White Supremacist/Racist group "True the Vote" Targets African American Communities in Columbus

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Plunderbund

Plunderbund has just confirmed that True the Vote is attempting to place “observers” inside Franklin County polling locations and, surprise!, the precincts they will be targeting are mostly in African American communities.

Quick background: True the Vote was founded in Texas but has been training “poll watchers” throughout the country in an attempt to intimidate Democratic voters at the polls.   Their plan is simple: primarily-white volunteers are dispatched to Democratic-leaning districts, usually with high populations Hispanic or African American voters, as part of a coordinated intimidation effort.

In Franklin County, True the Vote has submitted forms to the BOE to allow their observers into 28 precincts.   Demographic data show that the precincts being targeted are mostly in African American communities.  20 of the 28 precincts are comprised of over 50% African Americans.  And African Americans make up over 80% of the population in the the top 12 precincts.

Statewide, only 12.4% of Ohioans are African American.

The 2012 election cycle has seen multiple attempts by Republicans to disenfranchise African Americans using everything from intimidating billboards to restricting voting hours favored by Black voters.

In Ohio, True the Vote was also responsible for challenging the voter registrations of thousands of students this election cycle.

 

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Are Pennsylvania Republicans Targeting African American Precincts For Voter Intimidation?

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ThinkProgress

A coalition of civil rights groups have asked the U.S. Department of Justice to monitor an effort by the state Republican Party and a local Tea Party group to send poll watchers disproportionately to predominately African American precincts, the Philadelphia City Paper reported Monday. A partial list of targeted precincts, obtained by the groups, suggests that the Pittsburgh Tea Party and the Pennsylvania Republican Party will send observers to watch for “voter fraud” at precincts where African American voter registration is over 79 percent.

According to the letter:

The Pittsburgh Tea Party Movement conducted this training, on behalf of the Republican Party, as part of its program to combat alleged voter fraud in Allegheny County. We understand the Republican Party has targeted approximately 111, out of a total 1,319 precincts, in that county. The partial list, which is attached hereto as Exhibit A, includes 59 of the total 111 precincts targeted by the Republican Party. We are unaware of any history of voter fraud at any of these 59 locations. We are concerned that these locations are being targeted for impermissible, racially-motivated reasons.

A comparison of the 59 Republican Party targeted precincts to the other precincts in Allegheny County reveals that the targeted precincts disproportionately contain African-American voters. Specifically, the targeted precincts are over 79% African-American. By contrast, the nontargeted precincts contain, on average, less than 11% African-American registered voters

The Department of Justice will already be monitoring Allegheny County for potential voter suppression. The Pittsburgh Tea Party Movement website warns that because “the other side cheats,” volunteers must “insure the other side is not sneaking votes onto the machines.” Republican elected officials in Pennsylvania have conceded that they cannot point to examples of any such “voter fraud.”

Israel erects high tech barrier to fight African migrants

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AfricaReview

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday told his Cabinet that improved security deployment and a new high-tech barrier along the Egyptian border had succeeded in ending illegal entry by Africans seeking work or asylum in Israel.

"In the last month, only 54 infiltrators crossed the border and all -- without exception -- were taken into custody," Mr Netanyahu said in statements sent to Xinhua.

"That means that none of them made it to Israeli cities," he said, noting that "I remind you that only half a year ago, every month more than 1,000 came in, and that number was rising.

"Israel Defence Forces' (IDF) upgraded patrols and the erection of the 240-Kilometre-long barrier is intended not only to keep illegal migrants off Israeli turf, but also plays an important role in preventing attacks by militant cells.

Last month, the army said that it plans to deploy new security measures along the border with Egypt in light of looming terror threats from the Sinai Peninsula.

The new hi-tech gear and infrastructure improvements are focused along a 40 Kilometre "Dunes" sector of the 240 Kilometre long border fence, the IDF Spokesperson told Xinhua in October.

Due to its extreme topography, the open sandy area is particularly vulnerable to infiltrations and has served in the past as a corridor for militants to reach Israeli territory, the army said.

The beefed-up security is to include a fence-mounted vibration sensor array which signals operators where an infiltration is taking place.

The system is also deployed on Israel's borders with the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Syria.

WashPost: U.S. cities become hubs for Mexican drug cartels’ distribution networks

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The U.S. government has provided Mexico with surveillance equipment, communication gear and other assistance under the $1.9 billion Merida Initiative, the anti-drug effort launched more than four years ago. But critics say that north of the border, the federal government has barely put a dent into a sophisticated infrastructure that supports more than $20 billion a year in drug cash flowing back to Mexico.

The success of the Mexican cartels in building their massive drug distribution and marketing networks across the county is a reflection of the U.S. government’s intelligence and operational failure in the war on drugs, said Fulton T. Armstrong, a former national intelligence officer for Latin America and ex-CIA officer.

“We pretend that the cartels don’t have an infrastructure in the U.S.,” said Armstrong, also a former staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and now a senior fellow at American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies. “But you don’t do a $20 billion a year business . . . with ad-hoc, part-time volunteers. You use an established infrastructure to support the markets. How come we’re not attacking that infrastructure?”

A reported 8.9 percent of Americans age 12 or older — 22.6 million people — are current users of illegal drugs, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — up from 6.2 percent in 1998. Demand for and the availability of illegal drugs is rising.

Charles Bowden, who has written several books about Mexico and drug trafficking, said policy failures have exacerbated the problems. “The war on drugs is over,” he said. “There are more drugs in the U.S. of higher quality and at a lower price.”

8 A national network

Of the seven Mexican organized crime groups that traffic drugs across the United States, the Sinaloa cartel dominates the business, selling most of the heroin, marijuana, methamphetamine and cocaine. One Mexican national-security expert estimated that the cartel moves a kilo of cocaine over the U.S. border about every 10 minutes.

The Sinaloa, named after a Mexican Pacific coast state, is headed by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, one of the world’s most brutal and sought-after drug lords.

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Zimmerman's Last Chance to Vote? White Party (GOP) hold Mittens rally in town Trayvon Martin was killed

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theGrio 

The state of Florida is embroiled in controversy because of incredibly long early voting lines and wrangling about how long the polls can be open.

In the midst of this crisis, Republican governor Rick Scott made time to campaign alongside GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney in Sanford, Fla., the town where unarmed African-American teenager Trayvon Martin was killed earlier this year.

The town of Sanford and the state’s “Stand Your Ground” gun law have come under tremendous scrutiny after the case became a national phenomenon.

According to Mother Jones, the “law was sponsored by the same Republican legislator who helped shepherd Scott’s bill to shorten voter-hours last year.”

“We need every single vote in Florida,” Romney told the crowd in Sanford today. “We can begin a better tomorrow, tomorrow.”

Why You Should Stop Paying Attention to Puppetician Rudy Giuliani

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ThinkProgress

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani this weekend claimed that President Obama’s response to Hurricane Sandy was “worse than Katrina,” the New Orleans hurricane that left thousands dead, injured, and homeless.

But it turns out Giuliani didn’t reserve the “worse than” comparison for a dire situation. The former mayor — who has served exclusively as a partisan attack dog, and not a policy maker, for several years — has an affinity for using that turn of phrase to criticize the Obama administration. Here are five other instances in the last four years where he’s claimed Obama’s policy was in some way “worse than” whatever came before it:

1. Bengazi was “worse than” Watergate
In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Giuliani suggested that the murder of US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens “could be worse than Watergate because it involves very, very sensitive, classified information about which people could be killed and that may be worse than Watergate in terms of, you know, the taking of human life.”

2. Obama as President is “worst” since pre-Carter
Appearing on CNN with Piers Morgan, Giuliani was asked whether he thought Obama was the worst since Jimmy Carter. In his typical inflammatory fashion, Giuliani responded, “I think he’s been the worst president we’ve had since before Jimmy Carter”:

3. The withdrawal from Iraq was “worse than” Vietnam
“There’s an extra danger involved in this that might be worse than Vietnam. And it’s not about scale. Obviously the Vietnam scale is much larger,” said Giuliani. “This is an enemy, the Islamic terrorists, who have proven to be even more aggressive than the Communists were, in the sense that the Communists never attacked within the United States.”

4. Stopping drilling off the gulf coast was “more damaging” the BP oil spill
After the BP oil spill, President Obama issued a moratorium on deep water drilling off the gulf coast. Giuliani, who has ties to the oil industry, told Fox News that, “In the long term, there may be bigger problems than the oil spill with this moratorium… It could be a two year problem. And could be bigger and more damaging than the oil spill itself”:

5. Obama is generally just “worse than” Giuliani thought
After Obama had been in office for just six months, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Giuliani, “Have your worst fears come true, or are you satisfied?” To which he replied, “In many respects, it’s much worse than I thought.”

Giuliani recently called for the resignation of Obama over lagging post-recession growth, and blamed Obama’s “incompetence” for the deaths of the four Americans killed in Libya this September.

Oakland's Chief of Police Trashed All Emails Addressing Police Brutality

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DailyKos

People who've e-mailed Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan over the past year about Occupy Oakland probably didn't get much of a response.

That's because he used a spam filter to dismiss messages sent to him with "Occupy Oakland" in the subject line, according to a federal court filing Monday. Same goes for the phrases "stop the excessive police force," "respect the press pass" or "police brutality." Instead of landing in his in-box, those messages went straight into his junk mail folder, which he apparently never looked at.

Because of those filters, Jordan missed e-mails from other city officials and a federal court monitor, who oversees the department's compliance with court-ordered reforms stemming from a police abuse scandal.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/...

Hearing begins for US Army sergeant accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians

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[JURIST]

The military hearing for a US Army sergeant accused of murdering 16 Afghan civilians in March began on Monday and is expected to last the remainder of the week. Sgt. Robert Bales was originally charged with 17 counts of murder, including women and children, in a Kandahar village, but one charge was dropped [JURIST reports] in June. Bales also stands accused of six counts of attempted murder, seven counts of assault, and illicit use of alcohol and steroids. Some...

Police Officers More Likely to Shoot When Anxious

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PsychCentral

Oscar Grant was fatally shot by a BART police officer while allegedly resisting arrest.

Police were responding to reports of a fight on a crowded train when they detained Grant and several other passengers.  The incident, in which a police officer shot an unarmed Grant, was captured on digital footage and cell phone cameras. It was released to the media and has been watched by millions.

The next day saw protests. The officer involved in the shooting was later found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

A recent study in the journal, Emotion, investigated the effect of anxiety on police officer’s shooting decisions (August, 2012). Here’s what they found. 

Anxiety has a great impact on our cognitive functioning, our bodies, our actions and our ability to perform certain tasks.

In certain professions, anxiety is an inevitable part of the job.  Surgeons, police officers, fire fighters and world champion athletes all face situations where pressure to perform is at a peak.  In these kinds of professions, at that one critical moment, making the right decision is crucial.

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Biden slips again, refers to 'President Clinton'

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WISTV

Another oops for Vice President Joe Biden. He's mistakenly referred to "President Clinton" instead of "President Obama."

Biden told a crowd of 1,200 people at Lakewood High School Sunday that a Republican ad claiming Jeep will move jobs out of Ohio was "pernicious," and a sign that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney is desperate to win the state.

Biden says the ad claims "President Clinton bankrupted Chrysler so that Italians could buy it to ship jobs overseas to China."

Biden recently referred to Virginia's Democratic Senate candidate Tim Kaine as "Tom" and complained to an Ohio audience about TV ads "here in Iowa."

Biden, who is known for going off script, did not correct himself on Sunday and the crowd at the high school outside Cleveland appeared not to notice.

White Party (GOP) Freak Akin was Arrested at Least Eight Times in 1980s

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Hotline

Missouri Republican Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin was arrested at least eight times in the 1980s at anti-abortion protests, according to newly obtained records.

That is four arrests in addition to four the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported last month based on a review of its contemporaneous coverage of protests. The four additional arrests each appear to have occurred outside a women's health clinic in Ballwin, Missouri in St. Louis County between 1985 and 1987.

"Right Wing Watch," a project of People For the American Way, a nonprofit group critical of Akin's ties to what it calls radical elements of the pro-life movement, obtained incident reports on the arrests Friday from the St. Louis Country Police Department under Missouri's sunshine law, and provided them to National Journal.

Akin was arrested on October 26, 1985, April 19, 1986 and February 28, 1987 for trespassing. A December, 27 1986 arrest was for "trespassing and peace disturbance." The arrests reported by the Post-Dispatch came in the same period, between March 1985 and May 1987, but occurred at other clinics. Three were in St. Louis and one in Granite City, Illinois. The paper said protesters tried to block access to the clinics and refused to leave. In one case, Akin was carried out by police. The last known arrest came shortly before Akin's 1988 election to the Missouri State House, where he served for 12 years before he joined the House.

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Giuliani Claims Obama Response To Hurricane Sandy ‘Worse Than Katrina’

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ThinkProgress

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani isn’t exactly famous for his tact, but he kicked his penchant for overstatement into overdrive this Sunday, twice falsely claiming that the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) response to Hurricane Sandy was worse than its botched response to Hurricane Katrina under President George W. Bush.

Speaking at a Romney campaign office in Florida, Giuliani said “[Obama] right now is doing a terrible job of disaster relief in my city, but no one is talking about it…People don’t have water, they don’t have food, electricity and his FEMA is no where to be found. This is a worse response than Katrina.” He also levelled the charge during a Fox News appearance, telling host Neil Cavuto that the notion FEMA was doing a good job was a “joke:”

I think maybe because there’s an election going on, people don’t want to say that, but I think FEMA has dropped the ball, certainly as big they did with Katrina, maybe bigger because they had more warning here and the situation isn’t as big as Katrina.

Doug Wilder Sours on Obama

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NationalReview

What does the first African-American governor elected since Reconstruction think of the nation’s first African-American president?  

Doug Wilder made history in 1989 by becoming governor of Virginia, overcoming great odds. He governed as a moderate, balancing his budget during a recession without raising taxes and even made an abortive run for president in 1992 before realizing that Bill Clinton had the Democratic party’s heart that year.

Since then, Wilder has remained engaged in politics. At times he has infuriated Democrats with his pungent criticism of liberal orthodoxy. But at other times he has been a loyal Democrat, enthusiastically backing Barack Obama in 2008 and this year supporting former Virginia governor Tim Kaine for Senate. But so far this year he has not formally endorsed Barack Obama.

Wilder sounds down and depressed about Obama’s record and prospects now. He thinks the president took his eye off the ball by not emphasizing job creation during the last four years. He told the Washington Examiner that Obama didn’t deliver on his promise to govern in a moderate way that would be inclusive. “I think he’s governed left of center and didn’t focus on jobs and economic recovery,” he says. Asked if he will vote for Obama, Wilder half-dodged the question, saying with a chuckle: “I have not said anything differently.”

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