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Cliven Bundy said WHAT?


So, you can always count on some folks ….Bundy doesn’t disappoint ! Question is …
WHAT do we, as voters do or think NOW about Republicans like Senator Rand Paul, Boehner, Dean Heller , Greg Abbott, Governor Rick Perry who support Bundy

Cliven Bundy Wonders If Blacks Are ‘Better Off As Slaves’ Than On Gov’t Assistance

Catherine Thompson – April 24, 2014, 6:49 AM EDT

Now that he’s won a confrontation with the Bureau of Land Management over grazing his cattle on federal land, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy has time to hold court on everything from abortion to the current state of “the Negro.”

Bundy made some racially charged comments about government assistance in his daily news conference Saturday, according to a New York Times story published Wednesday.

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” the rancher began as he described a “government house” in Las Vegas where he recalled that all the people who sat outside seemed to “have nothing to do.”

“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he said, as quoted by the Times. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

The Times reached out to spokespeople for Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Dean Heller (R-NV), who have spoken in support of Bundy, and for Texas Attorney Gen. Greg Abbott (R). Those who responded distanced themselves from Bundy and his remarks.

A spokesman for Heller, who had called Bundy and his supporters “patriots,” told the Times that the senator “completely disagrees with Mr. Bundy’s appalling and racist statements, and condemns them in the most strenuous way.”

A spokeswoman for Abbott, who asked BLM to respond to reports that it planned to acquire land near his state’s Red River in the wake of the Bundy ranch standoff, told the Times that the gubernatorial candidate’s letter to the agency “was regarding a dispute in Texas and is in no way related to the dispute in Nevada.”

A spokesman for Paul told the Times that the senator wasn’t immediately available for comment on Bundy’s remarks. TPM has reached out to Paul’s office and will update when we receive a response.

Cliven Bundy Muses On What He Knows ‘About The Negro’

By karoli April 23, 2014 9:00 pm – crooksandliars.com
Defiant domestic terrorist Cliven Bundy shares his thoughts on liberty, race, and “the Negro.”
Cliven Bundy Muses On What He Knows 'About The Negro'

The standoff at Bundy Ranch is over, but Cliven Bundy can’t quite let go of the limelight, so he is giving a daily press conference. If he has nothing to say, he’s got plenty of opinions to share with reporters.

New York Times:

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.

“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

Two things to remember about this. First, Rand Paul and Dean Heller think this guy is a patriot and a hero. Second, the United States Supreme Court thinks race is no longer an issue any of us need to worry about.

Having read Bundy’s remarks, is anyone at all surprised that he doesn’t recognize the federal government’s authority?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Also, a factcheck for the New York Times. This paragraph needs to be corrected:

Mr. Bundy, whose family has grazed cattle here since they homesteaded in the 1870s, owes the government more than $1 million in grazing fees. He stopped paying after the bureau ordered him to restrict the periods when his herd roamed the 600,000-acre Gold Butte area as part of an effort to protect the endangered desert tortoise.

You got taken for a ride, NYT. Bundy’s family didn’t buy that land until 1948 and didn’t start grazing their cattle on it until 1954.

Update: Rand Paul (predictably) distanced himself from Bundy’s remarks, saying “he completely disagrees with Mr. Bundy’s appalling and racist statements, and condemns them in the most strenuous way.”

However, let’s not forget that Rand Paul’s former social media director and book co-author Jack Hunter would be quite in agreement with Mr. Bundy. Senator Paul also supported doing away with the Civil Rights Act, and his former spokesperson Chris Hightower also posted racist remarks on Facebook. Sometimes actions speak louder than the strongest condemnation of someone else’s opinion.

Update 2: Waiting for Governor Rick Perry to walk back his praise for Mr. Bundy, too. I won’t hold my breath.

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Official Google … trending news


Through the Google lens: search trends Sept 5-11

Posted: 12 Sep 2014 01:15 PM PDT

New phones, new games, new looks. Let’s take a peek at all the happenings this week in search:All you can eat? 
The Olive Garden learned this week that it’s risky to get between people and their food. The restaurant chain’s new “Never Ending Pasta Pass” offered up to 1,000 people seven weeks of unlimited pasta, salad and those sneaky-good breadsticks for just $100. The rush of pasta lovers eager for a deal crashed the Olive Garden website before the pass was even for sale—and thousands more turned to search to learn more about the debacle.

The latest edition
It was a big week for our neighbors from Cupertino. Apple’s latest announcement this week flooded the search trends, with more than 10 million searches for the new iPhone 6, along with its release date and price. People were also curious about the new Apple Watch, the band U2—whose latest album Apple gave away for free to all iTunes users—and how the announcement was affecting AAPL stock.

And baby makes four for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William and Kate Middleton, who announced this week that they’re expecting a little brother or sister for one-year-old Prince George. People turned to the web to learn more about the news. Start your office naming pools now!

Football frenzy 
A full 15 out of 20 top searches on Sunday were related to the first Sunday of football season, with the Cowboys, Steelers and Broncos topping the pack—on search, at least. But unfortunately, it was events off the field that had many people turning to the web this week. Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was suspended indefinitely from the league on Monday, after TMZ released a video that appears to show him assaulting his then-fiancee in an elevator. More than 2 million searches for Rice followed—the highest spike ever. People were also looking for more information on NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in an effort to understand whether the league’s leadership had knowledge of the incident earlier in the year.

POTUS and ISIS
Just a day earlier, President Obama announced that the U.S. military would expand its air strikes in Iraq and now Syria, against the extremist group ISIS. Searches for ISIL, the term the President used for the group, climbed the day of his speech as people looked for more information on the news.

Transformations 
The latest season of “The Biggest Loser” premiered yesterday with new trainers and a new concept—“Glory Days,” in which former athletes compete to regain their former fitness—leading people to the web to learn more. And “The Sixth Sense” star Haley Joel Osment was in the news this week—but we won’t blame you if you missed it, since he was nearly unrecognizable from his former self. Osment is filming a new Kevin Smith movie “Yoga Hosers,” in which he plays Canadian fascist journalist Adrien Arcand.

Tip of the week 
September is National Emergency Preparedness Month. With the Google Search App, you can get warnings from Google Public Alerts when bad weather is on its way. Take a few minutes to get prepared by learning more about Alerts, which are available on Google Now, Search and Maps.

Posted by Emily Wood, Google Blog Editor, who searched this week for [ducktales intro] and [adichie city arts]

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Too much Democracy?

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Georgia Republicans Lament Efforts To Expand Voting Access, Try To Stop Them

As November approaches, Georgia finds itself home to a toss-up Senate race between Democrat Michelle Nunn and Republican David Perdue. With such a competitive race, voters are registering at a higher rate than usual and county election boards are taking steps to expand access to the polls. America has one of the worst turnout rates of any developed country in the world, so you’d like to think that everybody would be cheering this news. But some Republican officials are worried that these measures are resulting in the increased participation of minority voters, and that that fact could spell trouble for their own candidates.

Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp is one of these officials. Think Progress’s Josh Israel reports on new audio released by progressive voting rights organization Better Georgia that captures Kemp sharing his frustration over it’s grassroots effort to register minority voters for the election. Here’s an excerpt from the tape:

Democrats are working hard, and all these stories about them, you know, registering all these minority voters that are out there and others that are sitting on the sidelines, if they can do that, they can win these elections in November.

Using the power of his position, Kemp plans to fight back. On Tuesday, Kemp launched a “voter fraud” investigation into the voter registration effort, which he says he suspects may have “forged voter registration applications, forged signatures on releases, and applications with false or inaccurate information.” (As a reminder, the problem of voter fraud is essentially non-existent.)

Kemp is not the only one feeling threatened. Just the day before he launched his investigation, another Republican, state senator Fran Millar, complained that voting is too convenient for black people. One of Georgia’s largest counties announced last week that it will allow early voting on a Sunday in late October and will open an early voting location in a shopping mall popular among local African-Americans. Millar penned an angry response, explaining that “this location is dominated by African American shoppers and it is near several large African American mega churches such as New Birth Missionary Baptist.” When asked to stand by his comments, Millar only got more offensive, writing in a Facebook post, “I would prefer more educated voters than a greater increase in the number of voters.”

BOTTOM LINE: Expanding voting access by increasing opportunities to vote and increasing voter registration is something that deserves to be celebrated in our democracy. Instead, some officials in Georgia, feeling threatened by what might happen if more people exercise their constitutional right, resort to name calling and launching specious investigations that are more likely intended for voter suppression than anything else.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Ted Strickland … Is Your State Rigged?

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Center for American Progress Action Fund

Much has been written on the Koch brothers’ immense wealth and influential network of shadow groups, think tanks, and political action committees dedicated to drastically altering our economic and political system at the national level —or, as we call it, “Kochonomics.”

But it is at the state and local level that the Koch brothers’ impact has become the most effective—and harmful.

The less Americans know about the effects of these state and local efforts, the more the Koch brothers can accomplish. The Center for American Progress Action Fund needs your help today to investigate and inform the public about the Koch brothers’ extended efforts to rig the system for their benefit.

Recently, the Center for American Progress Action Fund released the report, “Kochonomics: Rigging the System at the Local Level,” which revealed the Koch brothers’ successful campaigns to take their anti-government, low-regulation lobbying efforts from city to city. These campaigns are a part of a $400 million scheme to transform policies in school boards and town halls to oppose funds that support teachers and students, pay for police officers, maintain roads and bridges, and protect the environment. Yesterday, we released another report, “Kochonomics in Wisconsin and North Carolina,” which gives an in-depth view into the Kochs brothers’ efforts in two of their self-declared model states.

Help us continue to inform Americans across the country by contributing $5, $10, or $25 dollars to the Center for American Progress Action Fund to fund our investigative efforts. Your contribution will help provide citizens with the knowledge they need to fight back against the spread of Kochonomics.

We cannot sit idly by as our states and cities are being re-structured to benefit a wealthy few.

The Koch brothers are spending $400 million – We are asking you for $25. Please go to our website today and contribute what you can to keep our work going.

Thank you for your support!

Sincerely,

Ted Strickland
President and CEO, Center for American Progress Action Fund

P.S. Please be sure to share our reports and encourage your friends to contribute!

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