You know, just to keep things going.
Ok, so criminal justice reform is getting more front-burner. A genuinely bi-partisan group of people is looking for ways to reform our broken system. What I’d like:
End jail time for small time possession of illegal drugs. Anything less than a few ounces, maybe write the guy a ticket. No more jail time for failure to pay fines. End civil asset forfeiture. No more three strikes laws. Civil penalties for prosecutors who convict the innocent, or do fishing expeditions like the “Jon Doe” investigation in Wisconsin.
That would be a good start.
China seems to be dumping US Treasuries.
Women and minorities are obtaining concealed carry permits – a lot of concealed carry permits. Liberals won’t know what to do about this. As for us – it just means that, in the long run, a lot of women and minorities will eventually be voting conservative.
The guy who killed our Marines here at home spent a lot of time over in the Middle East. Someone please tell me why we allow easy travel between the Middle East and the United States.
Obama’s approval rating is 44.7%. Just keep in mind that it is very hard for a party to out-do it’s President’s approval rating on election day. To depress you, maybe what happens is Trump goes Perot next year and the final result is Hillary, 45%, Walker 42%, Trump 13%.
I actually spent some time reading the Iran deal. It is just terrible, as you suspected. Of course, people can read it different ways…I read it like an Iranian mullah who wants to do whatever he pleases. In that reading Iran…gets to do whatever it pleases. Seriously. 24 day waiting period for inspections. We not only have to lift sanctions, but help Iran gain market share and stamp on any State or local government which doesn’t want to do business with Iran. We have to give them scientific help of the best sort. And we have to obey the “spirit” of the deal – which is undefined. And if there’s a dispute about the implementation of the deal then we have 35 days to see it Iran’s way and if we don’t, then the deal binds us to see it Iran’s way. This isn’t diplomacy – this is Obama helping Iran to become the dominant power of the Middle East and pretending that he’s just making a nuke deal.
We are becoming a nation of cowards.
Hillary ain’t too popular.
From quiet homes and first beginning, out to the undiscovered ends, there’s nothing worth the wear of winning, but laughter and the love of friends. – Hilaire Belloc
Blogs For Victory 
The deal with Iran has certainly made the world more peaceful right?
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – “Whether the (nuclear) deal is approved or disapproved, we will never stop supporting our friends in the region and the people of Palestine, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain and Lebanon. Even after this deal our policy toward the arrogant U.S. will not change,”
And then there was this little gem:
“The Americans say they stopped Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon,” Khamenei said at Tehran’s Mosala mosque.They know it’s not true. We had a fatwa (religious ruling), declaring nuclear weapons to be religiously forbidden under Islamic law. It had nothing to do with the nuclear talks.”
I think we can chalk this up to another big win for the masterful Obama and his brilliant foreign policy. Meanwhile, Obama has yet to comment on Kate Steinle or the marines killed in TN.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iran-nuclear-talks/irans-ayatollah-ali-khamenei-vows-opposition-u-s-despite-nuke-n394326
The more I think about it, the more I think nuclear weapons were a red herring in this deal. I was noting some of the flaws in the deal to a Prog friend and he challenged me to actually read it before I criticize. Upon reading it, I realized that my Prog friend hadn’t read it, either – because once you read it, you see that most of the concrete actions in the deal have to do with Iran getting buckets of money and our help in economic matters. It does have a bit on how many centrifuges Iran gets to have and how much enriched uranium, yadda, yadda, yadda and states that Iran won’t try to build a nuke…but the inspection regime on that is so flimsy as to be a sad joke. It wasn’t cared about – it wasn’t what we were after…and all Iran had to do was throw some window dressing on the matter for our domestic political consumption. After all, Iran getting a nuke, in and of itself, doesn’t matter to us in the United States until they have an ICBM – and while Iran has done a lot of R&D on that matter, they still haven’t got it (they’ve got missiles which can reach Israel and parts of Europe, of course). My father told me years ago that actually putting a nuke on a missile and having it go where you want it to go and detonate when you want it to blow up is a very tricky process…it is why even with the V-2 as a template it was the mid to late 1960’s before we had a large force of ICBM’s…why, for instance, we parked a bunch of IRBM’s in Turkey which helped trigger the Cuban Missile Crisis…it isn’t easy science. It probably would be 10 years before Iran would have a deployable ICBM which could consistently hit targets in the United States…and until they’ve got that, their nuclear force is of low value (you’ll note that North Korea keeps working on its own ICBM’s – they don’t seem to even have a reliable IRBM at this time…but they want something which convinces us that they can hit us…so the blackmail will be even more effective). And not only do the Iranians have to develope an ICBM, they need enough of them to ensure that a first strike by us (or Israel) against their ICBM’s will leave enough left over for a counter-strike. To be a credible threat to us they’d need at least 50 – and probably 100 would be best. That is going to take some time – and some money (which we are providing) and some scientific expertise (which we are providing). I think this deal was just cover for Obama lifting the sanctions, which was his actual goal because he envisions a future in which Iran has become a U.S. ally (allied against whom we can only imagine).
If Obama thinks that Iran is ever going to be our friend, or even a reluctant ally, then either he and his advisers are even less intelligent than I thought, or there’s something even more nefarious at work than any of us thought.
I’m going with “less intelligent”. They really think that Iran is only our enemy because of that coup in the 50’s. It is what they are taught – and ask any Prog you like and if they are familiar with it, at all, that is just what they’ll agree to.
I think Obama is only thinking about Obama and his “legacy”, regardless of future dangers. When Susan Rice was asked if some of the new infused, previously frozen sanction money would go to fund terror groups, she replied:
“Yes, it is real, it is possible, and, in fact, we should expect that some portion of that money would go to the Iranian military and could potentially be used for the kinds of bad behavior that we have seen in the region up until now.”
Did you get that? “We should expect that to happen” according to Rice. Meanwhile our American prisoners are still in Iranian prisons. This is about as bad as it could possibly get, but just wait – we have another year and a half to see what else this guy will F**K up.
It’s not necessarily a matter of IQ, per se, but the giddy Magical Thinking that permeates the Left—that allows the Left to exist—-coupled with the megalomania that lets the Left believe that they are the only ones with the intellectual and moral capacity to see what others simply cannot. So the Left sees itself as the only side capable of seeing through the bluster of Iran to the innate goodness at its heart, and Magical Thinking tells them if they believe it, it is so.
Lefties truly believe that they are gifted with a Specialness that allows them to occupy the Higher Moral Ground, and this is based, among other things, on what they see as the clarity of vision to see the good in everyone. (Well, in everyone but Republicans, that is. If we want the Left to crack down on Iran, we need to make George W. Bush its president.)
There is a progression here. First, Iran is a victim. Worse, the victim of those dastardly Republicans, led by that dastardly Bush. Second, Iran is Islamic, and Islam is the Flavor of the Month for Lefties to prove how open minded and tolerant they are. So Iran is beautifully poised to be rescued by the loving and understanding and intellectual Left, which loves to identify and then side with a designated underdog.
And it’s fun to rush to the aid of Iran. It makes the Right crazy, which is always a plus for the Left. It threatens Israel, which is another mark in its favor. It hates America, which aligns it with the Left. Its avowed goals of destroying America and Israel sound very appealing, but there is no real awareness of the brutal reality that “destroying” means butchering hundreds of thousands of men, women and children (and animals, too—-are you paying attention, PETA?) and sickening millions more with radiation.
When a city, or cities, in the United States are hit with nuclear bombs from Iran, that same Left will make the big-eye and claim innocence, claim they had no way of knowing this would happen. No lesson will ever be learned by the Left. When militant Islam stated its intent to attack the United States, the Left was still astounded when they attacked the United States.
A Lefty will always be stunned by the consequence of his own actions (even though it was accurately predicted by others) in the nanosecond between the event and his scramble to find a Republican to blame for it.
This article is a must read, as it shines a bright light on the disturbed and over emotional progressive mind:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/17/obama-love-reforms
One of my favorite excerpts:
Obama also has a great tenacity in addressing (and occasionally even mitigating) certain forms of violence: the financial violence of being uninsured, the legal violence of homophobia and the state-sponsored racialized violence of the Confederate flag on government land.
“The financial violence of being uninsured”. Really? Meanwhile, inner city violence including actual loss of life in cities like Baltimore, NY, and Chicago has exploded and ISIS continues to develop new and horrific ways to kill Christians. But rest assured good people that the “violence of homophobia” is waning. I think we can all take comfort in that.
Let’s face it, it is pretty easy to “address (and occasionally even mitigat(e)..)” imaginary violence. It’s more of that Magical Thinking that defines the Left. Someone declares “I think being uninsured equals financial violence” and, to the Left, shazaam it is “violence”.
Funny how the Guardian doesn’t feel that being forcibly stripped of existing health care and then forced into a plan that is more expensive and offers less also constitutes “violence”.
I suggest that the constant misuse of the word “homophobia” is a violent attack on the English language. Until any of these squealing hysterics can find an example of legalizing fear of oneself or people like oneself, this vicious attack on the proper usage of words should be addressed—-and even mitigated—by a simple process we call STFU.
“..state-sponsored racialized violence of the Confederate flag..” ??????????????? Uh-oh. Evidently the previously inanimate pieces of cloth representing the Army of Virginia have come to life, and joined the previously inanimate pieces of metal known as “guns”, to wreak violence and havoc and VIOLENCE upon, well, upon squealing hysterics.
There are few things more entertaining, in a pathetic and slightly spooky way, than the shrill bleatings of the Left.
Earlier this morning I was looking for some information on the TV show “The Americans”. I had heard it was good but never saw it in my cable TV lineup. A link took me to a site which turned out to be Salon. I read the article on the TV show—it is streamed on Amazon Prime, which is why I never saw it—-and in the column to the right of the page was the usual lineup of promos for other articles. Just a quick glance at this array of Leftist pap was enough.
There is evidently an article on how Fox crushed Jon Stewart and forced his retirement, because the weight of constantly debunking right-wing lies just wore him plumb out. Evidently it was not the toll of having to constantly defend the indefensible that wore him down, but having to keep up with the tales told by that eeevil right-wing conspiracy that was too much for what Salon called “the last honest man”.
Who knew?
There is an article on how the right-wing “hoax” about PP butchering babies to sell off their body parts is just another example of how the Right never hesitates to “destroy lives”. That line did give me a slight pause, as I wondered if the writer had a clue about the irony of whining that it was the REPORTING of the actual, real, destruction of human life that was being reframed as “destroying lives”. As if failing to report that human beings were being killed for profit would mean that no lives were being “destroyed”? Sorry, but in my book death followed by dismemberment (or, in the ghoulish reality of abortion, dismemberment followed by death) is pretty much the definition of destroying a life, while documenting someone admitting to criminal acts is not.
And BTW, PP is not “selling” those baby parts—they are “donating” them. Good to know.
Starbucks donated a venti vanilla latte to me this morning. I just reimbursed them for the cost of providing it. Got to keep up with those shifts in definition, doncha know.
There are few things more entertaining, in a pathetic and slightly spooky way, than the shrill bleatings of the Left.
Agreed. And there seems to be an endless supply these days.
I was checking the Twitter feed and a lot of the right Twitter is having a ball with what is going on at Netroots Nation…seems the almost entirely white crowd booed both O’Malley and Sanders off the stage because they weren’t totally on board with #blacklivesmatter. The Democrat party has a problem – their base is batsh** crazy.
Yes and they all right here in Phoenix. I haven’t been following it that much but I did see a local news report the other day and the crowd was largely either old white people, or young white people who all marched down to the city jail to protest the “mass incarceration”. Netroots is of course though the pure leftists who would like to “progress” all the way into communism.
Update – I just saw the footage of the blacklivesmatter protestors – hilarious. They would not let the candidates continue, and then an organizer of the convention released a statement saying that they let the protestors continue because “we can not silence people of color or women of color”.
The footage is great. It turned out to be a freak show.
More unrest as two Democrat constituencies go head to head:
Angry clashes in South Carolina as Ku Klux Klan and New Black Panther Party come face-to-face in battle over Confederate flag
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3166640/Violent-clashes-expected-South-Carolina-Ku-Klux-Klan-New-Black-Panther-Party-come-face-face-rival-rallies-outside-capitol-statehouse.html#ixzz3gLIwwYPU
Come to think of it – I think this blacklivesmatter movement is a movement against the Democratic Party. I mean black lives have not mattered to Democrats over the last few decades – only their votes have mattered. Over the years Democrats have increased blacks dependency on government, have incentivized out of wedlock child birth and have neglected the inner cities where many of them live.
Also, I see a time coming soon where the many factions of the Democratic Party, ie; LGBT, Blacks, environmentalists, etc. will all become angrier over time because their particular narrow agenda is not being served to their satisfaction by the Democrats. It’s hard to properly serve so many masters. And then they will begin to fight amongst themselves.
Here’s a tweet from last nights freak show:
o’malley with “white lives matter” and hillary with “all lives matter” like damn! these white people really don’t get it.
I guess what they need to do is change the name to onlyblacklivesmatter.
A problem with that is things like this, which shows that to many blacks, black lives don’t matter at all. Keep in mind that while this was going on, someone was taping the incident, and many others just stood by and watched.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=062_1418174243
The racial division of this country knows no bounds under this radical “regressive” regime:
This Orwellian-style stockpile of statistics includes a vast and permanent network of discrimination databases, which Obama already is using to make “disparate impact” cases against: banks that don’t make enough prime loans to minorities; schools that suspend too many blacks; cities that don’t offer enough Section 8 and other low-income housing for minorities; and employers who turn down African-Americans for jobs due to criminal backgrounds…….Federally funded cities deemed overly segregated will be pressured to change their zoning laws to allow construction of more subsidized housing in affluent areas in the suburbs, and relocate inner-city minorities to those predominantly white areas. HUD’s maps, which use dots to show the racial distribution or density in residential areas, will be used to select affordable-housing sites.
http://nypost.com/2015/07/18/obama-has-been-collecting-personal-data-for-a-secret-race-database/
Notice how Obama is not working to improve their lives through expansion of higher paying jobs or better schools, rather he is trying to relocate them to different neighborhoods but still keeping them in “affordable housing”. Thanks Dad.
Federally funded cities deemed overly segregated….
“Federally funded cities”?
Definitely time to wean states and cities from the government teat. Slash the IRS to the tiniest possible number by implementing a Fair Tax and at the same time start a program of moving tax monies to the states to pay for the withdrawal of Federal spending there, The long range goal should be to, within a certain amount of time, reduce the Federal cut of Federal tax revenue to only what is necessary to pay for the enumerated duties of the Feds, return the rest to the states in a schedule that then reduces that as the states make their own decisions about how much money they need to pay for what THEY want to provide.
Charter schools and then, hopefully, more private schools due to the use of vouchers, ought to reduce the amount of Federal intervention in schools.
You make a good point, in that the goal of Obama and his minders is not to raise the quality of life for all poor people by governing in a way that increases opportunities for all, it is to slightly raise the qualify of life on the plantations where they keep the livestock they breed, feed and maintain to provide votes.
One day I can only hope that this country returns to its Constitutional roots whereas if we have to pay taxes–it will be to our State of which the States will then fund the mandated requirements of a small Federal government. Not what we have now where the Federal government can oppress or require so many things on a State from the overload position it has at present.
overlord
overload works too
http://www.mrctv.org/videos/reporter-hits-o-malley-left-saying-all-lives-matters
Obama’s Gun Grab # 3 or # 4 or however many to date….
Apparently, in another attempt to curtail the rights of law-abiding citizens–this administration has a new tact. Using federal prohibitions against acquiring or possessing firearms to those “adjudicated as a mental defective,” According to an Obama memorandum not just directed at Social Security but all Federal Agencies to report to NCIS.
In the case of Social Security (forced into at the end of a barrel to start with); Obama’s SSA bureaucrats read “all relevant Federal records” to mean all Social Security recipients who have a “representative payee” assigned to their accounts to help them manage their payments and receipts.
This is where the stripping of the 2nd Amendment would start ~ who is next?
https://www.nraila.org/articles/20150718/social-security-administration-to-strip-millions-of-americans-of-their-right-to-keep-and-bear-arms
It’s worse than that – Obama’s government is gathering all sorts of data on us so that the government may better control us (if a neighborhood is 50%+ white, then it is “segregated” and Uncle Sam MUST step in). What we need is laws prohibiting the government from gathering any information on us beyond how many of us there are…no race, no gender, no income, no nothing…the more info they have, the more they can oppress us.
There are certainly a lot of reasons one might designate a “representative payee” for Social Security benefits, and it is not only a gross misstatement of fact but a gross insult to assume that this means the person is a “mental defective”. Setting aside the fact that the word “adjudicated” has a specific meaning, “adjudication” is not a requirement for designating a “representative payee”.
PS—they are to report to NICS, not NCIS.
As an additional point. Apparently our Constitutional Lawyer in Chief has no idea of the meaning of “adjudicated.,” Actually, I am ashamed of our current President and cannot wait till this reign of terror on average citizens ends.