Usa Thread

[unit731]

Airbus

 

"BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- A UPS cargo plane has crashed in the vicinity of Airport Road and Eastlake Boulevard near Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport. The crash killed the pilot and co-pilot aboard the plane, according to Birmingham Mayor William Bell."

 

LINK

[Steve]

WTF? I'm all for transwhatever you wanna call them not to be abused in school by bullies and being able to be who they are but just like many thngs, the pendulum swings far in the other direction past reason and logic.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/highschool-prep-rally/california-law-let-transgender-student-athletes-choose-compete-101139096.html

While a student's ability to choose which restroom they use has received the largest amount of attention, two other rights protected in the bill will have a direct impact on California prep sports: the right to choose which locker room a student wants to use and whether they compete in boys or girls sports.

The transgender rights law has received major backing from civil rights organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Center for Lesbians Rights, but has also been attacked by some conservative detractors who fear that the law goes too far in officially sanctioning rights for some students who might receive biological advantages based on which sex they identify with for sporting purposes.

[Steve]

Some may say 1,000 people is not significant in comparison to 300 million but its the symbolism of it. An American passport (citizenship) is regarded as the most valuable passport to have globally. People risk life and limb to get into America for it. Giving it up is a huge symbolic thing.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-law-thats-driving-record-193226792.html

"My decision was less about the actual amount of taxes I had to pay, and more about the system," said one investment banker, who renounced his U.S. citizenship and is now a Hong Kong citizen. "I'm not an ultrawealthy dude. It was the hassle with all the paperwork."

A few months ago, I attended a dinner where I sat between two Americans living abroad who complained that FATCA has made foreign banks less willing to provide American expatriates with checking accounts, credit cards and mortgages. This has been a major point of complaint for organizations representing American expatriates.

FATCA also complicates matters for foreign businesses with American investors (and for Americans who want to invest in foreign businesses) since American ownership makes a business subject to FATCA reporting.

If you intend to move back to the U.S., you're probably not going to renounce your citizenship because it was hard to get a checking account, or even because you had to forego an investment opportunity. But if you're a dual citizen with weak ties to the U.S. and the law is materially interfering with your financial dealings, it might be a reason to go ahead and quit being an American.

[Steve]

The irony of it all...

http://tv.yahoo.com/news/birthers-republican-ted-cruzs-presidential-eligibility-questioned-141636992.html

Some members of the Republican party who have spent years questioning whether President Obama was really born in the U.S. now find one of their own rising stars in a birther controversy: Ted Cruz, the Canadian-born Tea Party darling.

Leading the conservative-leaning Drudge Report this morning is the headline "CNN: IS CRUZ ELIGIBLE?" The insinuation is that just as people on the right have questioned Obama's roots, CNN -- which many conservatives suspect of a left-wing bias -- is going after a rising conservative.

Also read: NBC News' Chuck Todd Blasts Hillary Clinton Miniseries: It's a Total Nightmare (Video)

In other words: They do it, too, so it's okay when we do it.

To be blunt, Cruz's eligibilty to run is much less certain than Obama's. Obama's isn't even a real question. He's proven repeatedly he was born in Hawaii, and anyone who chooses to believe otherwise truly chooses to believe otherwise. Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, to an American mother and Cuban father. That's a potential problem, because the Constitution says presidents must be "natural born citizens."

[Steve]

Very sad about the guy beaten up by the kids. Murky details as two girls fighting was the catalyst. They made four arrests but if there are more and it appears more were involved possibly by all means arrest and prosecute them. Hopefully there were cctv cameras or personal videos that can indentify the assailants. What gets the marches, etc. the other way around is when there are no arrests or the person is exonerated when there is evidence to suggest they shouldn't. Black suspects get shot by white cops fairly often. You don't hear protests for those shootings. Why? They were guilty and often in the act of committing a crime. In this sad matter there were 4 arrests. Cops have ALWAYS been too aggressive in minority communities. It was that way before civil rights and they didn't stop because civil rights laws were enacted. Its ALWAYS been that way, its just a little harder to get away with it in this electronic dominated society. Also the history of lynchings is well known as well. So when a cop or someone white kills someone black and it seems unjustified that's when you see the marches and protests and jacksons/Sharptons (who we all, black, white, etc. can do with out) come out. There was a guy recently, Wisconsin, I think but not sure. Anyway, this older white guy, had some guns stolen out of his house and suspected his black neighbor, a teenager of doing it. (no word as far as I know if it was true). The neighbor's own video surveillance camera caught him confronting the youth while he was emptying his trash, pulled a gun on him, told him to raise his hands and promptly shot the unarmed youth in front of his own mother. Most blacks haven't heard of the case. It never made the black online social media circuit. There were no marches. Why? The guy was arrested, tried and sentenced. If the guy got off THEN you'd see the marches, etc. So, the difference in both cases (Martin and this guy), both unfortunate, both tragic was that in the former, the perceived wrong doer got off and in the latter, the perceived wrong doers got arrested (the 4 kids). I don't want to sound flippant. I hate seeing any kind of crime, especially race based ones either way. Its bad enough beating or killing someone for personal gain but those with a a racial component are worse in my humble opinion. Beating someone is always wrong and if its doing to support your drug habit or money to feed yourself I hate it but you understand it as its been that way in ever society. Doing it based on nothing else but a color or culture is so avoidable. More avoidable than a poor person or a drug addict doing it if that makes any sense.

[Flashermac]

CS - Bill Heinecke gave up his US citizenship years ago and became a Thai citizen. He has lived in Bangkok since he was a teen and made his fortune in Thailand, so he finally decided he no longer wanted to pay US taxes on his money. As to Cruz, people forget that the Dems went after McCain when he was nominated, even though both his parents were US citizens. They claimed McCain was born in the Republic of Panama and thus ineligible. It was finally shown that he was born at the US Navy hospital in the Canal Zone, which was considered US territory at the time and the birthers had to shut up. (Not that I can image the Republicans actually nominating Ted Cruz!)

 

I wonder if golf pros in California can decide which tees to play from.

 

p.s. Steve, what I like best about you is that you don't have a chip on your shoulder. You're not angry, just thoughtful and realistic. I often learn from you. Your parents did a good job raising you. Maybe Auburn did too.

[Flashermac]

Humanity Is Drowning In Washington’s Criminality

 

by Paul Craig Roberts

 

 

Americans will soon be locked into an unaccountable police state unless US Representatives and Senators find the courage to ask questions and to sanction the executive branch officials who break the law, violate the Constitution, withhold information from Congress, and give false information about their crimes against law, the Constitution, the American people and those in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Guantanamo, and elsewhere. Congress needs to use the impeachment power that the Constitution provides and cease being subservient to the lawless executive branch. The US faces no threat that justifies the lawlessness and abuse of police powers that characterize the executive branch in the 21st century.

 

Impeachment is the most important power of Congress. Impeachment is what protects the citizens, the Constitution, and the other branches of government from abuse by the executive branch. If the power to remove abusive executive branch officials is not used, the power ceases to exist. An unused power is like a dead letter law. Its authority disappears. By acquiescing to executive branch lawlessness, Congress has allowed the executive branch to place itself above law and to escape accountability for its violations of law and the Constitution.

 

National Intelligence Director James R. Clapper blatantly lied to Congress and remains in office. Keith B. Alexander, Director of the National Security Agency, has also misled Congress, and he remains in office. Attorney General Holder avoids telling Congress the truth on just about every subject, and he also remains in office. The same can be said for President Obama, one of the great deceivers of our time, who is so adverse to truth that truth seldom finds its way out of his mouth.

 

If an American citizen lies to a federal investigator, even if not under oath, the citizen can be arrested, prosecuted, and sent to prison. Yet, these same federal personnel can lie to Congress and to citizens with impunity. Whatever the American political system is, it has nothing whatsoever to do with accountable government. In Amerika no one is accountable but citizens, who are accountable not only to law but also to unaccountable charges for which no evidence is required.

 

Congress has the power to impeach any presidential appointee as well as the president. In the 1970s Congress was going to impeach President Richard Nixon simply because he lied about when he learned of the Watergate burglary. To avoid impeachment, Nixon resigned. In the 1990s, the House impeached President Bill Clinton for lying about his sexual affair with a White House intern. The Senate failed to convict, no doubt as many had sexual affairs of their own and didn’t want to be held accountable themselves.

 

In the 1970s when I was on the Senate staff, corporate lobbyists would send attractive women to seduce Senators so that the interest groups could blackmail the Senators to do their bidding. Don’t be surprised if the NSA has adopted this corporate practice.

 

The improprieties of Nixon and Clinton were minor, indeed of little consequence, when compared to the crimes of George W. Bush and Obama, their vice presidents, and the bulk of their presidential appointees. Yet, impeachment is “off the table,†as Nancy Pelosi infamously declared. http://www.nytimes.com/cq/2006/11/08/cq_1916.html Why do Californian voters send a person to Congress who refuses to protect them from an unaccountable executive branch? Who does Nancy Pelosi serve? Certainly not the people of California. Most certainly not the US Constitution. Pelosi is in total violation of her oath of office. Will Californians re-elect her yet again? Little wonder America is failing.

 

The question demanding to be asked is: What is the purpose of the domestic surveillance of all Americans? This is surveillance out of all proportion to the alleged terrorist threat. The US Constitution is being ignored and domestic law violated. Why? Does the US government have an undeclared agenda for which the “terrorist threat†is a cover?

 

What is this agenda? Whose agenda is more important than the US Constitution and the accountability of government to law? No citizen is secure unless government is accountable to the Constitution and to law. It is an absurd idea that any American is more threatened by terrorism than by unaccountable government that can execute them, torture them, and throw them in prison for life without due process or any accountability whatsoever. Under Bush/Obama, the US has returned to the unaccountable power of caesars, czars, and autocrats.

 

In the famous play, “A Man For All Seasons,†Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England, asks: So, you would have me to cut down the law in order to chase after devils? And what will we do, with the law cut down, when the devil turns on us?

 

This is the most important legal question ever asked, and it is seldom asked today, not in our law schools, not by our bar associations, and most certainly not by the Justice (sic) Department or US Attorneys.

 

American conservatives regard civil liberties as mere excuses for liberal judges to coddle criminals and terrorists. Never expect a conservative Republican, or more than two or three of them, to defend your civil liberty. Republicans simply do not believe in civil liberty. Democrats cannot conceive that Obama–the first black president in office, a member of an oppressed minority–would not defend civil liberty. This combination of disinterest and denial is why the US has become a police state.

 

Civil liberty has few friends in government, the political parties, law schools, bar associations, or the federal judiciary. Consequently, no citizen is secure. Recently, a housewife researched online for pressure cookers looking for the best deal. Her husband was searching for a backpack. The result was that a fully armed SWAT team appeared at the door demanding to search the premises and to have questions answered. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/08/government-knocking-doors-because-google-searches/67864/

 

I am always amazed when someone says: “I haven’t done anything wrong. I have nothing to fear.†If you have nothing to fear from the government, why did the Founding Fathers put the protections in the Constitution that Bush and Obama have stripped out? Unlike the Founding Fathers who designed our government to protect the citizens, the American sheeple trust the government to their own demise.

 

Glenn Greenwald recently explained how the mass of data that is being accumulated on every American is being mined for any signs of non-terrorist-related criminal behavior. As such warrantless searches are illegal evidence in a criminal trial, the authorities disguise the illegal way in which the evidence is obtained in order to secure conviction based on illegally obtained evidence. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35773.htm

 

In other words, the use of the surveillance justified by the “war on terror†has already spread into prosecutions of ordinary criminals where it has corrupted legal safeguards and the integrity, if any, of the criminal court system, prosecutors and judges.

 

This is just one of the many ways in which you have much to fear, whether you think you are doing anything wrong or not. You can be framed for crimes based on inferences drawn from your Internet activity and jokes with friends on social media. Jurors made paranoid by the “terrorist threat†will convict you.

 

We should be very suspicious of the motive behind the universal spying on US citizens. The authorities are aware that the terrorist threat does not justify the unconstitutional and illegal spying. There have been hardly any real terrorist events in the US, which is why the FBI has to find clueless people around whom to organize an FBI orchestrated plot in order to keep the “terrorist threat†alive in the public’s mind. At last count, there have been 150 “sting operations†in which the FBI recruits people, who are out of touch with reality, to engage in a well-paid FBI designed plot. Once the dupes agree, they are arrested as terrorists and the plot revealed, always with the accompanying statement that the public was never in any danger as the FBI was in control.

 

When 99 percent of all terrorism is organized by the FBI, why do we need NSA spying on every communication of every American and people in the rest of the world?

 

Terrorism seldom comes from outside. The source almost always is the government in power. The Czarist secret police set off bombs in order to blame and arrest labor agitators. The Nazis burned down the Reichstag in order to decimate the communists and assume unaccountable power in the name of “public safety.†An alleged terrorist threat is a way of using fear to block popular objection to the exercise of arbitrary government power.

 

In order to be “safe from terrorists,†the US population, with few objections, has accepted the demise of their civil liberties, such as habeas corpus, which reaches back centuries to Magna Carta as a constraint on government power. How, then, are they safe from their government? Americans today are in the same position as the English prior to the Great Charter of 1215. Americans are no longer protected by law and the Constitution from government tyranny.

 

The reason the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution was to make citizens safe from their government. If citizens allow the government to take away the Constitution, they might be safe from foreign terrorists, but they are no longer safe from their government.

 

Who do you think has more power over you, foreign terrorists or “your†government?

 

Washington defines all resistance to its imperialism and tyranny as “terrorism.†Thus, Americans who defend the environment, who defend wildlife, who defend civil liberties and human rights, who protest Washington’s wars and robbery of the people in behalf of special interests, all become “domestic extremists,†the term Homeland Security has substituted for “terrorist.†Those who are out of step with Washington and the powerful private interests that exploit us, other peoples, and the earth for their profits and power fall into the wrong side of Bush’s black and white division of the world: “you are for us or against us.â€

 

In the United States independent thought is on the verge of being criminalized as are constitutionally guaranteed protests and the freedom of the press. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/10/james-risen-prison-journalism-criminalised The constitutional principle of freedom of speech is being redefined as treason, as aiding an undefined enemy, and as seeking to overthrow the government by casting aspersions on its motives and revealing its secret misdeeds. The power-mad inhabitants of Washington have brought the US so close to Gestapo Germany and Stalinist Russia that it is no longer funny. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult to see the difference.

 

The neoconservatives have declared that Americans are the “exceptional†and “indispensable people.†Yet, the civil liberties of Americans have declined the more “exceptional†and “indispensable†that Americans become. We are now so exceptional and indispensable that we no longer have any rights.

 

And neither does the rest of the world. Neoconservatism has created a new dangerous American nationalism. Neoconservatives have given Washington a monopoly on right and endowed its military aggressions with a morality that supersedes the Geneva Conventions and human rights. Washington, justified by its “exceptionalism,†has the right to attack populations in countries with which Washington is not at war, such as Pakistan and Yemen. Washington is using the cover of its “exceptionalism†to murder people in many countries. http://news.antiwar.com/2013/08/11/us-drones-pound-yemen-but-targets-arent-all-militants/print/ Hitler tried to market the exceptionalism of the German people, but he lacked Washington’s Madison Avenue skills.

 

Washington is always morally right, whatever it does, and those who report its crimes are traitors who, stripped of their coddling by civil liberties, are locked away and abused until they confess to their crimes against the state. Anyone who tells the truth, such as Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden, are branded enemies of the state and are ruthlessly persecuted.

 

How does the “indispensable, exceptional nation†have a diplomatic policy? How can a neoconized State Department be based on anything except coercion? It can’t. That is why Washington produces nothing but war and threats of war.

 

Wherever a person looks, whatever a person hears, it is Washington’s threat–“we are going to bomb you into the stone age†if you don’t do what we want and agree to what we require. We are going to impose “sanctions,†Washington’s euphemism for embargoes, and starve your women and children to death, permit no medical supplies, ban you from the international payments system unless you relent and consent to being Washington’s puppet, and ban you from posting your news broadcasts on the Internet.

 

This is the face that Washington presents to the world: the hard, mean face of a tyrant.

 

Washington’s power will survive a bit longer, because there are still politicians in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America and in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the NGOs in Russia, who are paid off by the almighty dollar. In exchange for Washington’s money, they endorse Washington’s immorality and murderous destruction of law and life.

 

But the dollar is being destroyed by Quantitative Easing, and the domestic US economy is being destroyed by jobs offshoring. http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/TAA0731131.html

 

Rome was powerful until the Germans ceased to believe it. Then the rotten edifice collapsed. Washington faces sooner or later the same fate. An inhumane, illegal, unconstitutional regime based on violence alone, devoid of all morality and all human compassion, is not acceptable to China, Russia, India, Iran, and Brazil, or to readers of this column.

 

The evil that is Washington cannot last forever. The criminals might destroy the world in nuclear war, but the lawlessness and lack of humanity in Washington, which murders more people as I write, is no longer acceptable to the rest of the world, not even to its European puppet states, despite the leaders being on Washington’s payroll.

 

Gorbachev is correct. The collapse of the Soviet Union was a debacle for the entire world. It transformed the US from the “city upon the hill,†the “beacon for humanity,†into an aggressive militarist state. Consequently, Amerika has become despised by everyone who has a moral conscience and a sense of justice.

 

 

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/08/13/humanity-is-drowning-in-washingtons-criminality-paul-craig-roberts/

[cavanami]

This is a shame...I was expecting better then this from him

He'd seemed like he really wanted to try and make a difference...at least in the beginning...

Ex-U.S. congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. sentenced to 30 months in prison

 

http://news.yahoo.com/ex-congressman-jesse-jackson-jr-sentenced-30-months-171700380.html

 

Former Illinois congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., once one of the most promising black politicians in the United States, was sentenced on Wednesday to 2-1/2 years in prison for misuse of campaign funds.

Jackson, a former Democratic representative and the son of civil rights leader the Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr., apologized before U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced him on Wednesday.

Jackson, 48, had pleaded guilty in February to misusing about $750,000 in campaign funds on luxuries such as fur capes, celebrity memorabilia, mounted elk heads and a Rolex watch...

[Flashermac]

WTF? I'm all for transwhatever you wanna call them not to be abused in school by bullies and being able to be who they are but just like many thngs, the pendulum swings far in the other direction past reason and logic.

http://sports.yahoo....-101139096.html

 

While a student's ability to choose which restroom they use has received the largest amount of attention, two other rights protected in the bill will have a direct impact on California prep sports: the right to choose which locker room a student wants to use and whether they compete in boys or girls sports.

 

The transgender rights law has received major backing from civil rights organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Center for Lesbians Rights, but has also been attacked by some conservative detractors who fear that the law goes too far in officially sanctioning rights for some students who might receive biological advantages based on which sex they identify with for sporting purposes.

 

 

 

D.C. Mayor axes gospel singer from MLK memorial concert because he is an ‘ex-gay’

 

 

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 13, 2013 (LifeSiteNews) – D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray admitted Monday that he made the final decision to remove gospel singer Donnie McClurkin from the lineup of performers at a city-sponsored concert held Saturday at the Martin Luther King memorial in response to complaints by gay activists.

 

McClurkin was to have been a headline performer at the event , called “Reflections on Peace: Ghandi to King,†which marked the beginning of a planned series of events to commemorate King’s life during the run-up to the 50th anniversary of the civil rights leader’s “I Have a Dream†speech.

 

But on Friday, several homosexual activists contacted the mayor’s office to complain about McClurkin’s inclusion in the show because the gospel singer is a vocal ex-gay who believes homosexuality is a “curse†which can be overcome through prayer and determination. They threatened to protest the event if he was allowed to perform. Soon after, it was announced that McClurkin would no longer be part of the program.

 

...

 

McClurkin said the decision was made to placate a group of 15-20 homosexual activists. “Fifteen or twenty people,†the gospel singer said, shaking his head, “compared to thousands upon thousands who were coming out to worship Jesus.â€

 

McClurkin said that church pastors throughout the city offered to take responsibility for the event if he was allowed to sing, but the mayor refused.

 

Said McClurkin, “This is bullying. It’s intolerance. And it is depriving someone of their civil rights when they are told that they cannot come to an event, [because] by coming it would cause a disruption.â€

 

This is not the first time former homosexuals have been subjected to campaigns of intimidation by gay activists in the nation’s capital.

 

The kickoff event for the first-ever “Ex-Gay Pride Month,†scheduled to be held at Family Research Council headquarters in D.C., was postponed last month after threats of protests and violence by gay activists.

 

And in 2007, at a county fair in the nearby suburb of Arlington, angry homosexual activists harassed and assaulted a group of ex-gays and members of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) at their fair booth.

 

...

 

 

http://www.lifesiten...he-is-an-ex-gay

[Steve]

Interesting thing about Jesse Jackson jr was that ideologically he was not far left. He is a centrist. He grew up in private schools and rumor was he went to a HBUC (historically black university/college) because his father forced him to. He grew up in white private schools. He was also pretty much the only black of note who supported Obama from the beginning. As I've said before Obama was always an outsider to the black political elite. certainly in Chicago the black politicians did not like him and considered him an outsider and not 'one of them'. His Hawaiian background, Harvard background, etc. He was painted as a person who could not understand the underclass because he never came from them..but I digress. Jr's father supported the Clinton's full tilt and father and son were at odds over it. The younger black pols are actually centrists, especially the children of former civil rights leaders and pols from those days. Ford from Tennessee is another. Son of a former Liberal civil rights era politician but very centrist, even right of center. Jackson and his wife have their self to balme. As for the mayor of DC I'm surprised. I don't think it would have been a big deal to his constituency. Some gays paint the black community as homophobic and its true in sentiment but not in action. Gays are tolerated in the black community. Numerous churches have gay choir directors, its almost a cliché in black Baptist churches. Same with gay hairdressers. That's a cliché as well as its so common. Also, its rare that a gay son is kicked out of the family. They are tolerated. Numerous cases of white families kicking out the gay son, rare in black families. They don't like it but the son is not ostracized. Not saying that gays are not made fun of, socially ostracized to a large extent but not beaten or run of the neighborhood in most cases. I've yet to meet a black family, mine included, that doesn't have an uncle or cousin or even a sibling that everyone knows is gay but its not talked about or discussed. I had an uncle who I was sure is gay. He was effeminiate and I recall it was an unsaid but 'rule' not to be alone with him...haha...you just 'knew' not to, hard to explain.