December 30, 2012

Woman charged with hate-crime murder in death of man pushed in front of NYC train

Source: NBC NEWS


New York City police officers escort 31-year-old Erika Menendez to a waiting car as she screams in Queens, New York City, on Saturday.

NEW YORK — .Menendez admitted to investigators that she pushed Sunando Sen, a 46-year-old Queens resident, on Thursday because of her hatred of Hindus and Muslims, a feeling that stems from Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Sen was born in India and ran a printing shop. He died Thursday night after being knocked onto the tracks. Police released security camera video showing a woman running from the station.

Police said that Menendez was recognized on the street in Brooklyn by a passer-by who called 911. Patrol officers found and arrested her.

Brown's statement said that while in custody Menendez made incriminating statements, saying that she "pushed a Muslim" onto the tracks. Brown also said:

"The defendant is accused of committing what is every subway commuter's worst nightmare - being suddenly and senselessly pushed into the path of an oncoming train. The victim was allegedly shoved from behind and had no chance to defend himself. Beyond that, the hateful remarks allegedly made by the defendant and which precipitated the defendant's actions can never be tolerated by a civilized society."






Read more: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/29/16235799-woman-charged-with-hate-crime-murder-in-death-of-man-pushed-in-front-of-nyc-train?lite

December 25, 2012

a most odd story about how the Irish sister-in-law of Hitler and her son Patrick escaped to the US

imagine having this as your family secret



Bridget Dowling was a Dublin native who married Alois, Adolf Hitler’s half brother. She bore a son, Patrick who had four children himself, two of whom survive. The sons grew up on Patchogue, Long Island.

The sons are among the only remaining blood links to Adolf Hitler and the two surviving brothers have no children so if they remain that way the Hitler Irish and American link will die out.

Bridget Dowling Hitler is one of the most intriguing tales of the Second World War and the Irish connection.,

She was just 17 in the summer of 1909 at the Dublin Horse show when her father fell into conversation with a handsome foreigner Alois Hitler, who told them he was a businessman on a trip to Ireland.

He wasn’t, he was actually a penniless waiter in a Dublin hotel but Bridget fell in love with the exotic foreigner anyway


They eloped to London and were wed. He was the future Fuehrer’s eldest half brother. Their common father Alois Senior went through three marriages and eight children, including Adolf and Alois.

Read more: http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/The-Irish-Hitler-the-strange-tale-of-Bridget-Hitler-and-the-Nazi-leader-156889665.html#ixzz2G6ppnB3D

December 21, 2012

Washington Post outraged with Hagel claiming he might push Obama well to the left on foreign policy

WaPo Editorial: Chuck Hagel is not the right choice for defense secretary
By Editorial Board, Published: December 18

FORMER SENATOR Chuck Hagel, whom President Obama is reportedly considering for defense secretary, is a Republican who would offer a veneer of bipartisanship to the national security team. He would not, however, move it toward the center, which is the usual role of such opposite-party nominees. On the contrary: Mr. Hagel’s stated positions on critical issues, ranging from defense spending to Iran, fall well to the left of those pursued by Mr. Obama during his first term — and place him near the fringe of the Senate that would be asked to confirm him.

The current secretary, Leon Panetta, has said the defense “sequester” cuts that Congress mandated to take effect Jan. 1 would have dire consequences for U.S. security. Mr. Hagel took a very different position when asked about Mr. Panetta’s comment during a September 2011 interview with the Financial Times. “The Defense Department, I think in many ways, has been bloated,” he responded. “So I think the Pentagon needs to be pared down.”

While both Republicans and Democrats accept that further cuts in defense may be inevitable, few have suggested that a reduction on the scale of the sequester is responsible. In congressional testimony delivered around the same time as Mr. Hagel’s interview, members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the sequester would lead to “a severe and irreversible impact on the Navy’s future,” “a Marine Corps that’s below the end strength to support even one major contingency” and “an unacceptable level of strategic and operational risk” for the Army.

Mr. Hagel was similarly isolated in his views about Iran during his time in the Senate. He repeatedly voted against sanctions, opposing even those aimed at the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which at the time was orchestrating devastating bomb attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq. Mr. Hagel argued that direct negotiations, rather than sanctions, were the best means to alter Iran’s behavior. The Obama administration offered diplomacy but has turned to tough sanctions as the only way to compel Iran to negotiate seriously.

-snip-

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/chuck-hagel-is-not-right-for-defense-secretary/2012/12/18/07e03e20-493c-11e2-ad54-580638ede391_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines


Thanks to DonViejo for posting this in the Politics 2012 forum

December 21, 2012

a special video for December 21, 2012

December 17, 2012

What if “gun control” is impossible? By Alex Pareene for salon.com

(Credit: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton)

That doesn't mean we can't ban some, make them a lot harder to get -- and maybe even tax the hell out of them

Effective gun control in America is impossible. It’s impossible for a million different reasons, some of them new, many of them very old, but it’s impossible all the same. It’s impossible because of our courts, our history, our culture, and, most significantly, our surfeit of guns. There are just too goddamn many guns in the United States to make it difficult for crazy or dangerous people to obtain one, or many.

A U.K.-style blanket firearms ban is obviously impossible, constitutionally and politically. Even Canadian-style firearms regulation, which requires licensing and prohibits or heavily restricts private ownership of most varieties of firearms, besides rifles and shotguns used primarily in hunting, probably wouldn’t stand up to our current conservative judiciary’s literalist (though not originalist) interpretation of the Second Amendment. Without a constitutional amendment — and please remember that nearly half of Americans own firearms — Congress can’t restrict the gun trade to the degree necessary to significantly reduce American gun violence.

There are countries with gun ownership rates nearly as high as our own and much less gun violence. You could attribute that to culture (other Western nations have a less blood-soaked popular media and lack our proud history of fetishizing power and violence and huge fucking guns) or regulation (nearly every other wealthy and gun-heavy nation registers firearms and requires licensing). But another thing Finland and Canada — to name two nations with plenty of guns and not many gun murders — have in common is a strong welfare state. There are also countries with many fewer guns than the United States, but with even higher homicide by firearm rates. They are all countries poorer and less equal than the United States. Social democracy might actually be a better deterrent to gun violence than gun control.

So let’s push for gun registration, and background checks for unlicensed firearms sales, and bans on huge video game-style mass death machines with ammunition designed to pierce armor and tanks, by all means. Let’s also look at taxing the hell out of guns, and using the money to buy ourselves a fairer nation, whose citizens are less terrified of slipping into intractable poverty if they lose a job, with universal access to mental and physical healthcare. I think we’re stuck with our guns, and even our gun culture. We can hopefully do something about the factors that lead Americans to use their guns

http://www.salon.com/2012/12/16/what_if_gun_control_is_impossible/

December 15, 2012

Please move the dear crossing

A lady calls into a North Dakota radio station to request the deer crossing signs be moved to lower traffic areas.

December 15, 2012

Teabaggers picket A Christmas Carol

December 11, 2012

Ron Paul Joins Dennis Kucinich to Demand Obama Drone Documents

Libertarian minded Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, and liberal Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, would seem like an odd pair on any issue. However, as the Houston Chronicle reports, both oppose the use of drone strikes in the War on Terror.

Paul and Kucinich attempt to force release of drone documents

Paul and Kucinich, both of whom will be leaving Congress within weeks, have introduced a resolution designed to force the Obama administration to release legal documents that are being used to justify the use of drones to undertake targeted killings of Al Qaeda terrorist leaders, according to the Houston Chronicle. Thus far the Obama administration has resisted attempts to have these documents released. Paul and Kucinich hope to force the White House to turn over the documents to a House committee for examination.

Paul a longtime opponent of drone strikes

Paul, who has advocated an isolationist foreign policy, has been also an opponent of the use of missile-armed drones used to kill Al Qaeda leaders. In a speech published on the website AntiWar.com Paul suggested that drone strikes kill too many innocent civilians while attempting to take out terrorist leaders, thus inciting hatred of the United States in the Middle East and around the world. Paul also expressed concern about the use of drone for domestic surveillance on civil liberties grounds.

The drone war

The use of drones as a weapon for targeted killing was started under the Bush administration, but was greatly expanded under the Obama administration, according to the New Yorker. There are actually two drone campaigns, one conducted by the military in war zones against terrorist targets, and the other, more controversial, conducted by the CIA in a variety of countries, some, Yemen and Pakistan, not technically war zones.

http://news.yahoo.com/ron-paul-joins-dennis-kucinich-demand-obama-drone-192800504.html

December 11, 2012

Ex-policeman gets life for 1957 death of Ill. girl

Source: Associated Press

Jack McCullough, 73, was convicted in September in one of the oldest unsolved crimes in American history to make it to trial. He was sentenced in a small town courtroom a few blocks from where Maria Ridulph played with a friend on Dec. 3, 1957, before she was grabbed, choked and stabbed to death in an alley. The 7-year-old's body was found months later, dumped in woods more than 100 miles away.

The little girl's friends and relatives didn't utter a sound or betray the slightest emotion as a silver-haired Jack McCullough stood, turned to them and proclaimed his innocence.

"I did not, did not, kill Maria Ridulph," said McCullough, who grew up in Sycamore and was 17 when Ridulph died. "It was a crime I did not, would not, could not have done."

Judge James Hallock admonished McCullough to face him, not the spectators, and a sheriff's deputy stood behind McCullough to block his view of Ridulph's relatives and the childhood friend who was left behind.

"He can say all he wants to say," Kathy Chapman, now 63, said afterward. "This finally puts this part of my life to a resting point."

Chapman had been playing with Ridulph in the snow when she ran home to get her mittens, leaving her friend with a teenager who had been giving them piggyback rides. When she returned, both were gone.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/ex-policeman-gets-life-1957-death-ill-girl-221429523.html

December 8, 2012

The first 2016 Democratic primary straw poll

Of course I know this is ridiculous - but since others have brought up the point...

Who would you at this time be the most inclined to support for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 2016?