Green Eagle

Via  Hullabaloo, the following quote, which pretty much says it all: "It is the grand jury’s function not ‘to enquire … upon what foundation [the charge may be] denied,’ or otherwise to try the suspect’s defenses, but only to examine ‘upon what foundation [the charge] is made’ by the prosecutor. Respublica v. Shaffer, 1 Dall. 236 (O. T. Phila. 1788); see also F. Wharton, Criminal Pleading and Practice § 360, pp. 248-249 (8th ed. 1880). As a consequence, neither in this country nor in England has the suspect under investigation by the grand jury ever been thought to have a right to testify or to have exculpatory evidence presented."   -Antonin Scalia, United States v, Williams, 504 U.S. 36 (1992) (Bolding by me, following the bolding at Hullabaloo) The Darren Wilson grand jury was an illegal sham designed to exculpate a white man who murdered a black teenager.  This prosecutor was involved in raising money for Darren Wilson's defense, and if he had a shred o...

"Nuclear Attack From Aliens Eradicated Life On Mars, Physicist Claims"

Many of you may have missed the story of Curtis Wade Holley, a Tallahassee man who, a few days ago, set fire to his own house, with the intention of killing police and firemen who responded.  Luckily, the police found out what was going on and warned the fire department to keep away, but not until Holley killed one sheriff's deputy and wounded another one. Well, early articles about this incident referred to Holley's "anti-government views."  Of course, as I immediately suspected, Holley turned out to be a Sovereign Citizen. The death toll from these violent right wing jackasses has now reached over 100, yet the press persists in treating them like a quaint but harmless group of jargon-spouting loons.  They represent a much greater threat to our national stability than ISIS or Al Qaida ever could, and it is time to put a stop to their often lethal antics. It remains only for me to point out that, like all Conservatives, their primary motive is to find an excuse...

Well, the press sure is full of people wanting to share their opinions about what happened with the non-indictment of Darren Wilson.  Of course, none of the ones that I have seen have managed to state the truth: that in many parts of this country, the law is deliberately corroded so white people can shoot black people for fun, without any consequences.  That's America today, folks- deal with it.

And ISIS in particular.  That's the story that we hear day after day, isn't it?  Well, here's a slightly different take: "Signs of Kobani ISIS fighters in Syria growing desperate have been amply buttressed by the recent outpourings of a Chechen militant in the social media. From this northern Syrian city, he issued an emotional plea for support and prayer for him and his supporters.   This conforms the news that ISIS is facing reverses as the advancing forces of Kurdish fighters have started seizing vital buildings used by ISIS, besides capturing a large number of weapons and ammunition.   This conforms the news that ISIS is facing reverses as the advancing forces of Kurdish fighters have started seizing vital buildings used by ISIS, besides capturing a large number of weapons and ammunition...The distress of ISIS in Kobani is now more apparent in the tone of social-media postings made by the group in recent days. In the past, the posts were euphoric about vic...

Well, I've been pretty unmotivated to plunge into the right wing maelstrom lately, but I guess it's time to get back on the job, so here goes: What's interesting in Wingnut Wrapup today is not what is here, but what is not- coverage of the Republican House committee that just released a report refuting all of the Republican lies about Benghazi that have been forced down our throats the last two years.  Mostly, the right wingers are just ignoring it the way they do with global warming or anything else that doesn't have the potential of making money for their masters.  Of course, there are some exceptions, like this one: Streiff, Red State:  "Lindsay Graham: House Benghazi report is “crap” We'll just leave it there, and move on, what do you say?. John Hawkins, Town Hall:  "How To Stop Being Poor...Once in college, on a trip out of town, I slept in an elevator all night because I couldnt afford to pay to share a room with friends and I was too proud...

Okay, okay, I've got nothing.  So sue me.

Benghazi.  Well, the latest Republican House Inquisition on Benghazi has managed to find absolutely nothing wrong with the actions of the White House or the intelligence community, no matter how hard they tried. I just took a look at a lot of the sites I normally cover in Wingnut Wrapup.  Will it surprise you to learn that not a single one of them, collectively responsible for hundreds if not thousands of posts over the last two years hyping this nonexistent scandal, has mentioned this latest result a single time? And what do you want to bet that, as the 2016 election approaches, and the right wingers figure that people have forgotten about this, all of the lies will return in full force, but the truth will be nowhere to be seen? And if you do happen to be a betting person, what will you wager that the mainstream press will not bother to point out that the Benghazi scandal was all a gigantic lie from the beginning?  Hint, if you are wondering which way to bet: ...

Global temperatures for this year so far: Of course, this comes from scientists, so feel free to write it off as some sort of self-serving lie.

If we can't have every single sick thing we want right now, just like the two year olds that we are inside. Republican Senator Tom Coburn: "The country's going to go nuts, because they're going to see it as a move outside the authority of the president, and it's going to be a very serious situation," Coburn said on Capital Download. "You're going to see — hopefully not — but you could see instances of anarchy. ... You could see violence."   "Instead of having the rule of law handling in our country today, now we're starting to have the rule of rulers, and that's the total antithesis of what this country was founded on," Coburn says. "Here's how people think: Well, if the law doesn't apply to the president ... then why should it apply to me?" Of course, we on the sane side of the political divide know that the whole notion of Obama being some would-be dictator who has a continuous record of abusing the ...

It distresses me to bring this sort of thing to your attention, but I would like you to take a look at this post at Crooks and Liars, which concerns the four people murdered by Palestinian extremists in a Jerusalem Synagogue.  What I want to ask you to read are some of the comments, which are an endless stream of the most disgusting attacks on Israel and Jews, written without a single acknowledgment that innocent Israelis were the victims here.  As my readers know, I spend considerable time looking at right wing websites, and I must say that the tone of these comments is absolutely on a par with the sort of thing that one sees at Aryan supremacist blogs like Vanguard News Service or the American Spectator. I saw hardly a single person take exception to this outburst of violent hatred, while many essentially applauded acts like this. Are we really caught in a world where the evil on both sides is equal?  If this is any indication, we are, and everything we try to do...

Recently, Green Eagle had occasion to reply to a Christian Identity video purported to prove that the real Jews were all Aryans, posted on You Tube.  As an aside I must add that it would appear that the great majority of Christian Identity adherents do not have particularly spectacular reading skills, because the bulk of their presence online consists of videos.  Anyway, back to the subject. As Green Eagle is known far and wide for his ability to have meaningful, constructive intellectual discussions with this sort of person, I thought it would be instructive to the less accomplished among us to see an example of his skill.  So, here it is: Green Eagle:  "I just want to tell you how much I enjoyed this.  It is one of the greatest collections of ludicrous misinterpretations of history and easily disprovable assertions I have ever heard.  Really, you guys should be writing for Saturday Night Live or Monty Python.  And to top it off, the Jefferson Ai...

Here is something that I bet you have never heard from anyone else, even though it takes no more than fourth grade math and a few minutes with Google to figure one thing out: that Republicans' claim of a mandate from last week's election is nonsense. In 2014, only 36.3% of eligible voters actually voted.  Of that 36.3%, Republicans got 52%; that is to say, they actually got 18.9% of eligible voters to vote for them. In 2012, 57.5% of eligible voters actually voted.  Obama got 51.1% of those who voted, or 29.3% of eligible voters. In fact, Romney got 47.2% of actual voters, or 27% of eligible voters. Thus, even with the absolutely abominable performance of Democratic candidates this year, the percentage of eligible voters that Republicans got decreased by thirty percent. And let us not forget that this was an almost perfect year for Republicans: their malignant stew of voter suppression, gerrymandering and massive dark money, and the fruits of their six year campaign ...

While hunting for something else, I found this: Now I get it!

Surely one of the most shocking misbehaviors of American intelligence services after World War II dates right to the beginnings of the CIA: the secret protection of literally thousands of Nazi war criminals by US intelligence organizations in the name of a resurgent explosion of irrational hatred of Communism.  In Operation Paperclip alone, 1500 German "scientists" and other war criminals were brought to the United States: "One purpose of Operation Paperclip was to deny German scientific expertise and knowledge to the Soviet Union...To circumvent President Truman's anti-Nazi order and the Allied Potsdam and Yalta agreements, the JIOA worked independently to create false employment and political biographies for the scientists. The JIOA also expunged from the public record the scientists' Nazi Party memberships and régime affiliations. Once "bleached" of their Nazism, the scientists were granted security clearances by the U.S. government to work in th...

Krugman.   Talking about the Supreme Court's decision to interfere in the legal process regarding a vicious suit to try one more time to damage Obamacare. Who else has the guts to risk their position in the mainstream press by telling the truth? "...let’s be clear about what’s happening here. Judges who support this cruel absurdity aren’t stupid; they know what they’re doing. What they are, instead, is corrupt, willing to pervert the law to serve political masters. And what we’ll find out in the months ahead is how deep the corruption goes." I have been saying since Bush v. Gore that we are in a frightening era never before seen in this country: an era in which a majority of the Supreme Court is corrupt.  Not overly ideological, not ignorant of the law, corrupt.  A half century and more of Republican Supreme Court packing, dating back to the Nixon-era fight that put the despicable racist Rehnquist on the Court, has resulted in a clear majority of Justices that are com...

So, I was in the supermarket today, and I noticed that one of the tabloids is featuring a story titled "Obama's Ebola Blunders Revealed." Blunders.  Here's the story to date: Number of Ebola Cases in the U.S:  4 Number contracted in a foreign country by someone who then came to the U.S: 2 Number of those who died:  1 Number contracted in the US: 2 Number of those who died: 0 Number of American citizens who contracted Ebola:  3 Number of American citizens who died:  0 In summary: two people got Ebola in the United States and both of them survived. By contrast, since Thomas Duncan, the one fatality listed above, first went to a hospital in Texas, something around 1300 people have been killed in this country with firearms.  And that many die every day from smoking related causes. And let us remember that President Saint Ronnie Reagan saw over 20,000 people in this country die of AIDS before he even mentioned the subject in public, let alo...

Digby reports: "Jason Leopold of VICE News says he's got a hold of the Executive Summary of the Torture Report." The executive summary of the torture report.  For people that didn't have time to read the whole thing, because it just wasn't that important.

People who are too upset at the Republican wins the other day might want to consider the fact that the Lakers are currently in last place in their division and the Cleveland Browns are in first place in theirs.  Something is sure out of control in the universe right now.

Of course, the mainstream press is reporting Tuesday's elections as the greatest miracle since the loaves and the fishes, and insisting that it's all over for Democrats, particularly in the Senate, probably forever.  But despite the inevitable pro-Republican spin, how true is it really? Here's my not-so-pessimistic take on what happened in the 2016 elections. There have been four two-term Presidents since Roosevelt.  In the midterm elections of their second terms, they lost an average of six seats.  At this point, the Democrats have lost seven (there are a couple of runoff seats still in play.) Several factors combined, however, to make this a particularly bad year for Democrats.  The 33 Senate seats up for re-election this year included far more vulnerable Democratic seats than Republicans, something that is due more to chance than anything else.  Also, this is really the first year of Citizens United, in which the Republicans were able to utilize billion...

From the website of the Impeach Obama Week people, this posting: "November 1, 2014   We did not have a regular impeach Obama protest on the weekend of November 1, because it was the weekend of Remembrance Day for the victims of illegal aliens. This event was for Robert Rosas, who was murdered five years ago by a gang of drug smugglers for his night vision glasses. He was guarding the border near Campo, CA." I am sure that one of the first acts of the new Republican Senate will be to make Remembrance Day for the Victims of Illegal Aliens an official national holiday- probably replacing Martin Luther King day. No word for when they will take up action on the Remembrance Day for the Victims of the Koch Brothers.

Green Eagle must announce that he is deeply touched that the American voters decided that nothing in this country was as important as their opportunity to provide him with two more years of material to subject to his ridicule. You really love me!  How could I have ever predicted that the nation would rally around Green Eagle like this?  And before I go let me give a shout out to our President, for standing for nothing, and for the Democrats in Congress, who decided the way to win an election was to send approximately one trillion e-mails to their (former) backers, begging them to finance a campaign devoid of every single thing it used to mean to be a Democrat. Just a little reminder of what that used to mean: And don't forget that tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life...like it or not.

Daily Kos today: "73% of conservatives vote, only 58% of liberals... The problem with too many of us liberals is we don't take the time to vote and so the Tea Party gets to control Washington" No, the problem is not that liberals don't take the time to vote.  The problem is that Conservatives have a party that they think (more fools them) represents them, and liberals do not. This election cycle, I must have gotten close to a thousand begging e-mails asking me to contribute money to a party and a President that will agree to cut Social Security and Medicare, but not oversee the criminals on Wall Street, that will occasionally talk about global warming, but never even try to really deal with it, that won't prosecute a single one of the war criminals responsible for the invasion of Iraq and for making our country synonymous with torture, that won't do a thing to protect the American people from the ravages of a couple hundred sociopathic billionaires.   ...