June 11, 2015

Tah-Dah!

Origin of Planet Earth:



Trust Us! We're Cute Cats!



My Utopia has arrived:



Oh, look, a rooster troll:



Last for tonight:



I got a million, but haveta sleep!

June 11, 2015

RIP. More details and many good pictures of Keith at link. Look here:

First US volunteer dies while fighting ISIS alongside Kurdish militia during artillery exchange in Syria

Broomfield's mother Donna said: 'He decided this was God's will and God wanted him to go. I didn't want him to but I didn't have a choice in the matter'

The People’s Protection Unit (YPG for short) created a foreign brigade called the Lions of Rojava to allow volunteers from around the world to join the Kurdish militia in their fight against ISIS. 

Those who put themselves forward are given a Kurdish nom de guerre when they join and Broomfield's was Gelhat Rûmet.

On the Lions of Rojava Facebook page, he was described as a 'brave American warrior [who] came to Kobane because he could not lean back and watch the atrocities which were committed by ISIS...'

'Keith’s generosity could be seen in his visits to the refugee camp of Suruc [Turkish town near the Syrian border] and his desire to help the poor children who are growing up in such a dangerous environment.

'He was a warrior with the courage and the heart of a lion. We want to thank his mother Donna for giving birth and raising such a wonderful son... 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3118770/First-volunteer-dies-fighting-ISIS-alongside-Kurdish-militia-artillery-exchange-Syria.html

At the link are the stories of other men from the UK, Australia and Germany who joined the Kurds and were killed fighting ISIS.

June 10, 2015

Rand Paul has made that clear with every single bill he's tried to add in 'personhood.'

You are RIGHT about women's PERSONHOOD being stolen.

Rand has pushed this since his few days in office, and it's getting more conservative support. If his proposed laws fail again, he wants to 'reform' the 14th Amendment to 'redefine what a person is,' to give the unborn all the Constitutional rights of a person. More than that of the mother.

Rand Paul Calls For Personhood Law To End Abortion ‘Once And For All’

by David Badash on November 26, 2012

Paul claims “Congress has the power to legislatively end Roe v. Wade,” which is stunning, since no law can overrule a Supreme Court verdict; only a constitutional amendment can — but that’s not what Paul is advocating.

U.S. Senator Rand Paul, a Tea Party favorite, is advocating for Congress to make a new law, a “personhood” law, called the LIfe at Conception Act,” establishing that human life begins at conception, and extending the 14th Amendment to all fetuses.

Paul in the audio message calls law “legal mumbo jumbo,” yet tells supporters, “we in Congress have the right to legally define when life begins,” regardless of what the truth is:

http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/rand-paul-calls-for-personhood-law-to-end-abortion-once-and-for-all/politics/2012/11/26/54644

Media Should Remember: Rand Paul Has A Problem With Women's Health, Not Just Female Journalists

April 9, 2015 by MEAGAN HATCHER-MAYS

Despite... the "fuzzy" answers he gave the AP and CNN :

As a senator, Paul is firmly anti-choice, though he's right that he does tend to keep things fuzzy when asked if he believes that rape victims should be forced to carry their pregnancies to term. Paul has a perfect voting record with National Right to Life, the organization behind the the law that just effectively criminalized all abortions performed in Kansas during the second trimester. (That law, by the way, has no exceptions for rape or incest.)

And then there's his sponsorship of federal personhood legislation that would extend full legal rights to fertilized eggs, a move that bans most, if not all, abortion and could make certain forms of birth control illegal.

Because Paul's personhood proposal holds that the full weight of the 14th amendment kicks in "at the moment of fertilization," methods of birth control that may prevent implantation -- like the copper IUD when used as emergency contraception -- could become, as the New Yorker so bluntly put it last year, "weapons of murder."

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/04/09/media-should-remember-rand-paul-has-a-problem-w/203230

The bill is called the Life at Conception Act (2013; 113th Congress H.R. 1091)

Will he get his wish? I don't know, but each of these ravings, plants a seed in the minds of people. Just like the Tea Party guy who want women who've had legal abortions for any reason, PUT TO DEATH FOR MURDER.

Imagine what they could do with the data base on health records and imagine what they could do. Talk about privacy rights? It all depends on who has the power and inclination to use or abuse:

Civil Liberties ‘Hero’ Rand Paul Proposes Fetal Personhood. Again.

by Jessica Pieklo - March 20, 2013

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) proved once again that when he claims to stand up for civil liberties what he really means is that he stands up for the civil liberties of white guys.

Fresh off accolades even from the left of his speaking filibuster of CIA head John Brennan in the name of a never-expanding police state, Paul introduced the Life at Conception Act, a bill that would declare that human life begins at conception, grant fertilized eggs the same legal status as born persons and would completely criminalize abortion in the United States. “The Life at Conception Act legislatively declares what most Americans believe and what science has long known – that human life begins at the moment of conception, and therefore is entitled to legal protection from that point forward,” Paul said in a statement. “The right to life is guaranteed to all Americans in the Declaration of Independence and ensuring this is upheld is the Constitutional duty of all Members of Congress.”

Paul is a long-time supporter of criminalizing abortion at the federal level while endorsing states to do the same because he hates big government and believes that individuals should be free to make even unpopular decisions without government pressure. Oh wait. Not quite.

Paul, who also opposes the Civil Rights Act, believes it is the 14th Amendment, the very vehicle that makes the Civil Rights Act a reality, that gives Congress the power to declare life begins at conception AND that it can do so without violating Roe v. Wade. Because, you know, consistency.

Now would be a good time to remind all those libertarian-minded Paul supporters who insist they can support Paul AND women because all Paul wants to do is return abortion to the states that this proposed legislation would do the exact opposite. So, hooray! States rights!

http://www.care2.com/causes/civil-liberties-hero-rand-paul-proposes-fetal-personhood-again.html

Yes, folks, imagine these guys in charge of the White House. Let the slaughter of sinful women go wholesale and completely legal.

Instead of burying these women, let's bury this bullshit for good:

No difference between parties?

Don't like the Nominee of the Democratic Party, so gonna vote Green which won't get elected or not gonna vote?

Don't care who is in the White House as it's all the same?

Anyone says that is no ally. Their actions kill women. In the states that restricted abortion and BC rights, women are dying NOW.



In case you can't tell, I do not like Rand Paul or Libertarians.

June 10, 2015

Six seems sufficient if the moderators are good and don't try to talk over them. I felt they were

distracting and kept the voters from getting a full feeling of the issues and positions of the candidates. The GOP doesn't get those kind of interruptions, IIRC.

Also, the endorsements of state governors, etc. doesn't mean much to me. Even if Obama endorses HRC... and there is a very good chance of that... There is so much dishonest slime being tossed at Obama that I feel it will only influence certain people.

Overall, the debates may be hampered by the moderators as they keep on wanting to make a name for themselves with their billionaire owners, and not inform the voters. I've found even CSPAN's constant breaking away from coverage to blab when Obama is speaking to show their agenda is to suppress our words, and they keep on distilling everything into their soundbytes. While giving maximum time to GOP on their programs every day.

What I'm trying to say, is that the candidates themselves will have to carry the burden of expressing their visions themselves. And while six debates sounds good, we are just so overwhelmed.

Also, the idea that HRC can get a lot of funds raised that will tip things in her favor with voters, IMO, is indequate. I don't think soundbytes, pretty scenery and triumphant music (as used in the recent Sanders video) are going to move the Democratic voter.

I could be wrong about all of this, I hope I am. I also don't like the way the campaigns are being portrayed on DU or even in HRC places, about name dropping and stuff like that. Or how much money they have. It sounds too much like the media and their 'horse race' talk and doesn't move me and I believe it turns people off.

I am ready for either of these excellent individuals to win the nomination for our party. And will vote for either, not holding my nose or any of that silly rot. Those who defame the party and any of our candidates, isn't worth my time and it shows they don't take the threat of a Trifecta of GOP control seriously. So I don't take their words seriously.

Any correction by you to make me change my mind is welcome.

June 10, 2015

He has stated emphatically that he will not run as an Independent:

If Bernie Sanders Runs For President, It Won’t Be as an Independent: “I will not be a spoiler”

...Naturally, “Will you run for president in 2016?” was the first question DFA Executive Director Charles Chamberlain asked Sanders. Though not definitive, his answer was enough to leave these activists hopeful.

“I am giving very serious consideration to it, but before you make a decision of that magnitude… you have to make sure that you can do it well,” Sanders said. “So what we are doing is reaching out to folks all over this country trying to determine whether or not we can put the grassroots organization together that we need.”

Sanders knows he will have to rely on grassroots mobilization to have a fighting chance at being elected, because his campaign will take on every monied interest. “If I run, we’ll be taking on the billionaire class,” he said. “That’s Wall Street, the drug companies, the military industrial complex.”

To the dismay some idealists, Sanders rejected the idea of running for president as an independent. “No matter what I do, I will not be a spoiler,” Sanders said. “I will not play that role in helping to elect some right-wing Republican as President of the United States...”

http://inthesetimes.com/article/17572/bernie_sanders_president

to pampango:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6140372#top

This should be an operating factor in all we do at DU:

“I will not play that role in helping to elect some right-wing Republican as President of the United States...”

I hope that no matter who gets the nomination, Democrats will remember who the real enemy is in this race, and not pretend that it's one Democrat or the other.

Or fall for the hoax that both of the parties are the same. It is necessary to increase the power of Democrats numerically in both D.C. and the states. With a Koch-backed GOP nominee elected to office in November, the GOP in the Congress has already made dire plans for the American people.

They are hinging many deadly manuevers on that possibility, and only holding back doing so because:

1) Obama won't let them on his watch.

2) They have not consolidated power in all three branches to run their goal, a one-party state.

Don't anyone fall for the idea that they will see reason or that they will not nationalize what they have built state by state.

June 10, 2015

Kicking for the late night on the West Coast crowd. And go to bed, Sheshe! I'm gonna...

June 10, 2015

Do we trust Lindsay to have the control to be Commander in Chief?

Obama Makes It Through Another Day Of Resisting Urge To Launch All U.S. Nuclear Weapons At Once


President Often Feels Button Put There 'Just To Taunt' Him. The president says the button is "constantly" in the corner of his eye.

ISSUE 47•19 • May 11, 2011

WASHINGTON - Despite being constantly tempted by the seductive power of having an apocalyptic arsenal at his fingertips, President Barack Obama somehow made it through another day Tuesday without unlocking the box on his desk that houses "the button" and launching all 5,113 U.S. nuclear warheads...

"Did you know that if you sort of put enough weight on the button with your fingertip, you can feel a little slack there before it actually clicks?" Obama added. "Thank you, and God bless America..."

"But it's hard not to dare myself to do it. It's like I'm standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, taking it all in, and I'm one millisecond away from saying to myself, 'Fuck it, Barack. Just jump...'"

During a deficit-reduction meeting last Monday with House Speaker John Boehner, the president's index finger was reportedly resting on the button the entire time without his even realizing it...

Historians have noted that a strong desire to press the button is not uncommon among U.S. presidents. After just one year in office, Jimmy Carter wrote in his diary, "You don't leave a man alone in a room with a button like that," and two years later the pages were simply covered with the word "button" over and over again. In 1974, Richard Nixon rapidly pressed the button 12 times just prior to his resignation, but Pentagon officials had already disconnected its triggering mechanism...

Read the stunning details and conclusion at:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/obama-makes-it-through-another-day-of-resisting-ur%2C20364/

I don't think we have a chance of snowball in hell with Lindsay in office. Just think about it...

June 9, 2015

Bernie has his eyes on fighting the billionaire class, not Democrats. Here's a pic from the link:

These are not stadiums, they are small venues. Obama was in such venues for many years.

But none of the candidates have had large events AFAIK, not yet.
And there will never be another Obama, so we will not have that charisma to gain votes for us again. No one running for office, IMO, has the amount of talent or intelligence he has. So we were given a chance to unite, and have not done so.

There were beautiful scenes of Bernie in Burlington, VT in this video. Scoot the button to the right until you pass the 'live' announcement and introduction. Bernie begins at about 40.05:

#t=620

Here's a video from Texas to a packed room in Austin:



His ideas are not disrespected in the Democratic Party at all. He is part of the CPC that the GOP calls communist. The SWP can't stand him, because he is to them a Democrat first, believing in a combined system of socialist and capitalism. That is the European model, which he and Democrats I work with, embrace.

Bernie is a Democratic Socialist, a well recognized faction of the Democratic Party. He's voted with traditional Democratic groups and refuses to go negative on any Democrats.

Our problem in achieving any of our goals is a large, hostile, anti-government voting block fueied by RW hatred. The GOP is afraid of him. Bernie doesn't speak to their attempts to smear, but of good governance and ideals. He's easy to understand.

I am guessing you are also in our party and want a Democratic win in November next year. We are all anxious about who is best to capture enough votes to prevent the utter destruction of our government. The GOP must not win. We need to be united.

I'd say to ignore any hostility. It's not Bernie's style, but it seems to be a regular thing online. Which is why a lot of people don't take online opinion very seriously anymore. As MM said:

Optimism encourages activism.
Pessimism enables inaction.

Activism breeds change.
Inaction begets nothing.

Let's keep it positive. Hope you enjoy the videos.

June 9, 2015

Nothing new. From 2011:

Dramatic video: 71-year-old taken to the ground for questioning Paul Ryan

Uploaded on Sep 7, 2011

As Congressman Paul Ryan cracked a joke about him, Tom Nielsen found himself face down on the floor being handcuffed by police. The 71-year-old retired plumber from Kenosha was thrown to the ground, placed in handcuffs, and arrested for trespassing and resisting arrest after objecting to Ryan's plans to gut Social Security and Medicare during his congressman's only public appearance scheduled during the August recess -- a $15 Rotary Club luncheon in West Allis on Tuesday.

Nielsen repeatedly told police that he wasn't fighting them and that he didn't want to make any trouble. He also told them several times that he had a broken shoulder. Police officers ignored his comments as they wrestled him to the ground despite his howls of pain.

Nielsen's comment to Ryan at the luncheon, his arrest, and Ryan's joke are all captured on video available here.

There was a string of such videos as soon as the Tea Party got in office in 2010 as they began holding meetings discussing public policy at country clubs and other private venues where no one but those invited were allowed. The public, citizens of cities and counties, were kept out of the areas. All under the aegis of 'private property.'

Remember when Palin's pal has his meetings on yachts with his donors? And how many bagger politicans have been violent, threatened violence, been convicted of crimes and still are elected by their voting block?

We know every GOP candidate running has met with and is colluding directly with the Koch brothers at their private retreats, from every state. They are quite outfront now about the support, they've been caught doing it.

Perry, Walker, Paul, Hucklebee, Cruz, Christie have implemented their policies on their states shamelessly. They have Rand and others attempting to nationalize their horrible laws, even called for an Article V convention to re-write the Constitution and repeal the amendments that don't fit the Koch dystopia they plan to force upon us.

The evidence has been posted on DU for several years now. We should never divert our focus from what they are doing.

June 8, 2015

I know it sounds CT, but I think the shit has already started. If the stats on blacks getting shot

by police before Obama was elected are different, IDK. I feel like black people are being punished because of it.

The signs were there in 2007 and 2008 when the Waffle House putsch was attemped, the guy who shot at houses owned by black people in the Northeast occured to start their race war (always the dream of the Nazis, KKK and Birchers), and on and one without end and escalating due to media consolidation.

These guys aren't exactly original thinkers. The police forces have been used wrongly and have bad apples by the bushel. The cop that sat on the 14 year old girl was part of that culture.

Some of the KKK in and around Feguson were cops. They should not have been there. I feel that the escalation of public violence is due to the legislative agenda of the Koch brothers and those like them that are landed or in some other way oligarchs.

With the destruction of positive policing, mitigating agencies and stand your ground and this 'I felt my life was in danger' (but that only works against black people, not for them, when they have the history to prove their lives are in danger) and is used by fired up racists to kill black people.

But these entities are not, and I repeat NOT, anything new. They have been here since before the American Revolution and those who truly believe in the spirit of the words 'all men are created equal' have been fighting them ever since. It's democracy or aristocracy/ feudalism.

Some of the richest people in this country are never seen, they got their start from the British crown before the Consitution. They have tolerated the BoR and the Constitution as long as it didn't threaten their power.

The election of Democrats in the sixties drove them nuts. Oh, heck, the New Deal drove them nuts. No, the abolition of slavery drove them nuts. The CSA never went away, as that mindset was here long before them. Now, do we stay as one country, fight for a government that will push back on them, or do we let the nation be divided up the way they want, so they can control us more intimately than ever?

It's up to us. We're at a tipping point. IDK what the end result will be.