In the wake of the tragic circumstances surrounding the downing of MH-17 where almost 300 innocent civilians lost their lives, President Obama met with the press and offered a statement.
In the statement, the president stated that “evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile that was launched from an area that is controlled by Russian-backed separatists inside of Ukraine. We also know that this is not the first time a plane has been shot down in eastern Ukraine. Over the last several weeks, Russian-backed separatists have shot down a Ukrainian transport plane and a Ukrainian helicopter, and they claimed responsibility for shooting down a Ukrainian fighter jet. Moreover, we know that these separatists have received a steady flow of support from Russia. This includes arms and training. It includes heavy weapons, and it includes anti-aircraft weapons.”
Now you know this was eventually going to happen. The United States President in will be blamed by Republicans for everything, no matter where in the world it happens or the circumstances under which it happens. Obama’s been for volcanoes, Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and now, a Malaysia plane shot down in Ukraine.
Republicans, fresh out of ideas and clueless on how to govern, constantly play the blame game and Obama is always their target.
Former Republican congressman from Florida Allen West, took to his website and cast blame squarely on the White House for the almost 300 people who lost their lives when someone shot down a Malaysia plane in Ukraine. In his post, West just about accused Obama of pulling the trigger that brought down the plane, saying the President is “purposefully creating drama globally” and he used the downed plane as an example.
Sadly, hundreds of Ukrainians and 298 souls on MH17 have paid the price for the weakness and abject cowardice of Obama’s “flexibility.”
And here in America we quibble over a lawsuit against this charlatan.
The blood on Vladimir Putin’s hands was poured by Barack Obama who is indirectly responsible, accountable accountable [sic] and no different than Neville Chamberlain’s weakness in the face of the 20th Century maniacal dictator Adolf Hitler.
What’s sad is that Allen West has an audience, and his ignorant Republican following would believe anything if it attempts to bring down their president.
I really really really hate writing about the ongoing, never ending, never will end, “crisis” in the middle east. We have so many problems here at home that need fixing yet we, or should I say they (the mainstream media) push those troubles aside whenever something violent happens in that area of the world cause..well..violence gets dicks hard I guess.
This is also the reason why the murders on both sides of the conflict will continue. Both sides are excited by the blood shed. Both sides cheer when little children on the opposing side are killed. They all love it now. They love the violence and the retribution and the killings. They all get off on it now, the rebels, the establishment, the politicians, the suicide bombers, all of them. It’s a cycle they have grown used to and it’s why the USA should have no involvement at all. None. Zero.
OK I got that out of my system. The issue now is with NBC news and their removal of a pretty good reporter, Ayman Mohyeldin, from the Gaza strip. Mohyeldin had reported on the killing of four young boys who were playing on the beach by the Israeli military. He said he had just been playing with these boys shortly before they were murdered. Yes they were MURDERED, not merely KILLED.
NBC claims he was pulled because of “security concerns” but that doesn’t jive because they soon placed Richard Engel into the same position. Also these reporters are constantly in harms way, every single minute of every single day, so it’s obvious NBC is lying. The question is why? Why pull Mohyeldin? And why lie about it?
It’s no secret that there are many Jews in this country who are, for some strange reason, blindly sympathetic to Israel. Some of them have been to Israel but most of them have not. I’m always confused as to why they care so much. And if so why not relocate to Israel and join the fight? I’m half Jewish and half Italian. Yes I know I’m combining a religion with a nationality but that’s how we do it in New York so get over it. Many Jews consider me to be totally Jewish since it’s my mother’s side that is Jewish. However I have no connection to Israel at all, never been there. I have been to Italy just once. If Italy were to get into a conflict with a neighboring country I would have no vested interest in it at all. I would choose to look at it from a totally objective point of view. Mostly I just hate war and conflict and would hope it would all end quickly.
The problem we have in this country is that too many people see the Israel-Palestine conflict from an extremely biased point of view. They overwhelmingly support Israel. That is simply a fact. It’s also a fact that there are more Jews in important positions of power in our mainstream media than Palestinians. No this isn’t a stupid anti-Semitic “Jews run the world” paranoia rant, it’s simply fact. Therefore it’s obvious that some of those people and those who might answer to them don’t like it when Israelis are shown in a negative light. They will give the Palestinians some sympathy but just enough to try and keep people like myself off their backs, their hearts really aren’t in it.
Oh I really hate writing about this shit. I know liberals are mixed on this issue. Maybe some of you have been wondering what my beliefs were. But now we have this chicken shit move by NBC news. They have been known to slant to the left but that didn’t matter in this case. In these matters it rarely does. There are people with money who live in this country who don’t want to see Israelis look like murderers. But some of them ARE murderers as are some Palestinians. I have always seen the Israelis as the big rich bullies with the expensive weapons and the Palestinians as the kids who are fighting back anyway they can. Sometimes their ways are horrific and grotesque. Both sides see little reason to come to an agreement because the killing and the revenge and the never ending cycle of this shit seems so normal and feels so right to them now.
What we CAN control in this country is how we cover this conflict. What NBC did was just simply wrong just as it would be wrong to pull a reporter for covering the Palestinians killing Israeli children. That hasn’t happened though..has it?
This is why the mainstream media in the USA sucks. Money as with everything else in this Capitalism on steroids society, rules all. It trumps good reporting, it trumps fair reporting, it trumps right over wrong. This is why we can’t get “fair and balanced” news anymore. There is always an executive who is shitting in his or her pants over that one call they might get from a rich, angry advertiser.
So Ayman Mohyeldin gets pulled from doing his job. A job he does well.
The lawyer representing John Boehner in his lawsuit against President Obama, wrote a piece in The Daily Caller back in February. The lawyer, whose name is Elizabeth Price Foley, argued quite convincingly that suing a president was a losing battle.
Elizabeth Price Foley, a Florida International University law professor, will argue for the draft resolution allowing Boehner to sue President Obama for failing to enforce Obamacare’s employer mandate during a hearing on Wednesday. But as The New York Times’ Jonathan Weisman pointed out, Foley already argued convincingly for The Daily Caller that the lawsuit has no legal standing. In other words, you have to prove that the person you’re suing personally injured you — Congress can’t prove that.
As Foley wrote for The Daily Caller back in February:
When a president delays or exempts people from a law — so-called benevolent suspensions — who has standing to sue him? Generally, no one. … That’s why, when President Obama delayed various provisions of Obamacare — the employer mandate, the annual out-of-pocket caps, the prohibition on the sale of “substandard” policies — his actions cannot be challenged in court.
The Supreme Court has also restricted the ability of Congress to sue, she argued, “creating a presumption against allowing members of Congress to sue the president merely because he fails to faithfully execute its laws.”
I thought it was a lot more but the official numbers are in, and the results show that President Bush and his top aides publicly made 935 false statements about the security risk posed by Iraq in the two years following September 11, 2001, according to a study released Tuesday by two nonprofit journalism groups.
“In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003,” reads an overview of the examination, conducted by the Center for Public Integrity and its affiliated group, the Fund for Independence in Journalism.
According to the study, Bush and seven top officials — including Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice — made 935 false statements about Iraq during those two years.
The study was based on a searchable database compiled of primary sources, such as official government transcripts and speeches, and secondary sources — mainly quotes from major media organizations.
A reporter from The Guardian shares his unsuccessful efforts to get an answer out of Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown, in reference to the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision.
Brown, who lost a previous Senate run against Elizabeth Warren partly because of his support for the Blunt Amendment – an amendment that would have allowed employers to opt out of providing contraception to women because of their religious beliefs – Brown is now trying to avoid the Hobby Lobby situation as if it is the plague. He’s even hiding in bathrooms to avoid answering questions from reporters.
The first incident came during a public campaign event, where Brown was shaking hands with voters at a New Hampshire diner:
I found Brown at a table at a restaurant called Priscilla’s, introduced myself as a Guardian reporter and enquired if I could ask him some questions. Brown smiled nervously and replied: “What do you want to ask me about?”
“Hobby Lobby? That would be a start,” I said.
“I’m all set,” he replied. “We’re enjoying ourselves right now.”
“But you’re standing for Senate. It is routine for journalists to ask you questions and usually the candidates answer.”
“Not without notifying my office.”
Brown stood up, walked to the back of the diner, and took shelter in the bathroom. A campaign aide, Jeremy, looked bewildered. He lingered beside me for a few moments, before politely excusing himself – “Nice to meet you” – and joining his boss in the bathroom.
Then, Scott pulled a move akin to Lindsay Lohan leaving the Chateau Marmont, except instead he was leaving a diner:
I decided to wait in the parking lot for Team Brown to emerge into the sunlight. Four minutes later, a white SUV swung round and parked next to the steps of the diner. Brown came out with a phone pressed to his ear. “Get in! Get in!” said a campaign worker holding open the car door. Another man asked me to leave. “You’re getting in the face of people that don’t care to talk to you,” he said.
The second time that Lewis found Brown at a public campaign event, Brown himself called the reporter “unprofessional and rude,” and a member of Brown’s team actually called the cops on the journalist:
I don’t know if Officer Valley, from the Ossipee Police Department, had ever before been called to deal with an errant reporter. I do know he walked up to the porch with an amused look on his face. “How you doing?” he said, shaking everyone’s hand. “What’s up?”
None of the parties disputed the facts of the case. I was the journalist. My job was to ask questions. The man holed up inside the tavern was Scott Brown, a would-be senator who didn’t want to answer. I was eventually asked to leave. I left.
Officer Valley mulled over the situation before delivering his summary judgment. “There’s no crime,” he said. “No issue here at all.”
“We’re used to politicians giving us evasive answers,” Lewis noted. “But we don’t expect them to run away from questions — unless, that is, they’re in crisis mode.”
Did you know? Tuesday, Republicans shot down a Senate effort to reverse the effects of the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision, the decision that gave religious rights to corporations, allowing them to deny contraception coverage to women.
Like most news in Washington these days, this Senate Republican blockage went practically unnoticed. Our news media is more interested in covering the dumbest factions of the Republican Party, then they are covering actual news. Like when Elizabeth Warren stood up and slammed the Republicans for continuing their war on women, that is something that should be talked about.
“I’ll be honest,” Warren said on the Senate floor. “I cannot believe we are even having a debate about whether employers can deny women access to birth control. Guys, this is 2014, not 1914. Most Americans thought this was settled long, long ago. But for some reason, Republicans keep dragging us back here over and over and over again.”
Warren called the Hobby Lobby case “just the most recent battle in an all-out Republican assault on women’s access to basic health care” and said while she found the Supreme Court ruling “stunning,” it was not entirely “surprising.”
“Giant corporations and their right-wing allies fight every day in Congress to protect their own privileges and to bend the laws to benefit themselves. They devote enormous resources to the task,” Warren said. “Sometimes, we beat them anyway.”
But while the Senate voted 56 to 43 to continue debate on the proposed bill — with three Republicans joining Democrats on the majority side — it did not reach the 60 vote threshold never to move forward.
A Texas actress who tried to blame her husband after sending ricin-laced letters to officials including President Barack Obama was sentenced Wednesday to 18 years in prison.
A federal judge gave Shannon Guess Richardson, 36, the maximum sentence under her plea deal on a federal charge of possessing and producing a biological toxin. Richardson was also ordered to pay restitution of about $367,000. She had pleaded guilty to the charge in December.
“I never intended for anybody to be hurt,” she told the court, adding later, “I’m not a bad person; I don’t have it in me to hurt anyone.”
Judge Michael H. Schneider noted that she had put many lives in danger and threatened public officials.
Richardson, who had minor acting roles in film and television including in the series “The Walking Dead” and the movie “The Blind Side,” said she thought security measures would prevent anyone from opening the letters addressed to Obama, then New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Mark Glaze, who at the time was director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Bloomberg’s group advocating for tougher gun control.
Prosecutors say Richardson mailed the three letters from New Boston, outside Texarkana, then went to police and claimed that her husband had done it. She was arrested last June. The day before her arrest, Nathan Richardson filed for divorce; it was finalized in January.
Republicans brought their lawyers to give their opinion on Boehner’s lawsuit against President Obama. And naturally, their lawyers agreed that the president has overreached his boundaries when he slowed down the implementation of the employer mandate in The Affordable Care Act.
But the Democrats have lawyers too, and they were invited to give their opinion on the lawsuit.
At Wednesday’s hearing, a pair of lawyers invited by Democrats said the Republicans’ expected lawsuit was itself an overreach and an attempt, they said, to stop the White House from making reasonable adjustments to the law.
The GOP’s frustration with Obama extends far beyond his handling of the healthcare law, stretching into his actions on immigration, environmental regulations and a host of other areas.
Simon Lazarus, a former adviser to President Carter, said that the House should respond to those actions by passing laws, not taking the president to court. His statements illustrated the skepticism that many lawyers have about the lawsuit, and whether the GOP can prove the president’s actions have harmed them.
“The president has authorized a minor, temporary course correction,” Lazarus said about the delay of the employer mandate. “As a legal and practical matter, that’s well within his judgment.”
Walter Dellinger, an acting solicitor general under President Clinton, added that the House’s proposed action would give too much power to the courts, by allowing the judiciary to weigh in on disputes between the executive and legislative branches.
Allowing the House to sue Obama or the president to sue Congress, Dellinger said, “would entrust with the unelected judges the power they should not have in the American system.”
Hillary Clinton appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to promote her new book, “Hard Choices.” Stewart however, had other more pressing things to talk about and got straight to the point.
“I think I speak for everybody when I say, ‘No one cares,'” Stewart said, referring to Clinton’s book. “They just want to know if you are running for President.”
“Jon, I was going to make an announcement, but you kind of spoiled it,” she responded.
Stewart pushed a little more and asked the former Secretary of State a few questions to determine what she would possibly be doing in 2016. Questions like whether she likes to commute to work or prefers a home office. Clinton answered home office. Stewart asked about her preference for offices, whether she prefers an office with or without corners. Clinton responded jokingly that she prefers an office with “fewer corners,” a clear reference to the Oval Office in the White House.
“So it sounds like to me, if I may, you have declared your candidacy,” Stewart said.
Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic challenger to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), raised more than $4 million from April through June, breaking a state fundraising record.
In a press release, her campaign also announced that Grimes had pulled in a total of $11.3 million in her U.S. Senate run and had $6.2 million cash on hand at the end of June.
The $4 million-plus raised in a single quarter surpasses the previous $2.9 million record for a Senate race in Kentucky — a record that McConnell set in 2008.
“Kentuckians are coming together to invest in our campaign because they recognize that Alison Lundergan Grimes will bring a new generation of leadership to the U.S. Senate,” Grimes campaign manager Jonathan Hurst said in a statement.
It’s laughable indeed. These people have been on a rampage against everything woman and especially against women’s contraception. But now, in this election year, Republicans are trying to appear pro contraception, and it’s hilarious seeing the pretzel formations they’re twisting themselves into.
On Tuesday, after Senate Democrats introduced a measure to override the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on Hobby Lobby and clarify that for-profit companies must offer contraceptive coverage, their Republican colleagues announced some forthcoming legislation of their own. As the Hill reports, GOP leadership will introduce a bill that appears to be supportive of women’s access to birth control.
“We plan to introduce legislation this week that says no employer can block any employee from legal access to her FDA-approved contraceptives,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said. “There’s no disagreement on that fundamental point.”
If the final bill is along the lines of the initial reports, however, the GOP’s competing legislation likely wouldn’t do anything to change the status quo or ensure that Hobby Lobby employees have insurance coverage for contraception. Instead, it’s simply a way for Republicans to reinforce the point that the high court’s ruling on Hobby Lobby doesn’t inhibit women’s legal access to birth control.
The fact that women are still allowed to purchase every type of FDA-approved birth control has become the central argument used to downplay the impact of the Hobby Lobby case. Of course, it’s certainly true. Contraception remains legal, and the decision to allow some for-profit companies to refuse to cover some types of birth control on religious grounds doesn’t mean that all IUDs, for example, are now banned.
But legality isn’t exactly the same as accessibility. And the Hobby Lobby case was about the latter.
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