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Long-time Chicano activist Carlos Montes, who has been active in the antiwar, education and civil rights movements in Los Angeles for decades, goes on trial today for bogus charges that are being brought against him for purchasing a gun. It is a political trial and a continuation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) targeting of antiwar and international solidarity activists.
On May 17, 2011, at 5 am in the morning, the LA County Sheriff and FBI crashed down his door and entered his home. Montes was still asleep. He thought someone was breaking in to kill him, beat him up or rob him. All of these things went through his mind. Read More »
This is a bizarre Mitt Romney moment from the campaign trail: Speaking at a campaign stop in Iowa on Tuesday, … Romney … took a swipe at Obama for rejecting President Bill Clinton’s “doctrine” of balancing budgets to meet spending proposals. He suggested that this was the result of a personal animus between Barack Obama and the Clintons.
“Almost a generation ago, Bill Clinton announced that the ‘era of big government was over,’” said Romney. “President Obama tucked away the Clinton Doctrine in his large drawer of discarded ideas along with transparency and bipartisanship. It’s enough to make you wonder if maybe it was a personal beef with the Clintons, but probably that — it runs much deeper than that.”
Hunh? “A personal beef”? This was the best response to that on Twitter: Romney says Obama “has a personal beef with the Clintons” – like when he ripped Hillary a new one by making her Secretary of State [no more mister nice blog/15 May 2012]
With the signing of a new expanded conscience clause bill in Kansas, Republican Governor Sam Brownback has now legally blessed a virtually open-ended number of situations in which “religious” workers can refuse to assist women under the guise that they believe they “may be” terminating a pregnancy.
Advocates of the law argue that it “updates existing law.” But by changing the law to include refusal to administer any drug that they believe may terminate a pregnancy, it opens the door to refusal of birth control and emergency contraception — both of which many anti-choice medical workers and pharmacists erroneously charge end very early pregnancies rather than preventing conception. The law could also allow refusal of even more medically-necessary drugs simply because they may relate to abortions. [alternet/RH Reality Check/Robin Marty/15 May 2012]
• It’s like the passive-aggressive cousin of Stand Your Ground. We could call it “Sit On Your Hands,” perhaps: You don’t have to help someone if you think they don’t deserve it, even if it’s a potentially life-threatening situation, and even if it’s supposed to be your job.
WASHINGTON – Just days after President Barack Obama came out in support of same sex marriage, several gay rights organizations in the nation’s capital were evacuated after a bomb threat. Four locations were threatened, the Metropolitan Police Department Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit headquarters, the Human Rights Campaign headquarters, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. Police evacuated and searched the buildings before the all-clear was given. A police spokesperson says one of the threats came through the Los Angeles Police Department. [wtop.com/15 May 2012]
During an interview last week, Rep. James Lankford (R-OK) told ThinkProgress that he doesn’t believe that LGBT people should be protected from being fired because of their sexual orientation. But yesterday, Lankford went on Oklahoma local television to say that we misrepresented his comments. According to Lankford, he wasn’t saying employers should be allowed to fire someone for being gay — just that being gay is a choice and LGBT people should not be protected from workplace discrimination. Did you notice the distinction? Neither did we. [thinkprogress/Annie-Rose Strasser and Scott Keyes/15 May 2012]
On the same night the Colorado House of Representatives killed a civil unions bill, CO Rep. Spencer Swalm (R) tweeted a link to an article called “Lost Majority.” The article asks the question “can enough American whites, accustomed to easy numerical dominance by centuries of history, learn to stop squabbling with each other for status in order to come together politically to assert their interests like any other voting bloc?” The link goes to the site VDARE.com which the Southern Poverty Law Center had identified as “white nationalist.” VDARE.com denies charges that it is a “white nationalist” site, but acknowledges that it will happily publish articles by those are. [thinkprogress/Josh Israel/15 May 2012]
The price of same-sex marriage is paid by the children. Our fight for marriage then should focus on the needs of children, not the rights of adults.
RightWingWatch has uncovered a clip of Mitt Romney speaking at an event known as “Liberty Sunday” in 2006 alongside anti-gay hate group leaders like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Don Wildmon of the American Family Association, and James Dobson, formerly of Focus on the Family. In his speech, Romney attacked the Massachusetts Supreme Court for its marriage equality decision, warning that there would be severe consequences for children
…Romney then endorsed a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Video here. [thinkprogress/Zack Ford/15 May 2012]
• [T]he ability to sustain a long-term, two-parent relationship (with any sex) is increasingly a function of class.
The White House has issued a veto threat (PDF) should the House version of the Violence Against Women Act reach the President’s desk. In a statement just released, the administration said that the House version of the bill is unnacceptable. Sponsored Rep. Sandy Adams (R-FL), the House version removes the protections for marginalized communities, stripping out provisions that were passed in the Senate version of the bill. According to the statement from the White House, the House bill “undermine[s] the core principles of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)”…The House version of VAWA would let abusers know that their victims called for help. It would also strip out the Senate’s protections for LGBT people and undocumented immigrants. [thinkprogress/Annie-Rose Strasser/15 May 2012]
Zimmerman may soon be charged with a hate crime by the FBI
…WFTV notes that “if Zimmerman is charged and found guilty of a federal hate crime involving murder, he could face the death penalty.” FBI officials confirm to ABC News that the investigation is ongoing but say the “hammer won’t be dropped” anytime soon. [thinkprogress/Judd Legum/15 May 2012]
Washington (CNN) — The United States says it has taken all the necessary steps on its side to admit Chen Guangcheng, the Chinese human rights activist who ignited a diplomatic frenzy when he escaped house arrest last month. “We are ready when he and his government are ready,” said Victoria Nuland, the U.S. State Department spokeswoman, on Tuesday. “We have been for more than a week now in terms of his visa to come pursue his studies.” China has said that Chen, who is blind, can apply to study abroad. But for the time being, he remains in the Beijing hospital room in which he has been staying since he left the refuge of the U.S. Embassy two weeks ago, awaiting his travel documents. [CNN Wire Staff/16 May 2012]
Updated at 4:57 a.m.: THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic went on trial for genocide on Wednesday, accused of leading the slaughter of 8,000 unarmed Muslim boys and men in Srebrenica in 1995, Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II. The ailing 70-year-old Mladic’s appearance at the U.N. tribunal for the former Yugoslavia marks the end of a long wait for justice to survivors of the 1992-95 war that left some 100,000 people dead. He is accused of 11 charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. [msnbc.com news services/16 May 2012]
Desperate to control the narrative, Romney and the GOP don’t want to talk about the economy, if that means talking about Bain and ‘vulture capitalism’. They don’t want to talk about foreign policy. They got nothing, or at least nothing new. Let’s talk about the economy! They don’t want to put pen to paper on immigration. They got nothing. Let’s talk about the economy. Okay, so let’s talk about the economy. Now they don’t want to talk about it.
“Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things…every one! So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, ‘Liberal,’ as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won’t work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor.” — Matt Santos, The West Wing
Kansas City’s GST Steel had been making steel rods for 105 years when Romney and his partners took control in 1993. They cut corners and extracted profit from the business at every turn, placing it deeply in debt. When the company eventually declared bankruptcy, workers not only lost their jobs but were denied their full pensions and health insurance, and the government was forced to step in and provide a bailout. [BarackObamadotcom/14 May 2012]
• Even with the bankruptcy and subsequent bailout, Mitt Romney and his partners made millions on the GST Steel deal. They played by their own set of rules, and profited even as workers lost their jobs and the local community suffered. It’s this same experience that Mitt Romney now cites as his qualification to be president, and the same economic philosophy he would bring to the entire country.
• Mitt Romney wasn’t trying to build companies for the long term. His plan was to maximize short-term profits, and then resell all or part of the business before the debts came due.
• With Dade Behring, Mitt Romney and his investors took over a healthy company and loaded it with debt. Rather than sell the company, they then had Dade take out even more loans to buy out their shares, driving the company into bankruptcy. Nearly 3,000 workers lost their jobs, while Romney and his partners made more than $250 million in profit. [romneyeconomics]
For nearly 20 years, Mitt Romney and his partners lived by the guiding principle that as long as they walked away with millions, it didn’t matter if companies went bankrupt and Americans lost their jobs. For GST Steel—a Kansas City company that had been in business for 103 years—Romney’s model led to the company’s bankruptcy and to 750 workers losing their jobs.
Now that he’s running for the presidency, Romney is trying to deny that he had anything to do with the consequences of his decisions.
—–
Romney can’t wash his hands of the decisions his firm made while he was CEO. Even while running the Salt Lake City Olympics, he still owned and profited from Bain Capital’s corporate buyouts, including GST Steel. Here are the facts:
Romney was head of Bain Capital when the firm took control of the Kansas City plant in 1993.
Romney “remained CEO and held his financial interest in the company through August 2001,” which includes the period “when the Kansas-based GST Steel plant was shut down and workers laid off” in February of 2001. [Source: Boston Globe]
Romney claims to have severed ties with his firm in 1999, but, as the Washington Post notes, he maintained full sole ownership until 2001.
Romney was listed on multiple Bain filings in 2001 and 2002, still functioning as a general partner in several of the firm’s funds.
Romney continues to get a share of the firm’s profit now, bringing the Romney family millions of dollars each year. As the New York Times notes, “when it came to his considerable personal wealth, Mr. Romney never really left Bain.”
In its effort to sell Mitt Romney as someone who understands the economy and knows how to create jobs, one of his campaign’s early talking points was that he helped create 100,000 jobs during his tenure at Bain Capital. The campaign repeated the claim throughout the primary, despite a glaringlack ofevidenceto support it (even Sarah Palin doubted it).
Romney eventually stopped repeating the talking point, which advisers had difficulty defending under pressure, and now it seems Boston has completely Etch A Sketched the number and severely lowered the number of jobs Romney is supposed to have created at Bain.
…Meanwhile, even the “thousands of jobs” figure should be suspect, as the evidence the campaign offers to support it is an editorial from the right-wing Washington Examiner endorsing Romney. Could the Romney campaign not find a single better piece of evidence — a news article, government data, or economist’s estimate, for instance — than an unsubstantiated opinion article from a paper that is simultaneously declaring that it favors Romney’s election?
And his assertion on his record as governor also fails to include the context that his state was 47th out of 50 on job creation.
Whatever “achievement” a Republican politician brags about, you can be pretty sure there’s more to the story. The Daily Beast has been following Romney’s track record of being brought in to clean up a bribery scandal at the 2002 Winter Olympics, and has found some things that indicate his own ethics leave something to be desired. [susiemadrak/15 May 2012]
• Republicans say they’re eager for the presidential campaign to turn away from “distractions” and focus instead on the economy. Someone should warn them that if they’re not careful, they might get their wish.
• If this is getting “clobbered,” well then, getting “clobbered” is a lot like having a gang of shrieking malicious toddlers flick boogers at your ankles.
A state judge has ruled that the Oklahoma law that severely restricts “the ways in which doctors can treat women with abortion-inducing drugs” is unconstitutional. In his ruling overturning the 2011 law, Judge Donald Worthington wrote that the law violates a woman’s right to privacy and bodily integrity. And Worthington added that the law ignores medical standards, according to RH Reality Check:
Judge Worthington ruled that the bill’s restrictions on medication abortion are unconstitutional because they are “so completely at odds with the standard that governs the practice of medicine that [the bill] can serve no purpose other than to prevent women from obtaining abortions and to punish and discriminate against those women who do.” [...]
The law — which had been temporarily blocked since October — would have banned any off-label use of medications for abortion or treatment of ectopic pregnancy, while explicitly allowing off-label use of the same medication for other purposes. According to the lawsuit, the law not only jeopardizes women’s health by preventing doctors from using safe and effective methods available, but also undermines women’s ability to exercise the full range of their fundamental constitutionally protected reproductive rights.
[thinkprogress/Amanda Peterson Beadle/14 May 2012]
…the law expands the definition of an employer covered under this particular exception
…in case you’d forgotten about the specifics of this abomination amidst all of the right wing lunacy that’s been flying around the country lately, the bill would allow employers to interrogate women about the purpose for which they are using birth control pills. If the fruit of that interrogation revealed the horrible fact that the employee was using birth control pills for—heaven forbid—birth control, she could be fired summarily. For anyone who thinks this is ridiculous and couldn’t actually happen, please go re-read Susie Madrak’s post about it.
After obstructing civil unions and other legislature, McNulty shows considerable gall, blaming others for his obstruction, and considerable ignorance, suggesting voters do not care about expanding civil rights for all Coloradans. The House State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee meets later today — seemingly to kill the civil unions bill. The voters of Colorado meet in November and observers expect they will likely respond by killing his one-seat GOP House majority and ending his reign as Speaker. [thinkprogress/Josh Israel/14 May 2012]
• In a taped appearance on The View, the President explained that supporting “marriage” over civil unions is important because of the federal benefits that depend on the word.
Mitt Romney says he likes being able to fire people. Mitt Romney takes a drive with a terrified family pet strapped to the roof of his car. Mitt Romney assaulted a gay student while in prep school. Mitt Romney tricked a blind teacher, apparently one he “liked,” letting the man walk into a glass door. He is a bully. Mitt Romney is also the presumed presidential nominee for a political party of unapologetic bullies. Ergo, he is a near-perfect leader for the Tea Party GOP. American politics in the age of Obama is beset by deep divides in partisanship, ideology and political values. These debates are about more than policy. They have devolved into disagreements about the very nature of empirical reality, facts and science. We’re having fights over whether global warming is real; whether tax cuts for the rich trickle down to the rest of us; whether Barack Obama is a United States citizen. According to the right-wing media echo chamber, Democrats and progressives are not just wrong on almost every major political and social issue. No, they are treasonous, deserving of death, and want to destroy the country.
[AlterNet/Chauncey DeVega/15 May 2012]
Get out your Purple Heart bandages, because it is once again time to remind the American people that The Troops are a bunch of lazy, cowardly, treasonous, unpatriotic, un-American, Kenyan-Socialist-Communist whiners.
If the election were held today, Obama would win the veteran vote by as much as seven points over Romney, higher than his margin in the general population.
The fuck you say! It is almost like soldiers are expressing anger at the toll of a decade of war, questioning the legitimacy of George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion, and worrying that the surge in Afghanistan won’t make a difference in the long run! [wonkette/Rebecca Schoenkopf/14 May 2012]
The Russian Foreign Ministry on Monday urged international bodies operating in Kosovo to prevent the region from turning into a training ground for Syrian rebels. A delegation from the Syrian opposition visited Kosovo in April to allegedly make a deal on exchanging experience in guerilla warfare against ruling authorities. So far, the fractured Syrian opposition has been unable to form a steady front against the forces of President Bashar al-Assad. The Russian ministry said in a statement that the talks covered not only the ways of organizing armed resistance against authorities but also the training of Syrian militants in Kosovo. “There are plans to use the areas [in Kosovo] that resemble the terrain in Syria. The possibility of setting up training camps at the former bases of the Kosovo Liberation Army [KLA] is also being discussed,” the statement said. “Transforming Kosovo into an international training ground for armed militants may become a serious destabilizing factor that could extend beyond the Balkans,” the document said. “We urge international bodies operating in Kosovo to take all necessary steps to prevent these plans.” [Global Research/RIA Novosti/15 May 2012]
Dubna, Russia – American research into hypersonic weapons, which the U.S. aims to complete by 2015, represents an especially serious threat to Russia, acting Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Friday.
“This breakthrough decision by the U.S. opens up for them the prospect of a transition from a demonstrator prototype to creation of a multirole hypersonic missile by 2015-2018,” Rogozin said during a visit to the Raduga “Bereznyak” state-owned missile design bureau at Dubna in the Moscow Region.
Rogozin, who has responsibility in the Russian government for the military-industrial complex, picked out American development work in the X-51, Falcon, HiFire and HyFly programs as examples of the perspective threat posed by U.S. hypersonic development work.
Moscow – Russian businessman Victor Bout was sentenced back on April, 5th for 25 years in prison. That day his attorney Mr. Dayan set a plan to appeal the verdict. [Voice of Russia/Vasily Sushko/15 May 2012]
On Monday, the U.S. Navy will officially announce the ships for its demonstration of the “Great Green Fleet” — an entire aircraft carrier strike group powered by biofuels and other eco-friendly energy sources. If a powerful congressional panel has its way, it could be the last time the Navy ever uses biofuels to run its ships and jets.
In its report on next year’s Pentagon budget, the House Armed Services Committee banned the Defense Department from making or buying an alternative fuel that costs more than a “traditional fossil fuel.” It’s a standard that may be almost impossible to meet, energy experts believe; there’s almost no way the tiny, experimental biofuel industry can hope to compete on price with the massive, century-old fossil fuels business.
Committee Republicans, like Rep. Randy Forbes, insist this isn’t an attempt to kill off military biofuels before they have a chance to start. “Now, look, I love green energy,” he said in February. “It’s a matter of priorities.”
But if the measure becomes law, it would make it all-but-inconceivable for the Pentagon to buy the renewable fuels. It would likely scuttle one of the top priorities of Navy Secretary Ray Mabus. And it might very well suffocate the gasping biofuel industry, which was looking to the Pentagon to help it survive.
Majid Jamali Fashi, who assassinated Massoud Ali-Mohammadi in January 2011, was brought to justice under the Iranian judicial system on Tuesday. Jamali Fashi was also found guilty of receiving training from Mossad inside Israel as well as $120,000 to assassinate the Iranian scientist. The Mossad assassin had also confessed to having received forged documents in Azerbaijan’s Heydar Aliyev Airport to travel to Tel Aviv. [presstv/15 May 2012]
Businesses have suggested it. The government has all but confirmed it. And according to one alleged member, they both might very well be right. A hacker tied to Anonymous says the loose-knit collective may be the most powerful organization on Earth.
…“You know how we got access?” asks Doyon. “We didn’t hack them. The access was given to us by the people who run the systems. The five-star general (and) the Secretary of Defense who sit in the cushy plush offices at the top of the Pentagon don’t run anything anymore. It’s the pimply-faced kid in the basement who controls the whole game, and Bradley Manning proved that. The fact he had the 250,000 cables that were released effectively cut the power of the US State Department in half. The Afghan war diaries and the Iran war diaries effectively cut the political clout of the US Department of Defense in half. All because of one guy who had enough balls to slip a CD in an envelope and mail it to somebody.”
“There’s a really good argument at this point that we might well be the most powerful organization on Earth. The entire world right now is run by information,” he adds.
I don’t think it’s a laughing matter. I don’t think this is something we should joke about. Ah, we’re talking about individuals who feel very strongly one way or the other, and I think we should be civil, respectful, allowing all sides to have the debate…but I think this is not something to laugh about, to poke fun of other people about.
…Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council which was labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. [thinkprogress/Ian Millhiser/13 May 2012]
• Mitt Romney decided to double down on his opposition to gay marriage during his commencement address at Liberty University this Saturday.
• Last week, another 17-year-old gay boy, Corey Jay Jonestrader, committed suicide in Rochester, Minnesota after experiencing extensive bullying.
• And afterwards, when I’m sitting in Vernon’s office, all I could think about was Larry’s father and Larry having to go home and explain what happened to him. And the humiliation – the fucking humiliation he must have felt. It must have been unreal. I mean, how… how do you apologize for something like that? There’s no way.
• Shades of 2000: Is Florida Going to Purge 180,000 Hispanic Voters?: Anyone who closely followed the 2000 presidential election fiasco in Florida remembers that one of the key reasons that George W. Bush “won” the state was the fact that thousands of black voters were falsely purged from the voter rolls in advance of the election, preventing those Floridians from voting, most of whom would’ve voted for Al Gore. In 2012, Republicans are looking at purging 180,000 Hispanics from the voting rolls. Is history repeating itself? [crooksandliars/Kenneth Quinnell/14 May 2012]
• Yes, Mitt gets worse: Romney’s chuckling non-apology for his prep school bullying shows his entitlement and lack of empathy
• SCRAPPY JOE: what was Old Handsome Joe doing in his Scranton days? Cold punching people in the face if they made fun of his stutter, no warning, no dancing around with his dukes up, just POW RIGHT IN THE KISSER. So it is clearly very terrible that we love Joey Biden even more intensely (as if that were even possible!), having read this column-length pout about the unfairness of it all from Commentary. What else did Joey do besides kicking ass constantly? He kicked ass for others!
• I remember every single cruelty I endured and inflicted: I don’t mean to suggest that Romney is without compassion. I believe, for instance, that he loves his wife and his children, and that he believes in God and the flag. But there is something in his character that I am starting to get frightened about, an unwillingness, or an inability, to feel remorse, to simply own up to a moral failing, to apologize not just if “somebody was hurt” but because you know, deep down, that you hurt someone. Think about it: here are these half dozen men who took part in a savage act nearly fifty years ago. It has haunted all of them. And the ringleader, the guy who made the plan and led the mob and cut the victim’s hair off remembers … nothing? It’s just bullshit, total fucking sociopathic bullshit. [therumpus/Steve Almond/11 May 2012]
• Colin Powell is still trying to cover up his crimes: He lied. There’s no doubt about it. And he’s going to spend the rest of his life trying to airbrush history. But it isn’t going to work. This wasn’t about a personal indiscretion or even a corrupt business deal. He knowingly lied that the country was in danger of being attacked by a foreign nation in order to justify an illegal invasion. That’s a serious as it gets and Colin Powell’s reputation won’t recover. The internet never forgets. [digby/12 May 2012]
• Joe Arpaio Faces a New Sheriff in Town: A few days after the “Toughest Sheriff in America” oversaw his 60th Latino-harassing raid in the Phoenix area, the Obama administration’s top civil-rights lawyer flew to Phoenix and slapped Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his office with a monumental civil-rights tort alleging rampant constitutional abuses, including widespread racial profiling of Latinos. The suit also claims the sheriff violated the civil rights of his critics by “illegal retaliation” that included baseless lawsuits and meritless administrative actions. Now 79, Arpaio claims he’s innocent and dismisses the lawsuit as politicking by the Obama administration in an election year. [The Daily Beast/Terry Greene Sterling/12 May 2012]
• “The response is overwhelming. I sold out in 2 days.” Some of those targets were sold to two Florida gun dealers, according to the seller.
• Umbrella stab victim dies of mercury poisoning: A German man has died after being stabbed in the backside by a stranger wielding a poison umbrella which injected him with mercury, fatally poisoning him. Police have admitted they have been left at a loss by the attack, which took place nearly a year ago, when the 40-year-old man was attacked by the mysterious stranger in Hannover. The case mirrors the murder of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov who was killed with a poisoned umbrella in London in 1978 at the height of the Cold War. [thelocal/11 May 2012]
The FBI’s Framing of Long-Time Chicano Activist Carlos Montes
firedoglake/Kevin Gosztola/15 May 2012
(update below)
Long-time Chicano activist Carlos Montes, who has been active in the antiwar, education and civil rights movements in Los Angeles for decades, goes on trial today for bogus charges that are being brought against him for purchasing a gun. It is a political trial and a continuation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) targeting of antiwar and international solidarity activists.
On May 17, 2011, at 5 am in the morning, the LA County Sheriff and FBI crashed down his door and entered his home. Montes was still asleep. He thought someone was breaking in to kill him, beat him up or rob him. All of these things went through his mind.
Read More »