Surprise! Tea Party Groups Picking The Pockets of Their Base

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/04/27/tea-party-con-men/

Surprising no one with any common sense at all, the Tea Party’s shady money dealings are exposed, showing how they have swindled their brainwashed base.

“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” ~ Lyndon Johnson.

This sums up the Tea Party. Since 2009, a group of flustered conservatives have taken to the mainstream to protest what they feel is an intrusive, dismantled, over-spending government. What is truly astonishing is that the people who donate to Tea Party organizations are those who benefit from food stamps, the Affordable Care Act, and take the most in federal subsidies. While these Tea Party supporters protest wasteful spending, they have no idea that their donations are not going towards electing their candidates, but expenditures for midterms. AKA – their getting their pockets picked.

A Washington Post analysis recently found that many of the top national Tea Party groups engaged in this year’s midterm elections have put only a tiny fraction of their money directly into the campaigns of the candidates they’ve endorsed.

The organizations and their contributions include:

• Of the $12.4 million raised by the  Senate Conservative Action and Senate Conservative Fund, only 17% went directly to candidates, and 23% went to other expenditures
• Of the $7.7 million raised by the Tea Party Express, only 1% went directly to candidates, 2% to independent expenditures
• Of the $7.4 million raised by the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, none went directly to candidates, and only 2% went to independent expenditures
• Of the $4.5 million raised by the Tea Party Leadership Fund, only 4% went directly to candidates, 8% to independent expenditures
• Of the $3.4 million raised by the Madison Project, only 2% went to candidates, 3% to independent expenditures

Independent expenditures was money spent advocating the election or defeat of a particular candidate. Apparently this is how they use their funds to create jobs (jobs to the 1% who run the show).

According to the Post’s findings, almost half of the money, nearly $18 million, that these Tea Party groups have on hand, have paid for numerous expenditures not associated with candidates, such as: fundraising and direct mail, which is provided by many Washington-area firms and think tanks.

 Out of the $37.5 million spent so far by the PACs of six major tea party organizations, less than $7 million has been devoted to directly helping candidates. Not surprisingly, the Tea Party leaders, the one’s who advocate for “smart spending” and their family members have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees, while their groups have taken out large sums for their airfare, retirement plans and even interior decorating.

this is the real 411 on the Tea People who would destroy democracy and take us back to the old days of Jim Crow and White only public places, they don't realize they are still the majority because Fox and those complicit to the deception tell them they aren't.
G W Bush, "you can fool some of the people all of the time and those are the ones you want to concentrate on", their base definitly qualifies as "some of the people".

as ridiculous as they look is as serious a problem they are. recognize

Congress Returns To Work To Do The Bare Minimum

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/congress-returns-to-work

AP Photo / J. David Ake

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress gets back to work Monday after a two-week vacation, and it's looking like lawmakers will do what they do best: the bare minimum.

Forget immigration, a tax overhaul, stiffer gun checks. They're all DOA.

Raising the minimum wage or restoring lost unemployment benefits? Not going to happen. Forcing government approval of the Keystone XL pipeline? Veto bait.

The only things likely to become law in a Congress bitterly divided between House Republicans and the Democratic-led Senate are those that simply have to pass, such as a measure to avoid a government shutdown.

That's a short, short list.

It gets even shorter if you leave off things that can wait until a post election lame-duck session.

Atop the list is a short-term spending bill to keep the government running past the Oct. 1 start of the new budget year. Votes on the bill aren't needed until September.

so on the short list the only thing they will vote on is keeping the gov't running IMO so they can continue getting paid for nothing there is not a scheduled vote for anything that concerns "we the people" and we know who controls what gets voted on and who get's kicked to the curb.

Much more difficult, however, is the second main item of must-do business: finding more money for the Highway Trust Fund to keep road and bridge construction projects afloat. The fund is running critically low on cash. The administration says that could mean a slowdown in construction projects this summer and fall when lawmakers are back home asking voters to return them to Washington for another term. The current highway bill expires at the end of September.

for five years Pres. has bent over backwards to get infrastructure his jobs act includes that and now they want to consider it with 6 months before election what is different now oh i said it they want your vote, can't wait to see how they spin this in their favor.  there's a lot more read the article pleaase.

Donald Trump attacks ‘girlfriend from hell’ for ‘setting up’ racist NBA owner Don Sterling(VIDEO)

http://uticaphoenix.net/donald-trump-attacks-girlfriend-hell-setting-racist-nba-owner-don-sterlingvideo/

Conservative mogul Donald Trump on Monday reacted to audio tapes of NBC basketball team owner Don Sterling reportedly saying racist things by blaming the “girlfriend from hell” for setting him up.

In an audio recording published on Saturday by gossip website TMZ, Sterling allegedly tells his girlfriend that she could have sex with African-American men like Lakers legend Magic Johnson as long as she did not post photographs of them on social media or be seen with them in public at NBA games

“It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people,” the man on the tape says during the 9 minute recording. “Don’t put him on an Instagram for the world to have to see so they have to call me. And don’t bring him to my games.”

Although Sterling has a history of being sued for housing discrimination based on race and for making other racial remarks, Trump spent a large portion of his weekly Fox News interview on Monday attacking then-girlfriend V. Stiviano.

“It’s terrible, he got set up by a very bad girlfriend,” Trump opined. “Let’s face it. That whole thing is — she’s called the girlfriend from hell.”

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade noted that many viewers had taken Sterling’s side because “it’s a private conversation… clearly, she was baiting him.”

“It’s so bad,” Trump agreed. “She was baiting him, and she’s a terrible human being. And he gave horrible answers, and disgusting answers. You’re right, it’s a private conversation. But it became very public.”

Co-host Steve Doocy pointed out that TMZ reported on Monday that Sterling had asked his girlfriend to record him for over 100 hours because he was forgetful.

“That kind of sounds like a defense,” Doocy observed. “I’m a little forgetful. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

ok this is getting weirder by the moment, why was this sex permission thing not in the original breaking of the story, and does Sterling appreciate Trump inserting himself in the story and does he know, is he looking for another 15 mins.? he all but called him an old feeble minded mind of musher. NBC hasn't ordered new episodes of his show yet. and douncy i mean Doocy asking if this is a defense for who and what the racist bastard said it but Fox will find a re-erite around that fact and introduce us to another "FACT".

Palin: If I were president, 'Waterboarding is how we'd baptize terrorists'

http://news.yahoo.com/palin-waterboarding-nra-speech-205827272.html

Sarah Palin would like all terrorists to know that if she were in charge, waterboarding is how the United States would baptize them.

At least that's what the former Alaskan governor and ex-vice presidential nominee told thousands of attendees this weekend at the National Rifle Association's annual convention in Indianapolis.

"If I were in charge," Palin said Saturday during a Stand And Fight rally at Lucas Oil Stadium, "[our enemies] would know that waterboarding is how we'd baptize terrorists."

Palin mocked what she called the Obama administration's coddling of suspected terrorists.

"Enemies, who would utterly annihilate America, they who'd obviously have information on plots, to carry out jihad," Palin said. "Oh, but you can't offend them, can't make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen." The White House, she said, has failed to put "the fear of God in our enemies."

this is what America might have elected as second banana war mongerer half term gov. Palin who reads nothing knows nothing and says nothing of note just comedy relief, in between the other war clowns.  

the total idiocy of this republican and those who cheer are begging the question "WHY"?  she has nothing to offer but same dried up rhetoric that is tantamount to "your mama jokes" except they are funny she is pathetically under informed but so is her base a marriage made in???????????????

The conservative firebrand also warned the pro-gun lobby that they — "intolerant, antifreedom leftist liberals" and "clownish, 'Kumbaya'-humming, fairytale-inhaling" Democrats — are seeking to "strip away our Second Amendment rights."

"If you control oil, you control an economy. If you control money, you control commerce," Palin said. "But if you control arms, you control the people, and that is what they're trying to do."

She called gun-free school zones "stupid on steroids."

for a mother she speaks devoid of concern for all the dead kids do to guns, and note she said "if you control guns you control the people", what does that sound like to you not someone you would want a party that she belongs to to be your governing body they won't govern they'll control straight from the bears mouth.

Bill O’Reilly Says Beyoncé Is Encouraging Black Girls To Get Pregnant

http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2014/04/27/3431245/oreilly-beyonce-teen-pregnancies/

Beyoncé Knowles-Carter doesn’t deserve to be named one of TIME Magazine’s most influential people, according to Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, because her new album is promoting sex before marriage within the black community.

O’Reilly, who has been particularly concerned about Beyoncé’s “raunchy” new album since the music video for her song “Partition” was released, disapproves of TIME’s decision to put the singer on the cover of its annual “100 Most Influential People” issue.

On his show on Friday, O’Reilly suggested that Beyoncé isn’t helping to address the “cultural deficits” in African American and poor white communities and is actually “part of the problem.”

“She knows — this woman knows — that young girls are getting pregnant in the African American community,” the talk show host said. “Now it’s about 70 percent out of wedlock. She knows and doesn’t seem to care.”

“She should be smart enough to know that what’s she doing now is harming some children,” O’Reilly added, after showing a clip of the singer’s “Drunk In Love” video.

which is it she knows or shold be smart enough to know?we know he's not concerned about Black girls so he added White girls so he can qualify his rant, don't think he cares that much about the White girls they grow up to be those he harasses in the work place.

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/04/i_took_fox_news_sexual_harassment_class/

But if O’Reilly is concerned about unintended pregnancies among teen girls, Beyoncé is a strange target. The 32-year-old singer has been in a relationship with her husband, rapper Jay Z, for more than a decade. They had their first child together not out of wedlock, but after they had been married for several years. “Drunk In Love” is specifically about their monogamous relationship; in fact, her so-called “raunchy” album is largelyentirely about the fact that marriage can be fun, and sensual, and desirable.

The two are arguably pop culture’s most famous married couple, and effective cultural icons to further conservatives’ argument that matrimony should be the end goal for America’s youth. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that they simply don’t look like the right-wing’s idea of who their spokespeople should be.

O’Reilly has accused Jay Z of using his “gangsta” image to impart negative messages to young men of color, encouraging them to sell drugs and glorify violence, and during the segment on Friday, he claimed that Beyoncé’s own sexual morals don’t count when she’s singing about sex in her songs and wearing revealing clothing in her videos.

i think he is envious of their success he ponced on them when they went Cuba he does not miss an opportunity to demonize them, remember his tirades against Snoop dog calling him Snoopy but when his star faded t's o to the next prosperous Black artist.  heard him rant against Ted Nugent in this way?  his agenda is clear and so is he.

Female Civil War re-enactors portray women who passed as men to fight. Female Civil War re-enactors march proudly onto the battlefields where their forerunners disguised themselves to fight.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2014/04/female_civil_war_re_enactors_portray_women_who_passed_as_men_to_fight.html

Kim Hopfer, a mother of two, lives on a farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. She works as a truck driver, and each year spends her one week of vacation re-enacting the Civil War—not in a hoop skirt and bonnet, knitting socks, but in a pair of Union blue trousers, among the ranks of the 138th Pennsylvania.

The re-enacting community often derides wannabe re-enactors whose personas are historically inaccurate as “farbish,” but in fact Kim is far from farbish. She represents one of as many as a thousand women who served in the Union and Confederate armies during the war, cross-dressed as men.

One of these soldiers was Frances Louisa Clayton, alias Jack Williams, a Minnesotan who enlisted with her husband in 1861. To pass as one of the boys, she took up drinking, smoking, chewing, and swearing. When Frances’ husband died, a few feet in front of her at Stones River, she stepped over his body and kept fighting.

Many like Frances enlisted with loved ones; a woman from Tennessee named Melverina Elverina Peppercorn joined the Confederate army to be with her brother. At least two women went to war with their fathers.

 But women also enlisted for many of the same reasons soldiers enlist today: patriotism and adventure, honor, economics. (A maid in New York at the time could earn $4 to $7 a month for her services; a Union soldier got $13 a month.)

The war ignited the imaginations and ambitions of young women like Emily, a 19-year-old from Brooklyn who wanted to enlist because she believed she was Joan of Arc reincarnate. Harriet Merill joined the 59th New York Infantry in order to leave behind the brothel where she worked.

what is the real reason right wing leaning men are so dismissive of woman, i've suggested mommy issues, afraid of being shown up, need to feel important.

 i would like to see someone ask those woman why they support the the centuries long war against them, they quickly say it's false and no one ever seems to ask why they think that or how can they deny it given glaring evidence.

Although she lives in town, this was her first time re-enacting at Gettysburg, and she was still trying to adjust to the heat. “You got to march, you got to keep time, you have all these clothes on, you have a 12-pound rifle plus however much weight in gear, plus all the wool that you have on.”

Raising her boot for me to have look, Kim said, “These are the most uncomfortable things I’ve ever had on my feet. They’re very hard. They’re very flat.” She admitted that she and some of her comrades “kind of have a Dr. Scholls thing going on in there” to make it a bit more comfortable. “Your feet hurt. Your back hurts. Your shoulder hurts. Your arms hurt. But it’s worth it. It’s really worth it.”

Many did wrap and hide and do whatever they had to do. At least five women fought in the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, including an unidentified drummer girl who swore that once she healed from her injuries she would never wear a dress again.

In the mid-19th century, no one carried an ID card. To enlist, a woman basically needed only to cut off her hair and pick an alias. Army surgeons conducting physical examinations often checked only to see if a recruit had teeth to tear open powder cartridges and a finger to pull a trigger.

Once she enlisted, however, a female soldier had to learn to pass as one of the boys. Loreta Velazquez sometimes wore a fake mustache. Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, a farm girl from New York who served as Pvt. Lyons Wakeman, wrote home to brag of a fight in which she gave another private in her regiment “three or four pretty good cracks.”

Summing up this kind of identity and gender performance, Sarah Emma Edmonds, a Canadian who served as a Union soldier, nurse, and spy under the alias Frank Thompson, wrote in her memoir that the war was a time for “entire self-forgetfulness.”

i see a few things that republicans could use to berate those women and question their sexual persuasion, bottom line they were discriminated against and there to my knowledge has not been a rational reason to continue to exclude them.

Could College Rankings Solve the Campus Rape Crisis? -

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/could-college-rankings-solve-the-campus-rape-crisis/361223/

This fall, as high school seniors prepare to apply to college, many will scan the rankings provided by U.S. News & World Report. They'll compare colleges' class sizes, tuition prices, the student-faculty ratio, and—potentially—their sexual-assault statistics. That is, if some members of Congress get their way.

Earlier this month, a dozen House members, including two Republicans, sent a letter to U.S. News & World Report asking the publisher to include sexual-assault and prevention data in its venerated annual college rankings.

Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., who is spearheading the effort, said she became interested in the issue while working to curb sexual assault in the military. "Oftentimes the Pentagon brass has come to me and said, 'Well, our statistics are better than college campuses.' And I thought, well, if that's the case, then we've got an issue in both settings," Speier said in an interview Wednesday.

i think this is great we've always heard "the people need to know" and since those schools seem to be late to the gate to do any meaningful reform to the present laws and protocols of those schools that turn blind eyes to this horrendous plight of our kids the future of America do we want them to be scarred for life while trying to run our gov't or a job or being a mom or dad?

i might also point out only two republicans are up with this, i've written before i think the republicans support rape and violence to women look at their lack of voting and track record.

But it doesn't stop there. Six percent of men are sexually assaulted in college, and more than 70 percent of LGBT students are sexually harassed during their college years, Speier said. In a recent op-ed, Rep. Pat Meehan, R-Pa., who joined Speier in signing the letter, also noted that an average-sized university with 10,000 students can expect "as many as 350 rapes per year."

"I think they're all staggering numbers. And the issue has not been taken seriously enough," Speier said. "I think when it starts to affect your rankings on the U.S. News and World Report 'bible,' as it's received by both universities and parents evaluating colleges with their kids, then we'll see things change."

are those who discriminate parroting their home life and environmental influences, there is a trend of more tolerant youths but you still have that minority of haters, those who engage should be published as well ifwe are not to tolerate the intolerable how better than to let the world know who they are, and how many jobs would be open to them.  

that of course would have to be a private effort schools won't do that they would lose students/money.

Bill Maher blasts cheating conservatives and obnoxious liberals

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/28/1295207/-Bill-Maher-blasts-cheating-conservatives-and-obnoxious-liberals#

Last Friday, Bill Maher blasted both conservatives that cheat to win elections, and obnoxious liberals who turn off people from voting for their side.

Look at all the big issues Democrats have on their side by big margins. 71% want to raise minimum wage. 88% want background checks for guns. 80% support a path to citizenship for illegals. 90% support an equal pay law for women. Republicans are against all of it. So how do they win?

I'll tell you how. They employ a complex multifaceted technique political scientists call "cheating". (audience laughter) Gerrymandering the districts, voter ID laws, purging the voter rolls, shortening the voting period, preventing anyone who's been to prison from voting, eliminating same-day registration, putting up billboards in poor black neighborhoods that say "Don't Vote. There's Ghosts In There!"

i agree and i've written a few times if you pledge allegiance to one party and because you want to get elected again you vote against that party than you are no more than your own opposition and a knife in the back to those who elected you, we don't need to help those who oppose us we need new people faithful to our party line.

you have to consider those DINO's in red states are not there to further our agenda the fact that they voted against it bears that out, so if they have been ineffectual so far why should we elect you again to help republican suppress our rights and deny us help because they would rather hurt us than their benefactors big business.  

we don't want to vote for collaborators. recognize

Updated: BREAKING: Jury awards $3 million in first fracking case

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/22/1293937/-BREAKING-Jury-awards-3-million-in-first-fracking-case

Today, a jury of their peers awarded Bob and Lisa Parr $3 million dollars in their fracking lawsuit against Aruba Petroleum. The Parr's attorneys said this was the first fracking case to ever go to trial. I'm trying to verify that.

Bob and Lisa Parr were neighbors to Tim and Christine Ruggiero in Wise County. I was there, in the Ruggiero kitchen, the day Lisa discovered that her timeline of doctor’s visits matched–exactly–Christine’s timeline of releases from the Aruba gas wells on her property.

Like Tim and Christine, Bob and Lisa shared all their information with me and I developed it into a case study for presentation to the EPA at Research Triangle Park and later to Gina McCarthy before she was EPA Administrator. The situation at the Parr's and Ruggiero's homes was so horrific, I even took Cynthia Giles, top enforcement officer for the EPA to see for herself.

The Parr's case study was added to others and published by Earthworks in Flowback: How the Texas Natural Gas Boom Affects Health and Safety.

that party that supports these fossil fuels already are deeply invested in that energy and have been for years, Bush/Cheyney went to war i iraq because of oil,

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/leadup-iraq-war-timeline

Later the Parrs were highlighted in Gasland Part 2. Today's decision might take some of the wind out of the fracking windbags who prattle on endlessly about how inaccurate Gasland is.Twelve SIX regular people who knew nothing about fracking were presented with the facts and awarded the victims $3 million dollars. It's going to be hard to spin that.

They were surrounded by gas wells.

Lisa’s suffered from
Breathing difficulties
Nausea
Rashes that left her scarred with pock-marks.
She had biopsies of the oozing welts on her scalp and the 4 ping-pong-ball-sized lumps on her neck.
Testing showed drilling chemicals in Lisa’s blood and lungs that match chemicals detected by the state in air testing outside her home.
She had a whole host of other ailments.

Bob and Emma also suffered various health impacts.

this is your republican hell bent on Keystone they don't care about ramifications those impacted or potentially to be impacted are no more than collateral damage to be settle in or out of court after the fact.

How the Koch Brothers’ Cato Institute Helped Make the ACA a Success

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/27/1294514/-How-the-Koch-Brothers-Cato-Institute-Helped-Make-the-ACA-a-Success

We in the reality-based community have long acknowledged the important role played by the Heritage Foundation in laying the groundwork for the Affordable Care Act.

But too many do not know that, after years of delay and denial, when Heritage out of modestydeclined to take credit for the brilliant success of its own plan, another pillar of the wingnut-industrial complex would step into the breach and help carry this plan to victory on what is now widely acknowledged to be a truly massive scale.

I refer, of course, to the Cato Institute, that venerable Koch-infested beacon of shrunken government for the poor and states’ rights for the rich.

“How," you might ask, "could an Institute founded by Charles Koch in his own image in 1974—and whose board of directors he and his brother actually sued in 2012 because it was too libertarian—have helped engineer the greatest expansion of federal benefits since the Great Society?”

Well, it seems that the Cato Institute and their "director of health policy studies", a Republican wonk named Michael F. Cannon who The New Republic named “Obamacare’s most relentless antagonist”, thought that they had found a devious way to subvert the ACA:convince red states to let the federal government run their exchanges.  

i guess it's true God really doesn't like ugly, these guys have tried to buy our gov't deny us health care, fair wage, pollute because they don't want to spend the extra money to keep their workers and the rest of the country safe from their carcinogens.

in their effort to achieve this anti American endeavor they have gone 180 degrees and the exact opposite has manifested within in their skulduggery, they also say God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform are you insured if so it's time now to vote big money down.

Fortunately, the legislation did allow the feds to set up exchanges if the states failed to do so. And that's where the Cato Institute stepped in to save Congress from itself.

According to Cato's Cannon, he personally spent much of the past few years traveling on junkets to dozens of state capitals, where he told right-wing state legislators not to set up their own exchanges.  

The details of this crusade are still a little hazy. On the one hand, it was a hard, truth-telling road. “It was very lonely out there,” he solemnly told The New Republic.  

On the other hand, Cannon admitted in his own piece, he had a little help from his friends, namely those at FreedomWorks, ALEC, Americans for Prosperity, the State Policy Network, countless “mini-me” state-level right-wing thinktanks, and, uh, oh yeah, the Tea Party (mad props!)

At first, the legislators were skeptical, Cannon says. “Why shouldn’t we have our own exchanges?” they protested. “Then we’ll have control! States’ rights!”

But Cannon schooled them otherwise. The whole thing is a big federal plot anyway, he told them. Doing an exchange yourself would only give you the illusion of control. In short: Take the red pill!

"we the people" control with our votes problem is too few exercise that right 2008 and 12 have shown us what we can do if we just show up.

Columbus Day: Celebrating The ‘Greatest Wave Of Genocide In History’

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/10/13/columbus-day-genocide-represents/

Why celebrate Columbus Day when it’s celebrated for all the wrong reasons? From slavery to genocide, meet the real Christopher Columbus. Image: Ricardo Liberato @ Flickr

The real story of Christopher Columbus.

During my school years, and perhaps during yours, whenever October rolled around, we started learning about the ‘great explorer and discoverer of America,’ Christopher Columbus. We talked about how Columbus discovered America, how he made friends with the Native Americans. We drew pictures of ships sailing across the ocean. We learned those familiar names: the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.

But we’d been lied to. None of the story was true. Columbus wasn’t some great discoverer- there were already people in America, and there had been for thousands of years. He wasn’t even the first European to journey to the Americas- the Norse had already travelled and built settlements on the east coast of Canada. So what was left? Why still celebrate this day? It’s okay, some said. We celebrate it now, not because he discovered America, but because his arrival in the Americas was a significant moment in history- one which opened up the world and brought the two hemispheres together making one harmonious, global society.   Bullshit.

Dr. Jack Weatherford, an American anthropologist and ethnographer, said it best when he noted that when we as a people celebrate Columbus Day, we celebrate a man “who opened the Atlantic slave trade and launched one of the greatest waves of genocide known in history.” Columbus may not have been the father of slavery, but he certainly expanded it. How?

It has to do with how he financed his voyage. Remember, he was on his way to India, or so he thought. When he proposed this to the Spanish monarch, his journey was underwritten and away he sailed. But that money would have to be paid back, and he had promised payment in the form of spices or gold. He found little of this in Hispaniola, where he actually landed. In a panic, and knowing he needed something of value to take back with him, he took the only thing he could find in abundance- humans.

most heroes of old were not that i guess there was a need to validate the race so they embellished history and made them icons to celebrate that's just like when certain inventions of the day were not credited to the real inventors but awarded to the power that be, music lots was by Black artist but made popular by White ones because of the powere that were would not play the original music.

http://www.blackinventions101.com/inventionslist.html

Slavery was nothing new to the world.

In fact, the history of slavery goes back to the beginning of socially stratified societies- perhaps as far back as 10,000 years or more. But when Columbus started to bring natives back to Spain, it opened up a whole new source for forced human labor. It was one from which they would seize so many that the people he encountered in Hispaniola, the Taino, are thought now to be extinct. Even after Columbus’ death, and despite the abolition of slavery in Spain, human labor was still in demand in Europe and those who sought to fulfill the demand continued to look to the Americas and to Africa as a source of slaves, thus perpetuating what Columbus started with that one voyage.

Despite the fact that we spend an entire weekend in October celebrating a man who does not deserve our celebration, the fact that we get a day off of school and work, and the fact that those Columbus Day sales make the stores quite a bit of money, means that we will probably keep celebrating this day. It doesn’t mean, however, that we have to make it about Columbus or about discovery. Many places actually observe the holiday differently. For example, in South Dakota, the day is celebrated as “Native American Day.”

American history what is it really and will the truth ever be known or are those that rewrote it and those that follow to ashamed?

Bill Maher: ‘Our gun laws are so crazy, even crazy people know that they’re crazy’

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/26/bill-maher-our-gun-laws-are-so-crazy-even-crazy-people-know-that-theyre-crazy/

Bill Maher and his Real Time panel ripped Democrats again on Friday for not setting themselves apart from Republicans when it comes to gun safety laws, pointing out that even Fort Hood shooter Ivan Lopez questioned how easy it was for a person with mental health issues to have access to firearms months before attacking the base.

“Our gun laws are so crazy, even crazy people know that they’re crazy,” Maher said.

Daily Beast editor-in-chief John Avlon agreed, mentioning the bipartisan gun bill that could not make it into law despite overwhelming public support following the 2012 mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

“They were trying to close a loophole reflecting mental health,” Avlon said. “It is so nuts that we aren’t able to get through a law with 90 percent support? That shows how paralyzed we are.”

Maher and Avlon also mocked Georgia Democrats for not standing up against the Republican-backed “guns everywhere” bill making it easier to carry guns into churches, public facilities and bars.

i don't see the point of Dems in  red zones first how did they get elected if they are now afraid to not support the right wing agenda as far as guns.  what good is a seat warmer that won't vote their party line they are not just DINO's they are RINO's behind the curtain.  if you get elected for the agenda of your opposition then you are your opposition and your worst enemy is yourself.

and it all seems to hover over guns i know that makes it difficult if not impossible for Progressives to win but electing one that is complicit with republican law might as well vote what you get.  we need a strong Progressive not afraid of what's right if they lose they still up their stock for next time.