'Perhaps you should look into it': Kayleigh McEnany dodges Obamagate question

During a press briefing, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was asked why Donald Trump accused Barack Obama of committing a crime this week and asked her to name the crime. After listing issues with people in office while Obama was president, she said it was reporters’ responsibility to ‘answer the question’ of what Obama did that was against the law. She ignored the reporter pointing out it is the White House press secretary’s duty to respond to questions about something the president said

Donald Trump Loses His Fecal Matter Over The DOJ

Donald Trump the man who accepts no responsibility for all of  the failures perpetrated by himself and his administration has accused the Department Of Justice under former President Obama.  Why would the orange a-hole rant and rave about this?

This is why.

   Donald Trump accused Obama administration Justice Department officials of "treason" as the agency moved to drop all charges against his first national security adviser, retired Army General Michael Flynn

"The Obama administration Justice Department was a disgrace," the president said in the Oval Office. "It's treason. It's treason.

More follows…

A Scandal Ridden Administration

President Obama Is The Founder Of ISIS Who Knew? (video)

Donald Trump the Republican candidate has gone beyond the pale with his assertions that President Obama founded ISIS. This all harkens back to a negotiated agreement reached during the last few months of the George W. Bush administration. But, there's even a more shocking reason for his comments. Conservatives in America view President Obama is foreign, a secret muslim, foreign born and a terrorist sympathiser.

CHRIS HAYES (HOST): Donald Trump is clearly pretty proud of this line, a line that is obviously patently and viciously untrue. But it’s more than sloppy wording, I think, or rhetorical flourish, it is part of a long case conservatives, and Donald Trump in particular have been building, that Barack Obama is not just a president they disagree with, he is fundamentally foreign. He is an other, possibly aligned with the enemies of the United States. Remember first there was birtherism, Donald Trump was eager to jump into the league.

[…]

There were suggestions President Obama, labeling him the apologizer in chief, wants to deliberately diminish America's power on the world stage. Here's just one example, Marco Rubio repeatedly in the Republican primary.

[…]

Trump’s political ascendency during the primary season brought back to the far more blunt suggestions of President Obama's true allegiance, something Donald Trump discussed just one day after the Orlando mass shooting.

[BEGIN CLIP]

DONALD TRUMP: We’re led by a man that either, is not tough, not smart, or has got something else in mind and the something else in mind, people can't believe it. People, they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can't even mention the words radical Islamic terrorism. There's something going on.

[END CLIP]

No, GOP. $400M Payment To Iran Was Not 'Secret', Nor Cash For Hostages

Today's effort to run interference for Donald Trump comes from the likes of Rep. Mike Pompeo and the Wall Street Journal, who have ginned up a bogus story about a "secret payment" of $400 million to Iran, delivered in cash in return for the people being held hostage in Iran. If the press had the collective…

Obama to visit Hiroshima on May 27, accompanied by Abe

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday said that U.S. President Barack Obama will visit Hiroshima during the Group of Seven summit later this month.

The first visit to the A-bombed city by a sitting U.S. president is scheduled to take place on May 27, the final day of the two-day summit, Abe said, adding that he will accompany the leader.

Rest assured America's conservatives will accuse President Obama of; Surrendering to Japan, violating his oath of office (However that works is only known to them), apologizing for dropping the bombs even though he won't and any other  crazy conspiracy theory they can think of. 

WIll U.S. Media Really Scrutinize Donald Trump?

When Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President many thought it was some kind of rouse or a joke.  Believing that Donald Trump would grow weary of the game or utter something so abhorrent he'd be forced from contest.  Instead the opposite has occurred with the media either ignoring his abject racism or enabling it.   America's corporate media view Donald Trump as a ratings and revenue generator, a member of the series political class and as means to drive the horse race.  Seeing him for who he really his seems to frighten them.  A person so unqualified to be President of the United States that it just boogles the mind and yet,  there he stands at the precipice of the Republican party ready to supposedly lead them to victory in November's general election only to realize after the disaster that is sure to befall the party that he was the wrong person to lead them anywhere.  

President Obama is correct in questioning whether the American media will ever step up and actually scrutinize Donald Trump. What he stands for and what his policy proposals will harm not only America but the world at large.

“I just want to emphasize the degree to which we are in serious times and this is a really serious job,” Mr Obama told the White House press corps on Friday.  “This is not entertainment. This is not a reality show. This is a contest for the presidency of the United States.”

Making his first remarks on the Republican race since Mr Trump emerged as the presumptive nominee, Mr Obama told the reporters that deeper reporting of the billionaire and his positions had now become paramount, implicitly criticising them for have fallen short thus far. “Emphasizing the spectacle and the circus, that’s not something we can afford,” he said.      

“It's important for us to take seriously the statements he's made in the past,“ Mr Obama went on. “Every candidate, every nominee has to be subjected to exacting stands and genuine scrutiny,”he said. That includes making sure their proposed budgets add up.  “If they don’t, that needs to be reported on and the American people need to know that,” he suggested.

After drones: the indelible mark of America's remote control warfare

When drone strikes are discussed by political leaders they're portrayed as being surgical , precise, warfare without casualty and those killed? They're militant's , terrorists or terrorist sympathizers.  The media plays along with this fiction.  Yet, many of those killed in these surgical strikes aren't militants or terrorists, but the innocent who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  


The strikes last a moment, but the consequences last forever. Six families explain how Obama’s secret drone war has left them struggling for answers after loved ones were wiped out without warning

Nabila’s favorite memories of her grandmother come from weddings. It didn’t matter who was getting married – relative or neighbor – her grandmother, Mamana, was an active participant, owing to her matriarchal perch above their village.

Mamana was as responsible as she was festive. An uneducated woman, she was the local midwife, and served as an impromptu primary care physician, even a veterinarian, when the need arose.

On a fall afternoon in 2012, Mamana called Nabila and a squad of her siblings and cousins outside to the family’s okra fields, part of their sprawling garden in tribalPakistan. It was about to be the Eid festival and the Rehman family needed to gather and prep vegetables. Nabila, nine years old, had set to work when the drone fired its missiles.

A behind the scenes tour of the Guantánamo Bay library – video

Guardian US correspondent David Smith was granted a tour of Guantánamo Bay prison, and a peek inside the library shows about 35,000 items available for inmates, from Harry Potter novels (very popular) to men’s health and fitness magazines, to a scratched-out copy of Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Has DIed Aged 79

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, known for his fiery comments on and off the bench, has died, Texas' governor says. He was 79.

"Justice Antonin Scalia was a man of God, a patriot, and an unwavering defender of the written Constitution and the Rule of Law. He was the solid rock who turned away so many attempts to depart from and distort the Constitution," Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement. "We mourn his passing, and we pray that his successor on the Supreme Court will take his place as a champion for the written Constitution and the Rule of Law."

Scalia was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1986 under President Ronald Reagan, who named him as Associate Justice. A lawyer by trade, he entered public service in the 1970s as general counsel for President Richard Nixon and as the Assistant Attorney General.

This is an important moment as it leaves the U.S. Supreme Court in an even ideological divide between the conservative and liberal wings of the court.  Given the current political climate in the U.S. and the rights abject hatred of President Obama any chance of having the Senate confirm any nominee before that august body and having them confirmed are near zero. 

The Peacemaker With The Peace Prize And His Drones

Victim of Obama's first drone strike: 'I am the living example of what drones are'

Faheem Qureshi was 14 when a drone attack on his home left him with horrific injuries, several family members dead and his dreams for the future in tatters


Faheem Qureshi’s uncles sat with their neighbors, chatting, cracking jokes and sipping tea, in their family’s lounge for male guests. Qureshi, almost 14, stood nearby, bored and restless, thinking about when he could go to the nearby playground where he and the other Ziraki village kids played badminton and cricket.

It had been a long day – Friday prayers, a food shopping errand at his mother’s behest, hosting – but also a happy occasion, as people stopped by to welcome an uncle home to North Waziristan, in tribal Pakistan, from a work excursion to the United Arab Emirates. Then he heard a sound like a plane taking off.

About two seconds later, the missile punched a hole through the lounge. Qureshi remembers feeling like his body was on fire. He ran outside, wanting to throw water on his face, but his priority was escape. The boy could not see.

Even though no known terrorists or terrorists sympathizers were killed in this attack the ever compliant media in the US would report that "several terrorists militants" had been killed even though most of the victims of these attacks seem to be innocent  civilizations.

 “The US government takes seriously all credible reports of non-combatant deaths and injuries. In those rare instances in which it appears non-combatants may have been killed or injured, after-action reviews have been conducted to determine why, and to ensure that we are taking the most effective steps to minimize such risk to non-combatants in the future.

“Although we will not comment on specific cases, were non-combatants killed or injured in a US strike, condolence or other ex gratia payments, such as solatia, may be available for those injured and the families of those killed,” Price told the Guardian.

“Are we not the same human beings as these two westerners who were killed?” Qureshi asked in his first interview with an American journalist, conducted through translation. The interview was facilitated by the human rights group Reprieve.

Here's the best part: “The US government takes seriously all credible reports of non-combatant deaths and injuries. If they truly took these of incidents seriously  there would have been an investigation into what happened and how it came to be that this young man's' home was attacked. Further there the U.S. government should have provided monetary support to the family for those lost, injured and the house that was destroyed in the mistaken attack.  That will never happen.

Nearly 90 Percent Of People Killed In Recent Drone Strikes Were Not The Target

U.S. drone strikes have killed scores of civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

According to a new report from The Intercept, nearly 90 percent of people killed in recent drone strikes in Afghanistan "were not the intended targets" of the attacks.

Documents detailing a special operations campaign in northeastern Afghanistan, Operation Haymaker, show that between January 2012 and February 2013, U.S. special operations airstrikes killed more than 200 people. Of those, only 35 were the intended targets. During one five-month period of the operation, according to the documents, nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets. In Yemen and Somalia, where the U.S. has far more limited intelligence capabilities to confirm the people killed are the intended targets, the equivalent ratios may well be much worse. 

The report, compiled from classified documents released by a source in the intelligence community, corroborates the many news accounts of civilian deaths caused by drone strikes. U.S. drone strikes have killed scores of civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia since 2009.

In December 2013, a drone strike in Yemen killed 14 people returning from a wedding. Government officials mistook their vehicles for those of al Qaeda militants. Parents in Pakistan have reported taking their children out of school to protect them from possible strikes.

The Drone Papers 

Can be read here at The Intercept

Sixteen-Year-Old Malala Yousafzai Warns Obama: ‘Drone Attacks Are Fueling Terrorism’

The White House invited sixteen-year-old Pakistani women’s rights activist Malala Yousafzai to meet the President, First Lady, and their daughter Malia on Friday. The youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize contender made the most of the photo opportunity, warning Obama that U.S. drone strikes were fueling terrorist attacks.

“I thanked President Obama for the United States’ work in supporting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees,” she said in the statement. “I also expressed my concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people. If we refocus efforts on education it will make a big impact.”

The official White House statement about the meeting did not mention this comment, instead declaring that the U.S. “joins with the Pakistani people and so many around the world to celebrate Malala’s courage and her determination to promote the right of all girls to attend school and realize their dreams.”

Jeb Bush On College Shooting: Sh*t Happens

The compassion of Americas conservatives for the lives and well being of their fellow citizens is astounding. No matter what happens blame the victim and not those involved in the commission of the crime or abuse. After all according to John Eilis Bush "Shit Happens."





President Obama's response.

Watch: President Obama's furious reaction to another mass shooting in America

Updated President Obama's statement on the mass shooting in the U.S. state of Oregon.

On Thursday, Obama spoke about the Umpqua Community College shooting in southwestern Oregon. He did not mask his anger about the tragedy — and America's apparent unwillingness to do anything about it.

"As I said just a few months ago, and I said a few months before that, and I said each time we see one of these mass shootings, our thoughts and prayers are not enough," Obama said. "It does not capture the heartache and grief and anger that we should feel. And it does nothing to prevent this carnage from being inflicted someplace else in America next week or a couple of months from now."



Obama pointed out that America has extraordinary levels of gun violence compared to other developed countries, which researchers widely attribute to the easy access to firearms in the US.