Category: Uncategorized

 
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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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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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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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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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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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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Burr has the day off. These thoughts, published just after the last national election, are a reminder of what we must do.

Continue reading “What We Must Do in 3 Weeks and 2 Days”

• This week’s note in Trumpian Alternative Facts comes from Senator Elizabeth Warren – really! The Trump admin lie she bumps into is minor, petty. And that’s what makes it worth considering: the petty pointlessness of it. Seems to come so naturally to these people, falsehood has become a default position.
   
• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post goes after Mr. Trump’s self-description as a self-made individual. He begins with New York Times research revealing the Trump financial history of failure and fraud. It is a story that is largely under-reported by other mainstream outlets.
   
• Master ranter Max’s Dad goes to a Trump rally, gives a blow-by-blow along with his own reactions. The adventure is worth the click-n-read.
   
• Tommy Christopher reports as a Senator who is an actual war hero blasts my President for saying Devin Nunes deserves the Medal of Honor. The Medal of Honor is our nation’s highest and most prestigious personal military decoration.
   
• M. Bouffant at Web of Evil points out the irony in a democratic republic of a major decision made anti-democratically.
   
• The Onion is entertained as Kanye West jumps on massage table to deliver speech about relaxation.
   
• Jonathan Bernstein looks at what have to be considered campaign activities and tells us who, among Democrats, is now running for President: everybody.
   
• Let’s see. For decades in Waller County, Texas, officials have illegally tried to prevent students, mostly black students, from voting. At the Waller County courthouse, a campaign staffer drops off a letter supporting voting rights for those students. Frances Langum covers his sudden arrest as a couple of police officers discover that he is a Democrat. No charges. “Investigative detention.”
   
  I was just a kid way back when this was routine in the South. Saw it on my parents’ black and white TV.
   
• Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson gets mad. After protests by parents and children, use of the n-word in the script prompts a high school to cancel a play based on To Kill a Mockingbird. We all should get mad about that. Harper Lee’s novel was largely based on the false conviction of an innocent man because of racism. Use of racial epithets would seem obvious for a play against racism to be faithful to the novel.
   
• At MadMikesAmerica, Glenn Geist compiles a list of how conservatives are giving ordinary words increasingly weird definitions.
   
• tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors brings us the story of a guy who saves a gosling. Gosling grows into a goose who then adopts the guy, then passes him down to the next generation. Neat video of the guy in his boat walking the goose.
   

 
From Iron Knee at Political Irony:

Yesterday, the Dow Jones average dropped 832 points. This has Wall Street rattled, and further drops are expected. On top of that, stock in Ford Motor Co. is down 29% and the company has announced that they are laying off 12% of its workforce. Interestingly, the company is blaming Donald Trump’s tariffs.

So, how will the election go if the economy goes south. Despite the fact that Trump has done little to improve the economy, he has been repeatedly taking credit for the (formerly) high stock market and low unemployment. Will he still feel the same way, or will he find a way to blame an economic slump on Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or even kneeling football players?

But that isn’t the worst news for Trump.

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