Tag Archives: Georgia

March 26, 2013 · 12:10 AM

George Zimmerman’s Brother: ‘Black Teens’ Are Killers

This is unfortunate because Robert Zimmerman has decided to paint all Black teens with a broad brush, totally disregarding the teens who excel in high school and college.  There are Black teens who can’t go to college but will work hard to achieve their goals.  I am proud to say my four boys fit both examples.

Stereotyping all Black males is what has gotten the police chief at the 40th precinct in the Bronx in hot water over his stop and frisk policies.

Think Progress

Rob Zimmerman

Since he shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last year, George Zimmerman has been trying to convince the public that he was not acting simply out of racist aggression but because Martin attacked him. Zimmerman’s brother, Robert Zimmerman Jr, is not helping his cause. On Saturday, Zimmerman went on a Twitter tirade against “black teens,” equating the boy killed by his brother with De’Marquise Elkins, the 17-year-old suspect in the murder of a Georgia infant.

Zimmerman tweeted the photo at Michael Moore, the NAACP, the NRA, and a Breitbart.com editor. He followed it up with another comparison between the two, tweeting “Teen to West: “Do you want me to shoot your baby?” #TrayvonMartin to #GeorgeZimmerman: You’re gonna die tonight Motherf**ker.”

In case the reason for his comparison of the two young black men was unclear, Zimmerman later tweeted:

Trayvon Martin was unarmed when Zimmerman allegedly followed him and shot him. He had no criminal record. Zimmerman had a history of calling the police to report suspicious black individuals, one as young as 7-9 years old. By his brother’s logic, this frequent suspicion of black people was not due to prejudice but because black people pose a genuine and constant threat to everyone around them.

Zimmerman’s trial is scheduled for June 10.

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February 21, 2013 · 4:37 AM

Worried Too Many Minorities Are Voting Republicans Try To Rollback the Constitution to 1913

african-american-voting

Seems like an effort in  futility to me.  This demonstrates yet again, the GOP’s constant folly of walking the thin line between optimism and delusion…

PoliticusUSA

A group state representatives in Georgia are proposing a resolution that would ask Congress to begin the process of repealing the 17th Amendment, which provides for the direct election of U.S. Senators.

One of the representatives behind this effort, Rep. Kevin Cooke said, “It’s a way we would again have our voice heard in the federal government, a way that doesn’t exist now. This isn’t an idea of mine. This was what James Madison was writing. This would be a restoration of the Constitution, about how government is supposed to work. The fact that this coincides with the 100th anniversary gives us a pretty good snapshot of what has happened to the federal government since then. The federal government has grown exponentially since the amendment was ratified. This would restore the constitution to what it was in 1913.”

Of course, this isn’t really about states’ rights or the intentions of the Founders. The movement to take away the people’s right to directly elect their senators is about keeping Republicans in power. A recent PPP poll of Georgia found that if Max Cleland could be talked into running for his old Senate seat in the state, he would lead each of the top five Republican contenders. If the Democratic candidate is Rep. John Barrow, he would trail the Republican nominee by an average of four tenths of a point. Depending on who the Republicans nominate, the Democrats may have a chance at picking up a Senate seat in Georgia.

The idea of repealing the 17th Amendment is just the latest extreme example of how far Republicans are willing to go in order to hold on to power. Instead of trying to appeal to the changing face of the electorate, a group of Republicans would rather takeaway the popular election of United States senators. 

Georgia’s demographics are changing quickly. People of color make up more than 40% of the state’s population. There is also an age gap, as 73.2% of Georgia residents over age 60 are white, but only 46.9% of the state’s school age children are white. The electorate in Georgia is shifting towards the Democratic Party.

Instead of changing with the times, some state Republicans have decided that the answer to their problems is to roll back the constitution to 1913.
Why stop at 1913? If they really want to hold off the demographic wave, they should also seek to repeal the 13th Amendment.

After all, the Founding Fathers also intended for slavery to be legal too.

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November 16, 2012 · 7:02 AM

Allen West Rejects Offer To Restart Political Career In Georgia: ‘I’m Not An NFL Free Agent’

Allen West Georgia

What an arrogant piece of work.  I, for one am glad he didn’t take the offer.  We have enough arrogant politicians in Georgia and we surely don’t need this one.

The Huffington Post

Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) on Wednesday turned down an offer from Georgia’s Republican Party chairwoman, Sue Everhart, who earlier this week urged the congressman to run for office in her state at some point in the future, in the face of his apparent electoral loss.

“No,” West told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution when asked if he’d consider Everhart’s offer. “Look, let me tell you something. I have moved my wife around for 20-some-odd years, being in the military, and she was also the daughter of a career military guy. When I retired, she chose Florida. That’s where my daughter’s in school, in college, my youngest daughter’s in high school. That’s our home. It’s a very nice thing, but I’m not an NFL free agent.”

West is currently still clinging to the hope that his loss to Democrat Patrick Murphy earlier this month is not concrete, despite the fact that Florida officials have certified the result.

While he and other top Republicans continue to explore possibilities for recounting votes, in hopes of somehow producing a victory, Everhart suggested on Monday thatWest should move back to his home state of Georgia if the final outcome doesn’t go his way.

“I would be glad to have him come back to Georgia and at some point run here,” Everhart told the Journal-Constitution. “I would certainly try to help him because he has done his job. The way he ran his race didn’t in any way interfere with the job he did. He ran as a Republican, a conservative Republican.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and Florida GOP Chairman Lenny Curry have both called for a full recount of the West-Murphy contest. Murphy is meanwhile attending freshman orientation events on Capitol Hill, a move that West’s campaign has criticized as “premature.”

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August 27, 2012 · 12:44 PM

Military Terror Plot: Murder Case Uncovers Terror Plot By ‘Militia’ Within U.S. Military

Military Terror Plot

This should come as no surprise…

The Huffington Post

Prosecutors say a murder case against four soldiers in Georgia has revealed they formed an anarchist militia within the U.S. military with plans to overthrow the federal government.

One of the accused troops, Pfc. Michael Burnett, pleaded guilty Monday to manslaughter and gang charges in the December slayings of former soldier Michael Roark and his girlfriend, 17-year-old Tiffany York.

Burnett told a Long County judge that Roark, who had just left the Army, knew of the militia group’s plans and was killed because he was “a loose end.”

Prosecutor Isabel Pauley says the group bought $87,000 worth of guns and bomb-making materials and plotted to take over Fort Stewart, bomb targets in nearby Savannah and Washington state, as well as assassinate the president.

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June 12, 2012 · 7:58 AM

KKK seeks to ‘Adopt-A-Highway’ in Georgia

Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members at 2009 rally (Flickr/Arete13)

I would say “only in Georgia”, but it happened in another state as well…

The Raw Story

The state of Georgia is in a bind after a local Ku Klux Klan (KKK) group filed a request to join the state’s Adopt-A-Highway program.

Records obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution show that the International Keystone Knights of the KKK in Union County has applied to “adopt” one mile of Route 515, located in the Appalachian Mountains near North Carolina. The state would be forced to give the group official recognition in the form of road signs bearing their name and other benefits in return for cleaning up litter on the stretch of highway.

A spokesperson for the Georgia Department of Transportation told Raw Story that he was aware of the request but could not say more.

The state of Missouri in 1999 argued that they could bar a KKK group from participating in the Adopt-A-Highway program without violating their First Amendment rights. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, the group eventually won after the state’s case was dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Officials from the Georgia Department of Transportation were meeting with lawyers in the state attorney general’s office on Monday to decide how to proceed. In the end, the state could be forced to include the white supremacist group or end the program altogether.

Continue reading here…

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April 2, 2012 · 12:39 AM

Georgia Republicans Pushing Drug Testing Refuse To Be Tested

PoliticusUSA

From health care to education, to civil justice and support for working families, the actions of  Republican legislators across the county show that they value their corporate buddies more than families. Now, we get to hear it form their own mouths.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this video of Georgia elected officials responding to public demand that they take a urine drug screenbefore picking up THEIR government check is priceless. Following the example of Republican-led legislatures across the county, Georgia lawmakers who are eager to force Georgia mom’s to pee in a cup blanch at the idea of requiring their colleagues to do the same.

And drug tests for CEO’s of corporations receiving special interest tax breaks? You just have to watch this video from Better Georgia, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that I chair, to see their response to that idea!

Kill this Bill: Unfair Georgia Drug Test from Bryan Long on Vimeo.

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March 9, 2012 · 4:31 PM

Georgia lawmaker compares women to cows and pigs

There’s gotta be something in the water, or the red dirt or some other anomaly that make some of  these “southern gentlemen” say the most batsh*t crazy things!

The Raw Story

Republican Georgia state Rep. Terry England says that his experience with cows, pigs and chickens has proven to him that women should be forced to have their babies after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

In a debate over Georgia House Bill 954, which would ban abortions after 20 weeks even if the baby is not expected to live, England recalled the time he had spent with livestock.

“Life gives us many experiences,” he explained. “I’ve had the experience of delivering calves, dead and alive — delivering pigs, dead and alive. … It breaks our hearts to see those animals not make it.”

England continued: “You know a few years ago, I had a man come to me in our store, it was when we were debating, talking about dog and hog hunting, I believe, and at that point there was some language inserted in there that dealt with chicken fighting. And the young man called me to the side and he said, ‘I want to tell you one thing.’ And y’all, this is salt of the Earth people I’m talking about, someone I would have never in a hundred years expected to tell me what he told me that day.”

“He said, ‘Mr. Terry, I want to tell you something. You tell those folks down there when they quit killing babies, they can have every chicken I’ve got.’”

House Bill 954 easily passed last week by a vote of 102-65.

Opponents have said that the so-called “fetal pain” bill would force women to carry stillborn fetuses or to have a Cesarean delivery. Doctors could also face 10 years in prison if they are involved in illegal abortions.

Watch this video from the Georgia State Assembly, uploaded March 6, 2012.

(H/T: Better Georgia, PoliticusUSA)

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February 15, 2012 · 8:49 AM

Newt Gingrich Dismisses Birther Question From Orly Taitz

It’s my firm believe that the cockroach will not be the only survivor of a nuclear holocaust. It’s possible that  Orly Taitz will be among the surviving species as well.

No matter how many times the Court has knocked her down by dismissing her cases before them, she gets back up and continues her frenetic attempts for someone in a judicial capacity to not only hear what she has to say, but to adjudicate her findings.

She came close, here in the state of Georgia, but ultimately ended up with egg on her face for the umpteenth time…

The Huffington Post

Orly Taitz took her anti-Obama birther crusade to GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on Monday, only to come up empty-handed. Again.

At a campaign event in Pasadena, Calif., Gingrich took questions after delivering a stump speech blasting , among other things, “President Obama’s war on the Catholic Church” and the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which recently overturned California’s same-sex marriage ban.

After answering concerns about the state of his campaign following a slide in recent polls and primary contests, Taitz came forward, suggesting that the birther issue could provide a “boost ” to his candidacy if he made it a hallmark issue.

“Somebody who wouldn’t be good enough, who wouldn’t be certified to pick tomatoes or clean bathrooms is sitting in the White House,” Taitz told Gingrich, reportedly to a mixed reception  from the largely Tea Party audience.

“That’s a project you should pursue,” Gingrich responded. He went on to say that with ongoing economic issues and other mismanagement he saw in the president’s agenda, he had “enough issues to debate Obama about.”

Taitz, a California attorney and dentist, is one of the most outspoken members of the birther movement, whose adherents claim that Obama is ineligible to serve as president because he isn’t actually a U.S. citizen. (In fact, the White House has released  the president’s long-form birth certificate, in hopes of quelling the conspiracy theories.) Taitz, who specifically believes that the president has forged his official documents, made something of a stir in Georgia last month when a judge subpoenaed Obama in a case her clients had filed attempting to bar Obama from the state’s primary ballot. Obama’s legal team ignored the judge’s order, however, and the case proceeded without him. It was eventually dismissed  by the judge, who determined that Obama was eligible to be on Georgia’s primary ballot in March.

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February 7, 2012 · 1:44 AM

Orly Taitz loses birther case to an empty table

I thoroughly enjoy reporting on yet another epic fail by looney birther queen, Orly Taitz, et al…

Daily Kos

The court decision is in:  http://www.scribd.com/…

Orly Taitz represented one of four plaintiffs challenging President Obama’s eligibility for placement on the Democratic ballot in Georgia. The President and his counsel were subpoenaed to appear in court to defend against these challenges, but the President’s attorney issued a nice letter to the judge stating that the Court had no business or jurisdiction even hearing the case and therefore the defense would not be in attendance.

So Taitz and her fellow attorneys presented their best arguments without challenge from the defense, and requested a summary judgment on the merits.

And the Court’s judgment: the plaintiffs have no case and no credible evidence, and there is no law to support their claims. Judgment for the defendant, represented only by an empty table, on the merits. Or in this case, utter lack thereof.

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February 4, 2012 · 7:40 AM

West Wing Week: 2/3/2012 or Riding the Advanced Technology Superhighway

The White House 

This week, the President made history by holding the first completely virtual interview at the White House on Google+.

He also tackled the rising cost of tuition at the University of Michigan, welcomed the President of Georgia, convened a cabinet meeting, stopped by the Washington Auto Show, announced a major refinancing plan for responsible homeowners, and attended the National Prayer Breakfast.

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