The Blowback Against Brownback Began Over the Weekend!

His "pro-life" flunkies' witch hunt is failing, badly.

It started late last week as the news stories scattered and only partially covered by the Kansas news media of a draconian anti-abortion 69 page law was gaining traction in the legislature. The story started to go across the internet before many knew what was to happen with the law getting out of committee.

By the time most news people were burying their heads into their pillows Friday night, the story was raging, even as the governor was having his social media staff work overtime attempting to delete and censor the remarks on his Face Book page. People were swarming his FB page with a "sarcasm campaign."

MSN covered it with a 'to delete or not delete' comment poll.

Yahoo News snatched a Mashable send-up by Kate Freeman who was able to snatch some of the comments before being taken off his site. This alone made the story more viral across the internet.  

Then WebProNews Social Media announced that no matter how many tax dollars Brownback spent on his social media staff to censor the "sarcasm bomb" explosion couldn't be stopped.  The article by Drew Bolling declared the work senseless and printed many more of the comments. 

The story now early Monday, 19 March 2012, is still going viral and the comments at Gov. Sam Brownback's Face Book page are still raging in debate some with hilarious bursts of sarcasm.

Many of the ones that were censored were then reprinted with screen shots at RH Reality Check, a net savvy web site for reproductive rights. The article by Head Editor Jodi Jacobson, "Ask Dr. Brownback: ... Women (and Men) Ask the Governor for Reproductive Health Advice" appropriately posted many of the comments that were not sarcastic but quite accurate about the lives of women and their choices for reproduction. 

Many of these were censored from the governor's FaceBook page.  

Cheers! Doing cyber activists proud!

It is called blowback and Brownback is feeling it, and many say that like Secretary of State Kris Kobach who last week was outed by Kansas citizen journalists at spending most of his state office time making media appearances, giving interviews and mainly grooming a reputation as nativist anti-immigrant law maker, the governor will suffer for it.  

William Allen White would call this the "rough equality" that Kansans were once famous for, a resistance that many in the political opposition in this dominant Republican state have forgotten.

Welcome to Brownbackistan!

John Celock: Kansas Abortion Bill To Ban Procedure By State Workers Passes House @ Huffington Post

Welcome to Brownbackistan's News Ministry!

Our state capital daily newspaper relies on a national news wire service to report on the religious fundamentalist lawmakers' latest war on Kansas women. A single four paragraph article was all the Topeka Capital Journal could muster on an illegal and unconstitutional measure being forced to the state's senate chamber. It is outrageous!  Instead those Kansans who have internet service have to go to the Huffington Post to read just how idiotic these lawmakers are. 

[Excerpt]  " ... The full House of Representatives adopted an amendment to the state budget Friday evening that would prohibit state money from being used on abortions and would ban state workers from performing abortions during the workday. Opponents say the amendment will jeopardize the accreditation of KU's OBGYN residency program, where residents receive training to provide abortions.
On Thursday, a House committee meanwhile passed an amendment to the state's sweeping anti-abortion bill meant to allow for the abortion training to continue at KU. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education requires OBGYN programs to provide abortion training.

Click image to enlarge. Keep Radio Free Kansas alive and kicking!

"Kansas citizens do not want (abortions)," state Rep. Joe Patton (R-Topeka) told HuffPost about why he sponsored the amendment...." Read more.

David Lindorff Sr. Dies: Radar Pioneer, Engineering Professor, Jungian Analyst and TCBH! Contributor

David Plimpton Lindorff, an occasional contributor to ThisCantBeHappening! and perhaps the last survivor of the Radiation Lab, a top-secret World War II project in Cambridge, MA that led to the placing of radar on aircraft, died March 15 in Storrs, CT at the age of 89 as a result of complications from ataxia. 

Lindorff, a native of Flushing, NY, was a polymath, an artist/writer/scientist/philosopher/analyst who, after writing an acclaimed book, Theory of Sampled Data Control Systems (Wiley, 1965), which addressed some fundamental challenges posed in analog computing, and working in his chosen field of engineering and computer science, took early retirement from the University of Connecticut at the age of 57 to remake himself as a licensed Jungian analyst and scholar. 

It was a second career he pursued for another 28 years, and it led to his writing a second book. Pauli and Jung: A Meeting of Two Great Minds (Quest Books, 2004). This volume, which is based on two decades of letters of correspondence between Jung and a famous patient of his, the enigmatic and brilliant theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli,  explores the issues of genius, creativity, and these two men’s discourses and debates over such concepts of quantum theory, synchronicity and the controversial notion of mind over matter.

Lindorff’s leap from engineering to a study of the psyche came in 1979. He said he was in the UConn faculty club dining hall having a weekly lunch with an informal group of professors who liked to practice their German, when the topic turned to a court decision, just in the news, in which several male state employees had won a lawsuit claiming discrimination because at the time, female state workers could retire at 60, while men had to wait until they were 65. Lindorff said, “With my three years’ military credit, I could retire now!” A colleague advised him, “If you’re going to do that, you better do it right away, because this decision is going to be so expensive it’s bound to be overturned on appeal.”  Lindorff left his lunch, pushed back his chair, got up, and walked across the campus to the personnel office and filed for retirement. “I didn’t even call my wife to discuss it!” he said. Shortly after this impulsive act, the court ruling was overturned as predicted, but Lindorff and a few others who had already filed their papers were allowed to remain retired...

For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1103

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This publication is now celebrating its first full year of publication. We did this all with almost no financial support--only what you, our readers, provided.  Can you help us make our second year a whole lot better, by giving use more financial support, so that we can devote more time to being reporters?  If you believe as we do that we need more independent journalism, please put your money where your convictions are, and back ThisCantBeHappening! Use the Paypal button at the bottom of the home page, or send us a check at the address listed on the “Support Us” page.

Uncut Press Conference Exposing Brownbackistan Attack on Kansas Poor, Illiterate & Oppressed People: Secretary of State Kris Kobach

Press Conference 3-15-2012 from Bill Brittendall on Vimeo.

Why Ron Paul May Cut a Deal With Romney

Alex Altman, Time Magazine
Excerpt: "Even after his southern losses, only Romney has a real shot at amassing the 1,144 delegates required to wrap up the nomination, and he would then face the task of unifying the GOP's warring factions. Which is why Paul's campaign has sent discreet signals to Camp Romney that the keys to Paul's shop can be had for the right price."
READ MORE

Scott Rothschild: Committee Approves Abortion Bill; Puts in Amendment for K.U. Medical Center @ Lawrence Journal World

Operation Rescue's Troy Newman's popular book.

[Excerpt] ... “To require physicians to give out information that is not based on medical science is wrong,” said state Rep. Kathy Wolfe Moore, D-Kansas City, Kan., who opposed the bill.
Moore said she understood some scientists have said there is a link between the increased risk of breast cancer and abortion, but that the overwhelming amount of research by the National Cancer Institute, American Cancer Society and other major health organizations say that isn’t so. ... Read more.

John Grant: Afghanistan: The Wheels are Coming Off @ This Can't Be Happening!

When does a determination to look on the bright side turn into a state of denial? That is, when do leaders of a secrecy-obsessed US government admit the decision-making surrounding the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan was misguided from the beginning and the endgame is a mess because of it?


While the leadership of America is mud-wrestling with itself in the election "silly season," the nation is watching the wheels come off its military occupation of Afghanistan. It feels like that special effects TV ad for a new SUV in which, as the SUV speeds forward, thousands of its parts magically come flinging loose until we see nothing but the truck chassis speeding ahead.


In Afghanistan, we’re down to that truck chassis. And its wheels are now coming loose. Once again, US leaders have reached a crisis endpoint in yet another counter-insurgency commitment. Once again our leaders insist on "victory" when that kind of end is impossible.


The story began just over a century ago. Smart, moderate historians like Andrew Bacevich (Washington Rules and The Short American Century: A Postmortem); Chalmers Johnson (The Blowback TrilogyandDismantling The Empire: America’s Last Best Hope) and others have made the imperial master narrative clear. In a nutshell, the expansionist militarist energy that began with the Spanish American War -- the so-called American Century -- is over. Or at least we’re climbing down the mountain we ascended so gloriously during the last century. 


The empire that was launched with great bully, outward-rushing enthusiasm by Teddy Roosevelt and others is now circling its wagons.


In 1899, Rudyard Kipling wrote the poem “The White Man’s Burden.” At the time, we were “liberating” the Philippines from the Spanish and becoming embroiled in a nasty counter-insurgency war with Philippine nationalists in which water boarding was regularly employed against uncooperative Filipinos. Here’s Kipling:


Take up the White Man’s burden -
Send forth the best ye breed -
Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild -
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.


His theme was the passing of the baton of empire and imperialism from Britain to the United States. America was high on Manifest Destiny and bursting at the seams to bring light to the benighted peoples of the world and to remake the world in its own exceptional image.


Being on the downside of empire is less invigorating. As economic realities become squeezed, it becomes harder and harder to sustain the notion that we’re covering the world with our beneficence. Instead, what we're doing is covering our ass trying to hold on to what we got...


For the rest of this article by JOHN GRANT in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1098

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Suzy Khimm: Kris Kobach, Nativist @ Mother Jones

[Excerpt]  If there's a controversial new anti-immigration law that's captured national attention, chances are that it has Kris Kobach's imprimatur.... Read more. And breaking news, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has declared that his 186 media appearances and interviews since taking office were done in his spare time. Read this at the Lawrence Journal World.

Raging Grannies Form Viagra Review Board, Kansas May Be Next @ indymedia

A Warning to Kansas Lawmakers?
Click image to "enlarge" and view gavel a/k/a meat tenderizer.
A new Viagra Review Board has resolved to decide, mandate and regulate distribution of the popular drug said to enhance male sexual performance. Image hat tip: Indymedia

Official Announcement
Resolved: Formation of Viagra Review Board, Palo Alto, Calif.

(Palo Alto, Calif.) Members of the Raging Grannies Action League said that men who want drugs such as Viagra to treat impotence should be required to have strict testing before receiving said drugs.


The Grannies applauded Ohio State Senator Nina Turner who has introduced a bill requiring that physicians take specific actions before prescribing Viagra and similar drugs, including giving a cardiac stress test and making a referral to a sex therapist for confirmation that the patient’s symptoms are not solely attributable to one or more psychological conditions.


The photo was taken of members of the Raging Granny VRB (Viagra Review Board) in response to moves by Republicans to limit women's right to reproductive health. Members of the Review Board are all women who came of age before Roe v. Wade. From their headquarters in Palo Alto they announced that they are old enough to know what it was like to live before women's reproductive rights became law of the land, and they will do all they can to make sure that the US does not return to that era. 

Chapters of the Raging Granny VRB are said to be forming across the country, including possibly one in Kansas.

Reported ongoing "Brownbackistan Witch Hunts" against Kansas medical professionals who provide contraceptives (including abortion) are taking place, coupled with a new highly restrictive law that will soon be passed by the legislature and signed by the state's Dear Leader Gov. Sam Brownback.

http://www.RagingGrannies.com

Linn Washington, Jr.: Pitfalls in Judges Judging Judges (Not) @ This Can't Be Happening!

Richard Cebull, the chief federal district court judge in Montana, went into damage control mode recently after newspaper reporters in his state discovered a racist and sexist email Cebull had sent to six close friends insinuating that President Obama’s mother had had sex with a dog.




Cebull, seeking to short-circuit the scandal he ignited, quickly requested that his peers on the Judicial Council of the Ninth Circuit (that includes Montana) investigate him to determine if he engaged in any inappropriate and/or unethical conduct.


Cebull’s request for a judicial council investigation raises the rarely examined issue of the practice of judges judging themselves on misconduct related matters.


Cebull had compounded his initial offense of sending the racist email by defending that email, telling reporters he considered the odious content anti-Obama not racist.


Federal law bars federal judges from engaging in both partisan and bigoted activity – twin requirements breached by Cebull’s action.


Cebull told his email receiving buddies that he hoped the content touched their hearts like “it did mine” – a lame attempt to spin the ugly content as a harmless joke.


So, what was the content Cebull considered touching enough to send to friends who forwarded that content to others?


“A little boy said to his mother, ‘Mommy, how come I’m black and you’re white?’ His mother replied, ‘Don’t even go there Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you’re lucky you don’t bark!”


Cebull, days after requesting peer review, then sent an apology letter to President Obama, in which he said he accepted “full responsibility” for his egregious act and promised the President that it “will never happen again.”


In that letter, after informing Obama of his request for Judicial Council review, Cebull curiously stated that he “honestly [didn’t] know what else to do” – apparently blind to the obvious reality that honor to his oath of office to uphold the Constitution and to administer justice fairly requires his resignation.


If a judge (federal or state) can’t see the glaringly offensive racism and sexism in passing along content calling President Obama’s African father a dog and his mother someone who would have sex with a dog needs to resign because that jurist lacks a capacity essential for judging: recognizing wrong.


Many parties will never again see Cebull as possessing the capacity to preside in his courtroom in an impartial, non-biased/non-partisan manner required of judges.


For the rest of this article by LINN WASHINGTON, JR. in ThisCantBeHappening.net, the new independent Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1096


Please, IF YOU VALUE THIS PUBLICATION, PLEASE SUPPORT US! (AND CHECK OUT OUR NEW T-SHIRTS BY SCROLLING DOWN THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE HOME PAGE. BE THE FIRST ON YOUR BLOCK TO BECOME “A MAJOR DESTABILIZING INFLUENCE”!)
This publication is now celebrating its first full year of publication. We did this all with almost no financial support--only what you, our readers, provided.  Can you help us make our second year a whole lot better, by giving use more financial support, so that we can devote more time to being reporters?  If you believe as we do that we need more independent journalism, please put your money where your convictions are, and back ThisCantBeHappening! Use the Paypal button at the bottom of the home page, or send us a check at the address listed on the “Support Us” page.

Mark Ames: Slovakia Defies the Kochs & Cato @ Consortium News

[Excerpt]  Exclusive: For the past decade, the people of the small central European nation of Slovakia have suffered under a harsh and corrupt “privatization” scheme devised by the Koch Brothers’ Cato Institute. However, in weekend elections, they defied their oligarchs by voting for a left-of-center “populist” party, reports Mark Ames. ...  Read more about the Kansas Koch's at Consortium News.

Doonesbury Cartoon Substitution @ Topeka Capital Journal

A BETTER HEADLINE?

"In Kansas No One Can Hear Women Scream."

 

[Excerpt]  "... The Topeka Capital-Journal isn’t running a two-week series of strips from Garry Trudeau regarding procedures being required for women in Texas seeking abortions. Publisher Gregg Ireland said the decision was based on a matter of taste, not necessarily philosophy. ..." Read more at CJ Online.

 

A Noteworthy Posted Comment:

 Honestly...

By Geiiga | 03/13/12 - 09:03 pm

...I'm sure the decision was for financial reasons. Namely, that they couldn't afford to staff the phones for the inevitable run of hillbilly whining.

Click to enlarge. Available at Doonesbury.com

And then there is Texas Gov. Rick Perry, after the kiss of death from Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback's endorsement for him as GOP candidate for president.  Perry as Palin for Newt? Watch below:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Too Much Online, News Weekly, 12, March 2012

[Excerpt]

How can we tell if we’ve become, as a society, too unequal? The Los Angeles Times has just offered up a novel suggestion: We can count bathrooms.

Reporter Lauren Beale has done just that. She has tallied up the number of bathrooms in Southern California’s most opulent manses. And these numbers will astound you. One newly remodeled Beverly Hills abode, now valued at $60 million, has 30 of them — to go along with 17 bedrooms.

“The idea is never to inconvenience yourself or a guest,” one luxury realtor told Beale. “You almost cannot have too many bathrooms.”

But we can have too much inequality. This week in Too Much we examine the latest edition of a much more conventional — but equally alarming — measure of the economic gaps that divide us. Also this week: a look at an inspiring new profile of deep pockets deeply committed to a more equal tomorrow. ... Read more at Too Much Online.

Community Discussion Thread on LulzSec Busts @ MetaFilter

Heavily linked with worthwhile comments.

Comments on Fox News coverage are hilarious!

Read them here.

David Meeks: Poll: Obama is a Muslim to many GOP voters in Alabama, Mississippi @ LA Times

Kansans were not polled. 

Read the results here.

Paul Pillar: An Israeli October Surprise on Obama? @ Consortium News

Nixon did it with the South Vietnamese government against Lyndon Baines Johnson in the Summer of '68.

LBJ called it "treason."

Why wouldn't Israel start war with Iran in courting any of the major GOP candidates running for president today?

Read this eye-opening article written by a 28 year analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency at Consortium News.

Paul Pillar: The Integrity of Policy Analysis @ The National Interest

Excerpt:  ... I have been following with a combination of puzzled fascination and profound concern the attempt by the brothers Charles and David Koch to seize control of the Cato Institute. Readers of the National Interest website know that Cato scholars are major contributors to these spaces, and that is one sense in which we readers have a stake in how this power play comes out. I do not pretend to understand Cato's unusual governing structure, which the Koch brothers are trying to manipulate and which includes a small number of nominally-valued “shares” alongside the normal sort of board of directors. ... Read more at the National Interest.

Author of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Notes

Hard to find articles and links on this fantastic series of novels, movies.

Click here to Kasama.

Robert David Graham: Notes on Sabu & Arrests @ Errata Security

Big post with lots of links, forwarded from someone who know.

Click here.

Petition to End the Kansas Madness in March @ KsMadness.org

KNEA Joins Campaign Calling on the Governor and Legislature to Fund Public Schools

KNEA, the largest union representing classroom teachers in Kansas, has joined three other
organizations to gather petitions in support of preserving quality primary and secondary
education for Kansas children. The month long petition campaign to rally support for funding
public schools is intended to send a message to the governor and legislature that citizens will not
tolerate a state policy which erodes the public school system. The governor’s proposal before the
legislature is inadequate and further threatens the state’s long tradition of giving every child an
excellent public education.

The petition campaign, Kansas Madness in March, began circulating across the state last week
and will continue through the month of March. KNEA is partnering in the event along with AFT-
Kansas, Kansas Families for Education, and Kansans United in Voice & Spirit.

Citizens can sign the petition at www.ksmadness.com.

Better than the Mainstream, but best?

Amy Goodman's Democracy Now news coverage of the LulzSec Bust. #Fail

The War on Journalists' Anonymous Sources: RFK Guest Barrett Brown Speaks Out

1. From Barrett's latest Paste Bin post, immediately after the FBI raid.
    
   As I have noted, the FBI raided my apartment in Dallas on the morning of March 6th. I was not there at the time; I had been given a vague warning that a raid was to take place the next day, so I went to my mom's place, where she lives with her husband, who is out of town, on the 5th. On the morning of the 6th, three FBI agents came to my mom's door and asked if I was there. She woke me up and I went down to talk to them. They told me that they'd executed a search warrant at my apartment and that the door had been broken in the process, and then asked me if I had any laptops with me here at my mom's place that I wanted to give them. I responded in the negative, and they left. At that point I began taking calls and e-mails from the press regarding Sabu, whom I learned was in fact a degenerate pussy traitor who couldn't face two fucking years in prison, making him the biggest pussy in the history of mankind. There were several people who came to this conclusion early on; I was not wise enough to be one of them. As to the various stunts he pulled in the months since his arrest - including but not limited to the unnecessary release of credit card information for Stratfor customers - we may never know to what extent such things were encouraged by his "Justice Department" handlers in an effort to discredit this movement. But I digress, lol. At any rate, the Feds came back a couple of hours later with a search warrant for my mom's place - they fully intended to take a certain laptop, and did.
2.  
3. The documentation left with me by the FBI after the raid on my mother's home states that the evidence they were looking for pertains to "conspiracy to obstruct justice, and the obstruction of justice, i.e. tampering with a victim, witness, or informant" and "conspiracy to access without authorization protected computers, and fraud and related activity in connection with computers (aiding and abetting), in whatever form, namely:
4.  
5. 1. Records relating to HBGary;
6. 2. Records relating to Infragard;
7. 3. Records relating to Endgame Systems;
8. 4. Records relating to Anonymous;
9. 5. Records relating to Lulzsec;
10. 6. Records relating to IRC chat;
11. 7. Records relating to Twitter;
12. 8. Records relating to wiki.echelon2.org;
13. 9. Records relating to pastebin.com;"
14.  
15. ... and then goes on to list computers and anything relating to them as things to be seized.