World News Korner

Courtesy of Politico:

Longtime Alaska Rep. Don Young improperly used campaign funds for personal use, accepted “impermissible” gifts and failed to report those gifts, the House Ethics Committee announced Friday.

Young, a Republican, has to repay nearly $60,000 to his campaign, and donors, the Ethics Committee said. He has also been reproved by the committee.

The Ethics Committee said that Young, who has represented Alaska in the House since 1973, accepted improper “gifts and expenses related to” 15 hunting trips. The trips occurred between 2001 and 2013, the Ethics Committee said.

Eight trips that Young took were improperly paid for, or were paid for by his campaign improperly. Young also did not disclose any of these gifts on his financial disclosure.

Okay while I am very happy that Young got his wrist slapped, I have to say that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

I have said before that I was completely shocked when Ted Stevens was indicted back in 2008. NOT because I thought Senator Stevens was innocent mind you, but because of the two of them I simply assumed the Feds had more evidence on Don Young than they did on Uncle Ted.

And the fact that Young remains out of prison today is completely ridiculous in my mind.

The guy needs to go to prison for the rest of his life, and you would be hard pressed to find an Alaskan who did not think he was guilty.

At the very least he needs to be voted out in the 2016 election cycle.

I mean come on Alaska! At least we can manage that, right?

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...This 2013 photograph of John McCain is being circulated by members of ISIS as a photo of him with members of some of their members in Syria... The poster does not specify which of the men is actually from ISIS or “Al Qaeda In Iraq” as they were once called. (Source.)


So this was John McCain in 2013, and what is his response to his Iraq buddies now?

Courtesy of HuffPo:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) ratcheted up the pressure on the Obama administration Thursday over the growing crisis in Iraq, calling for air strikes and special forces on the ground to arrest the advance of Sunni insurgents.

So rude to pose for a selfie and then try to launch an air attack against people don't you think?

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Martin Winters.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

The two-day manhunt for a Florida man ended Wednesday morning at the FBI office in Tampa, when 55-year-old “doomsday prepper” Martin Winters surrendered to authorities. According to the Tampa Bay Times, a wet, footsore and weary Winters gave up his freedom for the promise of some dry shoes, Gatorade, a couple of cheeseburgers and some French fries.

Winters is the head of a group known as the River Otter Preppers, survivalists who believe in hoarding weapons and supplies ahead of an apocalyptic event foretold in the Christian Bible’s final book, the Book of Revelations. (Oh they sound like a fun group.) An undercover FBI agent infiltrated the group and spent months building a case against Winters, who the agent said was planning a bloody, heavily-armed “last stand” against law enforcement officials.

“We’re glad to report that Mr. Winters did the right thing,” FBI spokesman David Couvertier told reporters. “We were hoping for a peaceful resolution, and today we got that.” A federal grand jury handed down an indictment two weeks ago naming Winters and five others on charges of designing and building destructive devices without a permit and other charges. Winters invoked his right to remain silent on Wednesday when he appeared before Magistrate Judge Thomas Wilson.

Authorities attempted to apprehend Winters on Monday, but he fled the scene, prompting the offer of bounty money.

"Give it up Feds, you're never going to take me alive! Hey, are those fries I smell?"

If the real Founding Fathers, for which men of this sort express such admiration, had been this easy to lure into captivity we would all be drinking tea, referring to each other as "guv'nuh," and calling a car hood a "bonnet."

Honestly though I am glad this did not end with somebody getting shot. Hopefully the dozens of incidents just like it that are almost certainly coming in the near future will end in a similar, non-violent, fashion.

Of course that does not serve the purposes of those on the Right Wing fanning the flames of distrust and hatred toward our government who are hell bent on starting a conflict in which some poor bastard is gunned down by federal agents of one kind or another, so that they can be martyred and used to increase the level of anger and vitriol, until the country explodes in a newer, more violent, version of the Civil War.

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Courtesy of the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel:

Prosecutors allege Gov. Scott Walker was at the center of an effort to illegally coordinate fundraising among conservative groups to help his campaign and those of Republican state senators fend off recall elections during 2011 and '12, according to documents unsealed Thursday.

In the documents, prosecutors lay out what they call an extensive "criminal scheme" to bypass state election laws by Walker, his campaign and two top deputies — R.J. Johnson and Deborah Jordahl. The governor and his close confidants helped raise money and control spending through 12 conservative groups during the recall elections, according to the prosecutors' filings.

The documents include an excerpt from an email in which Walker tells Karl Rove, former top adviser to President George W. Bush, that Johnson would lead the coordination campaign. Johnson is also chief adviser to Wisconsin Club for Growth, a conservative group active in the recall elections.

"Bottom-line: R.J. helps keep in place a team that is wildly successful in Wisconsin. We are running 9 recall elections and it will be like 9 congressional markets in every market in the state (and Twin Cities)," Walker wrote to Rove on May 4, 2011.

Look I don't want to be all "I told you so" here, but I totally KNEW this guy was a lowlife.

He looks like the kind of skeevy used car salesman who is always turning back the odometers, lying about the vehicles accident history, and trying to sell you unnecessary rust proofing just to screw you out of every nickel possible.

And the fact that he was working with Karl Rove to me is just about proof positive of his guilt.

These Teabagger Republicans really ARE just like the old Republicans, corrupt, larcenous, and willing to bend or break any law in order to get elected.

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A little more confrontational than I like to be, however I certainly understand the sentiment.

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Former Marine Andrew Paul Tahmooressi

So Palin has decided that she is now the go between for the mother of Sgt. Tahmooressi and the authorities in getting the former Marine out of the pokey.

Here is little Miss Nosy Britches most recent Facebook post:

As promised, here's the press release on the current situation with Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, the U.S. Marine stuck in a Mexican prison for months now.

Palin then links to this press release from Serving California, which is a Christian organization that counsels veterans, ex-offenders, and crime victims. (I'm not sure how many of those labels describe Sgt. Tahmooressi.)

The press release essentially chronicles the Marine's mother's attempts to get him a new lawyer, his struggles with PTSD, and of course Palin's "mother to mother" conversations with the mom.

Having read this document Palin's participation actually makes more sense.

It is the newest Right Wing cause celebre, which increases her conservative bonafides.

It concerns a soldier, so Palin gets to pander to the military.

The mother and son are very religious, and receiving support from Christian organizations, so Palin gets to check off that box as well.

And of course Palin gets to use the situation to attack the President again, and isn't that really its own reward?

Of course the facts that keep coming to the surface kind of take a big crap ( I know Sarah likes that word.) all over Palin's pity party parade.

The weapons and ammunition found in Sgt. Tahmooressi's truck.

Here is something posted last month by a blogger called Mexico Trucker:

Former Marine Andrew Paul Tahmooressi did not enter Mexico by mistake, according to an article published Friday in the Tijuana newspaper ZETATIJUANA.

Information obtained from a surveillance camera video showing Tahmooressi’s entrance into Mexico and investigations done on both sides of the border have led to this conclusion which is included in the investigative package that has been forwarded to the Procuraduría General de la República (PGR), Mexico’s equivalent to our Attorney Generals office. According to the report, this wasn’t the first time Tahmooressi had been in Tijuana and had “personal interest” in Mexico. The statement doesn’t specify when the previous visits to Mexico occurred, however, there is a heavy Marine presence in the southern part of California with Camp Pendleton less than 100 miles north of the border.

Tahmooressi was arrested on April 1, 2014 when he crossed into Mexico carrying a loaded .45 caliber pistol, AR-15 type assault weapon and a 12 gauge shotgun, as well as extra ammo clips and ammunition for all three weapons.+

He was charged with being in possession of firearms “reserved exclusively for military use” and faces from 6 to 21 years in Federal prison in Mexico if convicted.

And here is a little more from the same source:

The story changes with the time of day it seems. Some news outlets deem it prudent to stick with the story of how he was driving to San Ysidro to meet friends for dinner. Nothing said of Mexico. When truth be known, Mr. Tahmooressi had spent the day carousing around in Tijuana on foot.

He left his late model Ford F-150 pickup with his belonging in the back seat in garbage bags and the weapons, an AR-15 assault rifle, a 12 ga. shot gun and a 1911 Model .45 Caliber pistol in the vehicle, parked in a public parking lot on the border while he went partying. Not very responsible of him. These are the weapons he had in his possession when he was arrested and charged.

Fox News and all of their pundits deliberately overlook the fact that Mr. Tahmooressi had 400 rounds of ammunition for these weapons in his possession, further complicating things for him. He also had extra clips for both the assault rifle and the .45 in his possession. Nobody with the least bit of common sense would say that this was for his personal protection. It’s also notable that possession of these weapons and transport of these weapons is a felony in California.

If the statements made by Mexican Trucker are accurate, and he seems to know what he is talking about, then Sarah Palin's little military angel is really a PTSD suffering, wild child, who may have been transporting weapons into Mexico for the purpose of sale.

Another thing that is completely being ignored is that according to the head of Mexican Customs in Tijuana, Tahmooressi "Never, and I want to say this categorically, never did he say that he had made a mistake."

A mistake, by the way, that seems virtually impossible since THIS is the entrance to Tijuana, Mexico.

Seriously, how could anybody really be expected to notice that?

Another day, another example of Sarah Palin throwing her support behind a liar, criminal, or deviant.

Or, in this case, perhaps all three.

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Courtesy of the Violence Policy Center:

States with weak gun violence prevention laws and higher rates of gun ownership have the highest overall gun death rates in the nation, according to a Violence Policy Center (VPC) analysis of new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

Meanwhile, states with the lowest overall gun death rates have lower rates of gun ownership and some of the strongest gun violence prevention laws in the nation. However, even in these states the human toll of gun violence remains unacceptably high and far exceeds the gun death rate in most Western industrialized nations.

The five states with the highest per capita gun death rates in 2011 were Louisiana, Mississippi, Alaska, Wyoming, and Montana. Each of these states has extremely lax gun violence prevention laws as well as a higher rate of gun ownership. The state with the lowest gun death rate in the nation was Rhode Island, followed by Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey. Each of these states has strong gun violence prevention laws and has a lower rate of gun ownership.

Why is Alaska always on these bad lists?

Look before all of you sad little gun fetishists start to panic, nobody wants to keep law abiding citizens from owning a gun.

I completely understand that Viagra is expensive, loud noises frighten you, and that you have the muscle mass of a quadriplegic, so without your arsenal of bang sticks you feel lost, impotent, and confused.

However there are people who are careless with firearms, emotionally ill equipped to handle them, or mentally deranged and possibly homicidal, and surely everybody would agree that these people should not be trusted to own or handle instruments of death that can kill even fathers of newborns from all the way across the street.

We just want to send our children to school knowing hey are safe, attend a movie without having to wear a flack jacket, and shop in the mall without scanning the food court for armed assailants.

In other words we just want to live in the America that existed before the NRA started pushing gun ownership like that creepy guy in the van hands out free samples of meth to the neighborhood children. (The first taste is always free.)

In my opinion our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, outweighs the right of ammosexuals to walk around feeling like a bad ass.

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