the Buffalo Common Council has refused to end his campaign after he was caught on tape using the N-word to describe black leaders.

In an audio recording obtained by The Buffalo News, Joseph A. Mascia can be heard complaining to a former employee about Mayor Byron Brown, Council President Darius Pridgen, Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples-Stokes, and Dawn Sanders-Garrett, who was Mascia’s boss at at the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority.

During the one-minute profanity-laced recording, Mascia manages to use the N-word eight times.

“The f*cking n*****s, man,” he tells the employee as the recording ends. “Once they get in power, forget about it. Forget it. They want it all.”

On Wednesday, Mayor Brown called on Mascia to step down as resident commissioner of the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority

“I have been made aware of the existence of a tape that allegedly contains statements that are unacceptable and inflammatory by any standard,” Brown said. “Clearly, if Mr. Mascia can’t deny making these statements, he should immediately resign his elected position as a commissioner of the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority.”

Mascia’s opponent, incumbent Fillmore Council Member David A. Franczyk, called the remarks “atrocious and vile.”

“It sounds like language in the 1860s old South,” Franczyk observed. “It’s pretty scary stuff.”

Mascia insisted to WGRZ that he would not resign his position at the Housing Authority, and said in a statement that he would not suspend his campaign.

“The statement was totally out of character,” Mascia wrote in an email apology. “I have deep regard and respect for the individuals mentioned in the recording and apologize to them personally and profusely. It is my hope that they will accept my sincerest apologies and forgive me for my weakness in that moment.”

“Regardless of my frustration at the time, there is no excuse for the language that I used. I will continue to fight for neighborhoods that have been neglected and people who have been ignored,” he continued. “I have no intention of interrupting my progressive, inclusive vision for our city and the Fillmore district. As always, I will make myself available to the community to discuss this or any other issue related to the Fillmore district or my candidacy.”

Mascia is the Erie County Conservative Party’s endorsed candidate for the Buffalo Common Council candidate. He has also entered a three-way Democratic Party primary for the post.

Joe Mascia, you are today's worst person of the word, congrats numbnuts! 

NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

“I WILL LIGHT YOU UP”!

Newly released dashcam footage shows Sandra Bland's arrest before she was found dead in jail.

Justified? You be the judge.

NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

“PROJECTILE VOMIT OF DICKISHNESS”

TRUMP SPEWING "PROJECTILE VOMIT OF DICKISHNESS"

Jon Stewart returned to The Daily Show on Monday to scoff at Republicans who are suddenly willing to distance themselves from Donald Trump — but only after he bad-mouthed one of their own in Arizona Sen. John McCain.

“The only reason you like this guy in the first place is because of the terrible things he was willing to say about Obama,” he said. “But Trump has no control over the projectile vomit of dickishness that comes out of his mouth every time he opens it. It was inevitable some of his word puke was gonna get on you.”

The GOP should have known better, Stewart said, because the party had been down the same road in 2008 with Sarah Palin and her “Wasilla word salad.”

“Once you cast a spell and bring an Internet comment to life, it no longer belongs to you,” he explained. “Only this time, the chatroom troll emoji you’ve conjured has $10 billion of its own money.”

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Stewart also shot down Trump’s claim that he actually reversed course immediately after saying McCain was “not a war hero.” In fact, the host pointed out, Trump said, “He’s a war hero because he got captured.”

He also laughed off Trump’s complaining to NBC News that while “his hair is fine,” nobody comes to his defense when people make fun of his hair.

“First things first: your hair’s not fine,” Stewart said. “I agree, making fun of someone’s physical appearance is a cheap blow. But that hair? That is comedy entrapment. People are not attacking your hair — they are defending themselves from something that appears like it’s about to attack them.”

NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief
Roger West

“TRUMPS DOUCHEBAGGERY”

Liberal Fox News contributor Jehmu Greene encouraged Republicans to “own up to the fact” that GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s “douchebaggery” reflected the base that had controlled the party for the past seven years.

After Sen. John McCain criticized Trump’s supporters as “crazies,” Trump fired back at a forum on Saturday by taking a shot at his war hero status.

Although Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol had praised Trump after he recently called Mexicans rapists, the magazine’s online editor told Fox News on Sunday that the candidate had gone too far by questioning McCain’s military service.

“It’s probably the beginning of the end for Donald Trump,” Daniel Halper explained, pointing out that Republicans did not like “the questioning of war heroes.”

“I hoped that it was the beginning of the end when he first dipped his toe in the waters,” Jehmu Greene responded. “Because this is just a continuation of his douchebaggery and has been accepted for so long that finally they’ve come to their senses because, I guess, he has now finally crossed the line. But he crossed many lines quite some time ago.”

At that point Halper tried to shift the conversation to activists who recently shouted down Democratic candidate Martin O’Malley after they perceived that he downplayed the “Black Lives Matter” movement by saying “white lives matter.”

Greene called that a “perfect line of distraction and deflection… when you have the person who is leading in the polls saying things about our military men and women that is so offensive and still not wanting to own up to the fact that in the Fox News poll he was at the top just last week.”

“What is going on in the Republican Party?” Greene continued. “What does it take for you all to take your party back from the crazies that have had control of it for about seven years now?”

NFTOS

Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

FUCKFACE VON CLOWNSTICK [DONALD TRUMP] BECOMING A COMPLETE ASSHOLE

DONALD TRUMP CAMPAIGN PHOTO

AMES, IA — Each time Republican presidential candidate "Fuckface Von Clownstick" aka Donald Trump is given a public platform, he manages to offend even more Americans. On Saturday morning he took aim at Sen. John McCain and veterans, saying McCain is “not a war hero” because he was captured during the Vietnam War.

“He’s a war hero cause he was captured,” Fuckface Von Clownstick said during the Family Leadership Summit. “I like people that weren’t captured.”

Clownstick later told press that he would not apologize to McCain and that McCain picked the fight. The two have been feuding since McCain said that Trump is “firing up the crazies” after people gathered in Arizona to support the candidate who called immigrants from Mexico “rapists.”

McCain endured five and a half years as prisoner of war after he was shot down over Hanoi and badly injured — two of those years were spent in solitary confinement.

NFTOS

Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West

YO, ALL YOU HATERS AND BASHERS OF CAITLYN JENNER

ARMY SPECIALIST JOEY VINCENTE

Among the many barbs and accusations being flung at Caitlyn Jenner in the wake of her winning an Arthur Ashe Award is that military personnel are more deserving of awards for courage and valor than the former Olympian.

Buzzfeed reported on a response to those criticisms by U.S. Army behavioral health specialist Joey Vicente, posted a moving message to his Facebook wall in support of Jenner.

Vicente wrote:

Your negative opinions on Caitlyn Jenner and her deservedness of an award that you didn’t even know about until a few days ago are irrelevant.
Your definition of what or who a hero can or cannot be is irrelevant. 

40% of the transgender community have attempted suicide. What if I told you that her speech last night saved even one human being from attempting to take their life. I’d call that a victory on any scale. I’d call that (gasp)… heroic? 

You don’t like that a female who used to identify as male got an award at a ceremony run by ESPN? Here’s a hint: get over yourself. You are on the wrong side of history. Like many bigots of the civil rights era, you will one day have to answer for your hate, whether it is to your God, a loved one, or your few hundred Facebook friends that you think give the slightest bit of a shit about what kind of sandwich you ate or what kind of workout you got in today. 

You want to voice your opinion? Please, I beg that you do. But in using terms like “freak” or “faggot” you paint a much more vivid picture of yourself than you ever could of Caitlyn Jenner, a human being just now finally finding her comfort zone.

Vicente told BuzzFeed News that he posted the message because he wanted people to be more considerate about what they post to social media.

“Bigotry in any form is unacceptable and I guess I was just fed up with seeing people’s offensive remarks about a person they know nothing about,” he said.

NFTOS
Blogger-In-Chief

Roger West