This Was MY Idea!

If Only They Had Training...

The Gun Cult is throwing out extra stinky BS this week. If only kids were trained how to use firearms in schools, they opine, like the days of yore.

Well, yore, was over a half a century ago and now we live in a culture where school shootings happen every year and mass shootings happen every day. Of course, this idiotic supposition ignores the fact that folks like Adam Lanza, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were very well trained in the use of firerams...trained and certified by the NRA.

I'd say they respected firearms a great deal. They knew exactly what to do with them.

What Good Guys With Guns Do...

Check out what a "good" guy with a gun did.

When the assailants attempted to take his truck, a witness parked at the gas pump started shooting at the men, according to authorities. 

Police said he accidentally shot the victim in the head.

Ground stood!!!

Yet another myth revealed for all its bullshit...

That's Not My Cross

So Long, Johnny

So, John Boehner quit yesterday. Didn't see that one coming but it makes sense given the state of the Republican party today. Check out the reaction from conservatives at the "Value" Voters summit.



Talk about eating one of your own...sheesh. If they want to keep driving the party more and more right, I say we let them. It will never cease to amaze me how they think that a "real" conservative could win a national election.

For the record, I liked John Boehner. He was what Republicans used to be...sensible. No wonder he quit. His party continues to lose their minds...

Smart Kid!

And he's from Minnesota!!!

Friday Funny

Check out the State of the Union of Donald Trump is elected president.

The sheer numbers of his supporters really says something about the intelligence level of this country.

File Under: No Shit

GOP leaders: Trump sets us back on race

With so little support from women and people of color, there is no chance they can win.

How Right-Wing Media Are Welcoming Pope Francis To America

How Right-Wing Media Are Welcoming Pope Francis To America
This is how right-wing media welcomed Pope Francis to America:
Posted by Media Matters for America on Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Way to go "Christians."

Polls

Sting Them!

Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, the sting videos on Planned Parenthood have had an impact. The federal government might shut down because of them. Even though the videos are essentially false, abortion is back to being an issue again for the time being. So, here's a thought....

Let's do the same fucking thing for the Gun Cult.

Whether it's the NRA or some sort of gun blogger convention, it's way past time that some activists got up in their shit and fucked it all up. I think the American people would love to see what these people think about guns, violence, and little children being slaughtered every day because they need to feel empowered by a dick substitute.

Why hasn't it happened yet?

Good Words

"Ronald Reagan didn't attack the people around him. He didn't demean the people around him. He brought everybody together at the end. If Republicans don't bring everybody together at the end of the day, we do not win elections"

(Michael Reagan, son of Ronald Reagan)

Indeed.

If conservatives love Reagan as much as they say they do, the should heed this advice. This is especially true for the right wing bloggers and commenters. We all know you were bullied as kids and need your guns to feel empowered. Consistently attacking those that are different than you because they are liberal, not white, not Christian, and not part of your tribe means you lose.

Walker Out!

Scott Walker has just dropped out of the GOP primary.

Buh Bye, dickhead!!!

Now Carson Disqualifies Himself from the Presidency

Ben Carson is struggling mightily to dispel the notion that brain surgeons are smart: now he says that the Constitution prevents Muslims from being president. 

Article Six, paragraph 3 of the Constitution says exactly the opposite:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

The oath of office for the president is specified in Article 2, Clause 8 of the Constitution, and nowhere is religion mentioned:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Immediately contradicting himself, Carson said that members of Congress can be Muslims, even though they must affirm essentially the same oath as the president (with the totally superfluous addition of, "So help me God," added in legislation by some nitwits in Congress in 1884 in clear violation of Article Six's ban on religious tests).

Now, if a specific Muslim individual were to say that he places the importance of the Koran above the Constitution and the law of the land, then I agree he would disqualify himself from office. Just as Mike Huckabee disqualified himself when he flatly stated that as president he would disregard Supreme Court decisions on marriage equality.

He tries to frame it as a question of freedom, comparing gay marriage to the Dred Scott decision which declared black slaves to not be fully human. The problem is Huckabee has it completely backwards: the Supreme Court gay marriage decision is pro-freedom, declaring that gays are fully human, and have equal rights under the law. In this context, Mike Huckabee is on the side of the slave holders, treating gays like slaves who don't have equal rights.

Yes, the Constitution gives Mike Huckabee the right to believe anything he wants to; it doesn't give him (or Kim Davis) the right to impose that belief on others and take their rights away.


Clearly, neither Huckabee nor Carson are fit to be president, for they believe their Christian religion supersedes the Constitution. In contrast, during his run for president John F. Kennedy asserted:

But if the time should ever come — and I do not concede any conflict to be even remotely possible — when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same.

The fact is, neither the word "god" nor the word "creator" appear in the Constitution, though the Declaration of Independence does mention the cryptic "Nature's God" and "Creator." The Constitution mentions religion only to say that the government can't require or establish one.

What this tells us is that the Founders were religious men, and that their natural and religious philosophies led them write a soaring Declaration of Independence that asserts all men should be free. But when it comes down the nuts and bolts of governance, they were wise enough to ensure that religion has no place in the Constitution. This was a hard lesson learned from centuries of death and destruction caused by official state religions in Europe.

In 2007 Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison caused a stir when he took his oath of office on Thomas Jefferson's Koran. But Christians aren't any better; they all swear their oaths on the Bible. Only one representative has done the right thing: Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona was sworn in on a copy of the Constitution.

15 minutes Of Fame?

Objective Reality

Bill Maher slams the Obama-hating 2016 Republican candidates a...
Watch: Bill Maher slams the Obama-hating 2016 Republican candidates at this week's debate.Video by Occupy Democrats, LIKE our page for more!
Posted by Occupy Democrats on Saturday, September 19, 2015

Lies Upon Lies

At the GOP debate on Wednesday night, Carly Fiorina made the following assertion.

One of the Planned Parenthood videos shows "a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says, 'We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.' "

The video does not show this at all.

The Center for Medical Progress video does not show actually show footage of O’Donnell’s experience, and there’s nothing else in the video to corroborate O’Donnell’s story. Additionally, the supervisor in O’Donnell’s story does not say anything about keeping the fetus alive specifically for the purpose of harvesting the brain.

In addition, the videos themselves are heavily edited (see also: lies) so we're talking about lies on top of lies.

Roe V Wade is the law of the land and always will be. If opponents of abortion are serious about reducing or elimination abortions, they should look to the reasons why single women in their 20s (the largest group to demand abortions) get so many abortions.

If only more of them would shoot themselves like this...

Road-raging Mercedes driver shoots himself in the leg while waving rifle and handgun at Florida family

GROUND STOOD!!!

Certainly saves us the trouble...

A Question of Morality

There have been a number of stories about the morality of ad blocking recently. Some claim ad blockers are wrong because web content providers go to great expense to provide stories, and they should be compensated by ads. Others defend ad blockers, saying, "It's my computer and I should be able to control what I see."

I use an ad blocker in my browser. And it's not because I hate ads: it's because I value my privacy and security. First, an explanation of how Internet ads work.

I'm not opposed to Internet ads. I'm opposed to Internet ad technology.

Most web sites don't create their own ads. They just act as conduits for third-party ad providers who funnel ads through their web pages to end-users and use third-party cookies to track those users. The ads are actually coming from another server on the Internet, not the website you're visiting. (If you log into any of the websites with your email address, they can marry it to that third-party cookie and then sell it to spammers.)

Ad blockers work by detecting content served up by these third-party ad providers and ignoring it.

This means two things: first, the ad company can use that third-party cookie to follow you wherever you go on the Internet. When I go to a specific website, I'm giving them permission to know my identity. I don't want them to give that information to a third party whom I don't know and don't trust.

Second, when I go to a website I'm going there because I trust their content. If they're serving up crap from a third-party ad company, neither they nor I have any way of knowing that the fourth-, fifth- and thousandth-party content is trustworthy.

Internet ads aren't passive like commercials on television and radio: they are actively malicious.

Internet ads run code on your computer and can read and write data in your browser. Compare that to the commercials you watch on television: they may be for phony charities, worthless "naturopathic" remedies and ambulance-chasing scumbags. But they won't give my IP address and email to every spammer on the Internet, or infect my computer with a key logger that steals the password to my bank account.

Third-party ad companies do a poor job of vetting the millions of ads they serve up. Sometimes those ads have malware and viruses. My wife's computer was infected a few years ago when the local newspaper served up an ad with malware.

Ad blockers do two things: protect your privacy and prevent your computer from being infected by malware. Both of these are totally legitimate concerns for Internet users. Ad blockers won't prevent all these problems, but they close off one common vector of infection.

Now, if companies host their own ads on their own websites, ad blockers will not detect or stop them. That's okay by me: if they're hosting the content, they probably have vetted it to make sure that it doesn't contain malware.

This brings us to the real question: is Internet content supported by ads a viable model going forward?

I, for one, don't mind paying a subscription fee for content. I pay for sites that I rely on, that I think are deserving. It's like being a member of our local public radio and TV stations: if you think it's worthy and worth it, you should pay for it. Sadly, most Internet sites charge way too much for their content, and no one winds up subscribing.

Quality websites can host and display their own ads, which won't trigger ad blockers. This eliminates the ad serving middlemen, and no one will care if ad servers go out of business.

Ad blockers allow you to turn on ads for individual sites. For example, the Washington Post won't display most content if your ad blocker is turned on. Since the Post is an important national daily, I have turned on ads for it, though I'm afraid I will ultimately regret it, because it's got the same crappy ads you see everywhere else...

If the future of "free" content depends on advertisers shoving whatever crap they want down our throats and tracking our every move on the Internet, then it deserves to burn to the ground.

So, if content providers want to survive, they can a) entice users to subscribe, b) host their own ads or c) convince users to unblock their ads. If the future of "free" content depends on advertisers shoving whatever crap they want down our throats and tracking our every move on the Internet, then it deserves to burn to the ground.

Finally, I would make some suggestions for all web users who are interested in their privacy and security (these are in the settings for your browser):

1. Set your browser to send a Do Not Track request.
2. Disable third-party cookies and data in your web browser.
3. Keep local data (cookies) only until you quit your browser.
4. Turn off all popups (these are frequently used to create fake windows that fool users into downloading malware).
5. Don't automatically allow sites to track your location.

This won't protect you from everything (i.e., it won't stop Facebook from selling your data to other people, or free porn sites from swamping your computer with malware), but it will reduce your vulnerability. It will be a little more work: you have to log in every time you return to a site after you restart your browser (sites often use cookies to keep you logged in).

Now, should you use an ad blocker? It's not an easy question to answer. Ad blockers are like any other content on the Internet. How do you know you what you can trust?

If you do use an ad blocker, be careful: research the candidates before you turn on the ad blocker extension or plug-in in your browser. Like anything else on the Internet, things are not always what they say they are.

Knowing Your Enemy

The best way to defeat your enemy is to know everything you can about them. A recent Frontline documentary is most illuminating in terms of gun rights advocates and the NRA. The most intriguing thing about the entire piece is the section on Columbine. I found out two things that I didn't know before.

First, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were very much born of the Gun Cult. Check out this video which they showed in the documentary.



Pretty much like every gun blogger and gun humper out there.

Second, Harris and Klebold got their guns from a gun show which, because of the loophole that still hasn't been closed yet thanks to the fear peddling of the Gun Cult, never did a background check on them to see that they were underage. The NRA fought it back then and they are still fighting it today.

As I watched this episode, one thing became even clearer to me. These people may "use democracy to win their battles" but their mindset is anything but democratic. It's TOTALITARIAN in all caps and bold. Check out any gun blog out there and you will see exactly what I am talking about.

The only thing that these people understand and respect is force. This means that like previous totalitarian organizations and governments force will be the only thing that will ultimately bring them down.

Here's the trailer...