Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Government Oversight Committee, delivers on his promise to call committee Chairman Darrell Issa's bluff:






So now we know why Government Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa didn't want to to release the full transcripts—they show everything he's been saying is bunk. You can read the transcripts here and here.




http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/18/1217089/-Cummings-releases-full-transcript-of-IRS-screening-manager-interview

"Homosexual Industrial Complex"......




On Monday’s edition of “The Daily Show,” correspondent Samantha Bee investigated the phenomenon of bulling of Christians by LGBT people. According to may Christian activists, the real persecuted minority in the U.S. is the Christian right, who aren’t allowed to indiscriminately gay-bash anymore, which they see as a denial of their right of free speech.

In the clip, Bee spoke to Evangelical Christian pastor Matt Slick, who insisted that bigotry and discrimination against Christians is a huge problem, and that gangs of LGBT people are out finding straight people to attack.






Slick insisted that he wasn’t bigoted because he has a gay best friend whose acquaintance he first made in a jacuzzi. The friend came out to Slick after the two had gone out dancing together.

Gay Christian Todd Clayton told Bee that what the Christian right is currently doing is pitching “a giant temper tantrum” because “they don’t get to be in charge anymore.”



http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/18/daily-shows-samantha-bee-explores-the-rights-giant-temper-tantrum-about-lgbts/

Hopefully, Sen. Flake will also speak to his son about the video that he made in which he pretends to commit suicide. With a real gun. Warning – this video is very upsetting. I’m still sick to my stomach from watching it.






Arizona Senator Jeff Flake has some ‘splainin’ to do. Oh, sure he has apologized for the things his son wrote and said but he hasn’t addressed why his boy would use racist and intolerant terms. Where did he learn them? You know that song from South Pacific, “You’ve Got To Be Taught?” That song is 100% correct – kids are taught to hate and fear. So, Sen. Flake, who drummed those words into your son’s dear little ear when he was very young and impressionable?



Tanner Flake plays an iPhone game called “Fun Run” and you won’t believe what his user ID is: “N1ggerkiller.” As Buzzfeed‘s John Stanton discovered, Tanner has absolutely no filter when it comes to social media, sprinkling words like “nigger,” “Jew” and “faggot” throughout his writings. Of course, he has locked his Twitter feed now, but before he did that, Stanton captured some screen shots and they are ugly. Let’s have a look at some of Tanner’s Tweets (all the following images came from Buzzfeed):


























http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/06/18/your-sons-hate-speech-is-bad-but-pretend-suicide-is-worse-what-kind-of-parent-are-you-senator-flake-video/

WILL THE "CHIRPERS" SUPPORT OR NOT SUPPORT A JEB RUN IN 2016?......



Former Florida governor Jeb Bush is tuning out the "chirpers" in the Republican Party -- the critics on his right who disagree with his push for a comprehensive immigration bill. If Bush decides on a 2016 White House bid, the son and brother of two presidents said in an interview this weekend that it will be a campaign based on his two terms as governor.







Bush taped the CBN interview over the weekend, after he told the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference on Friday that immigrants are more "fertile" and can help boost the U.S. economy. He was talking about the birth rates of foreign-born women, but his awkward phrasing lit up Twitter.



Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, gigged Bush in her remarks Saturday to the same gathering of social and evangelical conservatives. Palin argued that the Senate immigration bill currently being debated has too many incentives, such as a pathway to legal status for 11 million unauthorized immigrants. "I say this as someone's who kinda fertile herself," said Palin, who has five children.





http://www.usatoday.com/story/onpolitics/2013/06/17/jeb-bush-chirpers-immigration-conservatives/2431673/

It has been half a century since President Eisenhower warned the American people about the Military-Industrial Complex. However, it would appear that the American people decided not to heed that warning. Since this time we have seen a rise in arms dealing around the world, lead by the United States, and an ever-growing appetite for conflict lead by neoconservatives and an interventionist mindset held by both major parties. So where do we find ourselves now in regards to military spending in the United States and around the world? The United States has found itself outspending the rest of the world in defense spending by an astronomical amount. The United States spends about 700 billion dollars a year on defense to maintain a global empire. This absurd amount is more than the next 14 countries on the list combined



Military spending is big business in the United States. Since 9/11, the United States has spent 3.3 trillion dollars on private defense contracts alone. The biggest war profiteers are Boeing (23.5 billion), Lockhead Martin (22.5 billion), Raytheon (11.4 billion), General Dynamics (11.3 billion) and United Technologies (6.3 billion). Now like any good business the idea is to maintain profits. However, these businesses main products are weapons and other systems designed to maximize efficiency on the battlefield.



If you read these numbers and shrug it off, more power to you. However, something to think about is the perpetual state of war we have entered. We have left Iraq; have a tentative withdrawal date in Afghanistan, but what about Syria and Iran? War profiteers lobby for armed conflict. Profits are what concern these individuals who make billions off the deaths of Americans and foreigners alike. War is how these CEO’s who lobby for conflict eat.



Americans have become desensitized to war by the media, Hollywood and political elites. We hide behind brainless mantras like “protect this country”, “fight for freedom”, and “support our troops.” We are so disengaged that we don’t care about killer robots reining terror from the skies upon innocent people in far off lands. We remain ignorant to the fact that our “war on terror” can never be won. How can you win a war against an abstract concept? How can you win a war against an idea? This kind of ignorance, this kind of nonchalant attitude towards violence is exactly what keeps us in a perpetual state of war, spending billions of dollars on defense and lining the pockets of corporate warlords.





http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/06/17/700-billion-dollars-a-year-in-defense-spending-wheres-the-outrage/


.

Asked during a live chat on The Guardian's website to respond to U.S. officials who have called him a traitor, Edward Snowden, the self-proclaimed source of recently leaked top secret National Security Agency documents, said he considers it an honor to be called a traitor by the likes of former Vice President Dick Cheney.




http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/snowden-its-honor-to-be-called-traitor-by

The selection of Susan Rice as President Obama's new national security adviser is highly problematic for those of us who believe that United States foreign policy should be more attuned to international law and human rights and that alleged threats to US national security should be based on empirical evidence rather than unsubstantiated allegations by warmongers.Rice's willingness to state demonstrable falsehoods to defend actions by the United States and its allies that violate international norms is very troubling. It is all too telling that the mainstream media was so willing to focus on spurious criticisms from the right regarding her initial responses to the killings in Benghazi while ignoring legitimate criticisms from the left.



One example of Rice's disconnect from reality came up in the lead-up to the war in Iraq ten years ago, as independent arms control analysts, scholars, investigative journalists and antiwar activists were challenging the Bush administration's lies about the supposed "Iraqi threat." In an apparent effort to discredit these efforts by those who opposed the rush to war, Rice rushed to the administration's defense by insisting that, "It's clear that Iraq poses a major threat." This claim came despite the fact that Iraq had disarmed itself of its chemical and biological weapons and eliminated its nuclear program at least eight years earlier. Moreover, despite the success of the UN's disarmament program, Rice asserted that Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction need to be dealt with forcefully, and that's the path we're on."



In February 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell testified before the United Nations that Iraq had reconstituted its biological and chemical weapons arsenal, as well as its nuclear weapons program - and had somehow hidden all this from the hundreds of UN inspectors then in Iraq who were engaged in unfettered inspections. None of this was true, and Powell's transparently false claims were immediately challenged by UN officials, arms control specialists, and much of the press and political leadership in Europe and elsewhere. (See my article written in response to his testimony: "Mr. Powell, You're No Adlai Stevenson.")



Rice, however, was adamant that Powell had "proved that Iraq has these weapons and is hiding them, and I don't think many informed people doubted that." In light of such widespread and public skepticism from knowledgeable sources, Rice's dismissal of all the well-founded criticism was positively Orwellian: those who blindly accepted Powell's transparently false claims were "well informed," while the UN officials, arms control specialists and others knowledgeable of the reality of the situation were presumably otherwise. Her openness to another US war in the Middle East became apparent when she announced in September that "there is no daylight" between the United States and the right-wing Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu - which has been pushing for a unilateral attack on Iran - regarding Iran's nuclear program.


cont'





http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16979-troubling-implications-of-susan-rices-appointment-as-national-security-adviser