Today, for the first time since the retirement of the Space Shuttle program in 2011, US astronauts launch into space on a SpaceX Falcon rocket. Watch the live NASA TV feed.
Category Archives: News
Supreme Court Makes Equal Marriage Rights the Law of the Land
In a truly revolutionary and long overdue ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has rendered invalid all laws across the United States that prevent same sex marriages.
It’s a day of celebration for all in recognition of a simple and profound truth: marriage is indeed a basic human right.
Justice Kennedy wrote this final paragraph of the Court’s ruling:
No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. The judgement of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.
It is so ordered.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, says it all. It’s a rebuke to the forces of bigotry. It should leave many people across the land hanging their heads in shame for ever suggesting that marriage is reserved for only one group of people.
If you held that belief at one time and have since changed, that’s a great step. You’ve come a long way.
If you still believe marriage is only for heterosexual couples, you may very well have some additional issues. I would suggest moving to South Carolina and hanging a confederate flag in your garage. Maybe you could buy lots of guns and ammunition for a final holdout. Whatever. The point I’m making is this: good riddance.
New Charlie Hebdo Cover Features Muhammad Holding Je Suis Charlie Sign
Je Suis Charlie
Florida Jury Shames Nation by Finding Killer of a Child Not Guilty
A jury of six women in Florida has seen fit to let Trayvon Martin’s killer go free. The disgust of Candlelight Stories is profound and extends into a more general realization that racism and the general fascination with security, guns and bigoted neighborhood watch groups is a symptom of the undying brutal hatreds rotting this country from the inside.
That it can even be suggested that a kid walking home is somehow to blame for fighting for his life is appalling.
Candlelight Stories sincerely hopes that the sub-normal George Zimmerman has no future.
Los Angeles Police Randomly Shooting Innocent People During Manhunt
The LAPD and Torrance Police Department are terrorized to the point of deadly incompetence by a single crazed gunman on a mission of revenge. Nut-jobs who write manifestos and go out to hunt police are quite rare and somewhat beside the real point. What we should all be extremely concerned about is the fact that the absolute finest that the LAPD has to offer – those who manage to get promoted into the detective ranks – apparently have such poor training, such poor instincts, and such callous disregard for life that they are willing to open fire on women delivering newspapers, simply because they happen to be driving a blue pick-up truck. Then, moments later, Torrance police open fire on another pickup truck just around the corner. This other pickup is black. So which is it, guys? Blue or black? Does your crazed gunman typically dress up as a woman and throw newspapers onto front lawns?
How many people are these assholes going to execute in their hunt for a lone Rambo wannabe?
Amazingly, the LAPD chief, Charlie Beck, considers this a ‘case of mistaken identity!’ Seriously, chief? What are you smoking today? This is an appalling case of dangerously stupid people who work for you shooting at innocent people for absolutely no reason. This is a case that should make a chief of police witheringly angry to the point of punching some cops’ teeth out onto the sidewalk, firing them, humiliating them in public, with criminal charges to follow. But that isn’t happening. Maybe the chief has a barbeque planned with these detectives. He wouldn’t want to miss that.
The problem here is that this deadly reflex to shoot at anything without understanding the target goes against any kind of training these people should have received. Firing your gun without knowing what you are shooting at is unacceptable. I don’t want to sound too reactionary, but cops who shoot innocent people really do deserve what’s coming to them. A newspaper woman is much better than a dangerous cop.
It goes without saying that I am horrified at the shocking violence and disregard for innocent life on display by the LAPD and Torrance police. An insane murderer’s rampage has somehow exposed our police force as an extremely dangerous organization.
Horrific Day in America as Connecticut School Children are Killed
It is a tragic day in America when a person has murdered nearly thirty people, eighteen of whom were small children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
Unimaginable horror. I just cannot fathom the mind that could do such a thing to children. It is beyond words. I feel bad for the people at that school, in that community and for the entire country.
There is a spreading sickness in America and it is brutalizing our children.
Death in Syria – How Global Post’s Tracey Shelton Captured Her Iconic War Images
Tracey Shelton, a photojournalist working for Global Post was on the Syrian civil war front lines in the city of Aleppo, covering a group of rebel fighters who were manning a barricade position. She was using a Canon 7D DSLR camera to take video as the fighters prepared for the possible approach of some tanks. They were caught unprepared and her camera captured the moment when they were killed by a tank shell. The resulting images have become some of the most direct examples of just how suddenly death can come in war. They are a shocking reminder of war’s brutality. The bravery she must have to sneak around those streets with only a camera to defend herself from snipers, tanks and rocket propelled grenades is astounding. I think I would simply put my camera away and run.
DSLR News Shooter has an in-depth article about the photographer.
The photo of Tracey Shelton is by Niklas Meltio.
The original video of the terrible moment in a short documentary is shown here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsJh67GjjPI
Here is an interview with the photojournalist about how she got her images:
http://vimeo.com/49395813
Police in Anaheim California Attack Children at Protest
People gathered to protest suspicious shootings by the Anaheim, California police and were brutally attacked by police wielding non-lethal weapons which included a dog being sent in at children. There simply comes an obvious time in the life of a civilized nation when the people must stand back and take a very good look at the savages that have been allowed to overrun police departments.
President Obama Declares His Support for Gay Marriage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvgJEYuKPyc
Well there you go! I knew there was a reason to be proud of our president. Obama today declared his support for gay marriage during an ABC news television interview. He is the first president ever to do so. It has taken him some time and he has decided to do it going into his reelection campaign. Good for him! I think I like him again!
At a time when the simpletons of North Carolina have decided to amend their state constitution to ban all marriages except those between a man and a woman because ‘God’ says that’s the way it should be, this president’s declaration of support rings out like a call to civilization, human dignity and simple common sense.
There’s a huge swath of our U.S. population cheerfully lining up to be the idiots of history – those people you will eventually see in historic photos displaying their blind range at the very thought of respecting the civil rights of others. Remember all those dead-eyed, raging lunatics in the 50s and 60s who stood in drooling protest against school integration? Remember them? Well they haven’t gone anywhere. Those idiots are still with us in the form of ‘religious’ folk who simply must ‘protect’ marriage from people who love each other and want to spend their lives together. History does not treat bigots very well.
Of course Vice President Biden must get enormous credit for declaring his own support for gay marriage just several days ago. His remarks created a shit storm for everyone else just the way they should have.
Barack Obama and Joseph Biden just got themselves another campaign donation from me.
President Obama Begins Indefinite Detention and Turns U.S. Military Against Americans
On New Year’s Eve, while few were paying attention, President Barack Obama signed into law a bill which authorizes the military to investigate and indefinitely detain any American citizen that the President chooses. It is now the law of the land, passed by both houses of Congress and signed by a Democratic president, that you can be identified as a possible terrorist and put into the hands of the military without any communication with the outside world – including attorneys, family, friends, or journalists. The military can then hold you without hearings or trials of any kind for the rest of your life if they so choose.
This is probably the single most frightening legislative act ever undertaken by an American Congress or president. The idea that a president could even remotely consider signing such a draconian and unconstitutional bill into law would never have occurred to me even during the Bush administration. The fact that the first black president in U.S. history is also the first president to turn his military against his own people should bring us all to tears of rage. I voted for this president. I donated to his campaign. For these things, I am now deeply ashamed. This is not a president that brings hope. This is not a man who represents to voters who he really is. This is not a man that I can ever vote for – no matter who the opponent is. Because ultimately, regardless of who Obama’s opponent turns out to be, that person will not have been involved with this law. That person will not have been a person who voted to turn the U.S. military against Americans. That person will not have enacted a law that would fit perfectly into the books of any tin pot dictatorship across the globe. In fact, nearly every dictatorship or authoritarian government worldwide has exactly this law on their books. All dictatorships need this law in order to pick up citizens who dissent and put them away in secret places – or kill them.
I don’t like Ron Paul because I think he’s probably a racist and a homophobe, but he’s angry about this law and he was one of the very few who voted against it. Seems reasonable to me. Let me put it this way: No president who signs a law like this should ever be reelected. Any opponent is preferable by a very wide margin. I hate myself for saying this because I have voted for Democrats all my life. But this is a presidential betrayal of the highest order. Worse, it is a governmental betrayal. Its magnitude is so great that it calls into question our ability to manage a democratic system. It weakens the very foundations of everything we have assumed and trusted about our system. It is an abysmal and terrifying start for the new year.
The ACLU says this about the law:
The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.
No American citizen can allow the U.S. military to take them into custody. And therein lies the real problem. If Americans find that they have no governmental or legal recourse to prevent their arbitrary abduction, arrest or ‘detainment’ by the military, then they have only one possible option left. That would be armed resistance against the U.S. military. What would you do if your son or daughter disappeared into a military prison without any trial? What if all three branches of government agreed that it was just fine to make Americans vanish without trial? With the current climate surrounding the Supreme Court this could certainly happen. What if a president began using this power to make troublesome people or political opponents vanish? What would your option be?
Your option and the option of great numbers of other frightened Americans would be something resembling armed resistance. Eventually, Americans would start killing U.S. military personnel. Soldiers who jumped out of vans to snatch Americans off streets would be shot to death by people defending themselves. This would be justified. In any democracy it would be legal self defense. In a country where the military has been turned against the citizens it becomes justifiable and necessary to kill military personnel while still firmly supporting the nation and its Constitutional basis. This is the unthinkable potential situation created by President Obama and our Congress.
Obama has signed a law that operates outside of the Constitution which guarantees due process to all American citizens. We are all presumed innocent until proven guilty. Obama, the House of Representatives and the Senate do not want that to be the case anymore. They are eliminating that fundamental Constitutional protection. This is a violent and dangerous act against freedom and the American people.
Obama has signed a law which now makes every member of the military a potential threat to every American citizen at home and abroad. You must remember that nothing in this bill requires anyone to prove that a detainee is a terrorist. Since no lawyers or courts are involved no one actually needs to prove anything. The law will simply be used to arrest and hold anyone of the President’s choosing for any reason of the President’s choosing.
A journalist could be detained by the military because the President asserts that the journalist wrote something suspicious in a newspaper article. We may never hear from that journalist again.
Think very carefully about this the next time you watch your troops celebrating Thanksgiving during an NFL broadcast. Those smiling, turkey-eating troops now have the power to march into your house, throw you into a canvas bag and take you to a cinder block cell where no one will ever hear from you again. That’s no exaggeration. What do you think ‘indefinite detention’ means?
The President signed this bill into law with his own little attachment to it – a statement. He claims to have significant issues with the detention provisions. He promises that his administration will never use those provisions to detain Americans. He ‘promises.’ But of course he signs the law. He takes the power. But he wants us all to feel a little better about it because he promises he really won’t use it. This is one creepy little bullshitter if I ever saw one.
Obama has lost all my admiration, my support, my money, and my vote. I will vote for anyone else. Anyone. I don’t care if it’s a Republican. I don’t care if the person can’t read, write, or do arithmetic. The bottom line is that whoever that person is, he or she won’t be Obama. Recall elections should be held to try to remove Senators and Representatives who voted for this bill. I am personally voting for a Democratic primary opponent to my current Representative who voted for this law. People who pose as liberals – like Al Franken – should be removed. The very idea of a liberal Democrat voting for this terrifies me. It really means that we are running out of options. Someone is so interested in gaining this power of indefinite detention that they are willing and able to get everyone working in concert for it. They have totally overcome the distinctions between Democrats and Republicans… liberals and conservatives.
Obama has seized the single most important legal power underlying all dictatorships and authoritarian governments: the power to make people disappear.
Here’s an interesting Russia Times America report on the bill from early December 2011:
Egyptian Military Leaders Begin Systematic Beating and Slaughter of Peaceful Protesters
The Egyptian military, which is supported by the United States military, has begun a brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters by beating and killing. Recently, they appear to have targeted mainly women, beating them with sticks, stomping on their heads and chests, and dragging them half naked through the streets.
This is the Egyptian military. This is the leadership of Egypt. The revolution of January 2011 has failed. Egypt has sunk into a brutal military dictatorship that has begun to rape, beat and kill all dissenters. I do not believe in peaceful revolution against murderous dictatorships. When confronted with barbaric monsters like the current leadership in Egypt, one must kill or be killed. My advice to Egyptians is to eliminate soldiers wherever you might find them by any means at hand – like the Libyans did. I say that because I’m an American. And nobody on the planet knows how to do a revolution like the Americans do. And the one thing we know about revolution is that when you want to win you put your gun in the other guy’s face and pull the trigger. Peaceful protests are for smirking idiots like the Dalai Lama.
But I do not think Egypt’s revolution will work. There are too many poor uneducated religious people and they will react to freedom with more brutal attacks on women. It is the nature of religious people under pressure to brutalize women. It happens in all places where you find poverty mixed with religion. In fact, it is oppression of women that fundamentally defines all religious behavior. Reading a Bible or a Koran is like reading an instruction manual for the subjugation and enslavement of women. These books are horrific works by deformed men who were terrified that they might not know for sure who really fathered their children. That is about all I have to say on the subject of the very sad and dying nation of Egypt. Arab Spring looks to me like a death march. I am also deeply ashamed of my country’s military association with Egypt. It is a profound embarrassment to all Americans to know that our military officers give advice and money to rapists. Disgusting.
Needless to say, I will not be visiting the fucking pyramids any time soon.
This news video contains disturbing images and shocking violence:
University of California Has Physically Attacked Tuition-Paying Students
University of California at Davis students staging a sit-in have been attacked by school police with massive doses of pepper spray. The use of weapons against tuition-paying students by the university is grounds for removal of any administration officials with knowledge of these tactics. This is disgusting. Students have a long-standing tradition of free expression on their campuses. Sit-ins are a harmless and excellent way for students to express outrage. The pepper-spraying police should at the very least be discharged. There should also be legal charges brought against them.
The spectacle of the university going after its students with weaponry and armored police thugs is simply outrageous. It’s an appalling act of stupidity and cruelty. This school should be hammered with lawsuits and public outrage. While Penn State University allegedly rapes small children, University of California blasts pepper spray into the faces of its kids. What the fuck may I ask is going on in this country? Our higher education system has typically been the only thing giving our country an edge internationally. Now it would seem that even that system is cracking.
It seems clear that every single protester at every protest nationwide should be armed with a canister of pepper spray to use against police. Their faces are vulnerable under the helmet guards. Every single protester with pepper spray. It looks to me like the time for passivity might be ending. There is a tactic that I think could be used against police. It would be the singling out of an individual officer by hundreds of protesters. The surrounding of a single officer might put the police ranks into a very uncomfortable position.
Occupy Wall Street Keeps Coming Back
Rachel Maddow does a wonderful piece on the freedom of speech aspects of Occupy Wall Street. She contrasts the police at University of California’s Berkeley campus shoving students with batons to the 1964 Mario Savio speech in support of free speech for students. The police violence against students last week happened on the very plaza that celebrates Savio’s great speech.
New York City Police Attack and Destroy Occupy Wall Street Encampment
On the orders of New York mayor Bloomberg, the NYPD staged a brazen and unwarranted attack on the Zuccotti Park protesters of Occupy Wall Street late last night, removing and destroying the entire camp. This assault on Occupy Wall Street appears to be a coordinated nationwide effort with police departments in various cities operating in near concert.
New York has been foolish. The police should not have done this.
There are major protest activities approaching this week. The police assaults may be an effort to head things off before any more major statements can be made by the movement. However, it would be my guess that now all the gloves come off. It would not be unreasonable for massive numbers of protesters to shut down the entire Wall Street area. I think now the movement will be justified in the general public opinion when it escalates its actions. My guess is that if it wasn’t yet, Wall Street is about to become ground zero.
It does appear that there is a court order against New York to allow the protesters back into the park with their tents. However, Mayor Bloomberg is ignoring the court’s order.
It is also reported that the police destroyed the protesters’ library of 5,000 books during their raid. Get it? That’s basically a book-burning.
It looks like the police also prevented press coverage of the attack. Network news helicopters were prevented from flying and journalists were roughed up and kept away.
However, it has now become clear that the Zuccotti Park protesters last week surrounded an emergency medical technician to prevent him from taking a mentally ill patient to hospital. The EMT’s leg was broken in the scuffle. That story fits in perfectly with the experience of a Rolling Stone reporter who was surrounded and prevented from interviewing someone. One of those acts is a serious crime committed by the protesters against an emergency worker. The other is an infringement of the right to freely speak with another person. It is also an attempt to prevent a journalist from doing his or her job. I do not support such actions on the part of the protesters. But those are not reasons to destroy their encampments.
Here is Keith Olbermann excoriating mayor Bloomberg for his raging stupidity:
Here’s a television news report about the NYPD raid:
Here’s a live feed from the Zuccotti Park area:
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