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Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.
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remember the working mother who got arrested for letting her 9 year old daughter play in the park?
she just shoulda told the folks that she was doing ‘FREE-RANGE’ parenting.
2520’s got a name for everything.
Poor working Black mother does it, it’s child abuse and neglect.
White middle-class folks do it, it’s FREE-RANGE parenting.
………………..
Free-Range Parenting
It’s a new, hands-off approach to raising kids. Should you give it a try?
By Lisa Zamosky
WebMD Feature
Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD
WebMD Archive
Would you let your 9-year-old son ride the New York City Subway system alone? Columnist Lenore Skenazy did, and then she wrote about the experience in the New York Sun. What followed was a storm of media attention and a mix of accolades and accusations from parents everywhere. A new movement also grew from Skenazy’s bold move: It’s called free-range parenting.
Almost as a backlash to the overbearing, over-scheduling “helicopter” parent, free-range parenting is based on the notion “that we can give our children the same kind of freedom we had [as kids] without going nuts with worry,” Skenazy says. “When you let children out, all the good things happen – the self-confidence, happiness, and self-sufficiency that come from letting our kids do some things on their own,” she says.
Sounds great, but even non “hovering” moms wouldn’t dream of doing what Skenazy did.
Liz Jereski, a mother of two living in Los Angeles, says simple requests from her 5-year-old son bring into question how much autonomy she can safely allow him. Recently, Jereski’s son wanted to race her downstairs in their apartment building. “I would take the elevator and he would take the stairs,” she says of the game her son proposed. “And I’ll think it’s fine, but then I think, no it’s not fine, because he’ll be out of my sight and something could happen. There’s a little voice telling you, ‘You know better and you shouldn’t do that.’”
There was a time when letting young children walk to school alone, ride their bikes around the neighborhood unsupervised, and hang out in the park didn’t seem like irresponsible parenting. In fact, if you grew up in the ‘70s and ‘80s (and earlier, of course), you probably remember going out to play after school and being expected to return home only when the street lights turned on. But as more families had both parents working outside the home, supervised after-school activities became increasingly necessary. What resulted was a shift in our culture that requires kids to be under constant adult surveillance.
“Kids today in all settings are very scheduled and very supervised,” says Richard Gallagher, PhD, associate professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the NYU Child Study Center. “You rarely find kids today engaging in pick-up softball games or other kinds of activities where they plan things and work it out themselves.”
Gallagher says the heavy emphasis on scheduling and supervision has caused children to lose the ability to entertain themselves without TV, computers, or video games.
http://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/free-range-parenting
UH HUH
UH HUH
July 17, 2014
Scott Walker Jobs Chief Defends Companies Who Used Taxpayer Funds to Outsource WI Jobs
On the same day that Scott Walker released a shameful and completely false ad attacking Mary Burke and her record of success at Trek, Walker’s top economic official was defending companies who used taxpayer funds to ship Wisconsin jobs overseas.
Speaking to reporters yesterday, Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation CEO Reed Hall, a past board member at Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and a Tea Party donor to Scott Walker, defended outsourcing saying, “We are in a global marketplace and some companies, to be successful financially, need to outsource.”
Both the Menomonee Falls-based Eaton Corporation and the Plexus Corporation in Neenah reportedly received millions in financial rewards from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation to create jobs in Wisconsin, only to layoff workers whose jobs were outsourced to facilities in foreign countries.
Hall went on to say, “I’m sorry that they temporarily had to outsource some jobs, but I think ultimately over the long-term its gonna be a great win for Wisconsin with both these companies.”
Yesterday, the Racine Journal Times slammed the “astonishing” failure of WEDC to ensure that Wisconsin tax dollars are used to grow Wisconsin jobs, and called on WEDC to require participating companies to pay the state back if jobs leave the state.
http://wisdems.org/news/press/view/2014-07-scott-walker-jobs-chief-defends-companies-who-used-t-2
Why I’m Excited About Black Captain America, Even If He Might Not Stick Around
By Hayes Brown July 18, 2014 at 11:57 am
It’s hard to be a black nerd at a comic book convention.
Even among all the bright lights and C-list sci-fi stars and homemade costumes, you stand out. Especially among the homemade costumes. If you choose to cosplay as a black nerd, you find yourself with limited options. You can pick from among the small list of characters who actually match your race. Pretty much every black guy running around the convention floor is dressed like the Samuel L. Jackson-based Nick Fury. Or you can branch out and cross racial lines, wearing the costume as best as you can, knowing deep down that to portray the character as accurately as some of the others running around the hall rented out for the weekend is impossible.
But the impossible just got a little more possible: Marvel released an announcement late Wednesday night that someone new would be taking over as that most patriotic of heroes, Captain America. The iconic shield is being passed from Steve Rogers, the white man who has played the part almost constantly since World War II, on to a black man: Sam Wilson, better known as the Falcon in Marvel’s pages.
That’s right everyone: my president’s black. Now Cap is, too.
The shift, explained in the storyline as being due to Rogers’ body no longer being able to handle the strain of being Captain America, makes sense from a canonical point of view. There’s a long history of teamwork between Sam Wilson and Steve Rogers, as anyone who saw this year’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier witnessed. But Wilson has always been stuck playing second fiddle. Not anymore, as Rick Remender, the writer behind the redesign explained in the blog post Marvel posted to announce the changes:
http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2014/07/18/3461162/one-black-comics-nerd-on-black-captain-america/
OWN Sets Cast For New Tyler Perry Drama Series ‘If Loving You Is Wrong’
By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Thursday June 5, 2014 @ 2:09pm PDT
EXCLUSIVE: OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network has assembled the principal cast of the latest Tyler Perry drama series, the upcoming If Loving You Is Wrong (formerly Single Mom’s Club). Premiering in September, the new series, created, written, directed and executive produced by Perry, follows the relationships of a group of husbands and wives that live and love on the same street. While the neighbors come from very different backgrounds, their lives are similar — raising children, dealing with exes, worrying about money and keeping romance in their relationships. But just below the surface — secrets, lies and deception threaten to destroy what they have built.
Amanda Clayton (John Carter) plays Alex who is married to Brad, played by Aiden Turner (All My Children). Together they have two children. The couple’s relationship seems solid, but a secret threatens to derail their marriage. Heather Hemmens (Hellcats) plays Marcie, a real estate agent married to Randal, played by Eltony Williams (24). Together they are struggling with Marcie’s inability to have children. Zulay Henao (The Single Moms Club) plays Esperanza, ex-wife of Edward, played by Joel Rush (Days Of Our Lives). She and Edward are parents of an eight-year-old girl. Esperanza is terrified what her ex will do when he finds out about her new boyfriend, Julius, played byOWN Logo Current Octavio Pizano (East Los High). Edwina Findley (Treme) plays Kelly, mother to a young son. Her boyfriend, and father to her son, has been away on a relief mission in Haiti for a year. April Parker-Jones (Jericho) plays Natalie, a single mother of three kids at home and one adult son in prison. She constantly struggles to pay the bills and her ex Lushion, played by Charles Malik Whitfield (Law & Order), is trying to love her while taking care of their son, Frank.
If Loving You Is Wrong, produced by OWN and Tyler Perry Studios, is Perry’s second drama series for OWN under his production deal with the network. The first, The Haves And The Have Nots, has been a breakout. It returned with new episodes May 27 to more than 3 million total viewers, becoming the network’s highest season premiere in history. Additionally, Perry’s OWN comedy, Love Thy Neighbor, returns with new episodes June 25.
http://www.deadline.com/2014/06/own-sets-cast-for-new-tyler-perry-drama-series-if-loving-you-is-wrong/
uh huh
uh huh
We need to take Rahim, Jamal, Tequan, Tamiqua, and Monique, all dressed in black, to the Whitest towns in Wisconsin. See how they like it.
……………………………………….
Elections board to consider lifting ban on poll observers using cameras
The ban on election observers using cameras at polling locations may soon be lifted in Wisconsin.
That move, which was recommended by the Republican-controlled Legislature, is set to be considered Monday when the state elections board meets to vote on proposed changes to election observer rules.
If the Government Accountability Board approves the change, observers might be able to use cameras to photograph and record voters and others at polling places by the Aug. 12 primary, including people getting ballots and registering to vote.
Earlier this year, Gov. Scott Walker signed a bill allowing observers to get closer to those they are monitoring. The legislation said that observation areas at polling places can be as close as three feet from the tables where voters obtain ballots or register, or from counting locations — rather than the six feet previously required. Observers would need to remain in those areas while filming or taking photographs of voters, and photographing ballots would still be prohibited….
http://host.madison.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/on-politics/elections-board-to-consider-lifting-ban-on-poll-observers-using/article_c067c4c0-6d1b-5be2-8db5-1d55573147f6.html#ixzz383DdGNQQ
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Chump Change To The Man
GOP casino multi-billionaire Sheldon Adelson wants to buy the Senate for the Republican Party, and he has enough money to do it by himself.
If you had a big, high-stakes project, think an extra $1 million a day might help?
Well, leading GOP sources focused on 2014 Senate races say such a boost is being contemplated by GOP megadonor Sheledon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino mogul.
Adelson has spent some time of late studying the map, and receiving briefings on state-by-state strategy and candidates. And he is promising to help Republicans target a dozen seats now held by Democrats, with the ultimate goal of picking up at least six – and the Senate majority. The GOP also is defending seats in Georgia and Kentucky.
So watch in the days and weeks ahead to see how much of a Senate play Adelson is prepared to make. One of the sources involved said it could be as much as $100 million. With 107 days to the election from Sunday, that would be an eye-popping bet.
Adelson is worth $35.9 billion. Him giving $100 million to the GOP to win the Senate is equivalent of you having $3,590 in your bank account and you giving $10 to your favorite candidate. And thanks to the Supreme Court, both are considered to be equal expressions of freedom of political speech.
http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2014/07/chump-change-to-man.html
Dodging Israeli Bombs in Gaza: A Personal Journal of Survival
By contributors | Jul. 20, 2014 |
By Omar Ghraieb
Gaza – Every night I seem to think it’s the worst night, until I go through the next one. I got so used to the house shaking and moving from the consecutive blasts that it now feels weird when everything is still. Flashing lights, the ground shaking all around, that’s my house during the current Israeli war on Gaza.
Every day, Israeli warplanes bomb a new house; a mosque is hit; a car is blasted; a hospital is attacked. Even cemeteries and handicap associations are no longer safe. Every day, new people die, people who were once alive with hopes and dreams, are now nothing but a number in a news report. Life is so vulnerable in Gaza right now that your life can suddenly become a statistic. No one knows who will become a number, or when.
When you live in a conflict zone, like Gaza, experiences force you little by little to create the best “Dos and Don’ts” warzone guidebook. After three wars in the space of six years, you manage to figure out the best ways to survive with the limited options available to you:
http://www.juancole.com/2014/07/dodging-personal-survival.html
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Keeping That Oath
Can we finally stop pretending that Team Dudebro Defector are somehow “liberals” and not right-wing, anti-Obama, anti-government cranks?
Activist Glenn Greenwald posted this today on Twitter, hyping a pro-Edward Snowden advertisement featured at reason.com:
…………………
Who is this “coalition of current and former military, police, and other public officials” Greenwald is promoting?
Why, that group of “former police and military” folks is non other than Oath Keepers, one of the nastiest right-wing militia groups in the country.
Launched in March [2009] by Las Vegan Stewart Rhodes, Oath Keepers bills itself as a nonpartisan group of current and retired law enforcement and military personnel who vow to fulfill their oaths to the Constitution.
More specifically, the group’s members, which number in the thousands, pledge to disobey orders they deem unlawful, including directives to disarm the American people and to blockade American cities. By refusing the latter order, the Oath Keepers hope to prevent cities from becoming “giant concentration camps,” a scenario the 44-year-old Rhodes says he can envision happening in the coming years.
It’s a Cold War-era nightmare vision with a major twist: The occupying forces in this imagined future are American, not Soviet.
“The whole point of Oath Keepers is to stop a dictatorship from ever happening here,” Rhodes, a former Army paratrooper and Yale-trained lawyer, said in an interview with the Review-Journal. “My focus is on the guys with the guns, because they can’t do it without them.
Hey, Las Vegas? Militia? Sprung into existence 3 months after Obama took office? You don’t suppose…
http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2014/07/keeping-that-oath.html
https://twitter.com/RarestAnimal/status/490938025359474688/photo/1
Democrats Poised To Flip Georgia’s Senate Seat As Michelle Nunn Holds Commanding Lead
By: Justin Baragona
In a poll by Landmark Communications released Sunday, Democrat Michelle Nunn has a commanding lead against both of her potential challengers in Georgia’s US Senate race. Against Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) Nunn is up by eight points, 49% to 41%. The poll also shows her with a nice lead against businessman David Perdue as Nunn leads him 48% to 42%. Perdue and Kingston are heading into a GOP primary runoff this coming Tuesday. The survey shows Kingston with a sizable lead as he is ahead by seven points, 48% to 41%.
While Nunn holds leads against both men, the thought is that she’d prefer to face Kingston in the general election. Atlanta-based political analyst Bill Crane had the following to say after this poll was released.
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/07/20/democrats-poised-flip-georgias-senate-seat-michelle-nunn-holds-commanding-lead.html
July 20, 2014
For Hillary, some room for a view
WaPo’s Rucker and Costa have a superb overview of all that disquiet on the leftist front. Its theme: there’s more anti-Hillary competition out there than is generally known–making coquettish noises or preening for the grassroots are not only Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and Martin O’Malley, but Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Senators Amy Klobuchar and Kirsten Gillibrand, Jerry Brown, Bernard Sanders, and Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, who sees an opening for a “voice [of] blue-collar concerns” with “red-state appeal” (which means he actually running for the veep slot).
Former senator Gary Hart articulates Clinton’s greatest vulnerability, which doubles as a strength: “She’s always trying to find the mythical center on controversial issues–and if you do that, someone else is going to take the bouquet for courage.” Offhand I can’t calculate the number of courageous losers in presidential primaries and general campaigns, but the number’s enormity only confirms the dubious consolation of Henry Clay’s remark, “I’d rather be right than be president.”
Howard Dean, a man who acquired his political education in the school of absurdly quixotic knocks, predicts: “Hillary, who most Democrats believe has earned it and paid her dues, would have to totally implode in order for a grass-roots candidate to win the nomination.” I think that assessment is both valid and enduring. Rucker and Costa insert another assessment that I question: “More than anyone else, Warren is speaking directly to the hopes of Democratic activists, who have grown disenchanted with Obama and hope his successor will be a strong progressive change agent.”
I’m not in the “Democratic activist” loop, so perhaps I’m wrong. But I detect, broadly on the left, less disenchantment with Obama than empathy for his frustrated and impossible circumstances. The promise of the 2016 election is that a Democratic wave will permit Obama’s successor to complete his agenda–to round out his legacy–and it is this to which the left desires a nominee’s overt commitment. An unflinching pursuit of the “mythical center on controversial issues” will undoubtedly carry Hillary into the White House; but, since she can’t lose to any among the breathtakingly pathetic Republican field, so would at least a spot of courage.
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2014/07/for-hillary-some-room-for-a-view.html#sthash.oederxdM.dpuf
Friday, July 18, 2014
The real deal
I remember a scene on West Wing where Josh Lymon tracks down Sam Seaborn, who is working at a law practice, to discuss whether or not they want to get back into politics. Josh is thinking about going to work for Jed Bartlet’s presidential campaign. He tells Sam that he’s going to check Bartlet out and will get back to him. After doing so, Josh calls Sam to tell him this guy is “the real deal.”
I’ve looked for a clip of that scene on youtube and can’t find it. So I’m going from memory. But it stood out to me because that’s how I feel like I’ve spent most of my time following politics…looking for the real deal. One of the reasons I’ve followed President Obama so closely is that I finally felt like I found just that.
The real deal doesn’t come along very often in politics. But I had that same reaction today when I watched this video of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick talk about his plans to work with the federal government to provide shelter for the unaccompanied children who have come here from Central America. You can skip to about 4:45 on the video to see the pertinent portion.
Patrick offered two reasons for his decision. One is the U.S. tradition of helping children from other nations in need. The other, Patrick explained, is deeply personal.
“I believe that we will one day have to answer for our actions and our inactions. My faith teaches that ‘if a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him,’ but rather ‘love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt,'” Patrick said , quoting scripture, as he grew visibly emotional.
http://youtu.be/ubpvoDIfKvY
http://immasmartypants.blogspot.ca/2014/07/the-real-deal.html
https://twitter.com/thomaswright08/status/490488330950574081/photo/1
https://twitter.com/KingCenterATL/status/490890704080875521/photo/1
James “Rockford Files” Garner, a true warrior for justice.
https://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/status/490877097943236608/photo/1
Apartments’ demise hurts vulnerable tenants
By MARY MITCHELL July 18, 2014 11:50PM
Updated: July 20, 2014 2:29AM
Sebrina Cummings has made strides since moving into supportive housing seven years ago.
Two of her eight children are in college. Another child is about to graduate from high school. Cummings, 47, works as a home care provider for the disabled and elderly. In many ways, she is the typical working-poor. When she moved into the Harriet Tubman Apartments at 5759 S. Michigan in 2007, Cummings was homeless and jumped at the opportunity to leave a shelter.
Now, Cummings is again facing homelessness through no real fault of her own.
Because the private non-profit organization, Brand New Beginnings, failed to fulfill the requirements of a grant to operate the city’s subsidized housing program known as Shelter Care Plus, fragile families are being dumped on the street.
Della Mitchell (no relation), the founder of Brand New Beginnings, declined to comment about the troubled program.
Unlike the intense scrutiny given Gov. Pat Quinn’s scarred Neighborhood Recovery Initiative, few questions are being raised about how a taxpayer funded housing program that opened with such fanfare seven years ago, has ended up in such a mess.
Last April, 40 families residing in two adjacent buildings were notified that the not-for-profit had lost its grant and the residents would have to move elsewhere.
But that same month, the city required Cummings to sign a “Shelter Plus Care Program and Supportive Housing Program Termination of Assistance and Appeal Policy and Procedure” agreement apparently unaware Brand New Beginnings had lost its subsidy.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/mitchell/28738952-452/apartments-demisehurts-vulnerable-tenants.html#.U8wLiLG2Ono
Sneed: Karen Lewis angling to field aldermanic slate
The mayoral race . . .
CTU chief Karen Lewis, who would like to grind Mayor Rahm Emanuel into a pulp, has pink slips she plans to pass out before she green lights a mayoral bid.
Sneed is told she has plans afoot to boot black Chicago aldermen who support Rahm.
“She’s hoping to seize growing black discontent over Rahm’s school policies to field candidates to unseat the black aldermen who are constantly showing up at Rahm’s side in photo ops, supporting him and his policies,” said an informed Sneed source.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/sneed/28732185-452/sneed-karen-lewis-angling-to-field-aldermanic-slate.html#.U8wIFrG2Ono
July 18, 2014
Can Elizabeth Warren withstand the demand for “something”–else, that is?
Slate’s John Dickerson agitates, “Run, Elizabeth, Run!”
If Warren joined the race, she would not win, but she would till the ground, putting grit and the smell of earth in the contest. She would energize the Democratic Party’s liberal base, which would then stir up other Democrats who seek to moderate or contain that group. Warren would challenge the Democratic Party on issues like corporate power, income inequality, and entitlements. She would be a long shot and she would have nothing to lose–which means she could keep talking about those ideas out loud. Because Clinton is close to Wall Street and finance executives and Warren is gunning for them, she has the potential to put campaign pressure on Clinton that other candidates can’t. Clinton and other candidates would be forced to explain where they stood more than if Warren weren’t in the race.
I question the proposition that anyone could ever compel Hillary Clinton to explain precisely where she stands on anything (except of course her undying support for Israel). She’s a perfectly constructed machine of political ambiguity, which explains her vast popularity and means, as Dickerson also notes, her presidential campaign “will have all the safety, risk aversion, and lack of impact of Clinton’s recent book, Hard Choices.” But what the hell. A Warren stab at the alarmingly impossible would possess an incalculable entertainment factor, which would be something, at least, in the otherwise alarmingly dull, Great Coronation run-up.
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2014/07/can-elizabeth-warren-withstand-the-demand-for-something-else-that-is.html#sthash.fqZhmqCp.dpuf
James Garner has passed away at 86
James Garner, Witty, Handsome Leading Man, Dies at 86
By BRUCE WEBER
JULY 20, 2014
James Garner, the wry and handsome leading man who slid seamlessly between television and the movies but was best known as the amiable gambler Bret Maverick in the 1950s western “Maverick” and the cranky sleuth Jim Rockford in the 1970s series “The Rockford Files,” was found dead in his California home on Saturday night, the Los Angeles Police Department confirmed on Sunday. He was 86.
Mr. Garner, who smoked for most of his life, even after open-heart surgery in 1988, had suffered a stroke in 2008.
Mr. Garner was a genuine star but as an actor something of a paradox: a lantern-jawed, brawny athlete whose physical appeal was both enhanced and undercut by a disarming wit. He appeared in more than 50 films, many of them dramas, but as he established in one of his notable early performances, as a battle-shy naval officer in “The Americanization of Emily” (1964) — and had shown before that in “Maverick” — he was most at home as an iconoclast, a flawed or unlikely hero.
An understated comic actor, he was especially adept at conveying life’s tiny bedevilments. One of his most memorable roles was as a perpetually flummoxed pitchman for Polaroid cameras in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in droll commercials in which he played a vexed husband and Mariette Hartley played his needling wife. They were so persuasive that Ms. Hartley had a shirt printed with the declaration “I am NOT Mrs. James Garner.”
His one Academy Award nomination was for the 1985 romantic comedy “Murphy’s Romance,” in which he played a small-town druggist who woos the new-in-town divorced mom (Sally Field) with a mixture of self-reliance, grouchy charm and lack of sympathy for fools.
Even Rockford, a semi-tough ex-con (he had served five years on a bum rap for armed robbery) who lived in a beat-up trailer in a Malibu beach parking lot, drove a Pontiac Firebird and could handle himself in a fight (though he probably took more punches than he gave), was exasperated most of the time by one thing or another: his money problems, the penchant of his father (Noah Beery Jr.) for getting into trouble or getting in the way, the hustles of his con-artist pal Angel (Stuart Margolin), his dicey relationship with the local police.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/movies/james-garner-actor-dies-at-86.html?_r=0
http://youtu.be/8955uhpXNFk
http://youtu.be/tO0Vq4fj3ho
I remember watching “Maverick” re-runs when I was in high school. It was the only “western” show that I ever watched and I only watched it because I thought James Garner was so handsome. “Luck is the lady that he loves the best.”
RIP, Mr. Garner.
I found Maverick through re-runs. I used to watch The Rockford Files with Daddy.
But Garner was an actor that I loved any role he played, even if the rest of the movie sucked.
RIP Mr. Garner.
OK! I was a die-hard “Rockford Files” fan. I watched it with my 2 brothers and w’d get up and jam to the opening theme music. My sisters thought I was nuts, because I enjoyed the them music. They didn’t get it, and I didn’t care that they didn’t get it.
And besides, James Garner was quite the looker too, which gave me even more reasons to watch RF.! LOL
July 19, 2014
Putin as Robertson, Obama as Redford
If there’s one thing Vladimir Putin understands better than Barack Obama, it’s humanity’s cynicism. The NY Times:
European leaders expressed outrage but showed little eagerness to escalate the confrontation with Russia. Mr. Cameron, whose country had nine citizens on board, said “those responsible must be brought to account.” Ms. Merkel, whose country had four passengers on board, said there were “many indications” that the Malaysian airliner had been “shot down” but declined to say whether she would support tougher sanctions
I’m reminded of jaded CIA spook Cliff Robertson educating the idealistic Robert Redford at the conclusion of Three Days of the Condor. Do you really believe the American people would care about a nefarious, U.S. military scheme to appropriate Middle East oil, if they need the oil? Robertson asks Redford. Ask them when they’re cold and hungry if they care. Ask them about idealism when the reality, or even the specter, of deprivation bites.
Nearly 300 innocents, including 80 children, blown out of the sky because Putin supplied ignorant separatist thugs with–to those 300 innocents, at least–what amounted to a weapon of mass destruction. I heard a military analyst say on CNN last night that the U.S. military requires six months of personnel training on the four distinct components of our equivalent of a Russian Buk missile system. It’s that complex and sophisticated. One doesn’t just point the murderous contraption like a rifle and pull a “launch” trigger. Thus a little knowledge of an SA-11 is 300 times worse than none at all.
Putin had to know that, or he should have known that. He should have known what Obama knows–that superpowers ought not supply, say, ignorant Syrian rebels with American “Buks,” for there are always “unforeseen consequences,” as Obama re-warned in his presser yesterday, to such weaponry proliferation.
Would that Putin possessed Obama’s sensitive intelligence. But, as noted, Putin has a hole card. As a former KGB officer, he thinks with the unimpeachable cynicism of Cliff Robertson’s CIA character.
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2014/07/putin-as-robertson-obama-as-redford.html#sthash.R18Tl2O8.dpuf
https://twitter.com/beanthere/status/490838482148151297/photo/1
this gun-totting mofo is the REAL COWARD.
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Good morning!
SG2 is tired this morning. We had a fish fry with family and friends at my house yesterday. Good food & good fun. I am wore out tired.
I know that food was good, SG2! Rest up