ACLU Defends the NRA Against Democrats

Don't Knee-Jerk
Sure the ACLU is screwed up at times, but always think for yourself.  So-called "small government" Conservatives have been defending unconstitutional Police State spying and tactics.  Meanwhile I have documented in this Blog how the ACLU has filed endless lawsuits to defend our Bill of Rights.
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Don't knee-jerk.  Judge each story on its own.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) defended the National Rifle Association (NRA) by opposing the New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s attempts to put the gun advocacy group out of business.

The ACLU submitted an amicus brief in federal court on Saturday, weighing in on the on-going battle between the Democrat and the NRA.

The NRA filed a lawsuit against Cuomo and the state’s financial regulatory bureau in July, contending that the agency instituted a “blacklisting campaign” by threatening insurers and financial institutions that associate with the organization. The bureau warned that by counting to work with the NRA, banks and insurance companies could face regulatory action.

The NRA has subsequently been deprived of basic insurance and may be “unable to exist as a not-for-profit or pursue its advocacy mission.”

While the ACLU has disagreed with the NRA on the meaning of the Second Amendment, the friend-of-the-court brief supported the NRA on behalf of the First.

“Those allegations [made by the NRA] represent a blatant violation of the First Amendment,” the ACLU states. “Although public officials are free to express their opinions and may condemn viewpoints or groups they view as inimical to public welfare, they cannot abuse their regulatory authority to retaliate against disfavored advocacy organizations and to impose burdens on those organizations’ ability to conduct lawful business.”

Cuomo has been a voracious critic of the NRA and has admitted to “proudly” trying to strong arm the group out of existence.

“When an organization that is normally on the opposite side from you, joins you in a huge fight against a devout enemy, you know the gun-hating, gun-banning, bullying, anti-Second Amendment, enemies of Freedom are way out of control,” Marion Hammer responded on behalf of the NRA.

Read More . . . .

See More
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ACLU Defends Milo’s First Amendment Rights

Pakistan air force to shoot down US drones

Call Me A "Crazy" Blogger

• Call me a crazy Constitutionalist blogger, which I am, but I don't recall Congress voting to bomb inside Pakistan.
• To me this is just more of that "eternal war" crap from the Military-Industrial Complex that wants to bomb just about everyone till the end of time.
• Frankly who cares which faction of third world tribal primitives controls some remote Pakistani village out in the middle of Who-Gives-A-Fuck-Stan.

(Times of India)  -  Pakistan Air Force (PAF) chief Sohail Aman said here on Thursday that he has ordered his force to shoot down any drones, including those of the US, if they violate the country's airspace.



The announcement was made public about two weeks after a US drone strike targeted a militant compound in Pakistan's tribal region near the Afghan border, killing three militants.



Pakistan had always condemned drone strikes on its soil but had never said they would shoot down the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). "We will not allow anyone to violate our airspace. I have ordered PAF to shoot down drones, including those of the US, if they enter our airspace, violating the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity," Air Chief Marshal Sohail Aman told an audience in Islamabad.



If he meant that US missile strikes on militant positions were a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty, then these violations have been occurring since 2004. The CIA was responsible for all US drone strikes in Pakistan until November 30, 2017.



After every drone strike, the Pakistan foreign office issues a condemnatory statement claiming that it will not allow such strikes on its territory.



Hundreds of civilians, according to media reports, including women and children, as well as many senior members of terrorist groups have perished in these attacks. The status of many more people remains unknown.

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VIDEO - Syrian soldiers embrace after breaking 3-year ISIS siege

Blast From The Past Cartoon
The CIA armed Syrian Islamists in an unconstitutional war. Now we see the Syrian Army liberating their nation from CIA backed "rebels" armed directly by us or through Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Syrian Arab Army soldiers joyously embraced their brothers in arms in the Deir ez-Zor area on Tuesday after the three-year Islamic State siege of the city was breached by government forces on the ground with Russia’s air support.

GOP tries to cut wages for Americans and H-2B workers

GOP Gives The Finger to America

• The open borders Republicans are always looking for new ways to drive down wages for their Masters on Wall Street.

(Breitbart)  -  The latest 1,305-page draft House appropriations bill for 2018 uses a bureaucratic trick on page 732 to help employers cut wages for foreign H-2B seasonal workers — and indirectly, also cut wages for American workers.

“Republicans in Congress still haven’t got the message that voters sent last November,” said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations for NumbersUSA. She continued:

Americans elected President Trump because they are tired of the elites in Washington being more concerned with big-business profits than with regular American workers being able to make a living wage.  Wages [for Americans] in the top H-2B occupations [landscaping and hospitality] have been stagnant or declining for years, and this bill will make them worse.

Under current rules, employers can only apply for H-2B seasonal workers if they cannot hire Americans for the jobs, and they must promise to pay H-2B workers American-level wages when they ask the Department of Labor for H-2B visas.

The new language would help employers minimize wages for H-2B workers by allowing them to cite the results of skewed “private wage surveys” of local wages. The results of the surveys would be cited in the H-2B request instead of the actual “prevailing wage” rates for local Americans working the free market for labor.

This rule, if adopted, would also hit Americans because employers use their resident population of roughly 125,000 H-2B workers to deflate any bidding war for American seasonal workers. The rule would also hurt Americans because wages for each company’s full-time American staff are informally tied to the wages paid to the seasonal workers.

The process feeds back on itself because lower-H-2B wages reduce market-rate wages for Americans, so cutting the real “prevailing wage,” Jenks said. Also, when companies use H-2B workers to hold down prevailing wages, fewer Americans apply for the jobs — so helping companies claim they can’t find Americans to do the work. “Employers have been using H-2B workers to lower wages industry-wide for years — this lets them do it faster.”

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And the Afghan War goes on and on

“I’m proud, I’m relieved. I’m proud of the fact that President Trump made a national security decision, not a political decision.

Lindsey Graham

By Gary;

Warmongers Lindsey Graham and John McCain praised President Trump for keeping us fighting in the Hellhole of Afghanistan.

That fact alone tells you staying there is the wrong decision.

In a previous article I said we would stay to a limited degree only because no administration wants a "Fall of Saigon" moment broadcast on live TV. But at some point the war has to end.

The Generals and their neo-con Chicken Hawks are thumping their chests, "We go kill now. Make big victory."

Sorry. I lived through the Military-Industrial Complex lies of the Vietnam War only to see the BS and lies continue in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya.

Even with 1,000,000 plus Allied troops in Vietnam there was no victory or any hope of victory.

So how are a few thousand American troops planning to control a country as big as Texas?  They aren't.  The increased troops, bombing etc will all be for show. Guerrilla forces are very hard to defeat. They just fade away to resurface later.

So How about a Peace Treaty? 

Call me a "Crazy Blogger", which I am, but I hear peace treaties have been signed for thousands of years. Wars have been ended and killing stopped. The Taliban does not appear to want to give up so why not make peace?

Good old Wikipedia says perhaps the first Peace Treaty goes back to 1274 BC.

Since the "nation" of Afghanistan hardly exists then it could be partitioned between the assorted tribal factions.  The fall of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia saw many new nations spring from their old borders.

I have no desire to see more Americans die to preserve the "Territorial Integrity" of Afghanistan.

If the Taliban are willing then end this insanity.

So here at my laptop I raise my gin and tonic in a toast to peace.

A toast to peace

American Terrorism
When in doubt shoot the lawful soldiers representing 
your king in the back from behind trees.
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k
Guerrilla Warfare
It fascinates me to watch the endless parade of nearly useless U.S. generals. In war after war these "leaders" never grasp the sheer military power of people's revolutions, insurgencies and guerrilla warfare.
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Since it is their profession one would think that the generals might vaguely be aware of the American Revolution, the Mexican war against France, the Algerian war or Vietnam but noooo . . . We just keep repeating the mistakes of the past.  The only "winners" of these wars are the coffin makers and arms manufacturers.

ACLU Defends Milo’s First Amendment Rights

While the GOP hides the ACLU acts

---- When UC Berkeley was being burned down by Leftist Terrorism to prevent Milo from speaking the "Conservative" Republican Party was hiding under their desks.

(Daily Caller)  -  The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Wednesday to defend Milo Yiannopoulos’ freedom of speech.

The ACLU published two articles explaining its decision to fight on behalf of the conservative firebrand against the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s restrictions on controversial advertising. Ads for Yiannopoulos’ new book, “Dangerous,” were initially posted in Metro stations and subway cars, but were later removed due over complaints from outraged riders.

The city-funded transit service claims that Yiannopoulos’ ads violated the policies it relied on to reject ads from three other organizations, including the ACLU.

In addition to defending itself and Yiannopoulos’ corporate entity Milo Worldwide LLC, the ACLU named two additional plaintiffs — Carafem, a healthcare network that specializes in getting women access to birth control and abortion medication; and the animal rights organization PETA.

All four organizations have little in common, but ACLU states that their differences “powerfully illustrate the indivisibility of the First Amendment.”

“Our free speech rights rise and fall together – whether left, right, pro-choice, anti-choice, vegan, carnivore, or none of the above,” the ACLU wrote.

“Here at the ACLU, we vehemently disagree with Mr. Yiannopoulos’ views. We work hard, every day, with the very communities he targets, to fight for equal rights and dignity for all,” wrote ACLU director James Esseks in a letter explaining the decision. “We recognize that his words cause grievous pain to many individuals, their families, and their loved ones. Speech like his hurts.”

“Yet even though we know how wrong-headed Mr. Yiannopoulos’ speech is, the ACLU today filed a lawsuit to defend his free speech rights,” he continued. “We did not take this decision lightly. We understand the pain caused by Mr. Yiannopoulos’ views. We also understand the importance of the principles we seek to defend.”

In other words, the ACLU does not agree with anything Yiannopoulos says, but will defend to the death his right to say it. Its decision is comparable to the defense of a variety of unpopular entities, including the Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazis, and the Nation of Islam.

Read More . . . .

Don't Knee-Jerk
Sure the ACLU is screwed up at times, but always think for yourself.  So-called "small government" Conservatives have been defending unconstitutional Police State spying and tactics.  Meanwhile I have documented in this Blog how the ACLU has filed endless lawsuits to defend our Bill of Rights.
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Don't knee-jerk.  Judge each story on its own.

Trump considers leaving Afghanistan

I suspect the war will go on and on

• This 3rd world shit hole is not worth one American life.  But politically no U.S. President wants another Fall of Saigon event broadcast live 24-7 on TV.
• So we will keep feeding just enough men and money into the Afghan meat grinder to keep it afloat through the next election.

(Daily Sheeple)  -  Amid consistent signaling that the administration will deploy several thousand additional soldiers to the Afghan war zone, inability to agree on a strategy has brought about discussion of a troop withdrawal, an option long thought to be beyond the pale for Washington policymakers.

“It’s a macro question as to whether the U.S., this administration, and this president are committed to staying,” an anonymous senior administration official told the Wall Street Journal. “It doesn’t work unless we are there for a long time, and if we don’t have the appetite to be there a long time, we should just leave. It’s an unanswered question.”

The exploration of the option reflects a divide within the White House, with the president and some top advisers hesitant to deploy new troops without a clear path forward.

During a visit to the Pentagon earlier this month, Trump appeared to back off his commitment to send more soldiers, answering “We’ll see” after being asked about the deployment.

While authorities have already been delegated to Defense Secretary James Mattis to send up to 3,900 troops to Afghanistan, these recent developments have sent mixed signals about how the administration wants to proceed.

Another option, reportedly favored by chief strategist Steve Bannon, includes the use of private mercenaries to replace U.S. troops in Afghanistan. There are currently some 29,000 private contractors operating in the country, with about 10 percent filling security roles.

Erik Prince, brother of Secretary of Education Betsy Devos and founder of Blackwater Worldwide—the infamous military contractor at the heart of a grisly 2004 ambush in Fallujah, Iraq—has already advised the administration on this plan.

In May, Prince laid out his views in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, describing the Afghan war, the longest-running conflict in American history, as “an expensive disaster for America,” and advocating “an East India Company approach” that would employ private fighters to bolster a smaller U.S. Special Forces presence in the country. The administration’s fondness of this approach is unclear, however, as Defense Secretary Mattis refused to include the plan among the options currently under review.

President Obama in 2009 oversaw an Afghan surge that put U.S. troop levels at their peak at around 100,000, but still failed to achieve anything close to victory. Given that prior policy failure, isn’t clear what another 4,000—or even 10,000—new soldiers could do to fix the deteriorating situation in the country.

According to a report issued by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the Afghan government controls less than 60 percent of the country, while the Taliban holds a large, growing, swath of territory.

After 16 years of failure, it is time for the United States to simply pack up and leave. It appears a window of opportunity has opened to extricate ourselves from the conflict, the administration would be well-advised to take it.

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Google: "Flood America with cheap labor"

Welcome to Eternal Poverty

• The bought and paid for open borders GOP and open borders Democrats have their lips fully planted in the billionaire asses of the Wall Street Oligarchs looking to drive down wages.

(ZD Net)  -  President Trump can count on vocal opposition from Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt if he makes the H-1B visa system any worse than it already is.

Speaking at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab yesterday, the executive chairman of Google parent Alphabet said his decades-long campaign against H-1B restrictions had been "trumped" by President Trump's travel ban on seven majority Muslim nations earlier this year.

"I spent the last 20 years announcing that the single stupidest policy in the entire American political system was the limit on H-1B visas," Schmidt said.

"I have recently been trumped by an America where you take the highly legal and highly technical people of seven countries ... and you keep them trapped at JFK so our lawyers can spring them out."

Similarly, tech firms generally oppose further restrictions on the H-1B visa system, which offers a fast-lane for high-skilled tech workers but is capped at 65,000 new applications per year under visas that expire after three years.

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GOP to oppose Trump border wall?

One Giant GOP Screw Job

• Repealing Obamacare went down in flames. Now the open borders Republican Party is looking for ways to delay or gut the Trump border wall.

(New York Post)  -  President Donald Trump’s call for $1.5 billion this year to help build a wall along the border with Mexico could be in jeopardy as fellow Republicans in Congress weigh delaying a decision on the request.

Republican Senator Roy Blunt, a member of his party’s leadership, told reporters on Tuesday that money for the wall likely would not be coupled with a spending bill that must pass by April 28 to avoid shutting down federal agencies whose funding expires then.

Blunt said the must-do funding “comes together better” without Trump’s additional request for the border wall and military programs and could be considered “at a later time.”

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The GOP Imports Cheap Labor
Does not give a Damn about American citizens
kk
Southern California Edison did the exact same thing that Disney did.  The following is an excerpt from a Fox News report…

Anonymous workers who were displaced by the visa holders also submitted written testimonials to lawmakers detailing their firings. Several claimed they were forced to train their replacements, and threatened with losing their severance if they did not.

“We had no choice in this,” one anonymous worker who claimed to have been one of those let go from Southern California Edison, said in a letter. The worker described how when the two vendors were picked – Infosys and TCS, both major Indian companies – SCE employees were told to “sit with, video chat or do whatever was needed to teach them our systems.”

If they did not cooperate, according to the testimonial, “we would be fired and not receive a severance package.”

kk
See our article:
‘You're Fired – Now Train Your Much Cheaper Foreign Replacement’

Afghan Soldier "Mistakenly" Shoots Three Americans

Afghanistan

The Gift That Just Keeps Giving

(The Guardian)  -  An Afghan soldier opened fire on Sunday inside a base in the southern Helmand province, wounding three US soldiers before being shot dead, an Afghan official said.

Colonel Mohammad Rasoul Zazai, an army spokesman, said the soldier had made a “mistake” and had not fired deliberately. A coalition-run Twitter account said an Afghan soldier shot and wounded three American soldiers, without providing further details.

Afghanistan civilian deaths may have been caused by US airstrike

Several US troops have been killed in Afghanistan in recent years in so-called insider attacks carried out by Afghan police or soldiers. In October, an Afghan man in a military uniform shot dead a US soldier and an American civilian contractor inside a military base in Kabul before being killed.

Most foreign combat troops withdrew from Afghanistan at the end of 2014, 13 years after they ousted the Taliban from power, but about 13,000 Nato-led soldiers remain to help advise and train Afghan forces fighting a revived Taliban insurgency.

Last May two Romanian soldiers were killed and a third wounded after two members of a local Afghan police unit they were training shot them.

Camp Shorab in Helmand, previously known as Camp Bastion, is a major former US and British base now run by the Afghan army.

Helmand has been one of the most fiercely contested regions of the country, with nearly 1,000 coalition troops killed there since the US-led military intervention in 2001.

The US said in January that about 300 marines would be sent to Helmand to assist Afghan forces battling the Islamist insurgents in intelligence and logistics matters.

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Civil Rights Leader: Illegal Aliens Hurt The Black Community

Blacks are Screwed By Both Parties

• Democrats  -  The have told Blacks to go screw themselves and have totally embraced illegal alien Hispanics over all other groups.
• Republicans  -  The GOP is totally bought and paid for by open borders Wall Street interests. If workers lose their jobs "Well that's the free market" say Republicans.
• Trump Nationalists  -  Trump is virtually the only politician to go directly into the inner cities and promise to create real jobs. Trump's plan is for workers of all ethnic backgrounds. And a rain of shit comes down on Trump's head from both corrupt parties for trying to help the average worker.

(Daily Caller)  -  Illegal immigration could harm members of the black community and their ability to get jobs, according to a black leader.

Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, believes that illegal immigration and its effect on the black community, specifically men, don’t receive enough attention, reports the Daily Signal.

“Black males are more likely to experience competition from illegal immigrants,” Kirsanow said.

A U.S. Civil Rights Commission report from 2010 found that immigration in general harmed the black community more than others. The report did not differentiate between illegal and legal immigration.

“What happens is you eliminate the rungs on the ladder because a sizable number of black men don’t have access to entry-level jobs,” Kirsanow said. “It is not just the competition and the unemployment of blacks. It also depresses the wage levels.”

Other members of the black community have also spoken out against the negative effects of illegal immigration. One black writer argued illegal immigration hurts the “economic stability” of the black community.

Read More . . . .

Obama & Bush "forgot" to report thousand of airstrikes

A Bipartisan Loss of Memory

• It is kind of hard to hide multiple wars. But when you have a paid off media machine, a rubber stamp Congress and a Sheeple public obsessed with their toy cell phones it gets a lot easier.

(Military Times)  -  The American military has failed to publicly disclose potentially thousands of lethal airstrikes conducted over several years in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, a Military Times investigation has revealed. 

The enormous data gap raises serious doubts about transparency in reported progress against the Islamic State, al-Qaida and the Taliban, and calls into question the accuracy of other Defense Department disclosures documenting everything from costs to casualty counts.

In 2016 alone, U.S. combat aircraft conducted at least 456 airstrikes in Afghanistan that were not recorded as part of an open-source database maintained by the U.S. Air Force, information relied on by Congress, American allies, military analysts, academic researchers, the media and independent watchdog groups to assess each war's expense, manpower requirements and human toll. 

Those airstrikes were carried out by attack helicopters and armed drones operated by the U.S. Army, metrics quietly excluded from otherwise comprehensive monthly summaries, published online for years, detailing American military activity in all three theaters. 

Most alarming is the prospect this data has been incomplete since the war on terrorism began in October 2001. If that is the case, it would fundamentally undermine confidence in much of what the Pentagon has disclosed about its prosecution of these wars, prompt critics to call into question whether the military sought to mislead the American public, and cast doubt on the competency with which other vital data collection is being performed and publicized. Those other key metrics include American combat casualties, taxpayer expense and the military’s overall progress in degrading enemy capabilities. 

U.S. Central Command, which oversees military activity in all three war zones, indicated it is unable to determine how far back the Army’s numbers have been excluded from these airpower summaries. Officials there would not address several detailed questions submitted by Military Times, and they were unable to provide a full listing of annual airstrikes conducted by each of the Defense Department's four military services.  

“It is really weird. We don’t track the number of strikes from Apaches, for example” said a U.S. military official with knowledge of CENTCOM's internal data collection and reporting. The official, who spoke to Military Times on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss internal procedures, was referring to AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, which the Army has used prolifically in combat over the last 15 years, most recently in support of American allies battling the Islamic State. 

Read More . . . .

Obama's Pentagon wants "biodegradable ammo" that grows flowers

The Insanity of Liberalism

• Comrade Obama will ship arms to Islamist monsters and drop thousands of bombs. But the real concern of liberals:  "Can we make war environmentally friendly?"

(Fox News)  -  The U.S. Army gets through a lot of ammunition thanks to the amount of training it carries out. But that ammunition doesn't come without waste which slowly degrades over hundreds of years polluting whatever ground (and nearby water sources) it happens to fall upon.

So the Department of Defense (DoD) decided to do something about it, and is requesting environmentally friendly ammunition for use during training exercises.

The request was made via the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. Specifically, the DoD wants "biodegradable training ammunition loaded with specialized seeds to grow environmentally beneficial plants that eliminate ammunition debris and contaminants."

The ammunition the DoD wants to replace with biodegradable alternatives includes "low velocity 40mm grenades; 60mm, 81mm, and 120mm mortars; shoulder launched munitions; 120mm tank rounds; and 155mm artillery rounds." There's also cartridge cases and sabot petals, which can either lay on the ground or end up buried beneath it.

Sourcing the seeds for use in this new ammunition won't be a problem as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) already bioengineered them so as not to germinate for several months, allowing time for the materials containing them to sufficiently biodegrade. The seeds can then take up any remaining contaminants as they grow, further reducing harm to the environment.

Read More . . . .

The Great Ted Rall

As a true Conservative I just love Leftist cartoonist Ted Rall. On many issues 

the far Right and Left can eagerly join forces.

Alternate Views on Voting

George Carlin on Voting