They Said That? 5/21/15

Posted: May 22, 2015 by gamegetterII in Uncategorized

Robert Gore's avatarSTRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

A new Renaissance may be right around the corner. From the movie The Third Man (1949):

In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.

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Fred-A Case of Delayed-Nausea Syndrome

Posted: May 22, 2015 by gamegetterII in Uncategorized

I have just read in Army Times that, to my delight, the Army is making soldiers wear the prettiest red high-heels in the pursuit of gender-equality. Yes. They look like little girls playing with Mommy’s shoes. It has something to do with understanding the psychological problems of women, a matter of importance in combat. It necessarily was done with the approval of the Army’s generals in the Pentagon, particularly Chief of Staff Odierno, since they are in charge of the whole Army shebang. I write them in astonished admiration, thusly:

Dear General,

I see that on your watch the Army is turning into a transvestite marching corps in high heels, a Ziegfeld cross-gendered or bisected gay-bath sexual zoo vacuuming up every sort of erotic loony, not to mention becoming a home for unwed mothers and prostitution rings. I commend you. I have always wanted to be defended by a freak show.

I do not question your qualifications for command. You doubtless have a firm handshake, a steely gaze, an imposing presence, and a perfect grasp of PowerPoint. But a general who is so afraid of feminists that he forces his troops to play dress-up, well, I mean, what if there is a real war?

I applaud your forthrightness in bringing the doughboys out of the closet in those cute red heels. They are so precious! (By the way, have you considered foot-binding?) As a former Marine in Vietnamese days, I have always suspected the Army of being cross-dressers. How candid of you to confirm my suspicions.

True, traditionalists, and warriors, and cranky old Marines will say that you are just another sorry two-bit, peace-time, careerist politician of a pseudo-soldier who doesn’t have the balls to stand up to feminists and protect the service from becoming a display ad for Victoria’s Secret. I am shocked. How could they think such a thing?

Yes, Generral, yes. I understand. Putting GIs in those darling heels is supposed to provide some kind of uplift (though I believe brassieres are better for that). But I know perfectly well, and you may suspect—check with your dominatrix—that feminists get a hoot out of watching those macho men (ugh!) tottering around before the whole world in heels, like teen-age girls preparing for their first prom. “Heeeeeeeeeeeee-ha-ha.” Likely every diesel-dyke in a Women’s Studies department is rolling on the floor. Tippy-toe. Tippy-tippy-toe. “Hey, Sheila, look what we made them do!”

What I figure, General, is you ought to set an example for the troops by wearing panties and a bra (if you don’t already wear panties: I give you credit for miitary foresight.) A good officer–we had some–doesn’t order his men to do anything he himself wouldn’t do. Walk a Mile in Her Skivvies, General. (Actually, when I was a hard-charging young Gyrene, we spent a lot of time trying to get into women’s skivvies. Now it’s going to be mandatory?)

But you can do more for equity. There should be clear expression of the Army’s commitment to transvest–justice, I meant to say. I can imagine a whole new gendered approach to insignia of rank: Artificial hooters, in easily-washed silicone and real flesh tone. Enlisted men would get small ones. Officers would have big mommas. You, being an exalted military figure, would have three. The Command-in-Chief could wear an udder.

Now, General, I speak only for myself as a Marine who carried a rifle in Viet Nam, but others may agree with me. (A “rifle” is one of those awful long thingies (no, not those long thingies) that make boomy noises and stinky smoke and put stains on your cocktail dress that just ruin it.) Outside of Da Nang we used to lie behind sandbags at night with mortars coming in (a “mortar” is one of those gun thingies with a tube—no, a different kind of tube, General—that shoots–never mind) hoping a hit wouldn’t spray a buddy’s guts around. To a man we were thinking, why couldn’t we have a leader like a Pentagon general to give us cute little heels instead of these uncomfy old boots?

But let us get back to serious military questions. The effect on our enemies of the boob-insignia will be profound. The Afghan resistance fighters will be stunned, just stunned, to see American soldiers in high-heels and varying numbers of breasts. As the Mujahedeen gape, paralyzed with amazement, our soldiers will be able to approach them and give them therapy on the value of non-violence and rape culture. Each mujahid would be encouraged to express his feelings and find the roots of his anger. They could all be given a breast to take home and fondle.

I can see by your feminization of the ranks that you are socially progressive. Good. I imagine that you are against the culture of violence that prevails in the military. But what can you expect in a society that has so many gun thingies, and glorifies them? We need to de-emphasize war, and substitute caring activities involving cooperation. You could lead from the front by taking part in social activities, perhaps being pivot man in a circle jerk. On YouTube (No, not that….)

I hear that also on your watch the Army has taken measures to make the service more LBTG-friendly, as well as more inclusive and welcoming to single mommies. I think you should go further. For example, the Army could use armored nail-salons to keep the troops looking great and feeling good about themselves, and those funny old tanks need changing tables inside the turret-thingy. And big guns look tho phallic. They must make women anxious. The only thing they are good for is drying lingerie. The guns, I mean, not the women.

Now, mean old military historians who say that in a real war soldiers die because of posturing peace-time political pogues (I was in an alliteration company)—what do they know? A few thousand lives are a small price to pay for gender-equity. Besides, those who do the fighting are not the girly-boys, the boy-girls, the katoys, the to-be-decideds, the climbing vines with their cucumbers chopped, or the single mommies who have to look after some random guy’s kid. These, the core of the Army, will not be troubled. As you have shown, we must stay with core values.

Don’t pay attention to those macho infantry men (ugh!) who say that women should try walking in men’s shoes—unloading a six-by of 81mm mortar rounds under fire, or changing a truck tire in sand in Indian territory with night coming on. Everyone knows that trucks unload themselves by pushing some kind of button or something, and anyway we have drones.

Them’s my thoughts, General. And I suspect that every guy who ever served in a combat zone shares my overwelling respect and admiration for you. If anyone criticizes you and you feel all upset and flustered, take your Midol, breathe deeply and it will get all better soon.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/PussyGeneral.shtml

Habersham County Sheriff, Joey Terrell, has allegedly given the most asinine defense about why a SWAT team blew a babies face off. The defense was allegedly used in a federal lawsuit on behalf of an infant hit with a grenade by SWAT during a botched raid in May of last year.

As previously covered, Bounkham “Baby Bou Bou” Phonesavanh, 19-months-old, was asleep in his crib. At 3:00 am militarized police barged into his family’s home because an informant had purchased $50 worth of meth from someone who once lived there. During the raid, a flash-bang grenade was thrown into the sleeping baby’s crib, exploding in his face.

Beyond the disfiguring wounds on the toddler’s face, the grenade also left a gash in his chest. As a result, Bou lost the ability to breathe on his own and was left in a medically induced coma for days after the incident. Bou was not able to go home from the hospital until July.

No officers were charged for their near-deadly negligence, and the department claimed that they did not know that there were children in the home. They defended their reckless actions by saying that they couldn’t have done a thorough investigation prior to the raid because it “would have risked revealing that the officers were watching the house.”

The family filed a federal lawsuit for damages that ended last month in a settlement (paid for by taxpayers) not only totaling less than the amount of the infant’s medical bills, but split up between family members. Furthermore, the conditions of the settlement included restrictions on further litigation pursued by the family in order to ensure that taxpayers, not the individuals who almost killed an infant, will be responsible for any further payout.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Author William Norman Grigg poured over the defense presented in this case by the Sheriff’s Office, and his findings are unbelievable – so unbelievable that we at The Free Thought Project originally thought it might be sick satire. No officials in their right mind would blame an infant for getting hit with a grenade during a botched raid, right? Wrong, according to Grigg.

“The act of sleeping in a room about to be breached by a SWAT team constituted “criminal” conduct on the part of the infant. At the very least, the infant was fully liable for the nearly fatal injuries inflicted on him when Habersham County Sheriff’s Deputy Charles Long blindly heaved a flash-bang grenade – a “destructive device,” as described by the ATF, that when detonated burns at 2,000-3,500 degrees Fahrenheit – into the crib.

Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/infant-responsible-grenade-thrown-face/#PT5yozmBxX8Xdzdm.99

I got nothin-I’m speechless-what kind of piece of shit blames the baby for being in the way of a blindly tossed flashbang?
Said POS had ZERO training in the proper use of flashbangs-yet no one is going to be prosecuted?
Unfuckinbelievable.

h/t NC Renegade

By Susan Duclos – All News PipeLine

americanterrorist.jpg

Read the whole thing.

Excerpt…

Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” in which veterans were named a threat in multiple instances within the report.

On page two-three of the nine-page report, under the heading of “Key Findings,” it stated:

(U//FOUO) The possible passage of new restrictions on firearms and the return ofmilitary veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communitiescould lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremistscapable of carrying out violent attacks. 

[…]

 (U//FOUO) Returning veterans possess combat skills and experience that areattractive to rightwing extremists. DHS/I&A is concerned that rightwingextremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order toboost their violent capabilities.

On page seven, under the header of “Disgruntled  Military Veterans” it stated:

(U//FOUO) DHS/I&A assesses that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit andradicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived frommilitary training and combat. These skills and knowledge have the potential to boost thecapabilities of extremists—including lone wolves or small terrorist cells—to carry outviolence. The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremistgroups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering fromthe psychological effects of war is being replicated today.

— (U) After Operation Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-1991, some returning militaryveterans—including Timothy McVeigh—joined or associated with rightwingextremist groups.

— (U) A prominent civil rights organization reported in 2006 that “large numbersof potentially violent neo-Nazis, skinheads, and other white supremacists are nowlearning the art of warfare in the [U.S.] armed forces.”

— (U//LES) The FBI noted in a 2008 report on the white supremacist movementthat some returning military veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan havejoined extremist groups. 

The full doument will be embedded below the videos at the bottom of this article.

As Americans are being conditioned to seeing massive military convoys on the streets across the nation and military “drills” and exercises are being scheduled, some already implemented, to further desensitize US citizens to what is happening under their very noses, leading them to consider the militarization of our country as “normal,” a number of events are occurring that indicate the time is rapidly approaching where political opponents, constitutionalists, survivalists, Christians and other religious affiliations, and any other group that would oppose living in a police state, will be targeted and are already on the “red list,” and it is the veterans that top that list.

You know the endgame has accelerated when “they” aren’t even trying to hide the fact that the lists exists.

They know who you are. They know where you are. They know what your capabilities are.

Read the rest @ http://allnewspipeline.com/Veterans_Top_Red_List.php

A series of reports over the last few weeks have shed more light on the increasingly predatory enforcement of misdemeanors across the country, and how this trend disproportionately hurts the poor. The first report comes from an area familiar to readers of The Watch — St. Louis County, Missouri. It was published by the Police Executive Research Forum. Among the key findings:

  • Policing is extremely fragmented: St. Louis County contains a patchwork of police departments, many of which have jurisdiction over very small areas. About one-third of the municipalities in the County that have a police department occupy less than one square mile. This has led to confusion and distrust among residents, who often feel targeted and harassed by police officers and the municipal court system.
  • Many police departments have inappropriate goals: In many municipalities, policing priorities are driven not by the public safety needs of the community, but rather by the goal of generating large portions of the operating revenue for the local government. This is a grossly inappropriate mission for the police, often carried out at the direction of local elected officials.
  • The “muni shuffle” is unprofessional: Police standards, training, pay, and professionalism vary dramatically throughout the region. Of particular concern is the so-called “muni shuffle,” in which police officers who are fired or allowed to resign because of disciplinary or performance issues in one department are quickly hired by another department, because it can be less expensive to hire an experienced (albeit compromised) officer than to recruit and train a new officer.

These criticisms have now been reiterated in several forums, by several different organizations. Perhaps most damning, all of this attention on petty offenses has distracted the area’s police departments from fighting crime. Despite the saturation of police departments, the report found elevated crime rates in the area, and that violent and property crime cost about $1,187 per resident. In other words, the people who live in St. Louis County aren’t being protected by the police, the police are preying on them. And they’re doing at the instruction of these local governments.

Up next, a well-reported three-part series on policing and the poor by the CBS affiliated in Miami. The report focuses on a city “crime suppression team” that’s supposed to improve the quality of life in poor areas. This excerpt is from part three.

During its five-month investigation into the Miami-Dade Police Department’s Crime Suppression Team, CBS4 News reviewed every arrest the officers from the South District Station made in 2014.

The results: CBS4 News found a unit whose actions resulted in the arrests of hundreds of individuals – mostly young black males – for petty offenses. Even more troubling, the arrests failed to result in a reduction in crime in the South District. In fact, crime went up in most of the major categories, according to records obtained by CBS4 News.

CBS4 News also found that most of the cases made by the Crime Suppression Team fell apart once they made it to court. Overall, the Crime Suppression Team had a conviction rate of just eleven percent.

And of the 245 individuals arrested for marijuana – only two ended up being convicted. In addition to those two convictions, 80 individuals – or one third of those arrested – accepted what is known as a “withhold of adjudication.”

“Withhold of adjudication is something that exists only in Florida and it’s kind of a legal fiction,” said Miami-Dade County Public Defender Carlos Martinez. “It’s a conviction, a judge has made a finding of guilt, but we are going to say you are not really a convicted person, but in fact you are.  Immigration does not look at the difference between a withhold or no withhold, they look at it as a conviction. And most employers that I’ve talked to about these issues, and they see withhold, to them it looks like a conviction. They don’t see the difference.”

Most of the people appearing in court don’t realize this because they are not represented by an attorney, Martinez said. “Seventy percent of the people in Dade County go to court without an attorney.”

In Florida, if prosecutors are not requesting jail time for a crime, the person charged doesn’t have the right to have a public defender appointed to represent them.

So once again we have police in predominantly poor, predominantly black communities making “broken windows” and “quality of life” arrests for petty offenses. This is saddling large percentages of these communities with burdensome fines and debilitating arrest records, it’s poisoning the relationship between the police agencies and the communities they’re supposed to be serving and it’s all doing little to nothing to make these communities any safer. This particular anecdote is just chilling:

Read the rest @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/05/14/the-ongoing-criminalization-of-poverty/

Robert Gore's avatarSTRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

A country is in deep trouble when criminals in government go free, but the people who expose them go to jail. Here’s a disturbing story and a plea for justice from John Kiriakou at antiwar.com:

I served two years in prison for exposing the CIA’s torture program. Why are the men responsible for it walking free?

After I blew the whistle on the CIA’s torture program in 2007, the fallout for me was brutal. To make a long story short, I served nearly two years in federal prison and then endured a few more months of house arrest.

What happened to the torture program? Nothing.

Following years of waiting for the government to do something, I was heartened when I read in my prison cell – in a four-day-old copy of The New York Times – that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had finally released in December a heavily…

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John W. Whitehead's avatarJohn W. Whitehead, Constitutional Attorney

“If we’re training cops as soldiers, giving them equipment like soldiers, dressing them up as soldiers, when are they going to pick up the mentality of soldiers? If you look at the police department, their creed is to protect and to serve. A soldier’s mission is to engage his enemy in close combat and kill him. Do we want police officers to have that mentality? Of course not.”— Arthur Rizer, former civilian police officer and member of the military

Talk about poor timing. Then again, perhaps it’s brilliant timing.

Only now—after the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security (DHS) and Defense have passed off billions of dollars worth of military equipment to local police forces, after police agencies have been trained in the fine art of war, after SWAT team raids have swelled in number to more than 80,000 a year, after it has become second nature for local…

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Wednesday on Fox News Radio’s “The Alan Colmes Show,” FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai said the government taking control of the infrastructure of  internet with “net neutrality” will eventually lead to attempts to take control of content on websites like the Drudge Report.

Pai said, “It’s not so much the FCC that I’m worried about in terms of online content regulation. But what we do see is that at places like the Federal Elections Commission there is a regulatory impulse to regulate what heretofore has been a pretty open marketplace of ideas.”

He continued, “Net neutrality would insert government jurisdiction over the infrastructure of the internet and in time, other agencies might try to regulate the content.”

He concluded, “If you look at what some of these agencies are thinking about doing right now—last year for example at the Federal Elections Commission, three regulators suggested that they did want to consider online content, like the Drudge Report, potentially as an in-kind contribution given that it had an impact on political campaigns.”

Read the rest plus video @ http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/05/14/fccs-pai-fec-wants-to-regulate-drudge-like-campaign-contributions/

Via David Codrea

The sign across the street from the Savopoulos; D.C. home "protecting" their exclusive neighborhood was no deterrent to homicidal monster(s)..

A successful businessman, his wife, son and housekeeper have been brutally murdered inside their $2 million home in an exclusive neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Speculation at this point is they were held captive before the adults were stabbed and bludgeoned to death, and the child was burned.

It is not known at this writing is if they knew their killer(s). Also unstated at this time is if Savvas Savopoulos or his wife Amy owned guns, especially in light of the bureaucratic hurdles associated with “legally” owning firearms in the District, and if they did, if that would have made a difference. What is known, but is not being disclosed by mainstream media, is that the executive and his company supported a politician who is a strong proponent of “gun control.”

The Center for Responsive Politics “tracks[s] money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy” on its OpenSecrets.org website. A donor search reveals Savopoulos made substantial donations to the Victory Now Political Action Committee and its Honorary Chairman, Rep. Chris Van Hollen.

The purpose of the PAC is to “promote Democratic candidates and important causes in Maryland and across the country … to implement a new agenda for this country together with President Obama.”

Gun owners are well aware of what that agenda is.

Van Hollen himself is a doctrinaire gun-grabber — he was rated “100 percent” by the Brady Campaign and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and was given failing grades by both Gun Owners of America and the National Rifle Association, He is a proponent of ending private sales, banning standard capacity magazines, and suing gun manufacturers for criminal abuses of their products, that is, misplacing blame for evil actions by others and using litigation against the firearms industry to reduce ownership by making guns prohibitively expensive. To show logical consistency, he should also support suing manufacturers of knives, blunt instruments and lighters or matches, as were evidently used in the Savopolous slayings. And if we are to believe the admonishment that a gun in the home increases the likelihood its owner will be injured or killed, so too must risks increase with the presence of any tool or object that can be deployed as a weapon.

http://www.examiner.com/article/murdered-executive-supported-gun-control-backing-politician?CID=examiner_alerts_article

Fontana Police Chief Rodney Jones watched Monday as the Rook – the Inland Valley SWAT team’s newest tactical weapon – used a battering ram to punch a hole in the wall of a building during a demonstration.

Other attachments to the tractor-like, bulletproof vehicle that runs on tank tracks could be used to rescue a police officer or lift debris from a building that collapsed in an earthquake.

Thousands of miles away Monday, President Barack Obama announced that the Pentagon would no longer be allowed to transfer some types of military equipment to police departments, in an effort to improve trust between law enforcement and communities.

“We’ve seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people a feeling like there’s an occupying force,” Obama said in an appearance in Camden, N.J., where he praised that city’s community policing. The changes follow criticism over how police departments deployed military-style gear to confront protesters in Ferguson, Mo., and other cities.

Jones said Obama was making a mistake.

“What he did was restrict 15,000 law enforcement agencies the ability to get some equipment that they don’t have the funds to buy,” Jones said.

Smaller departments don’t have officers they can spare to share with drug task forces, Jones said. The departments that make up the task forces share in asset-forfeiture funds – cash seized from drug dealers – that can be used to buy equipment.

****“We’ve heard significantly about the ‘militarizing’ of police departments. I’ve been doing this for 34 years. When we started this job we did not see the type of weapons that we see now. Our officers are confronted with people with hand grenades, with rocket launchers and high-powered weapons. If we’re sending these officers into harm’s way, we are not giving them the proper tools to protect themselves. To the people who say there’s a concept of the militarization of police departments, police departments did not create it (trouble); we’re responding to it,” Jones said.*****

Read the rest of this horsepucky @ http://www.pe.com/articles/police-767572-equipment-officers.html