June 20, 2018

Start calling Trump exactly what he is...

A Terrorist along with all the supporters of him elected or not.
The damage that this terrorist crew is doing to the U.S. at this point in history is more damaging than the ones that flew the planes into the World Trade Center on 9/11.
We have no qualms calling them what they were, why should we be uneasy calling Trump and crew terrorists now?
I believe that the people that engineered and carried out the 9/11 attack had purer reasons for their actions than Trump and his band of terrorists.

ter·ror·ist
ˈterərəst/
noun
1.
a person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
"four commercial aircraft were hijacked by terrorists"
synonyms: extremist, fanatic; More
adjective
1.
unlawfully using violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
"a terrorist organization"

June 15, 2018

Defense Contractors Cashing In On Immigrant Kids' Detention

https://www.thedailybeast.com/defense-contractors-cashing-in-on-immigrant-kids-detention?ref=home


A scandal-plagued company that used to work for the CIA is poised to profit off the influx of immigrant children being forcibly separated from their parents.

One of them, from Virginia-based MVM Inc., seeks a compliance coordinator to help in San Antonio with the “rapid deployment of an Emergency Influx Shelter for unaccompanied children.” As billed, the coordinator would ensure the children’s shelter met “policies and procedures” set by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement. MVM posted the job on its website this week.

MVM appears to believe its business is growing. A job posting on Indeed.com from 20 days ago advertises for youth care workers “in anticipation of a contract award.”

Matthew Kolken, an immigration attorney who frequently represents undocumented children, told The Daily Beast he’s deeply concerned about these contractors’ child care work.

“I’m guessing that in their mission statement, one of the central components isn’t the care of refugee children,” he said. “It is mind-blowing that those types of industries would be even considered with respect to the care of children. They’re not equipped to be able to do it. Would you want your child to be dropped off in their hands? I know I wouldn’t.”

June 12, 2018

What the f**k?

In off-hand remarks delivered to a press conference in Singapore on Tuesday, Mr Trump said North Korea had great potential for condos and hotels. He also said that from watching coverage of North Korean military drills, it appeared the country boasted “great” beaches.

“Instead of [testing missiles] you could have the best hotels in the world right there,” Trump said he told Kim. “Think of it from a real estate perspective. You have South Korea, you have China and they own the land in the middle.”

Trump said he trusts Kim, but admits that time may prove his faith is misplaced.

“I may be wrong, I mean, I may stand before you in six months and say, ‘Hey I was wrong,'” Trump said. “I don’t know that I’ll ever admit that, but I’ll find some kind of an excuse.”

————————————————————————————

Was this just an excuse for a real estate deal? Hey maybe I’m wrong, we’ll find out in a few months, but I’ll never admit it.

May 9, 2018

This is for a friend...

E R. this is for you.

May 9, 2018

What is it like to be you?

I feel like this is a very hard hitting video.

Listen to it 3, 4, 5 times to get the full impact.

At first you may say, that’s not me, at first you may say, I agree.
At first you may question just why this is posted on DU.
Then your critical thinking skills start to bother you.

April 17, 2018

Glenn Glenn Glenn...

Hold up a minute buddy, heard you got a jet for sale! Come on let’s talk.

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/04/glenn-beck-puts-private-jet-sale-media-empire-falls-apart/

April 8, 2018

If We Don't Act Now, Fascism Will Be on Our Doorstep, Says Yale Historian.

Posted with no comment.

https://www.alternet.org/activism/if-we-dont-act-now-fascism-will-be-our-doorstep-says-yale-historian

How close is President Donald Trump to following the path blazed by last century's tyrants? Could American democracy be replaced with totalitarian rule? There's enough resemblance that Yale historian Timothy Snyder, who studies fascist and communist regime change and totalitarian rule, has written a book warning about the threat and offering lessons for resistance and survival. The author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century talked to AlterNet's Steven Rosenfeld.

-snip-

We think about democracy, and that’s the word that Americans love to use, democracy, and that’s how we characterize our system. But if democracy just means going to vote, it’s pretty meaningless. Russia has democracy in that sense. Most authoritarian regimes have democracy in that sense. Nazi Germany had democracy in that sense, even after the system had fundamentally changed.

Democracy only has substance if there’s the rule of law. That is, if people believe that the votes are going to be counted and they are counted. If they believe that there’s a judiciary out there that will make sense of things if there’s some challenge. If there isn’t rule of law, people will be afraid to vote the way they want to vote. They'll vote for their own safety as opposed to their convictions. So the thing we call democracy depends on the rule of law. And the things we call the rule of law depends upon trust. Law functions 99 percent of the time automatically. It functions because we think it’s out there. And that, in turn, depends on the sense of truth. So there’s a mechanism here. You can get right to heart of the matter if you can convince people that there is no truth. Which is why the stuff that we characterize as post-modern and might dismiss is actually really, really essential.

- snip-

The same thing goes with Mr. Trump. The things that he might do that some people would like, like building a wall or driving all the immigrants out, those things are going to be difficult or slow. In the case of the wall, I personally don’t believe it will ever happen. It’s going to be very slow. So my suspicion is that it is much easier to have a dramatic negative event, than have a dramatic positive event. That is one of the reasons I am concerned about the Reichstag fire scenario. The other reason is that we are being mentally prepared for it by all the talk about terrorism and by the Muslim ban. Very often when leaders repeat things over and over they are preparing you for when that meme actually emerges in reality.

-snip-

TS: Yes. The point of the book is [that] we are facing a real crisis and a real moment of choice. The possibilities are much darker than Americans are used to considering. But at the same time, what we can do is much more important than we realize. The regime will only change if the gamble of the people in the White House is right: That many of us despise many others of us and that most of us are indifferent. If it turns out that there are emotions and values that are more numerous and more vibrant than indifference and hatred, things are going to be okay. That depends on us. That depends on us making certain realizations. It depends on us acting fast. In that sense it’s a test, not just collectively. Maybe there’s no such thing as a collective test. But it is a test for us individually.

Most Americans who haven’t been abroad haven't been faced by something like this. And hopefully they won’t be faced with it again. But we are faced with it as citizens and as individuals. And I think, five or 10 years from now, no matter how things turn out, we’ll ask ourselves—or our children will ask us—how we behaved in 2017.

February 17, 2018

A check for thoughts and prayers...

Check out this article from Detroit Free Press:

Michigander writes 'thoughts and prayers' check to GOP Rep. Jack Bergman

http://on.freep.com/2o63F2e

A photo surfaced Friday on social media of a check from an Ontonagon resident written out to Michigan U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman, R-Watersmeet, along with a note that says: "Dear Rep. Bergman - Since you and your colleagues in Congress seem to feel that this is the solution to mass murder, please accept this contribution."

No dollar amount was placed on the check - just "Thoughts + prayers." It's meant as a dig to politicians who send out statements of thoughts and prayers to family and loved ones after mass shootings from those who expect action rather than words.


What a great idea. Sending my checks to my Repub rep today

February 15, 2018

Here Are The Autopsies For The Victims Of The Las Vegas Mass Shooting

Follow up to previously posted article.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210233590

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/las-vegas-autopsy-documents_us_5a8234efe4b01467fcf08b97?ema


The details are disturbing. But they sharpen a reality we must confront.

By Nick Wing and Matt Ferner
The Clark County, Nevada, coroner released autopsy reports earlier this month detailing the deaths of the 58 victims of the Las Vegas shooting on Oct. 1.

The documents provide a window into the true horror of the massacre ― and of gun violence more generally. Looking through that window is admittedly uncomfortable, but doing so gives us a rare opportunity to honestly confront the graphic reality of a mass shooting. Shying away from that truth has only helped perpetuate a status quo in which many people have decided there’s nothing we can do to limit either the scope or the frequency of these tragedies. If that’s the path we continue to take, we should at least be willing to face up to the raw brutality of the incidents that we have accepted as an unavoidable feature of American life.

A number of the reports were difficult to evaluate due to inconsistencies in measurement, terminology and methodology, issues likely complicated by the sheer number of cases and the many different medical examiners who conducted the examinations.

HuffPost consulted with Arthur Alphin, a ballistics expert who specializes in the forensics of gunshot wounds and who has testified in a number of multiple shooting cases, to get his thoughts on a few of the cases. His comments are included in a number of the summaries below.

February 15, 2018

Las Vegas Autopsies Reveal The True Brutality Of Mass Shootings

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/las-vegas-autopsies_us_5a8233cde4b01467fcf08af6


The bullet struck the woman’s right forearm, passing cleanly through the flesh below her wrist and exiting the other side. The round was tumbling now, but still carrying enough force to re-enter her arm, lower down this time, before exiting again and plunging into her chest. The lead projectile then burst through her liver, finally coming to rest in the first lumbar vertebra of her lower back. Her death, described by a medical examiner, was determined to be a homicide.

The unnamed woman was one of 58 victims killed by a lone gunman at a country music concert on the Las Vegas Strip on Oct. 1, the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

-snip-

After a mass shooting, news stories often reduce victims to parts of a larger body count, the latest casualties of this particularly American form of gun violence. Just look at the headlines for the school shooting in Florida on Wednesday: “Mass Casualty Shooting At Florida School.”

-snip-

“The only good thing is she didn’t suffer. She felt no pain at all,” he said. “Some of those others, even though they died with the chest cavity wounds, they survived on the ground for 60 to 90 seconds, their heart continued to beat, the blood filled up into the pleural cavity and the thoracic cavity, their brain was still functioning, and they knew they were dying and they were in pain. At least this poor woman, it was instant.”

-snip-

The article goes on to say that we are called upon to remember the victims but rarely understand the carnage done to their bodies.
In 2015 after Sandy Hook, Kamala Harris when she was a California AG argued that the autopsy photos should have been spread out in front of lawmakers and then tell them to “Vote your conscience.”