ICE Agent Terrified At Separation From Team During Immigrant Raid

found online by Raymond

 
From The Onion:

“Where did everyone go? Guys, I’m really scared right now. Anyone? Bobby? Bobby, where are you?” said the frightened Borland, 41, who reportedly dashed through an apartment complex in a frantic effort to find his teammates and broke down in tears when he was unable to locate anyone he recognized. “Where did everyone go? Don’t leave me alone here, I’m so scared. These guys are like my family—what if I never see them again? Anyone? Please, someone, help me!”

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Devin Nunes’ Hometown Paper Slams ‘Laughable’ Idea He Deserves Medal

found online by Raymond

 
From Tommy Christopher:

The same paper that endorsed Nunes for 16 years is now savaging him for protecting Trump.

Rep. Devin Nunes’ (R-CA) hometown paper came down on him like a ton of bricks after Trump suggested giving Nunes a “very important medal” for his campaign to undermine the Russia investigation.

During an interview with “Fox & Friends” last week, Trump said that “Devin Nunes should get the Medal of Honor. What he’s gone through, and his bravery, he should get a very important medal.”

He then suggested a Medal of Freedom, since Nunes is a civilian.

The “Medal of Honor” comment drew condemnation from Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), a U.S. Army veteran who lost both her legs while serving in the Iraq War, and who eviscerated Trump for “insult(ing) real Medal of Honor recipients.”

Trump’s “Medal of Freedom” suggestion didn’t go over any better with his hometown paper’s editorial board. The Fresno Bee published a scathing editorial slamming the “laughable” idea.

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Evangelicals and the Virtue of Sluttiness

found online by Raymond

 
From Gregory B. Gonzalez at MadMikesAmerica:

Last week, a friend forwarded me an article about why so many Evangelical women supported Brett Kavanaugh, new appointee to the Supreme Court and alleged sexual predator. In it, the author explained that it has to do with Evangelical purity culture and how women are browbeaten into submerging their sexuality and making them feel responsible for any sexual assaults that happen to them.

To say it enraged me is putting it lightly. I loathe religion in general, but I loathe Evangelicals in particular. They’re hypocritical, pious, and judgmental. They’re everything antithetical to what a christian should be.

Young female Evangelicals are taught to dress ‘modestly’, made to feel ashamed for their sexuality, and are blamed for any sexual assaults done to them, as if Evangelical men bear no responsibility whatsoever. If an assault occurs, it’s usually because men were ‘tempted’ or that a woman doesn’t submit to her husband.

Well, you know what I have to say to that?

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Video Shows City Commissioner Shooting Alleged Shoplifter

found online by Raymond

 
From the Tampa Bay Times:

LAKELAND — For more than a week, details in the case of a Lakeland city commissioner who fatally shot an alleged shoplifter came mainly from police accounts.

Then, on Monday, Lakeland police released surveillance video that gives the public an up-close view of the shooting. It’s a crucial piece of evidence that investigators are using to decide whether City Commissioner Michael Dunn, 47, should face charges in the Oct. 3 killing of Christobal Lopez, 50.

Two attorneys who reviewed the video at the request of the Tampa Bay Times said it seems to contradict the idea that Dunn was in fear for his life when he fired.

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The Government Murder Of Khashoggi Is Not An Aberration

found online by Raymond

 
From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:

The world was shocked last week by the murder of a Washington Post journalist by the Saudi Arabian government — in the most obvious way (in their own embassy). But they shouldn’t have been shocked. While the murder may have been the most obvious one by a government, it is far from the only one.

Journalists across the world are being attacked (and many murdered), and those attacks are growing in number. Even in the United States (supposed bastion of democracy), journalists are being threatened with death — because Donald Trump has labeled them an “enemy of the people”. I have to believe Trump’s attack on journalists have encouraged less democratic governments to go after journalists they don’t like.

This is a horrible trend, because democracy cannot exist in any country without a free and unfettered press. When journalists are threatened, attacked, imprisoned, and killed, it is nothing less than an attack on democracy itself.

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Indicted Republican Duncan Hunter Runs A Racist ‘Willie Horton’ Ad

found online by Raymond

 
From Frances Langum:

And now, perhaps in the hopes that Republican voters have forgotten all about his impending TRIAL on December 3, Duncan Hunter is going full racist on his opponent. NPR:

As the race grows tighter, Hunter is attacking his Democratic challenger for his Palestinian heritage. A controversial television ad accuses Ammar Campa-Najjar of trying to “infiltrate” Congress. It says that Campa-Najjar changed his name to hide his family’s connection to terrorism.

“He changed his name from Ammar Yasser Najjar to Ammar Campa-Najjar,” said Hunter, “so he sounds Hispanic. … That is how hard, by the way, that the radical Muslims are trying to infiltrate the U.S. government.”

Actually, Ammar Campa-Najjar is Christian. And Campa is his Hispanic mother’s family name.

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A Plumber on the Supreme Court

found online by Raymond

 
From PERRspectives:

By “Plumber,” I’m not referring to Mario or even Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher. Instead, think of Charles Colson, G. Gordon Liddy, Howard Hunt, and the other henchmen who ran a political dirty tricks operation out of the basement of the Nixon White House. For the architects and felons behind the Watergate break-in and the ransacking of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, the ends justified the means. As Colson famously put it, “I’d walk over my own grandmother to re-elect Richard Nixon.”

Simply put, Judge Kavanaugh owes his career on the federal bench to his many years of faithful service as a partisan Republican hatchet man.

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Jared Kushner Made Millions But Paid No Tax For Years

found online by Raymond

 
From Mock Paper Scissors:

Over the past decade, Jared Kushner’s family company has spent billions of dollars buying real estate. His personal stock investments have soared. His net worth has quintupled to almost $324 million.

And yet, for several years running, Mr. Kushner — President Trump’s son-in-law and a senior White House adviser — appears to have paid almost no federal income taxes, according to confidential financial documents reviewed by The New York Times.

His low tax bills are the result of a common tax-minimizing maneuver that, year after year, generated millions of dollars in losses for Mr. Kushner, according to the documents. But the losses were only on paper — Mr. Kushner and his company did not appear to actually lose any money.

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Crock the Vote

found online by Raymond

 
From nojo at Stinque:

The pretense of government legitimacy in America rests, ultimately, on our right to vote — that as citizens of our republic, we collectively determine who governs us. An election lost can be deeply disheartening — our first presidential ballot was cast in 1980 — but if the loss is fair and square, so be it. Don’t blame us, we voted for the lesser scoundrel.

In many ways, the efficacy of voting, its guarantee of the consent of the governed, is an illusion: A President can achieve office while losing the popular vote. Half the American population is represented by only eighteen senators. House districts can be gerrymandered beyond recognition. The pretense of legitimacy is maintained — people voted! — but the results are engineered to thwart the popular will.

And even voting isn’t left to chance.

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