Hekate
Hekate's JournalIf he were not such a racist pig, he could talk about English Common Law that goes back centuries...
...and have some credibility when he references our "Anglo-American heritage."
In point of fact, we DO derive our laws largely from England. Under, for instance, Napoleonic Law, if a person is arrested, they are presumed guilty. If they were not guilty, the reasoning goes, why would the gendarmes have arrested them in the first place? I believe Mexico also has a version of Napoleonic Law.
In both Britain and America, there is supposed to be a supposition of innocence, and it is up to the court system to prove that the defendant is guilty. No matter how often we fail, that supposition of "innocent until proven guilty" is bedrock to our legal system.
Believe me, it is not like that in the rest of the world. Be glad of our Anglo-American heritage in the law, even if it is a racist talking about it.
That is Story B. Story A is Porter FAILED HIS BACKGROUND CHECK & FAILED HIS SECURITY CLEARANCE
The domestic violence story is disgusting and unacceptable. Trump, Porter, and Kelly are all disgusting and unacceptable.
But as the Orange Anus keeps telling us how sad it was to lose Porter and whines about due process and unproven allegations -- keep your focus on the fact that Porter already had his "due process" in the form of his FBI background check, which HE FAILED. Anyone who wants to argue WHY he failed can take it up with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
When the Mad King mumbles on about how Porter is the victim in this narrative, stay focused on the fact that Trump, Kelly, and Porter were all cool with Porter weighing in on the nation's most sensitive top secret material AFTER HE FAILED HIS BACKGROUND CHECK. Porter is no victim -- he got real special treatment for a year.
Never forget that.
Bring it back to this: the FBI flunked him out. The women did not come forward: the FBI found them.
The "due process" all these poor abused men want has already taken place, because it consists of an FBI security clearance investigation that Porter ans so many others have failed.
They failed.
Fck the ratfckers for saying otherwise.
If you really think that, you should join the Resistance. Get in touch with Indivisible ...
...and your local Democratic Party. The truly massive Women's Marches have been used extensively for GOTV, voter registration, networking, and encouraging women to run for office. Were you there?
Have you noticed the number of GOP Congressmen who have decided to not run again this year? A lot of them have been confronted outside their local offices by fed-up constituents, in some cases every single week for over a year. They also get many, many phone calls to their offices every single day. The poor things are just all tired out. Have you been calling them and visiting their offices?
Make sure you vigorously support the Democrats running to replace them.
Have you noticed that hun dreds, if not thousands, of women are filing to run for office this year? They are running as Democrats. Get out and support them.
Change is happening. Be part of it. Don't "hang out complaining on a blog." DU is a discussion board, anyway. You're welcome to hang around, debsy, but a lot of DUers are Resisting in real life, so hustle your bustle and do the same.
FYI Agent Mike: In the battle for Truth, Justice, and the American Way, we've always supported...
...those who work to support those basics. We know that most of you are straight arrows, and we don't want either the FBI nor the Justice Dept as a whole destroyed on the whims of a lunatic who embraces every dictator he encounters, especially Putin.
Ps: Yes, after coming of age in the 1960s, this does feel weird.
Hope Hicks is absolutely not a naive "former model". Fascinating LA Times op-ed today...
Once again, the combo of my iPad mini and the e-newspaper mean the link I had to labor to retrieve takes you not to the page I wanted, but to the front page of the paper/facsimile. I hope someone else can do better, because this is REALLY worth reading.
Hicks has been continually described (and thus dismissed) as a "former model" while journalists too damn lazy to dig any further thus get to dismiss her as nothing more than arm-candy. Instead, this woman is a charming shark among sharks.
Los Angeles Times, Sunday, February 4, 2018, page A18. The op-ed is by Virginia Heffernan.
http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/latimes/default.aspx?pubid=50435180-e58e-48b5-8e0c-236bf740270e
"Who is Hope Hicks and what'd she do?"
5th para down:
Hicks didn't just drift into her first PR job as some in the sheath set (ie models) are known to do. Instead, she's to the manner born, third-generation in a family of special-forces flacks.
Vile GOP California Congressmen: Nunes, Issa, Rohrabacher, Hunter. PLEASE do not tell yourselves...
...that every Democratic candidate in California needs to be a super-duper Progressive, or you are personally going to damn their perfidious souls to hell.
These GOP *holes and ratfckers all ran repeatedly in California districts and all of them won repeatedly. For years and years and years. What are the chances these districts will elect a Progressive?
We need to get rid of these evil guys. We need to encourage Democrats who can win to run in those districts. Nancy Pelosi still gets San Francisco.
Rant Off.
There was a nasty kerfuffle at DU year before last over the book collection of Seuss's WW II toons
According to some, his wartime efforts on behalf of the US could only be viewed through today's sensibilities, with no reference to historical nuance or to the fact that there might be some lessons to be drawn for our time. No, no, all those beloved children's books from The Cat in the Hat to The Butter Battle Book to The Lorix needed to be thrown on the ash heap of history as the products of a nasty racist mind.
It kind of bemused (and disheartened) me to see the ignorance on display. My after school cartoon fare in the 1950s was well-sprinkled with reruns of WW II era Loony Tunes (and others) characters kicking Tojo's ass and punching out Hitler. As of 9-11 all those old themes returned in new dress.
I picked up a copy of the WW II Seuss book at the public library a few months ago and leafed through it, shaking my head. All those cartoons about the America First movement could be printed today, and then some. The US has always had a strain of (white) nativism, ignorant populism, and isolationism, some eras worse than others. Seuss drew what he saw. We see it back again today, bolder and nastier than ever.
Seuss was no more racist than any propagandist. He caricatured ignorant Americans as well as our (then) mortal enemies. To a great extent He drew what he saw.
When my husband says: "Why didn't we move to Canada during BushCheney?!" My response always
...is: "We would have missed out on Barack Obama." I mean that -- those were 8 years of grace and a chance to build again. But as I often said here, only a chance, and so much depended on other people than Obama -- like us, and like the good will of the GOP. Thus America blew the chance.
Right now is possibly the worst and most perilous time in our history, and it is hard as hell to see any good in the future. My husband and I are 70 -- so same age cohort as you, MN. I have no advice to give except to hang on, check in here, and occasionally check to see what the Resistance is doing. There's an awful lot of younger people involved, and women are popping up all over the country filing to run for political offices.
In other words, when Hillary Clinton's chances at the presidency were murdered in cold blood, the story was by NO means over.
600,000 people marched in Los Angeles this weekend, 200,000 in New York, and more across the country. At every rally there were not just speakers but activists at card tables registering people to vote and handing out information and showing how to participate.
That's where my hope is residing. May we all live to see our democracy and republic renewed. 
The CCCP built so many Trojan Horses at our gates...
And we just wheeled them in.
The laugh-because-you-don't-want-to-cry irony of the NRA being punked is the gun-worshippers oft-stated creed that they are defending our freedoms. What they need to do is contemplate the First Amendment and use their brains.
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Gender: FemaleHometown: Central Coast, California
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Member since: 2002
Number of posts: 90,660
