First up, Kristian Powers, a white Hillary supporter, takes her shots at the President: (Via NewsBusters)
Next up is the Democrat Party’s version of Ron Paul basically, there are Moonbats and there is this guy; he is taking a break from his UFO chasing to get his shot in on the President — guess he is still pissed off about not getting the Democratic Party nomination. Click the image to watch:
Click the image to watch Senator Moonbeam get his digs in on the President.
I hate to be the one to say that I knew this was coming; but, I did. I said this a long while back, that because of the White House’s lack of leadership on the healthcare bill and because of the people spurned by the Obama administration and Obama during the election —- that Obama would end up paying for what he did. Well, now, it is payment time. There is blood in the water and the sharks are circling; both on the right and on the left as well.
The general rule in beltway politics is this; you watch my back, I will watch yours. The rule also is: You screw me and I screw you even harder. During various times during Obama’s election in 2008 and in 2012, Obama screwed various people over. Those people are getting their paybacks now. It is a partisan game for the right, and it is a political game for the left. The sick thing is; Hillary got tangled up in it all, which will deep six her Presidential aspirations, if there were any.
It is a sad ending to a Presidential Administration which promised so much and yet, delivered so little.
After examining all the details that emerged on Friday relating to the efforts by members of President Barack Obama’s administration to remove references to Islamic terrorism when explaining the reasons behind the 2012 attack on an American consulate in Benghazi, the panel guests on MSNBC’s Now agreed that the appearance of a scandal makes the White House “look terrible.” One guest even suggested that the controversy could lead to impeachment proceedings against the president.
NBC Reporter Kelly O’Donnell read from portions of emails in which high ranking State Department officials coordinated with the CIA to alter the official talking points on the Benghazi attack to remove any references to prior warnings or Islamic terrorism.
“This is quite the window into what is usually the hush-hush process about how to deal with these types of attacks and the spin that irrevocably comes afterwards,” NBC reporter Luke Russert opined.
“This is not good for the White House right now,” Russert said to BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith. “Does it stick?”
“Well, sure,” Smith replied. “They look terrible.”
RELATED: Dem Rep. Claims Benghazi Witness Changed His Story: GOPers Were ‘Trying To Put Words In His Mouth’
Smith said that the emails indicate that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may have been directly involved in the process of “scrubbing” references to Islamic terrorism from her department’s talking points.
“Does this become then an election politics thing?” Russert asked. He said that the Republican Party has been trying to link Clinton to the Benghazi scandal for some time.
The Daily Beast columnist Michael Tomasky said it does. He invoked “that word that starts with ‘I’” to describe the potentially significant political fallout that could result from the Benghazi scandal.
“It becomes a potentially impeachment issue as long as the Republicans are in control of the House,” Tomasky added.
I can tell you now, that if the perception among the black community is that the Nation’s first black President is being impeached by a white Republican Party; that there will be riots, there will be uprisings, and it will be messy. I sure hope that the United States has some sort of plan to put down an uprising of that sort of a scale. Because if you think that blacks will not riot and will not target white people in killings, for revenge; you are kidding yourselves.
I hope someone up there on the hill, has something more between their ears, other than air and puts a stop to this; before something horrible happens. This is the last thing America needs now. People are out of work, there is a 70% unemployment rate in Detroit and a very hot summer is coming to this area. I dread to think of what might just happen, if the House decides to go through an impeachment hearing. You think the riots in Detroit in 1967, and again in 1968 after MLK was murdered were bad? This riot would be 120 times worse than those riots ever were at the time.
All of these white conservatives who want to see some sort of a race war, will get their wish and it will be a brutal one too. I just hope that common sense prevails and not stupidity.
“He was removed from here because he was a disaster as a manager,” the second employee went on to say, expressing the belief that Hicks’ reassignment had “nothing to do with him being a whistleblower, it had everything to do with his management capacity or lack thereof.” This statement contradicts the narrative promoted on conservative media outlets that Hicks was being forced to remain silent and being punished for speaking out.
The same employees also told ThinkProgress of several troubling incidents involving Hicks and the staff at the Tripoli Embassy both before and after the September 11, 2012 assault in Benghazi. During the aftermath of Benghazi, Hicks showed a lack of diplomatic protocol that both staffers found extremely questionable given the tense times. This includes going to a meeting with the Libyan Prime Minister Mohammed Magarief in a t-shirt, cargo pants, and baseball cap. “I’m too upset to wear a suit,” Hicks allegedly told a staffer. “I want the Libyans to know how upset I am about this attack.”
In testifying before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, Hicks gave some of the most riveting testimony yet on what occurred in Tripoli the night of Sept. 11, 2012, when a diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya was attacked. That detailed account was prefaced by Hicks’ written testimony, which included claims that his superiors praised his performance during the night of the attack, which now rings slightly hollow given the critiques of his colleagues.
When speaking about the night of the attacks, the employees ThinkProgress spoke with described Hicks as being in a daze while other senior Embassy officials organized the evacuation from Tripoli to Germany. “At one point [Hicks] wandered past the huddled State evacuees, muttering to himself, and just sank into a couch,” the first employee relayed to ThinkProgress.
Prior to today, the State Department attempted to chart a middle path on Hicks, seeking to neither give credence to his claims of retribution nor portray him as lacking as a leader. Speaking in the daily press briefing yesterday, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters that Hicks’ reassignment was merely part of the Foreign Service Assignment System. “He’s now, per the standard procedure with all the other members of the Foreign Service, working through a preference list that he submitted, and he’s under consideration for positions in the next rotation,” Ventrell said. “So this is all part of the standard procedures.”
I am thinking that the Republicans might have just overreached on this who Libya thing just a little bit.
I also think that only “Whistles” being “blowed” are those of some very well know Republicans who are financing this whole partisan witch hunt. IYNWIMAITYD!
More than a dozen farm workers in Southern California were out of a job after walking out of the fields last week, forced indoors because of heavy smoke from a massive wildfire burning nearby.
“Oh, yeah, the smoke was very bad. That’s no doubt about that,” said Lauro Barrajas, of the United Farm Workers.
As the blaze, dubbed the Springs Fire, continued to grow in Camarillo May 2, farm workers 11 miles south in Oxnard said they started to feel the effects of the smoke in the strawberry fields.
The ashes were falling on top of us, one of them explained, adding “it was hard to breathe.”
Air quality in the region was at dangerously poor levels and 15 workers at Crisalida Farms decided they could not handle it any longer. They left, even though their foreman warned them they would not have a job when they returned.
When they went back to the fields May 3, the farm fired them.
Barrajas, who is a representative of the UFW, said the workers contacted him for help, even though they were not members of the union.
Union representatives met with the farm’s upper management and applied a union rule.
“No worker shall work under conditions where they feel his life or health is in danger,” Barrajas said.
In a statement to Telemundo, the farm representative said the workers left without permission while orders still needed to be filled. The company offered to pay them for the hours they’d worked.
Later, the company settled with the union and offered to rehire all 15 workers. But only one worker returned.
This is why I believe illegal immigration should be stopped. Because of stuff like this here, it is abusive and exploitative for Farm Owners to force workers to stay in a field with fire that close to them.
Furthermore, I believe it says a good deal about the Farm Workers Union to step in, even though these guys were not even union members and come to their defense. I believe it also says a good deal about the farm itself, when the workers say, “No thanks!” when offered their jobs back. Again, I believe this is one of the biggest reasons why the illegal immigration problem in this Country must be stopped. Because of stuff like this here.
I end this, with a word from one of the workers:
One worker said while it hurts to lose work, one’s health is more important.
Indeed, it is and I commend these workers for standing up against abusive employers and I commend the Farmer Workers Union for standing up for them — that is the American way.
I have often written on this blog about the good and bad of the Unions. This is the case of the good side of the labor movement.
Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing run a law firm together. They are also married. They are also soldiers in the dirty wars we have between the two major parties. When Scooter Libby was indicted, diGenova and Toensing demanded a pardon. In fact, they had been brawling on Libby’s side for years. Toensing even authored an amici curiae brief with the US Court of Appeals in Washington, seeking to overturn the ruling that forced Matthew Cooper and Judy Miller to testify in the Libby case.
Back in 1998, Howard Kurtz reported that diGenova and Toensing had made 300 television appearances in the month after news of the l’affaire Lewinsky broke on Drudge Report. That’s an average of five appearances each, every day for a month. Who appointed them to head the lynch mob?
Strangely, Geraldo Rivera played a part.
“I love him and I love his wife,” the talk host and fellow lawyer says. “They’re the most honorable people inside the Beltway. . . . He’s a strong, principled guy who doesn’t back down. If I played any part in making him a media star, I gloat with pleasure.”
More from Howard Kurtz, circa 1998:
Name a high-profile investigation in this city and chances are the prosecutorial pair is involved.
Charges that Republican Rep. Dan Burton improperly demanded campaign contributions from a lobbyist for Pakistan? DiGenova and Toensing are the Indiana congressman’s personal attorneys.
Newt Gingrich’s ethics problems? Toensing represents the speaker’s wife, Marianne, to ensure her compliance with House ethics rules.
A House committee investigation of the Teamsters and the union’s links to improper Democratic fund-raising? DiGenova and Toensing are leading the probe as outside counsel.
They are nothing more than partisan brawlers. And now they are representing so-called Benghazi whistleblowers who claim they have faced intimidation from their employers in the State Department. Mr. diGenova is representing Mark I. Thompson, who is a deputy coordinator for operations in the State Department’s counterterrorism bureau. Ms. Toensing is representing Gregory N. Hicks, who was serving as the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya at the time of the Benghazi attacks. Both men will testify on Wednesday before Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight & Government Reform Committee.
If they wanted to be taken seriously, they would have retained less notorious counsel.
Yeah, I know, I quoted the entire thing…sue me. 😛
Let me also be a fair person and point out that Charles Johnson over at Little Green Footballs has done one hell of a good job covering this whole partisan witch hunt since the beginning. I know, he most likely does not care for me at all; and most likely thinks I am in with the crazy right. But, I am not, at all. I do not agree entirely with his politics. But, I give him credit for being the guy to go after people who traffic in smearing those of whom they disagree with politically. While all the while, waving the flag of a protected minority and accusing those who dare to question as being Anti-Semitic. That, my friends, is the tragic state of the modern day Conservative movement. This is why I try to separate myself from the Neocon right.
Update: Some more thoughts that I wanted to add, but realized that this blog entry was getting long. Well, it is a long piece — deal with it. Here is my questions to the Neocon right about these whistle blowers:
Where were these so-called “whistleblowers” when the United States of America was invading the Country of Iraq based upon blatantly false information about so-called “Weapons of Mass Destruction”? I mean, if there was any sort of false information being pimped to the media, and there was, trust me — these people would have known about it.
Where were these so-called “Whistleblowers” when the United States of America was attacked on 9/11? I mean, if there was any sort of false information being pimped to the media, and there was, trust me — these people would have known about it.
You want to know where these people where? I will tell you where they were; they were standing around with their noses straight up the goddamned ass of President George W. Bush and the neocon administration in the White House, that’s where!
This is why I have not been writing about this whole thing; because I knew the minute that the right began pimping this tragic event out for political purposes; that this political partisan witch hunt was starting. This is the same stuff that the Republican Party and it’s elected officials on the hill did in the 1990’s with the Clinton scandal and this is what they are doing now. It is nothing more than that good ol’ partisan political theater — for the sole purpose of destroying their enemies. It is sick, it is cynical, it is un-American and it should stop. What makes it much worse is that it is racist in nature — in more ways than one. The Nation’s first black President and you have old, White, Conservative, Christian Republicans going after him. But, yet, the Republicans are not the racists, the Democrats are — so they say. 🙄
It is, like all politics these days — nothing but a horrible joke. 😡
Under Bush: Jan 22nd, 2002: US Consulate at Kolkata, 5 killed. June 14, 2002: US Consulate at Karachi, 12 killed. February 28, 2003 US Embassy at Islamabad: 2 killed. June 30, 2004 US Embassy at Tashkent, 2 killed. December 6, 2004 US Compound at Saudi Arabia, 9 killed. March 2, 2006 US Consulate at Karachi (2nd time), 2 killed. September 12, 2006: US Embassy at Syria, 4 killed. March 18, 2008 US Embassy at Yemen, 2 Killed. July 9, 2008 US Consulate at Istanbul, 6 killed. September 17th, 2008 US Embassy at Yemen, 16 killed. 60 total Outraged Republicans: Zero.
I can almost hear it now, “Yeah, but that was Bush and he actually loved this Country, unlike Obama.” 🙄
Update 4: Oh, By the way, Why am I saying all of this? Because like these two people in this video here; I happen to know there is really no difference between these two political parties anymore — That’s why!
Update 5: Cross-posted to My FiredogLakeUpdate6: Great, someone over at FDL marked my Diary as spam. Nice guys. I defend Obama and that’s the thanks I get? Nice. 🙄 Partisanship is such a drag. 🙁
Update 7: I think another point that people on the left are forgetting is this; the neoconservative hawks on the right were the ones that told Obama, “You have to something in Libya!” and you know what? He did. This idea was debated among the right, but the anti-hawks were overruled. Boots were put on the ground to help the Libyan rebels. Then, we were actually foolish enough to open a United States embassy there. All the while knowing that terrorists were operating in that Country. As a result, we lost an ambassador. So, as far as this writer is concerned, the persons to blame for this horribly tragic event are the neoconservative hawks, like Bill Kristol, John Podhoretz and those whom agree with them.
I am a bit late to this one, and I really was not going to write anything about it. However, after seeing the following video, that I am going to share, I felt compelled to write a little something about it.
First of all, let me say that I am not anti-gun. I am not even really into Wilsonian foreign policy. Furthermore, I happen to know that the United States of America is not even a Democracy; but rather a constitutional Republic. (…and not a “Christian Republic”, as some on the so-called “Christian Right” like to claim that it is.) This video here, pretty much sums up my political stance. Which is pretty ironic, considering Bush wanted to export democracy over to Iraq; how can we export something that we’re not? But, I digress.
Okay now this is where I am going with this all. The following is why I do not have much use for people like Adam Kokesh and his libertarian friends or any use for people like Alex Jones.
Video: (WARNING: THIS VIDEO IS EXTREMELY GRAPHIC AND HARD TO WATCH. DO NOT WATCH THIS IN FRONT OF CHILDREN!)
MIDDLEFIELD, Ohio — Police here said today they still do not know why James Gilkerson jumped out his car and began firing at Middlefield police officers who had pulled him over after Gilkerson had run a stop sign in the village.
They did say Gilkerson fired 37 rounds from an AK-47 rifle on March 10, and that the two officers fired back with 54 rounds of their own, killing the Mentor-on-the Lake man.
Police showed the dash cam video of the shootout during a news conference. They also distributed a statement from the Lake County prosecutor saying the shooting by police was justified and the matter would not be taken to a grand jury.
“He got of the vehicle, intending to kill my officers. We don’t know why he did it,” said Police Chief Arnold Stanko.
Stanko said police found eight, 40-round magazines for the AK-47 in Gilkerson’s car along with a number of books and magazines about militias and terrorism.
The names of some of the literature were “Backyard Rocketry: Converting Model Rockets Into Explosive Missiles,” “Advanced Close-range Gun Fighting,” “Homemade Detonators: How To Make Them.” Another described how to get rid of a dead body.
“He was a scumbag, and a terrorist, and he’s dead,” Stanko said.
Gilkerson fired on the officers on Ohio 608, near Pierce Street.
Stanko said one of his officers, Erin Thomas, got out of the patrol car after Gilkerson was pulled over, walked around the car, and got to about the driver’s side door of the cruiser when Gilkerson bolted from his car and began shooting.
Stanko said Thomas fired back, as did her partner Brandon Savage. Stanko said Savage returned fire through the windshield of the cruiser.
Stanko said Gilkerson was shot several times, but kept firing. During the gunfight, Gilkerson shouted, “Kill me.”
Thomas, a former Woodmere officer, still is not back to work. She lost a finger in the encounter. Savage had minor injuries to his left thigh. He is back at work, the chief said.
The chief said police could find little in the way of ammunition and books in the home Gilkerson shared with his mother. He said he did not know if Gilkerson kept his weapon, ammunition and the books in his car all the time or if he had piled it all in side that day.
Okay folks, here is the truth and I know this is going to piss some people off. Well, you know what? TOUGHSHIT!The truth is my friends that this guy was most likely a follower of Alex Jones and his kooky conspiracy theories. He might have had some mental issues of some sort; but something triggered this guy to intentionally break the law, so that the cops would go after him and he could get out of his car, open up on the cops and go out in a blaze of glory. I happen to believe that it is not a gun problem, but a far-right wing, Alex Jones kooky conspiracy theory problem.
I have one thing to say about this whole thing. If anyone is hurt or killed in this so-called March on DC with loaded guns —:
SEND THE BODIES TO MATT DRUDGE, ALEX JONES AND ADAM KOKESH!
Matt Drudge is the one that teases the inflammatory headlines, Matt Drudge links to Alex Jones; Alex Jones pimps out the kooky conspiracy theories and Adam Kokesh laps it all up and goes out and does idiot things like this march. This my friends is what the right in this Country has become; a fucking absolutely idiot parody of its former self. This irrational fear that Obama is going to tear up the constitution and somehow or another transform America into some kind of Communist Country is stoked by these two people and someone needs to get to Drudge and tell him to cut the crap. Because the Conservative/Republican/Tea Party/Small Government/Liberty movement is being delegitimized more and more, every time someone does something like in the video above. This is called acting out over irrational fear.
Now, it is not just Drudge, Jones or even Kokesh — It is the entire right-wing blogosphere! I have blogged since 2006. I can tell you that the Bush-era blogosphere does not even remotely hold a candle to the way things are now in the Conservative Blogosphere. The sad truth is that the Conservative Blogosphere has gone off the rails; just like the liberal blogosphere did during the Bush-era — especially after the defeat of John Kerry in 2004. My God, they are doing the very same things. It is that same irrational behaviour, the same vitriol, the same idiocy; and just like in the Bush era — they a beginning to sound like parody of themselves. This is why, as much as I hate to be the one to say it — the Republican Party lost two elections. Not because who was running, because of what the right had become after the departure of George W. Bush from the White House.
It was bad enough to make some people leave the “right”, like this guy here. I cannot really blame him, some of the stuff that I see in the headlines, makes me wonder, who are the people running these blogs? Do they really believe some of the stuff that they write? Now, it is not lost on me at all, that I happen to be a part of that group. I am in a way; and in another way, I am not. I do not consider myself to be that much of a right-winger. I tend to cut it right down the middle. I love my Country and all; but I will the first to tell you that neither of these two political parties are perfect, nor are they political or moral absolutes. I believed this in 2006 and I still believe it now.
This is why I have not been writing on this blog much since Mitt Romney lost the election. Because I honestly fear that something I might write, just might trigger some dude, who is not quite with it; to go off and act out like in the way in the video above. This is also why I sometimes want to take my old blog down; because there were times in the past, when I wrote someone while, “Caught up in the moment.” and I fear that writing could trigger someone to do something crazy. This is also why I try to keep things in the “Common Sense” area, when it comes to running this blog. I just do not always jump on a headline, until it begins to pass the smell test. I tend to avoid Alex Jones style of headlines. Because I do not want to trigger something, like in the above video.
Hopefully, that all makes sense to someone…. it does to me.
The Bottom Line: I love my Country, I just do not trust my Government — BUT! I am not interested in trying to go out and kill a bunch of police officers, because of that — and neither should anyone else. Neither should anyone write anything anywhere that would trigger someone to want to do that. This is called irresponsibility and there is a good deal of that in the right wing media world right now.
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