Via Haaretz, here are the terms of the Israel-Hamas cease-fire proposal from US Secretary of State John Kerry.

Kerry’s initiative stipulates the following terms:

1. A one-week, temporary cease-fire, starting Sunday, during which Israel Defense Forces troops will not leave the Gaza Strip entirely and will continue to locate and destroy Hamas tunnels.

2. During this cease-fire, Israel and Hamas will begin negotiations on a more permanent arrangement, with Egyptian mediation. The Palestinian Authority will participate in these talks.

3. The United States, the UN secretary-general and the European Union will provide guarantees to both sides that the negotiations will deal with the issues important to them - for Israel, disarming Gaza of its rockets and tunnels, and for Hamas, ending the blockade of Gaza and repairing the damage the Strip has suffered.

As soon as I posted this I saw the latest live update — the Israeli cabinet has rejected Kerry’s proposal: LIVE UPDATES.

8:34 P.M. Israeli cabinet rejects John Kerry’s cease-fire proposal, according to a senior Israeli official. Discussions continue on how to improve the proposal in Israel’s favor.

DERP

As another example of the tenuous hold The Gateway Pundit has on accuracy, check out this xenophobic, scaremongering headline:

BREAKING: HHS Has Released 30,340 Unaccompanied Illegal Minors Across US This Year

So breaking!! that it’s been going on for the last six months, but to continue with the post.

According to the Office of Refugee Resettlement 30,340 illegal children were secretly released to sponsors across the United States in the first six months of this year.

I’ve got some problems with the term “illegal children,” but let’s focus on the “secretly released to sponsors” aspect of this story.

First of all, it’s not a secret if the ORR announces it’s happened. And second, by law, the government is prohibited from revealing the precise whereabouts of minor children. So, in that respect, there is some secrecy.

Who are these sponsors? From the ORR website:

We try to place the child with a parent, and if that is not possible, with a relative, and if that is not possible, with a family friend. We do not restrict placements based on the immigration status of the parent or other sponsor. All sponsors receive a background check that includes a public records name and address check to search for criminal history; review of any criminal history the sponsor self-reports during the reunification process; and through interviews with the child. If the sponsor is not a parent or legal guardian of the child, a fingerprint check is also conducted.

Oh, and the kids are not released until they get a clean bill of health, so they’re not carrying plague or TB or ebola as some kind of Typhoid Marys. [Seriously, some people really believe these kids are major threats to the health of the nation.]

Continue reading…

This is not shaping up as a good month for right wing racist Ted Nugent: Tacoma Casino Cancels Nugent Shows, Citing Racism.

TACOMA, Wash. — Emerald Queen Casino will cancel two Ted Nugent concerts that were scheduled August 2 and 3 over allegations of racist remarks by the singer.

Puyallup Tribe officials said the decision came after learning that Nugent has said racist remarks.

“The first amendment gives people the right free speech, but I think racism is intolerable and not acceptable here,” said Puyallup Tribal Council Vice President Lawrence W. LaPointe. “We’ve been getting lots of complaints from the community and other organizations.”

“I don’t want to take away his right to say what he wants to say, but we don’t need it here.”

In case you’re tempted to doubt Nugent’s long history of racism, please note that he was a frequent guest on the Tennessee white supremacist radio show “Political Cesspool.”

Wow. I rarely begin a post that way, but here’s something I never knew about Reason Magazine, the flagship journal of American libertarianism, and it’s really, really awful. Mark Ames at Pando Daily has dug the whole thing up: As Reason’s Editor Defends Its Racist History, Here’s a Copy of Its Holocaust Denial “Special Issue”.

Astonishingly, in February 1976, Reason dedicated an entire “special issue” to promoting Holocaust deniers, under the guise of so-called “historical revisionism.” How horrifying is it? You can judge for yourself — the whole thing is embedded below.

PandoDaily contacted noted Holocaust historian and Holocaust Museum expert Deborah Lipstadt to ask her opinion. In 2000, Lipstadt won a much-publicized libel trial in Britain against a leading Holocaust denier, David Irving. When we shared with her the list of Reason’s “special issue” contributors and authors positively cited in the issue, Lipstadt described it as “the Who’s Who of early American Holocaust deniers.”

Authors who contributed articles Reason magazine’s “special issue” included one of the most notorious American pro-Nazi activists of the postwar era, Austin J. App, author of the 1973 tract, “The Six Million Swindle: Blackmailing the German People for Hard Marks and Fabricated Corpses” and contributing editor to the rabidly anti-Semitic magazine, the American Mercury. Two more authors hired to write for Reason’s “special issue” included James J. Martin, a regular contributor to the same neo-Nazi American Mercury magazine; and Percy Greaves, a founding board member at the anti-Jewish hate group, the Liberty Lobby.

Both Martin and Greaves were deeply involved in leading anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denier outfits before, during and after Reason hired them as contributors; and shortly after they appeared in Reason’s “special issue,” both Martin and Greaves served as editorial directors in David Irving’s favorite neo-Nazi outfit, the Institute for Historical Review, described as “the world’s single most important outlet for Holocaust-denial propaganda” by the Anti-Defamation League.

Here’s the whole disgusting thing.

Scribd

That bogus story about the ISIS Islamist group ordering all women to get circumcised has been debunked since early this morning, but at Breitbart “News” it’s still on their front page without any sign that it’s fake.

JIHADISTS IN IRAQ ORDER WOMEN UNDERGO GENITAL MUTILATION

That’s their whole story in the screenshot above, but at Breitbart “News” they make their money by inciting the worst right wing knuckle-draggers on the planet, and they react as expected with horrifying amounts of bigotry and hatred, threats of violence, calls for genocide, incoherent rants against Barack and Michelle Obama, and some of the worst spelling and grammar you’ll ever read.

Warning: the comments quoted below are very sick and disturbing — but make no mistake, this is the business model for many right wing media sites these days.

I wouldn’t mind doing a little genital mutilation of these Men Of God and see how they like it. Islam is a Pestilence.

[…]

Islam is a degenerate religion.

[…]

May America slaughter ten million pigs and spray the blood over the dead bodies of every Muslim in the world. Pigs are not filthy, Muslims are filthy. To hell with people who eat with their right hand because they use the other one to wipe their butt. Do you guys realize how backward and gross this society is? They archaic and disgusting on all levels—physical, social, religious, sexual. I hope the civilized world soon consolidates the will to take care of them once and for all.

[…]

well, another win for our muslim president.

[…]

Mecca delenda est!

[…]

What do you expect from such 7th century followers of satan?

[…]

Islam is a disease and we should work to cure the world of it.

[…]

Indeed, their belief structure—religious or otherwise—is sick beyond belief…on par with Nazism. They only reason these animals get away with it is because their perverse ideology is classified as “religion.” I don’t care if it’s called religion, philosophy, fanaticism or whatever… They need to be dealt with, just like America dealt with Hitler and the Empire of the Sun. Muhammad was a violent, vile pervert. Anybody who follows that religion is rotten to the core. No PC police here… I refuse to say, “Islam is great, it’s just those who twist it.” B.S. Islam itself—at its core—is filthy and perverse.

[…]

All part of Obama and the Democrat parties war on women

[…]

Time to hunt these diseased sons of pigs down and butcher them.

[…]

If this bit of barbarism doesn’t demonstrate the need to wage total war on Islam, nothing ever will. A new holocaust awaits, whether we want it or not.

[…]

Hey Barry, this is what happens when Aholes like you Do Nothing.
You are an Abomination, and many Citizens in The USA are Disgusted with you.
Forget as a failure as a President, but you Are also a Failure as a man, father and husband.
You surely are One Disgusting Individual as are your administration members including the complicit silent and Propaganda main stream media.
You did nothing when ISIS was on the move andtyou continue to do nothing.
You Always do Nothing.
You are Nothing.
All you do is Bully America Domestically because you are a Pathetic person who is incapable of leading anything more than a neighborhood, if that.
The Two Time Barry Voters are also partly to blame for all of these Atrocities.

[…]

F’n barbarians….. the only thing that is going to stop these guys is a bullet between the eyes. But Obammy is too busy playing golf.

On and on it goes like this, for more than 1800 comments so far. I had to stop because I was starting to feel ill, but this is just a tiny selection from this nauseating torrent of hate speech. And the only comments that seem to be getting deleted by their “moderators” are from… you guessed it… liberals.

As we reported back in April, raving freakazoid nut sandwich Glenn Beck is being sued for defamation by the Saudi student he falsely accused of being the “money man” behind the Boston marathon bombings. Today the Washington Post has new details on the bizarre strategy Beck’s lawyers are trying to use to defend him; they’re claiming Abdulrahman Alharbi is a “public figure,” which would significantly raise the bar for proving a defamation case.

How and when did Alharbi become a public figure? Well, according to Beck’s doubtlessly expensive legal team, it happened when Glenn Beck accused him of being behind the Boston terror attacks, and he tried to defend himself against Beck’s accusations. Oh, my aching head.

What makes Alharbi a public figure, according to Beck? “By behaving suspiciously at the Marathon finishing line when the bombs detonated, thereby causing his detention and a background check by law enforcement,” states Beck’s motion to dismiss, Alharbi “embarked on a course of conduct that was reasonably likely to result in public attention and comment on his background, activities, and immigration status.” Plus, he gave interviews defending himself, said Beck’s legal team, led by Michael J. Grygiel.

YouTube

RightWingWatch has been keeping track of Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin as he goes from one far right media outlet to the next, pushing a line of persecution and victimhood that would embarrass a spoiled five-year old. Akin is doubling down on his creepy misogynistic statements by claiming the evil left wing media is trying to destroy him because he’s a brave American hero.

This week, Akin also told the Christian Broadcasting Network that he’s being persecuted because he’s on the side of “good” in a spiritual war between good and evil.

YouTube

After the whole thing blew up and it took maybe a week or two and it was just amazing. It wasn’t just national, it was international news, because people were saying I said something most of the time that I didn’t even say and assigning me motives that I didn’t have. What did I feel like? It’s going to be sort of an odd analogy but I’ll share it with you. I felt sort of peaceful, as though I was in a parachute. I sort of felt that on each side of me were these towering cumulus clouds. On the one side lightning and thunder of evil and the other side brilliant light of good and I sort of felt like I was literally on the front lines and that evil and good were going at each other all around me and I’m thinking, ‘how did I get here so fast? If you want a mental picture, sometimes you just have to sort of think of a bizarre picture but that’s what it felt like. I felt a sense of peace like I was protected but it seemed like there was this intense war between good and evil, which in a way didn’t surprise me because I always felt like I want to be on the side of selling good ideas.

Akin, by the way, was covered at LGF even before his twisted statements about “legitimate rape,” when he announced that he wanted to abolish school lunches and repeal the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

So he’s basically your all-around repellent whining right wing caveman with a raging persecution complex.

Worried that IT experts seem to typically vote Democratic, the Koch Brothers have spearheaded hackathons to lure techies into the conservatarian sphere.

The gathering was the first inaugural conference put on by Lincoln Labs, a year-old club of politically-minded technologists started by three millennials with backgrounds in Republican politics: Garrett Johnson, a former aide to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; Aaron Ginn, who worked on Mitt Romney’s digital team; and Chris Abrams, who runs digital operations for Vanity Fair magazine. The group — which adopts the label “conservatarian,” a popular buzzword for the ideological coalition between conservatives and libertarians — was born in 2013 in the aftermath of the failed Republican attempt to regain control of the White House, in which President Obama’s mastery of digital campaigning and data collection trounced Republican efforts to match it.

Over the past year, Lincoln Labs has grown to represent the epicenter of the right-wing tech scene as it struggles to make a dent in an industry traditionally dominated by the political left.

For most of Lincoln Lab’s existence, the group has relied upon financial backing and support from the orbit of activist groups that are part of Charles and David Koch’s donor network. Last weekend’s conference was sponsored by an array of groups from the Koch network: Generation Opportunity, its youth outreach group; the Libre Initiative, its Hispanic organization; Americans for Prosperity, its lead political advocacy arm; and i360, which collects data on behalf of the Koch network. Microsoft, Google, and Stampede, a political consulting firm that provides campaign services to conservative candidates, also served as sponsors for the event.

More: The Kochs’ Nonprofit Empire Is Building a Network of Libertarian Hackers, Coders and Designers - Yahoo News

Predictably, the icons of 21st century conservativism, politicians like Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, made appearances to woo techies to the GOP side.

For Paul, a possible future Republican presidential candidate, the trip to Northern California was an opportunity to meet with tech entrepreneurs from both sides of the aisle, a group Paul hopes shares his antagonism for unbridled government spying and questionable data collecting practices.

“I come out here and people say, ‘Oh, I love President Obama. We’re all for President Obama, we’re from the tech community.’ Why?” Paul asked in his address at the conference. “Why would you be? He’s not for innovation. He’s not for freedom. He’s for the protectionism crowd.”

Paul went on to challenge the hackers to develop apps, “so the marketplace can figure what the idiots and trolls in Washington will never come up with.”

Makes you get kind of warm and fuzzy all over, doesn’t it?

Ted Nugent’s scheduled show at a native American casino in Worley, Idaho, was recently canceled when the venue received numerous complaints about the crotch-rocker’s long history of hateful racism and right wing extremism, and tonight he’s lashing out at critics who are calling for his show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin to be canceled as well — calling them “unclean vermin” who don’t “qualify as people.”

Which is probably not going to convince anyone that he’s not a hateful cretin.

Ted Nugent, who performs Saturday at the Leach Amphitheater in Oshkosh, has a few words for critics calling for Waterfest organizers to cancel his show.

“I take it as a badge of honor that such unclean vermin are upset by me and my positive energy,” Nugent said in a recent interview with Gannett Wisconsin Media. “Put your heart and soul into everything you do and nobody can stop you. Sometimes you give the world the best you got and you get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you got anyway.”

The outspoken rocker took some time to respond to a few questions via email while on the SHUTUP & JAM! tour. He said he’s always had critics.

“By all indicators, I don’t think they actually qualify as people, but there has always been a lunatic fringe of hateful, rotten, dishonest people that hate happy, successful people,” Nugent said.

I didn’t think it was possible, but the latest horribly botched execution in Arizona is even worse than the one in Oklahoma in May.

FLORENCE, Ariz. (AP) — Arizona officials say a murderer who was sentenced to death has died nearly two hours after his execution started.

Wood’s lawyers had filed an emergency appeal in federal court during the execution demanding that it be stopped. The appeal said Wood was “gasping and snorting for more than an hour.”

Attorney General Tom Horne’s office says Joseph Rudolph Wood was pronounced dead at 3:49 p.m., one hour and 57 minutes after the execution started.

Pure and simple barbarism, sanctioned by the government.

Here’s the expected justification from right wing governor Jan Brewer: Arizona Execution of Joseph Wood Took Nearly Two Hours - NBC News.com

Gov. Jan Brewer said she was “concerned” about the execution length and ordered a review but insisted Wood did not suffer “in stark comparison to the gruesome, vicious suffering that he inflicted on his two victims.”