Not a Single HP Employee Reported Donating to Carly Fiorina’s Campaign
Nothing more needs to be said. Though I have supplied musical accompaniment.
Rumor has it that multiple sites at HP spontaneously broke into this song at the news of her ouster.
Category: Wanker
TransCanada Loses Again
They just gave up on a lawsuit in Nebraska over their attempt to assert extraordinary eminent domain rights:
TransCanada announced on Tuesday that the company will pull out of the lawsuit filed by over 100 Nebraska landowners challenging their right to use eminent domain to seize land for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
Facing mounting legal expenses and a likely loss in court, the company will instead go through the Public Service Commission (PSC) review process it had originally hoped to avoid.
“We believe that going through the PSC process is the clearest path to achieving route certainty for the Keystone XL Project in Nebraska. It ultimately saves time, reduces conflict with those who oppose the project and sets clear rules for approval of the route,” said a representative of the company in a statement.
The PSC process will take at least a year, and cannot move forward if and when President Obama rejects the federal permit for the pipeline.
………
“TransCanada realizes that LB 1161 is unconstitutional,” added Art Tanderup, a farmer whose land is on the proposed pipeline route. “This is a victory for landowners standing up to prevent a foreign corporation from taking their land for corporate greed through eminent domain. TransCanada pushed LB1161 through the legislature to avoid using the Public Service Commission procedure that they now want to follow. We believe that the PSC will not allow Keystone XL to be placed in the Sand Hills or over the Ogallala Aquifer but are confident President Obama will reject the pipeline before the PSC even has a chance to conduct a review.”
So, TransCanada, the company that ignores regulations, and leans on lawmakers to exempt them from regulations, and then has their pipelines blow up, has decided that their latest attempt to subvert the regulatory prices isn’t going to work.
They lose, and the rest of us win.
I can live with that.
Stop Whining, Bitches
I am referring, of course to House of Saud:
Saudi Arabia has called on Bashar al-Assad to give up power or be removed by force, raising the global stakes at a time when the Russians are shipping troops and military hardware to Syria in an effort to prop up its beleaguered leader.
The threat was made on Tuesday by Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Adel Al-Jubeir.
“There is no future for Assad in Syria,” Jubeir told journalists at the UN general assembly. “There are two options for a settlement in Syria. One option is a political process where there would be a transitional council. The other option is a military option, which also would end with the removal of Bashar al-Assad from power.”
“This could be a more lengthy process and a more destructive process but the choice is entirely that of Bashar al-Assad.” The foreign minister did not specify how Assad would be forcibly removed, but pointed out that Saudi Arabia is already backing “moderate rebels” in the civil war.
The Saudi intervention fuelled an already heated row at the UN over Syria’s future, where the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, issued a forthright defence of the Syrian regime, describing it as fighting a lonely and “valiant” battle against Islamic State extremists.
You know, I know that you have all kinds of butthurt over the fact that the secular* Arab government in Damascus is still standing, even after they created ISIS to attempt to create another Sunni dominated sectarian state.
You are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem.
The fact that you are unable to accomplish your agenda in that part of the world is a good thing.
*And murderous. The regime is murderous too, but the House of Saud has no problem with murderously genocidal regimes, see Bahrain as an example.
Get a Brain, Morans
Some inbred white bigots who don’t know how to use a spell checker have decided that enough is enough, so they took to flying pro confederate banners over various monuments:
Community activists and historic preservationists got help from an unusual source to draw attention to their protest Saturday of statues of Confederate leaders on Monument Avenue during the first day of training for the UCI Road World Championships.
A small plane carrying a banner with a Confederate battle flag and the phrase “Confederate heros matter” circled above Monument Avenue, where the protest had gathered at the statue of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.
The Virginia Flaggers, who took credit for the banner on their Facebook page, said the misspelling of “heroes” was “Pilot error. We sent the right spelling. We think the point was still made.”
“This is the first time he’s ever messed up,” Grayson Jennings, a spokesman for the Virginia Flaggers, said of the pilot in an interview. “I don’t think half the people even knew he messed up.”
(emphasis mine)
Trust me, people know.
This is going to end up a major meme, kind of like this pic:
The stupid, it burns us.
Useful Idiot of the Day
Frank Rich, who seems not to understand that Donald Trump won’t take the money out of politics simply because he’s a rich guy who says so.
Whatever Mr. Rich is smoking, I want none of it.
James O’Keefe Jumps the Shark
I am referring to the evil James O’Keefe, of ACORN infamy, and not my friend who spends a lot of time at the Massachusetts Pirate Party herding cats.
In his latest “sting” he had one of His Evil Minions™ buy a T-Shirt for a Canadian tourist:
………
The reporters (including me) appeared confused about how they got to the press conference hosted at the National Press Club. Present at the press conference were five to 10 video cameras, along with a room of 30 or so reporters, all oblivious to the fact that we had been snookered into another supposedly salacious release from O’Keefe’s organization.
Clinton staffers have already been put on alert for hijinks from O’Keefe’s conservative group, which gained notoriety around the ACORN scandal, and put out a video last week showing a Clinton campaign staffer encouraging a “volunteer” to ask Iowans if they are Clinton supporters before registering them to vote.
“We have journalists across the country investigating inside the campaign. Not just this campaign,” O’Keefe said on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, the group teased its second release as “a powerful new undercover video confirming that corruption has permeated Hillary Clinton’s campaign at the highest levels.” The video purports to show Molly Barker, the director of marketing for Clinton’s campaign, accepting a campaign donation from a foreign national. Sounds pretty bad, right?
Then you find out that the “foreign national” is a Canadian woman who was simply trying to buy a T-shirt at Clinton’s kickoff rally, and that Project Veritas Action’s own “journalist” acted as an intermediary straw buyer to make the transaction, taking the Canadian woman’s money to purchase the shirt for her.
In the video, the Canadian visitor (who, O’Keefe says, Project Veritas Action did not find the name for) says, “Can I give her the money? She’s American. Can she buy it for me?”
“She could make a donation,” Barker says.
“Can you buy it for me?” the Canadian woman asks the Project Veritas Action operative.
“Sure, I’ll buy it,” the Project Veritas Action operative says. “So Canadians can’t buy them, but Americans can buy it for them?”
………
Project Veritas Action is comfortable conducting its operations under ethically dubious circumstances. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank got at that in an exchange during the press conference with the group’s legal expert, Benjamin Barr.Milbank: “I’m no expert on campaign finance law, but was that legal for your person to take that cash?”
Barr: “It’s a technical violation of the law. It’s akin to jaywalking for campaign finance. This is a low-dollar threshold contribution. There’s no reporting issues at play. It’s less than $200. So at most it would be a small civil penalty that’s a few hundred dollars. But what we’re really worried about is the Hillary campaign that has taken in a wide array of contributions. Once you aggregate beyond $2,000, then you’re within the criminal sanctions.”
Milbank: So you violated the law as well?
Barr: Yes.
………
“Is this a joke?” The Daily Beast’s Olivia Nuzzi asked later in the Q&A. “This feels like a prank.”
“Is this a joke,” O’Keefe repeated. “Well, the Clinton campaign doesn’t think it’s a joke, because they’re talking to The Washington Post about it. And we sent the letter to the Clinton campaign, so no, this is not a joke.”
Not only does O’Keefe have the gumption to offer to entrap a political campaign to the tune of $40, his group is now seeking redress for its own straw purchase.
“The Clinton campaign should return their illegal contribution. I don’t see other remedies. That’s the only remedy that we’re seeking,” O’Keefe said at the press conference.
………
To quote Charles Baudelaire, “The devil’s finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.” O’Keefe has the opposite intentions. His finest trick is to persuade you that he does still exist, and is worth listening to.
Even the Washington Post, which has never found a Clinton scandal that it would not eagerly pimp, has determined that there is no “there” there.
A Canadian tourist wanted a t-shirt, and a member of O’Keefe’s “Wretched hive of scum and villainy” took pity on her and bought it for her, and somehow it’s a big Clinton scandal?
Dude, you have had your 15 minutes of fame.
Get a real job, and stop living in your parents basement.
Remember the Loon Who Wanted the Government to Assassinate Law Professors Who He Disagreed With?
It looks like he won’t be teaching at West Point anymore:
A law professor who published an inflammatory article urging attacks on law professors and “Islamic holy sites” and who has been dogged by accusations of misrepresenting his academic and military credentials has resigned from the US Military Academy at West Point, the Guardian has confirmed.
US military academy official William Bradford argues that attacks on scholars’ home offices and media outlets – along with Islamic holy sites – are legitimate
Although West Point hired William C Bradford on 1 August, a spokesman said the prestigious undergraduate institution where the US army educates its future officers parted ways with the controversial academic on Sunday, the day after the Guardian published an article highlighting Bradford’s proposals to treat US scholars as “enemy combatants”.
“Dr William Bradford resigned on Sunday,” army lieutenant colonel Christopher Kasker, a West Point spokesman, told the Guardian on Monday. Bradford had taught five lessons for cadets in a common-core law course, from 17 to 27 August.
The West Point resignation marks the most recent academic departure for the controversial Bradford, following a decade’s worth of apparent exaggeration of his service record and academic career.
It remains unclear how thoroughly West Point vetted Bradford before hiring him.
………
Bradford has had a checkered academic career. In 2004, he quit a job teaching at the Indiana University School of Law after allegations emerged that he had exaggerated his military service, portraying himself inaccurately as a Gulf War veteran, an infantryman and a recipient of the prestigious Silver Star, an award for gallantry in action.
The army provided Bradford’s releasable service history to the Guardian on Monday. Bradford was commissioned into the army as a second lieutenant – the same rank West Point cadets hold upon commissioning – in 1995 and served the majority of his six-year service in military intelligence in the army reserve. He neither deployed nor earned any awards.
In 2005, the Guardian has learned, Bradford took a visiting professorship at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, teaching property law. A former student who wished to remain anonymous said Bradford’s behavior included “doing push-ups in class [and] making students stand and give answers in a military-like manner”.
Bradford, the former student said, ended up leaving his class – and ultimately the college – without grading the final exam.
Seriously? This guy was employed at West Point?
Whoever is responsible for his hiring put “Wingnut Welfare” over both academic integrity as well the good order and discipline in the armed forces.
They need to be fired, and whatever security clearance that they might have needs to be replaced by a Cap’n Crunch decoder ring.
Why Does this Guy Teach at West Point?
William Bradford, an assistant professor at West Point is calling for the assassination anyone who opposes his view of the world, as well as the law schools where they work.
Additionally, he wants Islamic holy sites bombed, just because:
An assistant professor in the law department of the US Military Academy at West Point has argued that legal scholars critical of the war on terrorism represent a “treasonous” fifth column that should be attacked as enemy combatants.
In a lengthy academic paper, the professor, William C Bradford, proposes to threaten “Islamic holy sites” as part of a war against undifferentiated Islamic radicalism. That war ought to be prosecuted vigorously, he wrote, “even if it means great destruction, innumerable enemy casualties, and civilian collateral damage”.
Other “lawful targets” for the US military in its war on terrorism, Bradford argues, include “law school facilities, scholars’ home offices and media outlets where they give interviews” – all civilian areas, but places where a “causal connection between the content disseminated and Islamist crimes incited” exist.
“Shocking and extreme as this option might seem, [dissenting] scholars, and the law schools that employ them, are – at least in theory – targetable so long as attacks are proportional, distinguish noncombatants from combatants, employ nonprohibited weapons, and contribute to the defeat of Islamism,” Bradford wrote.
West Point is the revered undergraduate institution north of New York City where the US army educates its future officer corps. It prides itself on the rigor of its curriculum. Representatives from the school said Bradford had only begun his employment there on 1 August.………
In the paper, Bradford identifies himself as an “associate professor of law, national security and strategy, National Defense University”, seemingly his previous job before West Point. But a representative of the National Defense University said Bradford was a contractor at the prestigious Defense Department-run institution, “never an NDU employee nor an NDU professor”.
It appears not to be the first time Bradford misrepresented his credentials. He resigned from Indiana University’s law school in 2005 after his military record showed he had exaggerated his service. (Among his paper’s criticisms of supposedly treasonous lawyers is “intellectual dishonesty”.)
Why is this guy not asking if we want fries with that for a living?
Why is he working at West Point?
Why was he a contractor at the National Defense University before that?
This is particularly troubling when one considers that his record before both of these jobs was clouded by credible allegations that he had consistently lied about his life story.
Why does this guy continue to get jobs in the national security establishment?
The Very Modern Model Of a Modern Moron Pundit Class
Donna Brazile, last seen mismanaging Al Gore’s Presidential campaign in 2000, is now praising George W. Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina.
Seriously?
Un-dirtyword-believable.
Today in IP Insanity
The city of Inglewood, California attempted to use copyright to prevent people from posting videos of their city council meetings.
Thankfully, thee judge called bullsh%$ on the town’s arguments:
Joseph Teixeira doesn’t like Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts, so he makes Youtube videos featuring City Council meeting footage.
The Mayor and Council decided to silence their critic by paying to register the videos of their city meetings with the US Copyright Office, then spending $50,000 in taxpayer money to retain a lawyer to sue Teixeira for copyright infringement.
The court was unimpressed with Inglewood’s leaders: it ruled that the council meetings weren’t copyrightable; that councils can’t make money from public records; and that the videos — in the event that they used anything copyrighted — were fair use. Now they face the possibility that Teixeira will recover fees for his pro bono counsel — more tax dollars flushed away in an illegal bid to prevent a critic from speaking.
Then there’s the Streisand Effect: in bringing this action, the City of Inglewood increased traffic to Teixeira’s videos by five hundred percent.
(emphasis original)
It’s nice that the judge slapped them down firmly.
Increasingly, IP is used to censor criticism and to privatize the public space, and it is a bad thing.
Best Letter to the Editor Ever!
For those of you who don’t see the image, it is a Washington Post reader noting that the only place where Donald Trump hasn’t appeared in the paper is the weather page.
H/t Jim Romenesko.
Merkel Got What She Wanted
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has resigned and called snap elections:
Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has announced he is resigning and has called an early election.
Mr Tsipras, who was only elected in January, said he had a moral duty to go to the polls now a third bailout had been secured with European creditors.
The election date is yet to be set but earlier reports suggested 20 September.
Mr Tsipras will lead his leftist Syriza party into the polls, but he has faced a rebellion by some members angry at the bailout’s austerity measures.
He had to agree to painful state sector cuts, including far-reaching pension reforms, in exchange for the bailout – and keeping Greece in the eurozone.
A portion of Syriza has responded by splitting off into a new party:
Hardline rebels have confirmed an irreparable split in Greece’s ruling Syriza movement and broken away to form a new anti-austerity party as the country heads towards its fifth general election in six years.
The long-awaited move by up to 29 dissident Syriza MPs on Friday followed the resignation of the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, who stepped down on Thursday to pave the way for a snap poll widely forecast to strengthen his hold on power.
The new Popular Unity party, headed by the former energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, said it would fight the promises of further austerity and far-reaching reform that Tsipras made to Greece’s international lenders to secure a new €86bn (£62bn) bailout package.
Lafazanis told a press conference the party would offer a realistic alternative to the deal. He said: “A new power is coming to the fore. We aim for government … and we will not fall victim to blackmail. We want to become a great movement that will sweep the bailouts aside.”
The veteran former Communist party member listed Popular Unity’s key objectives as cancelling Greece’s three bailouts, writing down its mountain of debt and leaving the eurozone “if necessary” to help the country recover.
This is significant, because we will now have a non-fascist party in the election that saying that there are worse things than leaving the Euro zone.
I don’t think that the Greek populace is willing to leave the Euro ……… yet, but Euro skeptic parties appear to be on the upswing.
When there is no politically alternative to a poorly conceived, and insanely managed common currency, those feelings have to go somewhere.
Now that Merkel, who said that Tsipras resigning was, “Part of the solution, not of the problem,” it’s clear that the replacement of social democratic parties with the, “We don’t suck quite as much,” policies of Tony Blair and their ilk has left a large political vacuum.
I just hope that Fascist parties don’t fill this vacuum, but I fear that they will.
Well, Duh!
Over at The New Republic, Andrea Flynn states the obvious, that “Carly Fiorina Is a Trojan Horse in the GOP’s War on Women.”
Her record in politics is one of failure, and her record in business is one of fraud and failure, so the only reason that she would be a more credible candidate than, for example, Limberbutt McCubins, a Tabby cat from Kentucky is that her double-x chromosome gives the Republicans some (not particularly) plausible deniability against accusations of engaging in a war on women.
Meet the Clampetts
Cue the Banjos
Down in Oklahoma, some bigot declared that their gun shop was a “Muslim Free Zone”, the 1964 Civil Rights Act be damned.
This brought in the usual suspects who dedicated themselves to “protecting” the establishment.
One of these products of generations of first cousins marrying dropped his gun and shot himself:
The Muskogee County sheriff said a member of the group guarding an Oktaha gun shop accidentally shot himself Tuesday.
Sheriff Charles Pearson said the man dropped his gun and a bullet hit him in the arm. The sheriff did not identify the man or offer any other details about what happened.
The group of armed citizens and veterans is standing guard outside the Save Yourself Survival and Tactical Gear store after the owners said they received death threats from all over the world for putting up a sign saying Muslims weren’t welcome.
“I saw several of those gentlemen out there yesterday,” Pearson said. “The way they were holding their weapons, with the fingers on the triggers, you can tell a couple of these gentlemen have no idea about weapons safety. It’s like the Clampetts have come to town,” Sheriff Pearson told muskogeenow.com.
According to the Supreme Court, there is a fundamental right to own firearms.
We also have a fundamental right to eat Ghost Peppers, which have a heat rating of over eight hundred thousand Scovilles.
Just because you have a right to do this does not make it right, though.
This gentleman should not own a gun, because he is too stupid to own a gun.
What Is Depressing Is That This Isn’t Even the Craziest Thing Said by a Republican This Week
The craziest Mother f%$#er in the Republican Presidential contest ……… No, the other one, ……… No, the other one, ……… No, not Donald Trump.
OK, it’s Ben Carson, alright?
Well, the other day, he was talking immigration, and he suggested that we should use missile strikes to secure the border against illegal immigration:
Another day. Someone else surges near the top of the polls. Another nutball comes to the border and loses his mind. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present your current second-place contestant in the Republican presidential derby.
On Wednesday morning, Carson responded to a question about whether he would be open to the possibility of drone strikes on American soil to secure the border. “The take home point is this. We have excellent military leaders,” he said. “We need to employ their expertise because this is a war we are fighting. That’s the bottom line.”
Look out, El Paso. Sometimes, mistakes are made. Sorry about that junior high that used to be there.
It’s batsh%$ insane, it’s needlessly cruel, and it is is a relentlessly bigoted demonization of the other, but it’s not as bad as deliberately accusing mothers of poisoning their children for free rent.
Pay Them More Money, You Stupid F%$#ing F%$#s!
It appears that are having a problem finding and keeping experienced cooks:
Behind the swinging doors of restaurant kitchens around the country, things are getting a bit more chaotic. It’s not the sort of thing diners would not have noticed, because it’s happening behind the scenes, out of view. Orders are still coming in, and plates are still coming out. But there’s a growing problem that chefs and restaurateurs are talking about more these days.
Good cooks are getting harder to come by. Not the head kitchen honchos, depicted in Food Network reality shows, who fine-tune menus and orchestrate the dinner rush, but the men and women who are fresh out of culinary school and eager.
The shortage of able kitchen hands is affecting chefs in Chicago, where restaurateurs said they are receiving far fewer applications than in past years. “It’s gotten to the point where if good cooks come along, we’ll hire them even if we don’t have a position. Because we will have a position,” Paul Kahan, a local chef, told the Chicago Tribune last week.
It’s also an issue in New York, where skilled cooks are an increasingly rare commodity. “If I had a position open in the kitchen, I might have 12 résumés, call in three or four to [try out] in the kitchen, and make a decision,” Alfred Portale, the chef and owner of Michelin-starred Manhattan restaurant Gotham Bar and Grill, told Fortune recently. “Now it’s the other way around; there’s one cook and 12 restaurants.”
Gee, why is it so tough to find good cooks?
Maybe it’s this:
One of the clearest obstacles to hiring a good cook, let alone someone willing to work the kitchen these days, is that living in this country’s biggest cities is increasingly unaffordable. In New York, for instance, where a cook can expect to make between $10 and $12 per hour, and the median rent runs upward of $1,200 a month, living in the city is a near impossibility. As a result, people end up living far from the restaurants where they work. Add to that how late dinner shifts can end, causing people to arrive home well into the night.
Top it all off with the fact that culinary school graduates are often working through significant amounts of debt, and the burden can be insurmountable.
It’s markets, baby.
You cannot find cooks to underpay and abuse because ……… Oh, I don’t know ……… Maybe there are fewer illegal workers out there to depress wages:
And then there’s another subtle but significant change happening across America that doesn’t bode well for the restaurant industry. After years of steady inflows of Mexican immigrants, who have proved both eager and talented cooks, the trend is reversing itself. The number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States has leveled off over the past decade (it peaked eight years ago in 2007). By 2012, net migration to Mexico was already zero, or even negative, meaning that more Mexicans were moving out than moving in.
So you want your employees to go heavily into debt at cooking schools, you want to work them mercilessly, and you don’t want to pay them well, and now the guys that you can use the threat of La Migra to keep them in line have gone home.
The pay sucks, and they are treated like crap, so people are not flocking to the profession,
You find the same thing in other fields where this has happened, like, for example, airline pilots.
We have been eating our seed corn in terms of skilled professionals for over a generation, if we are finding it hard to find new guys, the solution is not more gastarbeiters (H1B, L1A, etc.), it is to strengthen worker rights, strengthen union rights, and raise the minimum wage.
America, F%$# Yeah!
Say what you will about America, but we lead the world in firearms related stupidity:
Flamethrowers were gruesome weapons of war and so controversial that the U.S. military stopped using them after Vietnam.
But as crazy as it may sound, they are available for sale to the public.
A Cleveland startup called Throwflame is selling flamethrowers for $1,599 that can shoot fire for 50 feet. Another company, Ion Productions Team of Detroit, is selling $900 flamethrowers that can eject flames for 25 feet. Both companies started selling them this year.
The flamethrowers are marketed not as weapons, but as fun devices.
“We always have the people who just want it for fun. Impress the neighbors at the BBQ,” said Throwflame founder Quinn Whitehead.
Both Whitehead and Ion CEO Chris Byars said their flamethrowers have caused no injuries, and safety is a priority. But Ion notes on its website that the flamethrower “may result in injury or even death.”
A flamethrower may result in injury or even death?
Gee, you think?
One bright spot, for me, anyway:
Still, flamethrowers could run afoul of state or local laws. They are banned outright in Maryland. California considers them “destructive devices,” which are illegal, but the state does issue permits for use on movie sets.
So these lunatics are not selling their weapons of death in my my state.
I’m now beginning to wonder how this country ever managed to survive our occasional bouts of peace.
There are times that I wonder if we are more of an episode of Jackass than we are a nation.
H/t Naked Capitalism.
I Cannot Believe that I am Saying This………
But I was wrong when I suggested a few days back that the disruption of a Bernie Sanders speech by Black Lives Matter was likely an exercise in Nixonian rat-f%$#ing by the Clinton campaign.
It turns out now that the best evidence now is that at least one of the protesteris a bit of a nut, who was in the not too distant past a Teabagger supporter of Sarah Palin.
IMNSHO, you cannot manufacture this kind of lunacy, so I’m going with a small group of nuts:
An interesting development has occurred within the Black Lives Matter movement and it has caused many outside and from within the movement to question the wisdom in the most recent interruption of Bernie Sanders campaign. While no one can deny its effectiveness, especially considering Senator Sanders newest addition to his team is a Black Lives Matter activist, this interruption happened after Bernie had already begun shifting his campaign towards publicizing his stance on racial issues.
When individuals place themselves in the public eye they become scrutinized at every level. While looking into these activists for the Black Lives Matter movement, it became readily apparent that either they were not officially a part of the BLM movement, or they were not organized until just around the time of the incident.
………
Then more startling information came out concerning Marissa Johnson, the main agitator who berated Bernie for being a racist. According to her own Facebook profile she was a huge Tea Party supporter and had supported Sarah Palin in her 2008 Vice Presidential candidacy.
………
While none of that necessarily qualifies her as being a troll, or as some on the internet have accused an operative who is just trying to delegitimize the Sanders campaign. It is very possible that Johnson was a staunch Tea Party supporter in 2008 and has now changed her political persuasion to more closely mirror that of Bernie Sanders or Martin O’Malley. Eight years are a long time for an individual to reflect upon politics and their effects in the real world.
Although it is quite disquieting when you dig deeper into the facts. The Facebook page and social media presence of Johnson’s faction BLM Seattle did not exist until the day of the rally. Two hours after the interruption her Facebook page had been live for less than 24 hours and had garnered less than 50 followers. Again, this may all relate back to poor planning and nothing nefarious, but it is certainly not indicative of someone attempting to achieve legitimacy within the political spectrum. Johnson is also a member of a group called Outside Agitators 206, a movement within the larger Black Lives Matter movement, based out of Seattle. Unfortunately, they don’t appear to hold the same goals as the larger movement and actually made a public statement declaring their intent was to “declare war on the Democratic Party“. ………
I would note that there has been no formal comment by BLM on this protest, and I would argue that there can’t be one, because, much like the Occupy movement, there is no head, there is no tail, and there is no way to determine if someone is official, a nut, or an agent provocateur.
On the other hand, I think that the preponderance of the evidence here is that this specific protest is the product of the bat-sh%$ insane wing of BLM, so I apologize to the Clinton campaign.
BTW, read what the Bear who Swims has said about Occupy and its ilk about the tendency of groups like Occupy, and BLM to function as “Useful Idiots”.
Here is a particularly good bit:
Say what you like about the reactionaries, they have spent the last 30 years do these things. They have
- Used mass media to explain their theories, and why they are better.
- Popularized goals and objects and made them part of the political discussion through poltical organizing and outreach.
- Created a cadre of individuals who are willing to take on public office at all levels of govenment to implement their policies.
- Created a core group of constituencies who are loyal to their cause — even against their own interested.
Let us put that another way, they have play practical electoral politics effectively. In the course of this they have created a separate reactionary nationalism, which while at odds with the views of many, has no counter balance.
Go read what the Bear, AKA my brother, AKA the hairiest Saroff, AKA Stephen wrote.
He has been involved in politics for a long time, and has little patience for folks who think that it is noble to rearrange deck chairs on a certain White Star Line ocean liner as an alternative to identifying and avoiding icebergs.
Worthy of Dick Tuck
.@ScottWalker received a $900 million novelty check from #KochBrothers today in #NH. #nhpolitics #FITN #climate pic.twitter.com/gWOvKTZnM8
— Tyler McFarland (@tmcfarland29) August 3, 2015
This is a truly an epic political prank what got pulled on Scott Walker in New Hampshire.
What Does a Cop Have to Do to Get Fired?
It appears that plotting to murder someone is not enough:
A police officer in Alabama proposed murdering a black resident and creating bogus evidence to suggest the killing was in self-defence, the Guardian has learned.
Officer Troy Middlebrooks kept his job and continues to patrol Alexander City after authorities there paid the man $35,000 to avoid being publicly sued over the incident. Middlebrooks, a veteran of the US marines, said the man “needs a god damn bullet” and allegedly referred to him as “that nigger”, after becoming frustrated that the man was not punished more harshly over a prior run-in.
The payment was made to the black resident, Vincent Bias, after a secret recording of Middlebrooks’s remarks was played to the city’s police chiefs and the mayor. Elected city councillors said they were not consulted. A copy of the recording was obtained by the Guardian.
………
“This town is ridiculous,” Bias, 49, said in an interview. “The police here feel they can do what they want, and often they do.” Alexander City police chief Willie Robinson defended Middlebrooks. “He was just talking. He didn’t really mean that,” he said in an interview.
………
Middlebrooks, 33, made the threatening comments to Bias’s brother-in-law during a May 2013 encounter at his home, which Bias was visiting. Police came to the home after they discovered an unleashed dog.
A lawsuit from Bias that the city paid to settle before it reached court stated that while Bias remained inside the house and out of earshot, the officer remarked to Bias’s brother-in-law, who is white, that he was tired of “that nigger” being released from jail.
………
The officer did say he had been cleared by a state inquiry into the incident and referred the Guardian to the state bureau of investigation (SBI) and Larkin Radney, the city attorney for Alexander City. A spokesman for the SBI, however, said: “We have no record of us investigating this case.” Radney said: “I really don’t know what he’s talking about.”
During the interview at his office, Robinson said Middlebrooks “was disciplined” when the recording came to light, but declined to elaborate. Asked if the officer was ever suspended from patrols, Robinson repeated: “He got disciplined.” When it was put to him that some agencies might have terminated the officer’s job, the police chief said: “I don’t know what other departments do, but I made that call, and I’m going to live with that.”
Robinson tried to stress that Middlebrooks was in fact proposing that the brother-in-law carry out the killing. “He wasn’t saying that he was going to do that,” said the police chief. “He was talking about the man doing it himself.”
So a criminal conspiracy to commit murder under the color of law is not a grounds to fire this thug?