Author: Ezra Grant

I'm just tired of the lies and nonsense coming from the GOP, so this is my little contribution to combat the nonsense!

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contraception contraceptives Politics

Ted Cruz: “I have literally never met anybody who wants to prohibit Americans from using contraceptives”

Ted Cruz, the Republican senator from Texas is a liar!

He is the same Ted Cruz who is on the front lines of the Republicans’ war on women, ensuring that contraception and other essential methods of health services for women get cut, defunded and destroyed – as is the case in his state of Texas.

In the midst of his personal vendetta to eradicate contraception and other forms of women’s health services, Cruz lied again by saying,  “I have literally never met anybody who wants to prohibit Americans from using contraceptives.”

“They tried to convince Americans, and sadly they succeeded in convincing a number of Americans, that were somehow some people in the political sphere out to stop people from using contraceptives. I have literally never met anybody who wants to prohibit Americans from using contraceptives if they so desire. The allegation that there is somehow any effort at all to restrict access to contraceptives is looney, in the U.S. Senate the number of Senators advocating doing that is zero, they never have.”

Can you say Republican Hypocrite?

Audio

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Featured

The Staten Island Man Killed By Police Was A “Gentle Giant”

(AP) — Eric Garner was a familiar figure on the streets near Staten Island’s ferry docks: to his friends, a congenial giant with a generous gesture or a calming word; to police, a persistent face of the small-time crime of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes.

Garner’s last run-in with police spiraled into a confrontation in which an officer applied an apparent chokehold, leaving the married father of six dead and police tactics under scrutiny. And it left some who knew him wondering why such conduct was used against a man they describe as a neighborhood peacemaker.

“That’s the ironic part about it. He’s the most gentle of everybody over there,” friend Irvine Johnson said.

Public anguish over Garner’s death kept building Monday, as a small group of demonstrators gathered outside City Hall to demand the police commissioner’s resignation. Medical examiners were working to pinpoint the cause of Garner’s death, prosecutors and police internal affairs detectives were investigating officers’ conduct in the encounter, and the Fire Department was probing paramedics’ and emergency medication technicians’ actions.

Garner, 43, whose friends called him “Big E” and “Teddy Bear,” had a son starting college, five other children and two grandchildren, and a quarter-century-long relationship with his wife, Esaw. He’d had had a couple of temporary jobs with the city Parks Department in recent years, most recently helping with horticulture crews and maintenance in 2013.

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MSNBC Politics war

MSNBC Gets Slammed by Guest For Their Pro Israel Broadcasting -Video

Their one sided coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict was a little too much and a little too obvious for Rula Jebreal, the guest on today’s MSNBC program “Ronan Farrow Daily.”

During the interview, Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal unloaded on Western media outlets, including MSNBC, arguing that influence from pro-Israel forces makes the news coverage more favorable to the likes of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Because of AIPAC, and because of the money behind it, and because of Sheldon Adelson, and because of all of us in the media. We are ridiculous. We are disgustingly biased when it comes to this issue,” Jebreal said.

“Look at how many airtime Netanyahu and his folks have on air on a daily basis. Andrea Mitchell and others,” she continued, referring to the MSNBC stalwart whose show airs right before Farrow’s afternoon program. “I never see one Palestinian being interviewed on theses same issues.”

When Farrow pushed back gently and pointed out that Palestinian guests have been interviewed, Jebreal continued her criticism.

“Maybe 30 seconds! And then you have 25 minutes for Bibi Netanyahu, and then half an hour for Naftali Bennett and many others,” Jebreal said.

Video

Categories
Sports

LeBron James Was The Biggest Cheerleader at His Son’s Game – Video

Most people know LeBron for his spectacular moves on the basketball court, but just in case that didn’t work out, James also has a secret cheerleader trapped inside just waiting for the right moment to unleash.

That moment came over the weekend when King James went to his 9 year old’s AAU Fourth Grade National Championship game. The proud daddy couldn’t contain himself as his son showed that the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.

Video

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Featured Gun Control shooting

Man Charged with Murder – Kills Friend While Testing a Bulletproof Vest

This is an unfortunate situation for the deceased, but a valuable lesson for the rest of us. Never put on a bulletproof vest and willfully make yourself a target. Soo much can go wrong.

A Maryland man was charged with first- and second-degree murder last week after he shot and killed a friend while the two were testing a bulletproof vest, according to the Baltimore Sun.

Early Wednesday morning, Darnell Mitchell, Mark Ramiro (pictured) and another friend decided to film themselves testing a bulletproof vest in the basement of a Westport, Md. home.

According to video tape reviewed by Baltimore police, Mitchell put on the vest, looked into the camera and said he was ready to take a “deuce deuce in the chest.”

Ramiro missed Mitchell’s vest and instead shot him with a .22 caliber handgun.

Ramiro and the third person rushed to help Mitchell, and drove him to the hospital. Mitchell was declared dead a few minutes after they got to the hospital, according to police.

Officers were then called to the hospital and obtained a warrant for the video tape that captured the incident, according to the Baltimore Sun.

A spokesman for the Maryland attorney, Mark Cheshire, told the Baltimore Sun that prosecutors originally sought a second-degree murder charge, and the court commissioner later added the first-degree charge.

Categories
Politics

Dutch Investigators Examine Bodies from MH-17 Crash Site – Video

Click to view video.

BBC News is reporting that three Dutch investigators have examined bodies from the MH 17 plane crash. The bodies are stored in a refrigerated train by the crash site.

Categories
Barack Obama Joe Scarborough Politics Ronald Reagan

Joe Scarborough Tells Big Lie On Television, Issues Small Apology on Twitter

There was a disagreement on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, between host Joe Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski.

The discussion had to do with the downed MH17 flight in Ukraine and the way two American presidents handled the situation when planes were shot down during their administration. The presidents? Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan.

Mika Brzezinski tried to educate the Republican with the fact that Ronald Reagan handled a similar situation by staying on vacation for 4 extra days before finally making a statement. Joe lamented how wrong she was about his faithful leader, Reagan.

The convo went like this:

BRZEZINSKI: At the same time there’s these parallels being made to Ronald Reagan and how he responded to the Korean airliner. It took him four days to go back and make the strong statements that he made, just for some perspective.

SCARBOROUGH: He immediately canceled his vacation.

BRZEZINSKI: No, he didn’t, actually.

SCARBOROUGH: Yes, he actually did.

BRZEZINSKI: No, he didn’t immediately cancel it.

SCARBOROUGH: Yes, he did. He immediately canceled it. He immediately went back to the White House. He immediately canceled fund-raising events and campaign events. Yes, he did. You can go back and look. Ronald Reagan didn’t keep campaigning. He stopped when the Korean airliner went down.

Brzezinski, it turned out, was right. Reagan’s address came four days after the attack, in between which he had an aide make a statement about the incident before making a shorter one himself. At the time, Reagan had been on a twenty-five day vacation in California, and resisted returning to Washington, having an aide tell reporters that he had “every facility, every capacity, every capability” to deal with the crisis at his California ranch. The trip was eventually cut short.

Scarborough conceded the point on Twitter about fifteen minutes later:

And thanks to all the kind souls on Twitter who pointed out my boneheaded error as well. You are great ombudsmen! I was wrong. @morningmika

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) July 21, 2014

Categories
News

This Mother and Son Selfie Was Taken Aboard MH17 Before Plane Crashed

A few hours later the plane crashed in Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.

According to the Mirror, 15-year-old Slok and his mother were travelling to Kuala Lumpur on a trip for single parents and their children.

Categories
Israel News Palestine Politics

7 Nobel Peace Winners and 64 Public Figures Want International Arms Embargo on Israel

Sixty-four public figures, including seven Nobel Peace Prize winners, have called for an international arms embargo on Israel for its “war crimes and possible crimes against humanity” in Gaza. The statement came in a letter published in Britain’s The Guardian on Friday.

“Israel has once again unleashed the full force of its military against the captive Palestinian population, particularly in the besieged Gaza Strip, in an inhumane and illegal act of military aggression. Israel’s ability to launch such devastating attacks with impunity largely stems from the vast international military cooperation and trade that it maintains with complicit governments across the world,” read the statement.

“We call on the UN and governments across the world to take immediate steps to implement a comprehensive and legally binding military embargo on Israel, similar to that imposed on South Africa during apartheid,” the letter concluded.

Among the signators were Nobel peace laureates Desmond Tutu, Betty Williams, Federico Mayor Zaragoza, Jody Williams, Adolfo Peres Esquivel, Mairead Maguire and Rigoberto Menchu.

Also signing were academics Noam Chomsky and Rashid Khalidi, filmmakers Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, musicians Roger Waters and Brian Eno, writers Alice Walker and Caryl Churchill, and journalists John Pilger and Chris Hedges. Two Israelis, academics Ilan Pappe and Nurit Peled, signed the letter as well.

h/t Haaretz

Categories
News Politics

The Republicans Idea of a Leader, Vladimir Putin, Is Pissing Off The World

Yes, the world is mounting pressure against Russia’s president Vladimir Putin since evidence suggests that Russian equipment shot down Malaysia Airline MH-17, killing 298 innocent people. But what do Republicans think of the man they call “a leader?”

Crickets…

Circumstantial evidence suggests that Russia provided the missile that Ukrainian rebels used to shoot down the Malaysian Air jetliner on July 17, killing 298 passengers and crew, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in television interviews.

“There’s a build-up of extraordinary circumstantial evidence,” Kerry said yesterday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. “We picked up the imagery of this launch. We know the trajectory. We know where it came from. We know the timing.”

Putin confronts worldwide scorn just as the U.S. and its allies were trying to push him into a corner over the annexation of Crimea and his support for pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. The U.S. and Europe tightened sanctions last week, and U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron told Putin on a call yesterday that the attack was “totally unacceptable,” his office said in a statement.

“Russia risks becoming a pariah state if it does not behave properly,” U.K. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said yesterday in an interview on Sky News. “We now need to use the sense of outrage that is clear to get a further round of sanctions tightening against Russia.”

Categories
Featured News sexual assault

Florida Police Officer Accused of Having Sex With Underage Girl

And now our daily news from Florida.

A Florida police officer is accused of having sex with an underage girl he first met when she was 11 and he was assigned to her missing persons case.

Oldy Ochoa Jr., 48, a homicide detective who has been with the Miami Beach Police Department for 20 years, was charged with two counts of sexual battery Saturday for allegedly having sex with the girl in an unmarked police vehicle as he was taking her to her GED class, reports the Orlando Sentinel.

Ochoa first met the girl when he helped locate her six years ago when she had a missing persons case. While living with another family he petitioned the court to allow her to live with his family in December.

She stayed there for two months before running away, the newspaper reports.

The Pembroke Pines Police Department, which is investigating the case, could not make a copy of the arrest report available to the Daily News Sunday.

The victim told police Ochoa allegedly would hold her hand and kiss her while the two were sitting on a couch, the Sentinel reported.

The sexual assault occurred in an unmarked police car in February in an alley near the school where the girl was taking her GED classes, the newspaper reported. The pair also had sex in the car in a wooded area.

Ochoa is now at Broward County jail and his attorney told the newspaper he would not discuss the allegations.

The investigation was launched in March and Ochoa was relieved of his duties as an officer, the newspaper reported.

Miami Beach Police Chief Dan Oates issued a statement describing the situation as “a very sad day for our department” and they would take appropriate action regarding his employment when the criminal case concluded.

Categories
Arizona News

Court Rules – Arizona Man Cannot Be Executed Until Drug’s Origin is Known

Joseph Wood – (image source: AP/Arizona Department of Corrections)

The ruling came from The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Saturday. Arizona is set to execute Joseph Wood on Wednesday, but as of now, that execution is on hold until the source of the drugs are revealed.

Joseph Wood, who killed his estranged girlfriend, Debra Dietz, and her father, Eugene Dietz, in Tucson in 1989, is scheduled to die July 23.

But his attorneys at the Federal Defender’s Office in Phoenix filed suit claiming he had a First Amendment right to know who supplied the drugs that will be used to kill him and the qualifications of the executioners who will carry it out.

Two of the judges in a panel of three sided with Wood; the third dissented.

At issue is a new drug combination that Arizona has turned to because it cannot obtain the drugs it normally uses for executions. That combination, and one of the drugs in particular, a Valium relative called Midazolam, has caused apparent “flawed executions,” as the court called them, in Ohio and Oklahoma.

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