The Marathon Bombers…And Gun Control

Not much is being said about this, and it certainly hasn’t risen to the attention of the mainstream media – but…

How exactly did the Boston Marathon terrorists get their explosive material to make a bomb?

 

 

I took a bit of artistic liberty with Michael Ramirez’s excellent and poignant cartoon commentary to add a bit of truth.  The “cowards” in this case sit in the US Congress.

You see – the explosive material for the bombs constructed by the Tsamaev brothers  is commonly available in just about every gun store, and gun show in America.

Now in an America where Homeland Defense is busily putting cameras in just about every spot except up your ass – although if some Republican Senators have their way they will be able to shove them up women’s vaginas… Why is it harder to buy a joint of Marijuana than the tools to kill and maim dozens of your neighbors? (Speaking of – what the heck is the deal with the pot heads in Denver shooting up- instead of smoking –  the joint?)

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t turned into an advocate for drug use – but guns in America are now paraphernalia for addicts and drug dealers…. And mass killers.

And no sportsman, we aren’t talking about your trusty Remington shotgun here.

This is what I am talking about …

 

This is a one pound container of “gunpowder” (It’s not really “gunpowder” anymore, but it is the fuel which goes bang when you pull the trigger). It also comes in 8 lb packages.  You see – there is a group of, in vast majority law abiding, shooters who like to make their own bullets. (And no – I don’t mean to pick on NORMA, as far as I know they are a perfectly law abiding company with no criminal connection, and there is no published evidence that their product was used in the Boston bombings). However – I can buy this “explosive” in many states he same way I can buy ammunition which already has been assembled containing it – cash and carry. Which apparently is exactly what the Boston Marathon terrorists did.

No – this isn’t C4 or SEMTEX or any of the vastly more powerful Military explosives used by international terrorists. Nor is it Ammonium Nitrate, previously featured in the Oklahoma City Bombing, currently starring in the leveling of an entire Texas town. But you walk into your local store and ask for a block of SEMTEX or C4, and there is a very good chance you will be invited to visit at your local Federal Law Enforcement Office, and get to met some swell FBI or ATF guys with a very limited sense of humor. Indeed – to purchase Ammonium Nitrate which is a common ingredient in many fertilizers requires a background check to make sure you are going to fertilize the fields instead of blow up a buildings.

Ergo in the NRA’s version of America (and 46 Senators), it’s easier to buy “gunpowder” than fertilizer.

So… The 46 azzwipes who voted down watered-down gun legislation are not only guilty of enabling the Newtown killer… But international terrorism via the Boston Marathon terrorists.

Do you really want to live in an America where you have to have armed guards so the kiddies can go to the playground and swing on the swing set?

 

 

 

 

Boston Marathon Bombing

 

Now…For the work of finding out who is responsible for this. It is impossible to say at this time whether this is an act of Foreign or Domestic Terrorism. At least to reports at this time, the bombs appear to have been relatively crude devices made from either home made or cobbled together explosives wrapped in nails and screws to function as shrapnel, which suggests they were made with off-the-shelf materials purchased here in the United States. There is still confusion on whether there were more bombs.

Yet another tragedy.

 

A Tea Bagger “Hoodie”

I’m sure many of you remember the Trayvon Martin case, where a black teenager was identified by his murderer as a “suspicious criminal” for walking home in a hoodie, with the hood up in the rain.

Well…They have finally come up with a Hoodie for malcontent white folks…I guess it beats the Wayne Pierre “solution” of everyone carrying a concealed Anti-Aircraft Missile…

The anti-drone hoodie that helps you beat Big Brother’s spy in the sky

The newest fashion statement for the far right and domestic terrorist set

I am wearing a silver hoodie that stops just below the nipples. Or, if you prefer, a baggy crop-top with a hood. The piece – this is fashion, so it has to be a “piece” – is one of a kind, a prototype. It has wide square shoulders and an overzealous zip that does up right to the tip of my nose.

It does not, it’s fair to say, make its wearer look especially cool. But that’s not really what this hoodie is about. It has been designed to hide me from the thermal imaging systems of unmanned aerial surveillance vehicles –drones. And, as far as I can tell, it’s working well.

“It’s what I call anti-drone,” explains designer Adam Harvey. “That’s the sentiment. The material in the anti-drone clothing is made of silver, which is reflective to heat and makes the wearer invisible to thermal imaging.”

The “anti-drone hoodie” was the central attraction of Harvey’s Stealth Wear exhibition, which opened in central London in January, billed as a showcase for “counter-surveillance fashions”. It is a field Harvey has been pioneering for three years now, making headlines in the tech community along the way.

It began in 2010 with Camoflash, an anti-paparazzi handbag that responds to the unwanted camera flashes with a counter-flash of its own, replacing the photograph’s intended subject with a fuzzy orb of bright white light.

Ewwwwe…Wait a minute! Do you think I can get that camera flashie thingie mounted on my car tight above the license plate? Now THAT’s a million dollar idea!

Back to the Wing-Dizzies…

There is, I point out, no obvious target audience for anti-drone fashion. He’s unfazed. “The kind of person who would wear it really depends on what drones end up being used for. You can imagine everything, from general domestic spying by a government, or more commercial reconnaissance of individuals.” I suggest perhaps political protesters. “Yeah, sure. Maybe that’s the actual market.”

Harvey is well aware his work can seem a little before its time. “I wouldn’t say many people have a problem being imaged by drones yet,” he deadpans. “But it imagines that this is a problem and then presents a functional solution.”

Reality, to be fair, is not so far behind. Over the next 15 years the US Federal Aviation Administration anticipates more than 20,000 new drones will appear in American skies, owned not just by law enforcement agencies and the military, but also public health bodies and private companies.

 

Free “Blade”. Wesley Snipes Leaves Prison

Actor Wesley Snipes can now begin the process of putting his acting career back together… A “Blade” sequel?

Repeat after me, Wesley…”1040…1040…1040″.

Actor Wesley Snipes released from prison

 Actor Wesley Snipes has been released from a federal prison where he was serving a three-year sentence after being convicted on tax charges in February 2010.The release to a supervised residential location in New York occurred Tuesday, the Federal Bureau of Prisons told CNN.

Snipes, 50, who starred in the “Blade” action movies and “White Men Can’t Jump,” had been serving time at a federal prison in Pennsylvania. A jury convicted him of willfully failing to file tax returns for 1999, 2000 and 2001. Snipes was acquitted of felony tax fraud and conspiracy charges.

In June 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of his sentence, which he had argued was too harsh for a misdemeanor conviction.

 

“Illegal Immigration”? How the Bengazi Added to Our Cultural Mix Before the Civil Rights Act

One of the biggest lies told you in school is about “America being the land of opportunity for immigrants”. It’s a lie because before 1965 immigration from non-white parts of the world was illegal. Many of the Chinese who came here to work on the Transcontinental Railroad in the 19th Century, were boxed up and shipped back to China as soon as the railroad was finished.

In terms of “non-whiteness” the Irish were only brought here in the 1840’s through 1870’s because they were cheaper than slaves, and made excellent cannon fodder during the Civil War. Black folks and Irish competed, and often worked for and on the same low paying dirty jobs, from digging coal mines, to ditch digging. That competition was sometimes not friendly – as demonstrated in the New York City Draft Riots during the Civil War, and later during the early Labor Union period of the 1900’s. But there is a pretty rich history between the two groups, certainly not all antagonistic.

South Asia was particularly singled out by American Immigration authorities, which is why few South Asians can trace their history in the US back more than 50 years. But some Indians and what would later become Pakistanis did come here nearly 150 years ago. They stayed here, they married, and raised families. A fascinating book (next on my loyal Kindle) uncovers this previously unknown and ignored bit of history…

The Bengazi in Harlem. A group of largely Muslim South Asian immigrants and their African-American and Puerto Rican Wives at a  1952 banquet at New York’s Pakistan League of America.

Bengali Harlem: Author documents a lost history of immigration in America

In the next few weeks, Fatima Shaik, an African-American, Christian woman, will travel “home” from New York to Kolkata, India.

It will be a journey steeped in a history that has remained unknown until the publication last month of a revelatory book by Vivek Bald. And it will be a journey of contemplation as Shaik, 60, meets for the first time ancestors with whom she has little in common.

“I want to go back because I want to find some sort of closure for my family, said Shaik, an author and scholar of the Afro-Creole experience.

That Americans like Shaik, who identify as black, are linked by blood to a people on the Indian subcontinent seems, at first, improbable.

South Asian immigration boomed in this country after the passage of landmark immigration legislation in 1965. But long before that, there were smaller waves of new Americans who hailed from India under the British Empire.

The first group, to which Shaik’s grandfather, Shaik Mohamed Musa, belonged, consisted of peddlers who came to these shores in the 1890s, according to Bald. They sold embroidered silks and cottons and other “exotic” wares from the East on the boardwalks of Asbury Park and Atlantic City, New Jersey. They eventually made their way south to cities like New Orleans and Atlanta and even farther to Central America.

The second wave came in the 1920s and ‘30s. They were seamen, some merchant marines.

Most were Muslim men from what was then the Indian province of Bengal and in many ways, they were the opposite of the stereotype of today’s well-heeled, highly educated South Asians.

South Asian immigration was illegal then – the 1917 Immigration Act barred all idiots, imbeciles, criminals and people from the “Asiatic Barred Zone.”

The Bengalis got off ships with little to their name.

 

That Presidential Couch…

The Prez certainly has an appreciation for beautiful women…

If you thought Michelle was standing still for that…

President Obama and California AG Kamla Harris

 

President Obama and Miss Israel, Yityish Aynaw

 

The Prez getting charmed at a State Dinner

The Prez Moving to his next Executive Bedroom?

Michelle brings the Prez up short…

Somehow, I don’t think Michelle is worried.

 

 

A Fair Trial?

Do you really believe that, if you are a Minority you could get a fair trial out of a Rethugly judge?

Sort of like this one…

Richard Cebull, Federal Judge Who Sent Racist Obama Email, Retires

U.S. District Judge Richard F. Cebull, the federal judge in Montana who sent an email last year suggesting that President Barack Obama’s mother had sex with a dog, has retired following an investigation into his conduct.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit announced Tuesday that Cebull had submitted his retirement letter, effective May 3. A special committee had conducted a “thorough and extensive investigation” and submitted their report to the circuit’s Judicial Council, which issued a confidential order and memorandum on March 15, according to the court.

In the email forwarded by Cebull, a young Obama asks his mother why he’s black and she is white. “Don’t even go there Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you’re lucky you don’t bark!” his mother replies. Cebull told recipients of his email that he hoped it “touches your heart like it did mine.”

Cebull, nominated by President George W. Bush, stepped down as chief U.S. district judge in October and took a reduced caseload. He apologized for sending the letter back in the spring.

This is pretty emblematic of what the Bushit filled the courts with.

 

Republican Taliban in North Carolina

Christian Taliban Conservatives don’t get that US Constitution thing – nor in most cases their state Constitutions. They want to ram their religious beliefs down everyone else’s throats…

North Carolina May Declare Official State Religion Under New Bill

Republican North Carolina state legislatorshave proposed allowing an official state religion in a measure that would declare the state exempt from the Constitution and court rulings.

The bill, filed Monday by two GOP lawmakers from Rowan County andbacked by nine other Republicans, says each state “is sovereign” and courts cannot block a state “from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.” The legislation was filed in response to a lawsuitto stop county commissioners in Rowan County from opening meetings with a Christian prayer, wral.com reported.

The religion bill comes as some Republican-led states seek to separate themselves from the federal government, primarily on the issues of guns and Obamacare. This includes a proposal in Mississippi to establish a state board with the power to nullify federal laws.

The North Carolina bill’s main sponsors, state Reps. Carl Ford (R-China Grove) and Harry Warren (R-Salisbury), could not be reached for comment on Tuesday, The Salisbury Post reported. Co-sponsors include House Majority Leader Edgar Starnes (R-Hickory). Another is state Rep. Larry Pittman (R-Concord), who in February introduced a state constitutional amendment that would allow for carrying concealed weapons to fight federal “tyranny.”

The bill says the First Amendment only applies to the federal government and does not stop state governments, local governments and school districts from adopting measures that defy the Constitution. The legislation also says that the Tenth Amendment, which says powers not reserved for the federal government belong to the states, prohibits court rulings that would seek to apply the First Amendment to state and local officials.

The bill reads:

SECTION 1. The North Carolina General Assembly asserts that the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.

SECTION 2. The North Carolina General Assembly does not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public schools, or any political subdivisions of the State from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.

The North Carolina state constitutiondisqualifies those who do not believe in God from public office. The provision has been unenforcible since the 1961 Supreme Court decision in Torcaso v. Watkins, which prohibited such bans.

 

And then there is the “Janet Jackson Wardrobe Malfunction Bill”…