Well, well, well.

CNN exclusive: White House email contradicts Benghazi leaks 


CNN's Jake Tapper reports: 

 CNN has obtained an e-mail sent by a top aide to President Barack Obama about White House reaction to the deadly attack last September 11 on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that apparently differs from how sources characterized it to two different media organizations. 

The actual e-mail from then-Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes appears to show that whomever leaked it did so in a way that made it appear that the White House was primarily concerned with the State Department's desire to remove references and warnings about specific terrorist groups so as to not bring criticism to the department. 

Rhodes, White House communications director Jennifer Palmieri, and White House press secretary Jay Carney, could not be reached for comment. 

In the e-mail sent on Friday, September 14, 2012, at 9:34 p.m., obtained by CNN from a U.S. government source, Rhodes wrote: 

 “All – “Sorry to be late to this discussion. We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation. 

 “There is a ton of wrong information getting out into the public domain from Congress and people who are not particularly informed. Insofar as we have firmed up assessments that don’t compromise intel or the investigation, we need to have the capability to correct the record, as there are significant policy and messaging ramifications that would flow from a hardened mis-impression. “We can take this up tomorrow morning at deputies.”

The email is HERE.

"Just an early, failing attempt to smear Hillary for 2016. Because the GOP has no relevant policies for our times, just politics." 


The GOP in its hysterical reaction to the Benghazi attacks and its maniacal desire to make the whole tragedy into an impeachable offense and a career-ender for Secretary Clinton, has made themselves into a carload of clowns.  Their unrelenting pursuit of vengeance in this whole affair is emblematic of everything the GOP has done, and still tries to do, since Mr. Obama won the presidency in November 2008.

The whole sordid mess on the GOP side has been nothing more than a campaign to slander Secretary Clinton and bring down Mr. Obama's presidency.  There was no interest in finding out where the security failed and how to prevent such failures in volatile Middle East countries so that we never have to endure more tragedy.  This was never a goal of the GOP.  What they wanted was SCANDAL!  SCANDAL!  SCANDAL!  And even if it meant looking for fire where there was only smoke and misrepresenting what actually happened, so what!  The ends justify the means for a party that is so marinated in hatred for this president that they've lost all reason.

"So whoever leaked the inaccurate information earlier this month did so in a way that made it appear that the White House – specifically Rhodes – was more interested in the State Department’s concerns, and more focused on the talking points, than the e-mail actually stated."




Charlie Pierce gets it---perfectly:


"Since it appears that we are going to have ourselves an entire summer of this kind of nonsense, I think it's important to identify which journalists now have the right to complain about it. 

If you ever took Jim McDougal or David Hale or any of the other Arkansas travelers seriously in the 1990's, you don't get to complain about Darrell Issa now. 

If you ever spread any of the mendacious twaddle about Al Gore during the 2000 election — this includes the offal about Love Story, and Love Canal, and inventing the Internet, and where he lived as a boy, and anything at all to do with a Buddhist temple — you don't get to complain about the "culture of scandal" that is paralyzing the government. 

If you ever returned a phone call from David Bossie, shut up. 

If you ever said anything positive about Matt Drudge, leave the room. 

If you ever laundered oppo research from Roger Stone, or Lucianne Goldberg, or Enron Ed Gillespie, or Ed Rollins, or any of the other well-compensated ratfkers of the Right, shut up, leave the room, and throw yourselves into the river. This also goes for any cable booker who ever booked Ann Coulter, or called Andrew Breitbart an 'activist' or, worse, a 'journalist.'

Ratfking has a long history in American politics, and I'd be loath to preside over its disappearance. Politics would become remarkably boring. However, we used to know what it was, and what to do with the people when they got caught practicing it. We used to be able to distinguish ratfking from actual reporting. That all fell apart during the Clinton years, when we had some genuine ratfking going on under the color of an independent counsel's office in the Department Of Justice, and also in the offices of several congresscritters, and when it all culminated in the single greatest ratfk of them all — the second impeachment of a sitting president in the country's history. If you were part of enabling all that, you have no right to complain about the circus now. You were the ones who trained the elephants in the first place."

DAVID BROOKS:


"Let’s review the actual events. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was killed on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2012. For this there is plenty of blame to go around. We now know, thanks to reporting by Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper and Michael Schmidt in The Times, that Benghazi was primarily a C.I.A. operation. 

Furthermore, intelligence officers underestimated how dangerous the situation was. They erred in vetting the Libyan militia that was supposed to provide security. The next day, Nuland held a background press briefing, a transcript of which is available on the State Department’s Web site. She had two main points. There’s a lot we don’t know. The attack was conducted by Libyan extremists. She made no claim that it was set off by an anti-Muslim video or arose spontaneously from demonstrations. 

On Friday, Sept. 14, David Petraeus, then the director of the C.I.A., gave a classified briefing to lawmakers in Congress. The lawmakers asked him to provide talking points so they could discuss the event in the news media. C.I.A. analysts began work on the talking points. Early drafts, available on Jonathan Karl’s ABC News Web site, reflect the confused and fragmented state of knowledge. 

The first draft, like every subsequent one, said the Benghazi attacks were spontaneously inspired by protests in Cairo. It also said that extremists with ties to Al Qaeda participated. The C.I.A. analysts quickly scrubbed references to Al Qaeda from the key part of the draft, investigators on Capitol Hill now tell me. On Friday evening of Sept. 14, the updated talking points were e-mailed to the relevant officials in various departments, including Nuland. She wondered why the C.I.A. was giving members of Congress talking points that were far more assertive than anything she could say or defend herself. 

She also noted that the talking points left the impression that the C.I.A. had issued all sorts of warnings before the attack. Remember, this was at a moment when the State Department was taking heat for what was mostly a C.I.A. operation, while doing verbal gymnastics to hide the C.I.A.’s role. Intentionally or not, the C.I.A. seemed to be repaying the favor by trying to shift blame to the State Department for ignoring intelligence. 

 Nuland didn’t seek to rewrite the talking points. In fact, if you look at the drafts that were written while she was sending e-mails, the drafts don’t change much from one to the next. She was just kicking the process up to the policy-maker level. At this point, Nuland’s participation in the whole affair ends." 

THE REST IS HERE.

Now let's sit back and watch the GOP and the media turn themselves into splenetic gargoyles over the next batch of reasons to INPEACH! President Obama.

I have a very strong feeling they'll end up looking like the scandal mongering elephants that they are.

But they know it's a SCANDAL!!!!!!!1111!!!!!!

"From a new PPP poll: Of the 41 percent of Republicans who consider Benghazi to be the worst political scandal in American history, 39 percent are unaware that Benghazi is located in Libya. 10 percent said it’s in Egypt, 9 percent in Iran, 6 percent in Cuba, 5 percent in Syria, 4 percent in Iraq, and 1 percent each in North Korea and Liberia, with 4 percent unwilling to venture a guess." 


Meanwhile, to the eternal disappointment of the GOP:

2013 Deficit To Shrink To $642 Billion: Congressional Budget Office

WHO CAN TAKE REPUBLICANS SERIOUSLY?

Wondering why the country is stuck in the "never-doing-anything-muck-and-mire" of  D.C. politics?

Is it just our imagination, or is GOP obstruction real? Here's a list, from today's New York Times, of how the GOP continues to undermine any progress this administration has proposed and set forth that will help the country to do better and to prosper.

IMO, the GOP destests President Obama more than it loves its fellow Americans. 




Mr. Obama hasn’t given up inviting the Republicans to join him in making the hard choices of governing, but he has been rebuffed each time. This year, in hopes of getting some support for modest tax increases on the rich, he even proposed a reduction in the cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients. The events of the last few weeks should make it clear to him why that offer should be pulled from the table immediately. Consider:

 ¶Shortly after Mr. Obama presented this idea to Republicans, more than a half-dozen of them began trashing it as too “draconian” and a “shocking attack on seniors.” For years, the party has demanded entitlement cuts, but the moment the president actually offered one, he was attacked. Then last Tuesday, Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, said that no grand bargain is possible because Democrats aren’t willing to make significant cuts to spending and entitlement programs. The Social Security cost-of-living change, he said, did not go far enough. 

 ¶Senate and House Republicans are refusing to meet with Democrats to negotiate over the budgets passed by each chamber. Four times in the last two weeks, Senate leaders have proposed beginning a conference committee to hash out a federal budget; four times they have been blocked by Republicans. The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said they were afraid the committee might reach an agreement to raise both taxes on the rich and the debt ceiling, which are, of course, the Democrats’ stated goals. Knowing that their positions would be deeply unpopular among the public if their stubbornness were exposed in an open committee, Republicans would simply prefer not to talk at all.

¶Instead of negotiation, Republicans cling to their strategy of extorting budget demands by threatening not to raise the debt ceiling. On Thursday, the House passed a stunningly dangerous bill that would allow foreign and domestic bondholders to be paid if Republicans forced a government default, while cutting off all other government payments except Social Security benefits. 

The bill has no possibility of becoming law, but its passage was a deliberate thumb in the eye to Mr. Obama, business leaders and those who say the debt ceiling should not be used for political leverage. 

Republican lawmakers have become reflexive in rejecting every extended hand from the administration, even if the ideas were ones that they themselves once welcomed. Under the circumstances, Mr. Obama would be best advised to stop making peace offerings. Only when the Republican Party feels public pressure to become a serious partner can the real work of governing begin.




Republican obstructionism, its obsession with the Benghazi attack, and now its newest bright shiny object, the IRS debacle, is what the GOP considers "governing."  While the GOP wallows in its "All Benghazi All The Time" circus, important matters are not being addressed, and the American people are not happy.  But that's the GOP's game plan.  Screw the country as often and hard as they can, then blame the administration for doing nothing about it.

The GOP's greatest hope is to find something, anything, to bring down this administration.  Never forget that the leading pols of the Republican Party got together on the night of Mr. Obama's inauguration in 2008 and made a promise to one another to obstruct, obstruct, obstruct.  That plan was hatched and sworn to in the midst of this country's terrible financial collapse, and while we were still at war.

"On the night of Barack Obama’s inauguration, a group of top GOP luminaries quietly gathered in a Washington steakhouse to lick their wounds and ultimately create the outline of a plan for how to deal with the incoming administration. “The room was filled. It was a who’s who of ranking members who had at one point been committee chairmen, or in the majority, who now wondered out loud whether they were in the permanent minority,” Frank Luntz, who organized the event, told FRONTLINE. Among them were Senate power brokers Jim DeMint, Jon Kyl and Tom Coburn, and conservative congressmen Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy and Paul Ryan. After three hours of strategizing, they decided they needed to fight Obama on everything. The new president had no idea what the Republicans were planning." 

That is a bigger scandal than anything that's happened in the Obama administration.


But!  LOOK!  Over there!

BENGHAZI!

Remembering Her Today and Every Day

ANTHROPOLOGY

The photos arrive in the mail.
Each sister sends one newly found
so I can see our mother when
she was young, then matronly,
standing on the hospital's lawn.
They do it to give me history,
to impress in my memory her
Kodachrome vitality. Arranging
a chronology of missed years.
They dig for bones in cartons
drawers and cardboard albums.
I reconstruct in black and white,
in color. She is almost solid, fleshed
with each new fragment: the infant
in her arms, the sisters holding
her arms as she leaves the hospital.
Here her smile is less generous, more
tentative, her brows narrowed.
This must have been just after
the tumor blossomed, before
she lived from bottles and in charts.
Hair by muscle, I build the body
under which my girlhood lies,
below the carved stone. From beneath
red clay, anthropologists lift femur
and fibula, gently dust, arrange the ribs
of what lived, moved and was buried.

                                              --S.K.

Anti-Science GOP Still in Denial Over Climate Change

The GOP cannot continue to ignore this.  

Please see below:


Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations Surpass 400 PPM Milestone


Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide surpassed a notable milestone this week.

They reached a daily average above 400 parts per million, reported NOAA, for the first time in human history.

The milestone, hit on May 9, may be symbolic, notes Climate Central, but manmade CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels continue to rise, bringing greater atmospheric warming and exacerbating the effects of climate change.

 Scientists argue we've loaded the "climate dice" in favor of more weather anomalies and extreme heat waves.

Carbon dioxide levels highest in recorded human history

Most scientists believe the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas is helping cause the rapid rise in carbon dioxide levels. 

This greenhouse gas traps heat, changes weather patterns, and raises sea levels. Ralph Keeling runs the CO2 monitoring program at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. 

He believes efforts to curb emissions have failed and some impacts of climate change are irreversible. 

"We're moving into dangerous territory," he said. "So there are lots of threats to human beings in these changes. We don't know exactly how big but it's very unlikely that we're going to get through this without major turmoil."



The Coming GOP Civil War Over Climate Change 

Thursday, May 9, 2013
By Coral Davenport

Kerry Emanuel registered as a Republican as soon he turned 18, in 1973. The aspiring scientist was turned off by what he saw as the Left’s blind ideology. “I had friends who denied Pol Pot was killing people in Cambodia,” he says. “I reacted very badly to the triumph of ideology over reason.” 

Back then, Emanuel saw the Republican Party as the political fit for a data-driven scientist. Today, the professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is considered one of the United States’ foremost authorities on climate change—particularly on how rising carbon pollution will increase the intensity of hurricanes. 

In January 2012, just before South Carolina’s Republican presidential primary, the Charleston-based Christian Coalition of America, one of the most influential advocacy groups in conservative politics, flew Emanuel down to meet with the GOP presidential candidates. Perhaps an unlikely prophet of doom where global warming is concerned, the coalition has begun to push Republicans to take action on climate change, out of worry that coming catastrophes could hit the next generation hard, especially the world’s poor. 

The meetings didn’t take. “[Newt] Gingrich and [Mitt] Romney understood, … and I think they even believed the evidence and understood the risk,” Emanuel says. “But they were so terrified by the extremists in their party that in the primaries they felt compelled to deny it. Which is not good leadership, good integrity. I got a low impression of them as leaders.” 

Throughout the Republican presidential primaries, every candidate but one—former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who was knocked out of the race at the start—questioned, denied, or outright mocked the science of climate change. 

Soon after his experience in South Carolina, Emanuel changed his lifelong Republican Party registration to independent. 

“The idea that you could look a huge amount of evidence straight in the face and, for purely ideological reasons, deny it, is anathema to me,” he says.

Emanuel predicts that many more voters like him, people who think of themselves as conservative or independent but are turned off by what they see as a willful denial of science and facts, will also abandon the GOP, unless the party comes to an honest reckoning about global warming." 

MORE HERE.


But that's where we are:  Ideology trumping science.  And the greatest amount of ideological denial is within the GOP.  As long as they control the House and its legislative role in dealing with climate change, nothing will be done.


Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), the new chairman of a critical House subcommittee on the environment, is doubling down on his climate change denial.In an op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune this past weekend. 

Stewart repeated a litany of climate change denial tropes before insisting that the reason Congress has been unable to pass comprehensive climate legislation is because even Democrats don't believe the science behind anthropogenic global warming:

 In 2009, despite having control of the entire elected government, President Obama and the Democrats in Washington chose not to pass climate change legislation. And why not? Because even the majority of Democrats recognize that the science regarding climate change is uncertain, the suggested remedies would likely not work, and would be devastating to working families. 

The claim is demonstrably false. A Gallup poll released last week found that 78 percent of Democrats think human activities contribute directly to global warming. Only 39 percent of Republicans said the same.


MORE ANT-SCIENCE DENIAL FROM THE GOP: 

APRIL 2011:  House Republicans rejected several measures Tuesday that called on Congress to adopt the scientific consensus that climate change is real, that it is caused by human activity and that it is a threat to human health. 

 We’ve known since before the 2010 election that most of the new House Republicans openly deny the science behind climate change. But now it’s officially on the record. So here, for that record, is a list of things Republicans now say they officially don’t believe: 

 * that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has skyrocketed by about 100 parts per million since 1950. 

* that carbon dioxide disrupts the transfer of thermal energy through the atmosphere, trapping it and redirecting it back to Earth (otherwise known as the “greenhouse effect”). 

* that the absorption of this heat has caused the Earth’s oceans to get warmer by about .302 degrees Fahrenheit since 1969. When water gets warmer, it expands, resulting in rising sea levels. 

* that the warming of the Earth has also has caused glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets to melt. 

* that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are each losing mass at an accelerating rate. Together, they’ve lost a combined average of 475 gigatonnes a year. And that rate of loss is accelerating by about 36.3 gigatonnes every year. That water ends up in the Earth’s oceans. 

* that glaciers are also retreating across Asia, threatening the water supply there and resulting in massive water runoffs and extreme flooding. In Bhutan, 66 glaciers have decreased by 8.1 percent over the last 30 years. The Himalayan glacier Chhota Shigri Glacier, in India, has lost 12 percent of its mass in just the last 13 years. 

* that the addition of this water to the oceans has caused the rate of global sea rise to double in the last decade, to about 3.4 millimeters per year (as opposed to about 1.8 millimeters for the last century). 

* that the warming of the planet increases the likelihood and frequency of extreme weather events — including hurricanes and intense rainfall — by raising ocean temperatures and adding energy to the Earth’s atmosphere. Since 1975, the destructive power of tropical cyclones — their duration and maximum wind speed — has increased by 70 percent. that the atmosphere is getting much, much warmer. 

2010 is now tied with 2005 as the warmest year on record — ever. The 20 warmest years on record have occurred since 1981. The 10 warmest years on record have occurred in the past 12 years. 

The denial of these and other facts supporting the scientific consensus that climate change is real is not merely ideological; it’s political. 

Republicans are trying to block new regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency that would limit greenhouse gas emissions, on the grounds that those rules would hurt the GOP’s corporate patrons.

BENGHAZI: Krokodil for Conservatives.

BENGHAZI is krokodil for many conservatives and especially FAUX NOOZ.  But they can't and won't give it up.  And if you link to what krokodil is, you'll see why they cling to it so desperately and what it will do to them.




"The co-chair of the State Department’s Accountability Review Board on the Benghazi terror attacks last year said on Wednesday criticized those claiming the Obama administration’s response to the attacks has the elements of some kind of Watergate-style cover-up. 

“I think the notion of a quote, cover up, has all the elements of Pulitzer Prize fiction attached to it,” former Ambassador Thomas Pickering said on MSNBC. He also rebutted claims that the review board tried to protect former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from scrutiny: 

PICKERING: I saw no evidence of it. She did publicly take responsibility for what happened below her and indeed one of the things the Congress did in preparing the legislation that established the Accountability Review Board was to say we don’t want a situation where heads of agencies take responsibility and then nobody who made the decision in the chain has to suffer any consequences for failure for performance. I believe in fact the Accountability Review Board did it’s work well. I think the notion of a quote, cover up, has all the elements of Pulitzer Prize fiction attached to it.

PICKERING: The aircraft at Aviano were 2 to 3 hours away but there were no refueling aircraft available. I think that speaks for itself. It has all along. I don’t see any contradiction. … There should be no controversy over that. Aircraft were there but they were not available in a time span that could have made any serious difference in connection with the issue."

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

The Benghazi Hearings:  What's New and What's Not

Seen on Boylston Street

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Go HERE to see some excellent photography.

CONGRATULATIONS DELAWARE!

DOVER, Del. (AP) — A divided Delaware state Senate voted Tuesday to make their state the 11th in the nation to allow same-sex marriage, after hearing hours of passionate testimony from supporters and opponents. 

The Senate’s 12-9 vote sends the bill to Democratic Gov. Jack Markell, who supports the measure and planned to sign it later in the day. It would go into effect July 1. 

 “I think this is the right thing for Delaware,” the governor said after the vote, while posing for pictures with supporters outside his legislative office. 

“It took an incredible team effort.” Gay rights activists and their supporters in the chamber erupted in cheers and applause following the Senate vote.




Another state recognizes equal protection under the law!  And Delaware joins the inexorable march toward equality for all.  Good going Delaware!  We're proud of you.

Next up, we're watching Minnesota and Illinois:

Minnesota appears poised to legalize gay marriage
 
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Minnesota appears poised to legalize gay marriage, as the Democratic speaker of the state House said Tuesday that a gay marriage bill endorsed by the governor and likely to pass in the state Senate also now has enough backing in his chamber. The House will vote on the measure Thursday, and if it passes, the Democratic-led Senate could vote on it as soon as Saturday.

Pat Brady Resigns: Illinois GOP Chair Steps Down Amid Gay Marriage Support Controversy 

"Illinois GOP Chairman Pat Brady has stepped down from his post amid controversy over his public support for same-sex marriage. 

 Brady is citing personal reasons for his resignation, announced Tuesday in a letter sent to the state party's central committee. According to the Associated Press, his wife is battling "serious cancer" and he wants to spend more time with her and their family. 

 Social conservatives within the state party had targeted Brady and called for his resignation after he announced that he personally supported same-sex marriage equality early this year. 

One member of the party's central committee previously described him as "a total disgrace" in supporting marriage equality and other issues that were contrary to both the national and state GOP's policy platforms."



Ah, yes.  The "Central Committee" calls a man who supports equality under the Constitution of the United States of America a "total disgrace." 

Your modern Republican Party.  Equality = Disgrace

"FREEDOMS" LOVING N.R.A.ers!

National Rifle Association Bans Bleeding “Obama” Target, Others RemainBeyond the pale at the NRA convention. “They thought it looked too much like President Obama,” says a worker.






"They THOUGHT it looked too much like President Obama?  No, Mr. "A Worker," the whole point of the display at the N.R.A. show is to have the zombie look EXACTLY like Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, and for the idiots who aimed at it to take pleasure in pretending to assassinate the President of the United States of America.

Now I perfectly understand that not all N.R.A. members are demented gun-happy goons who take pleasure in fantasizing about murdering the President of the United States of America.  And I understand that those who engage in this sickening exercise are no better than the jihadists who plan murderous attacks on Americans, but I don't understand the fools who thought this display and use of President Obama's image was something a "freedoms" loving American would be proud of.  

Afterall, the meaning is quite clear:  Those who took part in shooting at the image were acting out some sort of treasonous fanatasy.  Freedoms lovers!

But I suppose having them engage in something as unAmerican, treasonous, hateful, and dimwitted as this is better than having them work out their frustrations by sticking forks in their eyes.

Or is it?

Here's the target after our 2nd Amendment-loving fellow Americans had their little bit of "fun."

Here's a loving father teaching his little boy how to aim at and draw blood from "Barry," the President of the United States of America--Oops! No.  It's a "zombie!"  Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. 

Isn't that a beautiful American value?








Can anyone imagine how these mentally-deficient 2nd Amendment supporters would have reacted had some liberal group done this to images of Presidents Reagan or Bush?  Would they have thought it was all in harmless, good American fun?

I ask; you reply.

SUNDAY NIGHT POETRY

IN THE BEDROOM OF GEARS AND TIMING


Just before 5 am, glass trinkets 
and silver frames on a polished shelf
begin in small sequences 
to gather light.  Buttons and worry dolls 
in a box represent someone's still life, 
who hasn't the courage to pretend, 
who hears the ride of the blood, 
the gun of the clock. 


And the clock makes a tick
whirl fly.  Like a bird
meeting the glass, something
in here collides with the eye,
the immovable wall.


I admit this for no one, really, 
trying to reach things I expect 
one day will come, like a dainty fog 
settling over the coverlet in blue 
so uncorrupted, you would
just die of it. 

                                                 --S.K.

If We Could See Inside Others' Hearts

A video from the Cleveland Clinic:

An Unconscionable Crime

Not what the teenager did, but how the adults responded. If the law demands her expulsion and that she be charged with felonies, then "the law is a ass!":



BARSTOW, Fla. — A Florida teenager with an “exemplary record” was arrested and expelled from her high school for conducting a science experiment which had the wrong results. Kiera Wilmot, a student at Bartow High School, is facing two felony charges for the incident, which includes making or attempting to make a destructive device. She had mixed toilet bowl cleaner and pieces of aluminum foil in a tiny water bottle. 

Wilmot told police she thought the concoction would result in a little smoke. Instead, the bottle exploded, according to the Barstow Police Department report, A spokesperson for the Florida State Attorney’s office said the case is currently under investigation and would not be commenting further. 

The 16-year-old was in the school yard working on the experiment, according to the police report. The project was not part of a class assignment and no one was injured in the incident. Bartow High School Principal Ron Pritchard told television station WTSP that Wilmot had an exemplary record and she is known around campus as a good student. 

“She’s is a good kid,” the principal said. “she has never been in trouble before. Ever.” 

According to the police report, Wilmot told police she was in no way trying to hurt anyone or create a disruption of school. The principal agreed and said she simply made a bad decision. 

“Honestly, I don’t think she meant to ever hurt anyone,” he told the television station. “She wanted to see what would happen when the chemicals mixed and was shocked by what it did. Her mother is shocked, too.” 

The principal said the young lady was completely up front and honest about what happened.

“She didn’t run or try to hide the truth,” he said. Nevertheless, the school district called the police, had her arrested and expelled her from school.

From Change.org (sign the petition):

Kiera Wilmot has been described as an exemplary student and a wonderful young woman. 

Why is it then that an experiment gone wrong is being dealt with by the police and school as a felony offense? 

According to the Miami Times: "7 a.m. on Monday, the 16 year-old mixed some common household chemicals in a small 8 oz water bottle on the grounds of Bartow High School in Bartow, Florida. The reaction caused a small explosion that caused the top to pop up and produced some smoke. No one was hurt and no damage was caused." 

The principal has said that that he doesn't believe she had any malicious intentions. Yet she now faces two felony charges as an adult. These include making, possessing or discharging a destructive device and with possessing or discharging weapons on school grounds! 

"...the charges have not yet been filed and this means that Florida State Attorney Jerry Hill and Assistant State Attorney Tammy Glotfelty have an opportunity to the right thing, use common sense, and drop these charges against Kiera."


Comments:



Hannah Eiseman-Renyard LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM 

I feel compelled to write to you, all the way from London, England, to let you know I am disgusted by your criminalization of a good student's natural curiosity. 

 No one was harmed. No intention to harm was there. There was no 'discharge of a weapon' there was a pop sound and some smoke. I do worse than that when cooking dinner sometimes. 

Your reaction is disproportionate, draconian and disgraceful. 

By ensuring this student has a criminal record you have given her a life sentence as a second class citizen. You said Kiera Wilmot made 'a bad choice'. Sir, your criminalisation of your student - despite understanding she had no ill intent - is a bad choice. Kiera Wilmot did not do anything with the gravitas of making 'a choice' - she was just being a normal 16 year old in a science laboratory. 




Rachel Popkin SEATTLE, WA  

Because my friends and I did similar experiments and worse when we were 16. Ten years later, we are scientists, engineers, and medical students. 

Kiera displayed natural curiousity that all young scientists display. Her life should not be ruined because of it.

The People's House That Isn't

Why can't Congress, and especially the House, get anything done?  See below for some of the answers and see below for how the American people view Congress and how changing demographics will ultimately change its last-gasp obstructionist mentality.


Gallup:

Fifteen percent of Americans now approve of the way Congress is handling its job, essentially unchanged from 13% in March and 15% in February. Congress' disapproval rating is 79%.

All three partisan groups' ratings of Congress have been similarly low since the legislative body came under divided control after the 2010 midterm elections, with the exception of a spike in Democrats' rating prior to the 2012 elections. Rank-and-file Democrats were more likely than Republicans and independents to approve of Congress from February 2009 until the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterms.



Why the dismal approval rating for Congress, and especially the House?  Timothy Eagan explains:


Timothy Eagan, NYTimes:


"Much has been said about how the great gerrymander of the people’s House — part of a brilliant, $30 million Republican action plan at the state level — has now produced a clot of retrograde politicians who are comically out of step with a majority of Americans. It’s not just that they oppose things like immigration reform and simple gun background checks for violent felons, while huge majorities support them.

Or that, in the aggregate, Democrats got 1.4 million more votes for all House positions in 2012 but Republicans still won control with a cushion of 33 seats. Or that they won despite having the lowest approval rating in modern polling, around 10 percent in some surveys. Richard Nixon during Watergate and B.P.’s initial handling of a catastrophic oil spill had higher approval ratings.

But just look at how different this Republican House is from the country they are supposed to represent. It’s almost like a parallel government, sitting in for some fantasy nation created in talk-radio land. 

As a whole, Congress has never been more diverse, except the House majority. 

There are 41 black members of the House, but all of them are Democrats. 

There are 10 Asian-Americans, but all of them are Democrats. 

There are 34 Latinos, a record — and all but 7 are Democrats. 

There are 7 openly gay or lesbian members, all of them Democrats. 

Only 63 percent of the United States population is white. But in the House Republican majority, it’s 96 percent white. 

Women are 51 percent of the nation, but among the ruling members of the House, they make up just 8 percent. (It’s 30 percent on the Democratic side.)

To date, seven bills have been enacted. Let’s see, there was the Responsible Helium Administration and Stewardship act — “ensuring the stability of the helium market.” The Violence Against Women Act was renewed, but only after a majority of Republicans voted against it, a rare instance of letting the full House decide on something that the public favors.

Just recently, they rushed through a change to help frequent air travelers — i.e., themselves — by fixing a small part of the blunt budget cuts that are the result of their inability to compromise. Meal assistance to the elderly, Head Start for kids and other programs will continue to fall under the knife of sequestration."

The Beltway chorus of the moment blames President Obama for his inability to move his proposals through a dunderheaded Congress. They wonder how Republicans would be treating a silken-tongued charmer like Bill Clinton if he were still in the White House. We already know: not a single Republican voted for Clinton’s tax-raising budget, the one that led to our last federal surplus. Plus, they impeached him; his presidency was saved only in the Senate. 

Obama may be doomed to be a reactive president in his second term, with even the most common-sense proposals swatted down because, well — if he’s for it, Republicans will have to be against it. What could be a signature achievement, immigration reform, faces quicksand in the House. But a gerrymander is good for only a decade or so. Eventually, demography and destiny will catch up with a Congress that refuses to do the people’s bidding." 

**********

 Denis Campbell, UK Progressive 

 "As elected representatives of the people, they seem incapable of avoiding self-immolation. 

The GOP has doused themselves in kerosene, tied themselves in the middle of a circle to the nation and hold a lighted match over their own heads threatening President Obama with dropping it on themselves, if he fails to agree to a balanced approach to revenues and cuts… which he already has done… many of which were proposed by this Republican Congress themselves… who are opposed to any idea this President puts forward."

The demographics of future voters guarantee that unless the GOP changes, it will have a difficult time recapturing the WH and holding on to its majority in the House:




America’s changing demographics. 

 "According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2010 results, the nation’s share of the non-Hispanic white population declined from 69.1 percent in 2000 to a present 63.7 percent in 2010, with America’s minority population rising from 30.9 percent in 2000 to 36.3 percent in 2010. 

Twelve of the nation’s 50 states have a minority population exceeding 40 percent—triple the number of such states in 2000. 

Four states—California, Texas, New Mexico and Hawaii—now claim “majority-minority” status. 

The reason for this population shift is Latino-Americans, who now are one-sixth (50.5 million) of the national population, compared to one-eighth (35.3 million) a decade ago. This political and demographic phenomenon is not limited to America’s border states, with their pre-existing Latino populations. 

Latinos represented a majority of the population growth in 18 states. They accounted for at least 40 percent of the population growth in seven other states, and at least 30 percent of the population growth in another five states. 

Twelve of the nation’s 50 states have a minority population exceeding 40 percent."



"Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies."  --Robert Kennedy

STUPID AMERICAN GUN CULTURE: First in a series that will, sadly, go on and on and on and...

UPDATES I AND II BELOW

How young is too young for a kid to own a gun?   Twelve?  Seven?  How about Five?  Is five too young? 

Not according to certain gun cultures in this country.  

Five is just a dandy age for a kid to own a rifle.  The age of scant reasoning ability or sense of responsibility.  The age when a lot of kids are still wetting their beds and sucking their thumbs. 

But hey!  This is America!  And the gummint has no right to tell us parents what age we can put a 22-caliber Little Cricket single-shot rifle in little Johnny or  Janie's hands.

And for poor little two-year old Caroline Starks:  Sh*t Happens!




5-year-old Kentucky boy fatally shoots 2-year-old sister 
From Leigh Remizowski
CNN updated 10:55 AM EDT, Wed May 1, 2013


"(CNN) -- A Kentucky mother stepped outside of her home just for a few minutes, but it was long enough for her 5-year-old son to accidentally shoot his 2-year-old sister with the .22-caliber rifle he got for his birthday, state officials said. 

Little Caroline Starks died Tuesday in Burkesville, in southern Kentucky, according to Cumberland County Coroner Gary White. 

"The little Crickett rifle is a single-shot rifle and it has a child safety," White said of the weapon. "It's just a tragic situation." Kids and guns: 'These are not isolated tragedies' Starks' autopsy is scheduled for Wednesday, but the shooting has been ruled accidental, according to Kentucky State Police Public Affairs officer Billy Gregory."

Ruled an accident, eh?  I'd rule it negligent homicide and punish the stupid parent(s) who put a weapon in the hands of a child.  But then I'd be labeled an anti-Second Amendment maniac.  And the parents who gave a baby a weapon to play with--a weapon that killed his sibling--would be praised for their love of freedoms! and liberty! and their right to bear arms.

And the right to bury their baby girl.

UPDATE I


Here's How the Rifle That Just Killed a 2-Year-Old Girl Is Marketed for Kids
By Mark Follman on Wed. May 1, 2013 3:10 PM PDT


"Clearly the issue of parental responsibility is at the center of this tragedy. 

But against the backdrop of the Newtown massacre and ongoing national debate over regulating firearms, it also points back to the big business of guns—including how the industry profits from products aimed at children. 

 The Pennsylvania-based maker of Crickett rifles, Keystone Sporting Arms, markets its guns with the slogan "My First Rifle." They are available with different barrel and stock designs, including some made in hot pink to appeal to young girls. 

 Business has boomed since the company's inception in 1996, according to its website. In its first year, it had four employees and produced 4,000 rifles for kids; by 2008 it had greatly expanded its operations, with 70 employees and an output of 60,000 rifles a year. 

KSA's site states that its goal is "to instill gun safety in the minds of youth shooters and encourage them to gain the knowledge and respect that hunting and shooting activities require and deserve." 

 But a visit to the "kids corner" page reveals a gallery of photos that some people might find unsettling:"

Stupid American Gun Culture:  Every pre-schooler has the 2nd Amendment right to play with a lethal weapon--and kill his siblings!


Capt. Fogg over at The Swash Zone has a post up on this horrid tragedy.


UPDATE II:

The great Charlie Pierce:


"Nobody in this story is ever going to be the same.

I can't imagine the trauma the family's going through. The little girl is dead and the little boy is going to carry this moment to his grave.

Luckily, though, there was a local official to explain it all to the visiting media. "It's a normal way of life. I mean, folks - and it's not just rural Kentucky, it's rural America. I mean folks hunting and fishing, it's sports shooting - it's just a way of life. You know, you begin at an early age, learning to use and respect a gun," said Joe Phelps, Cumberland County Judge Executive, whose position has been described as similar to that of a local mayor.

 Stop.

 No.

 Also, too: goddammit. Up with this, I no longer have to put. If your "way of life" involves handing deadly weapons to five-year olds, your way of life is completely screwed up and you should change it immediately because it is stupid and wrong. (And, again, also, too: goddammit, "learning to use and respect a gun" means at least knowing that the fking thing is loaded when it's sitting in the corner of the parlor like it's a damn umbrella stand or something, and we should talk about hat part, too.) 

It is not in any way "normal" to hand a kindergartner a firearm. If a mother from the inner-city of, say, Philadelphia did that, and the kid subsequently shot his sister to death, Fox News never would stop yelling about the crisis in African American communities and the Culture Of Death, and rap music, too. 

If your culture is telling you that children who have only recently emerged from toddlerhood should have their own guns, then your culture is deadly and dangerous and that should concern you, too. 

If your culture demands that, in the face of a general national outrage over the killing of other children, your politics work to loosen the gun laws you have, as they apparently did in Kentucky, then your culture is making your politics stupid and wrong and you should change them, too. I do not have to understand these people any more, and it is way too early in the day to be drinking this much."

NJ Gov Christie Gives More Love to President Obama; Wingnuts All Over America Weep and Gnash Teeth

Oh Snap!  

Grind!  Grind!  Grind!

Do you hear that America?!

That is the sound of angry, irate, raging rightwingers gnashing their teeth after they heard the awful, terrible, horrible Governor Chris Christie tell teevee personalities on some morning show that President Obama HAS KEPT EVERY PROMISE HE MADE TO HIM IN THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE SANDY!

The awful, terrible, horrible Gov. Christie did not call President Obama the anti-Christ, baby-killing, Commie, Marxist, Socialist, Nazi, teleprompter-reading, Kenyan Usurper (with the "uppity" wife), and THAT WILL NOT DO!

How long now before the long knives come out and the extremists on the right start calling for the head of Chris the Christie???

Wait for it.  Three, two, one...ALL LOSERS ARE BREAKING HELL!


"Chris Christie has done it again. He gave President Obama a big verbal bear hug on MSNBC’s 'Morning Joe' program on Monday. The governor was asked whether, six months later, he had any regrets about working with Obama after Superstorm Sandy, given that he has since been described as a “pariah” by members of the GOP. First, the governor simply said “No”, repeating it twice. Then he added:

“I’ve got a job to do. And nothing else crossed my mind… Presidential politics was not what was on my mind that day.”

After describing the progress New Jersey has made in recovering from the storm, as well as the foot-dragging process Congress went through before approving aid, Christie said:

 “Listen, the President’s kept every promise that he made. And the fact is, that’s what I was saying at the time… I was asked how is the President doing and I said, He’s doing a good job… We saw suffering together and when you see that, you are going to either step up and be responsible, or you’re not, and we stepped up and were responsible together.” 

Get out your fainting couches rightwing Obama haters!  A GOPer actually said something non-partisan about President Obama and even *GASP*  praised *GASP* him!

Do I see a crack in the unified wail of rage and detestation that has been the default reaction to everything President Obama has done in his presidency? 

Oh Noes!

A GOP governor and a Democratic President working together to help Americans?  

What will we tell the children?

GOP dies irae?  

Or Americans working together to help Americans?

I report; you decide.