In where else, South Carolina:
"S.C. debates high cost of redisplaying a flag" by Richard Fausset New York Times December 26, 2015
COLUMBIA, S.C. — After decades of debate in South Carolina over the Confederate battle flag, it seemed the matter had been settled in July, when state officials stopped flying the flag on State House grounds and relegated it to a museum for “appropriate display.”
Then came the price tag.
This month, consultants for the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum here introduced a $5.3 million plan to expand the facility and show off the flag, along with an electronic display of the names of the state’s Civil War dead.
That idea proved to be a bust among Democrats who view the flag as an affront to African-Americans, and among members of both parties who balked at the cost.
“Irresponsible,” said Representative Mary E. Tinkler, Democrat of Charleston.
“Absurd,” said Representative Christopher A. Corley, Republican of Graniteville.
“It wouldn’t have cost anything to keep it where it was,” said Representative William M. Chumley, one of 20 Republicans in the South Carolina House, including Corley, who voted against moving the flag in the first place.
Hey, political correctness and the grinding of an agenda while wiping away history (someone please page George Orwell) comes with a cost.
Last week, the commission that oversees the museum reduced the cost to $3.6 million. But the plan is subject to approval by the Legislature, and Tommy Pope, the House speaker pro tempore, said in an interview that he expected a vigorous debate as his fellow Republicans sought to balance spending concerns with what he called the heritage that the flag represents.
The continuing debate illustrates a challenge that many communities around the country are facing as Americans embark on a sweeping reconsideration of public symbols and memorials that many now find offensive. As these icons are relegated to the dustbin of history, someone usually needs to figure out how to manage the dustbin — and pay for it.
The blog editor looks at such a description of the current "debate" and is not only stunned, but understands this is beyond offensiveness. This is about the destruction of freedom of speech.
Fortunately, one day, the purveyors of this propaganda will be in that dustbin, and perhaps even sooner than we think. They may even already be there with the decades-long lies and complete loss of credibility.
That's why you are reading this and why I'm writing it.
I mean, really, next thing they will be telling us is Putin disowned Lenin and sided with Stalin.
For centuries, of course, conquering armies, revolutionaries and liberated peoples have done no such thing, preferring to pull down, melt, or dismember memorials to toppled governments.
Or stage such a ceremony in a square after toppling a certain deceased Middle East dictator whose country begins with the letter I.
But other models have emerged to preserve such memorials and recognize history while not extolling the ideas they embody.
In Budapest, a tourist attraction called Memento Park has collected dozens of Soviet-era monuments to Communist titans like Lenin, Marx, and Engels. “This park is about dictatorship,” the park’s designer, the architect Akos Eleod, is quoted as saying on its website. “And at the same time, because it can be talked about, described, and built up, this park is about democracy.”
What do those words mean anymore when the democracies are now the dictatorships?
Around the American South, somewhat similar strategies are emerging, particularly since the killing of nine African-American members of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston in June prompted a movement to take down the symbols of the Confederacy. An avowed white supremacist is to stand trial in the shootings.
That's the narrative anyway.
Of course, Jewish supremacism is fine. They even have their own state.
At the University of Texas at Austin, a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, was removed from a place of prominence in August.
I'd like to see some presidents removed, like impeached, you know?
After refurbishing, the statue will be displayed in a new historical exhibit space dedicated to “the role of symbolism, statuary, and public memory in American history,” said Don Carleton, executive director of the university’s Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.
South Carolina’s Confederate and military museum dates to 1896; since 2001, it has been housed in a reconfigured textile mill a few blocks from the State House. The exhibits celebrate the state’s martial history and make some effort to contextualize the collection of old weapons, photographs and curiosities, though often with a distinctive Southern twist: One display refers to the Civil War as the “War Between the States,” the name preferred by Confederate heritage groups.
What's in a name other than a meaningless argument?
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Related: Al Sharpton to meet with Citadel head
Starting to feel like a government provocation.
"Bill would require South Carolina journalists to register" Associated Press January 19, 2016
COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina journalists would be required to register with the government before reporting the state’s news under a bill introduced Tuesday by a Republican state lawmaker.
Maybe that Nazi analogy is appropriate after all. Wow!!
The proposal would establish a ‘‘responsible journalism registry’’ with requirements that journalists must meet before working for a news outlet in the state. Those requirements weren’t laid out in the bill’s summary, which was available online Tuesday. The measure’s full text has not yet been posted.
Fees could be charged to be listed in the registry, which would be operated by the secretary of state’s office. The bill also would authorize ‘‘fines and criminal penalties’’ for violating the law.
The bill has been referred to a committee for debate.
Bill sponsor Rep. Mike Pitts, R-Laurens, did not immediately return messages seeking comment on the proposal. Last summer, the former law enforcement officer opposed an ultimately successful push to remove the Confederate Flag from South Carolina’s Statehouse grounds following the slayings of nine black parishioners at Emanuel AME in Charleston.
Time to play taps.
Bill Rogers, executive director of the South Carolina Press Association, said he’d lobby hard against the measure, which he said he found bizarre.
Not really; not in 21st-century AmeriKa.
‘‘Any registration of journalists would be unconstitutional — unless you lived in Cuba or North Korea,’’ Rogers told The Associated Press.
So? It's not like government follow those darn pieces of paper; in fact, they view themselves as above those enforcements. A privileged cla$$, if you will.
Ashley Landess of the South Carolina Policy Council, whose online publication The Nerve frequently posts stories critical of state agencies and lawmakers, said she feels the measure is likely aimed at publications like hers but would affect all working journalists.
‘‘I hope that this insane attempt at shutting up any hint of criticism finally wakes everyone up to how dangerous and how out of control our legislators are,’’ Landess said. ‘‘The fact a lawmaker in this country thinks nothing of proposing a law to set standards for what reporters are allowed to write — are you kidding me?’’
No, no kidding, and why did the Obama administration just come to mind?
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I suspect the point of all this is to out bloggers like me by making us register. They will tell us we can keep our online anonymity, but they will know the name (already do via telecom and after 10 years of spying and data collection).
Let's go a little further south:
"New Orleans council votes to remove Confederate monuments" by Cain Burdeau Associated Press December 18, 2015
NEW ORLEANS — It was an emotional meeting — often interrupted by heckling — infused with references to slavery, lynchings, and racism, as well as the pleas of those who opposed removing the monuments to not ‘‘rewrite history.’’
City Council President Jason Williams called the vote a symbolic severing of an ‘‘umbilical cord’’ tying the city to the offensive legacy of the Confederacy and the era of Jim Crow laws.
The decision came after months of impassioned debate. Now, the city faces possible lawsuits seeking to keep the monuments where they are.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu first proposed taking down the monuments after police said a white supremacist killed nine parishioners inside the African-American Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., in June.
What if.... never mind.
Anti-Confederate sentiment has grown since then around the country, along with protests against police mistreatment, as embodied by the Black Lives Matter movement.
Landrieu’s administration said it would cost $170,000 to take down the monuments and put them in a warehouse until a new location is found for them, perhaps in a park or museum. The city said it would hire contractors soon to remove the monuments.
In addition to the towering statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, the council also voted to remove a bronze figure of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, and a more local hero, General Pierre Gustave Toutant, who was born in St. Bernard Parish.
As for the Father of the Country.... who did he think he was, Ben Affleck?
The most controversial is an 1891 obelisk honoring the Crescent City White League. An inscription added in 1932 said the government withdrew federal troops and ‘‘recognized white supremacy in the South’’ after the group challenged Louisiana’s biracial government after the Civil War.
And that, of course, will make you forget about cla$$ as the jewsmedia foments division and demonizes white people. For the record, I'm not a supremacist of any sort.
In 1993, these words were covered by a granite slab with a new inscription, saying the obelisk honors ‘‘Americans on both sides’’ who died and that the conflict ‘‘should teach us lessons for the future.’’
Yes, the trademarked "Never Again" should be for war, and about both sides dying, that's a good point.
You know, in all the decades since the War Between the States, I never once heard anyone complaining about Johnny Cracker sacrificing himself up for the war machine.
What's next, sorting through the Arlington National Cemetery?
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Nazis in New Orleans?
See: Are You Brave Enough to Read This Blog?
It's a different look at history and likely more accurate than the mythical received wisdom we were all taught and told.
150 years later, ‘Return of the Flags’ reenacted on Beacon Hill
What about those who find those flags offensive?
With Confederate flag gone, King Day rally shifts focus
Rally calls for keeping Confederate emblem on Mississippi state flag
Doesn't that make you angry?
Good thing Louisiana is going progressive:
"New Louisiana governor is off to a volatile start" by Richard Fausset and Jeremy Alford New York Times January 15, 2016
BATON ROUGE, La. — No one expected that the governor’s job in Louisiana was going to be easy for a Democrat, not even for a Democrat like John Bel Edwards.
Edwards, Louisiana’s 56th governor, is facing one of the more complex political balancing acts in the country. Though conservative on some issues, he is also a Roman Catholic who has said that his faith compels him to seek social justice. “We need to acknowledge the hard truths about poverty in our state,” he said in his inaugural address Monday.
And more than just that, guy.
He has proposed increasing the minimum wage and ensuring equal pay for women, promised to extend new protections to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, and promised to restore an element of the federal food-stamp program halted by Bobby Jindal, his Republican predecessor.
But in so doing, Edwards risks alienating members of the Republican-controlled Legislature, with whom he must cooperate to solve what he calls the state’s “top priority”: resolving the breathtaking structural budget shortfalls he inherited from Jindal.
In his speech Monday, Edwards implicitly criticized the legacy of Jindal’s two terms in office, calling on residents to rebuild Louisiana. As a candidate, Edwards had charged Jindal, who used highly creative bookkeeping methods in an effort to hew to a no-tax pledge, with indulging in fictions in the budgeting process.
Is that why his presidential bid went nowhere?
Edwards repeatedly emphasized his record in the US military, saying he would address Louisiana’s problems like any officer in the field. And time and again, he issued a call for bipartisanship: He said that the voters had “chosen to rise above partisan politics” and that the state could band together “regardless of party,” and he exhorted the Legislature to work with him to “pass sound solutions.”
An uncharitable, if widely held, view in the state is that he won election in November mostly because of voters’ distaste for his Republican rival, Senator David Vitter, who was dogged by a prostitution scandal. But Edwards’s admirers say that he has his own strengths, and that as far as Democrats go, he is suited to woo Louisiana Republicans.
But politics in Louisiana has become more nationalized.
Whether Edwards could rekindle the old bipartisan spirit remains a huge question leading to a special session on the budget emergency that is set to convene in February, after the Mardi Gras holiday.
State Representative Ted James, a Democrat, said the vote was a sign that Edwards had a tough mission ahead. “I don’t see the Republicans I serve with trying to work with the governor on certain issues,” James said. “With this vote we took a step toward being more like Washington, D.C.”
Meaning they fund corporations, Israel, and the war machine at the expense of the people.
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"New Louisiana governor starting Medicaid expansion plan" Associated Press January 13, 2016
BATON ROUGE, La. — On his first full day in office, Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards reversed course from his Republican predecessor Tuesday and started the process of expanding Louisiana’s Medicaid program.
At a news conference surrounded by supporters, Edwards signed an executive order calling for the state Department of Health and Hospitals to make administrative changes needed to begin offering the health insurance coverage to the working poor.
‘‘This is the right thing to do. This is not even a close call,’’ Edwards said.
The order came two days ahead of President Obama’s planned appearance in Baton Rouge, where he’ll champion his federal health care overhaul that allows for the Medicaid expansion.
He's going to wave that in your face?
Former governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican who left office this week, refused expansion, opposing it as too costly for the state and an inappropriate growth of government spending.
But Edwards, who was sworn in Monday, said the state should accept the billions of dollars in federal funding available to provide insurance coverage.
The new governor said he wants to have government-funded health insurance cards in more people’s hands by July 1.
His administration estimates that 300,000 more people, mainly working poor, will be added to the state Medicaid program under the expansion, which covers adults making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level — $33,400 for a family of four.
Working poor.
Think what that says in an America riddled with record and rising wealth inequality.
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"Theater shooter thanks man accused of black church slayings" Associated Press January 13, 2016
BATON ROUGE, La. — The gunman responsible for a deadly rampage inside a Louisiana movie theater last summer left a rambling, handwritten 40-page journal thanking the man accused of killing nine black people in a church.
This smells like a steaming stinking false flag set-up and psyop, folks.
They keep recycling scripts!
On the partially redacted, lined pages of what appears to be type of school notebook, John Russell Houser laments the state of the U.S., calling it a ‘‘filth farm,’’ and he rants against the news media, national political figures, women, gays and blacks.
‘‘America as a whole is now the enemy,’’ he wrote, also warning of impending problems for the country. ‘‘I have hidden nothing and have hated the US for at least 30 years. It will soon be every man for himself. A global rearrangement comes soon.’’
Investigators also found wigs and disguises in the motel room, suggesting Houser had hoped to escape after the shooting. Police have said he tried to blend in with the crowd of people fleeing after the shooting but turned back after spotting officers entering the theater.
Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft has said Houser visited the theater more than once, perhaps to determine ‘‘whether there was anything that could be a soft target for him.’’ His only known connection to Lafayette was an uncle who died there three decades ago.
In the journal, Houser wrote that ‘‘soft targets are everywhere. Military police, etc. designations are not necessary.’’ He had a long history of erratic behavior in the Georgia and Alabama communities where he lived before the shooting in Lafayette, which is about 60 miles west of Baton Rouge.
In 2008, a Georgia judge ordered him detained for a mental evaluation after relatives claimed he was a danger to himself and others. But the judge said she didn’t have him involuntarily committed. That could explain how he passed a federal background check in 2014, which enabled him to legally buy the .40-caliber handgun he used in the shooting from a pawn shop in Phenix City, Alabama.
He was a regular presence on right-wing extremist message boards, where he praised Adolf Hitler and advised people not to underestimate ‘‘the power of the lone wolf,’’ according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.
That's where the print copy, and the SPLC involvement points to an organized psyop in this case. Houser is likely being housed by some government intelligence agency.
A former neighbor said Houser flew a large Confederate flag outside his home and a Nazi swastika outside a bar he owned, and put ‘‘doomsday’’ fliers in his neighbors’ mailboxes.
Deliberate provocations, indicating part of the plan to stir things up.
Houser became estranged from his family and lost his businesses and his Phenix City home. When he was evicted, he ruined the property by pouring concrete into the plumbing and glue into the fixtures, police said. His estranged wife, Kellie Houser, filed for divorce in March 2015, claiming he lashed out at her and warned, ‘‘I’d better watch out because he always wins.’’
In August, ‘‘Trainwreck’’ star Amy Schumer spoke tearfully of the two women killed in the shooting as she urged lawmakers to support a gun control bill sponsored by her second cousin, U.S. Sen. Charles Schemer.
Yeah, I saw something on the blogs about that skank being related to that bank-$erving $cum.
Less than a month after the Lafayette shooting, police in Tennessee shot and killed a mentally ill homeless man who attacked a Nashville-area movie theater with a pellet gun, an ax and pepper spray. The Tennessee shooting occurred while jurors in Colorado were weighing a death sentence for James Holmes, who killed 12 moviegoers and wounded 70 others at a movie theater in 2012.
How convenient all these crisis drills gone live or whatever psyops scenarios is being presented to us as real to push the agenda are available for citation, huh?
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Glad I don't go to the movies much.
"Louisiana sheriff’s deputy slain; former inmate arrested" by Bill Fuller Associated Press January 14, 2016
Authorities have arrested a former inmate in the death of a sheriff’s deputy whose body was found earlier this week in a shallow grave near her north Louisiana home.
Jermaine Johnson, 35, was booked for second-degree murder on Tuesday in the killing of his neighbor, Sulyn Prince, 69, and his bond has been set at $1 million, Louisiana State Police Trooper Matt Harris said Thursday. Additional charges are pending.
The second-degree murder charge carries a mandatory life sentence in Louisiana.
State Police found Prince’s body late Monday, Harris said. Evidence found in her house in Homer led to Johnson’s arrest.
Neither Harris nor Prince’s former employer, Webster Parish Sheriff Gary Sexton, would discuss a possible motive. They also declined to say how Prince was killed.
Johnson had been indicted in 2009 on an aggravated rape charge, and was held for five years in the Webster Parish jail where Prince worked. He pleaded guilty in 2015 to simple rape, was sentenced to the five years he had served, and was released in early 2015, Sexton said.
Family members asked Homer police to check on Prince on Monday; they found evidence of foul play and called State Police for help, Harris said. Late Monday evening, dogs from the Shreveport Fire Department Cadaver Search Team found Prince’s grave in woods just north of her house, Harris said.
‘‘Good old-fashioned police work and a piece of evidence found by the Homer Police Department led troopers to obtain a warrant for the arrest of Johnson,’’ Harris said.
Prince worked in the control room at Bayou Dorcheat Correctional Center, west of Minden, and had worked at the jail for 12 years, Sexton said. Sexton said she had prior corrections experience at David Wade Correctional Center, a state facility near Homer, and at the Claiborne Parish Detention Center.
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And who is forgotten in all this?
Why the Native Americans, of course, and aside from the derogatory names for sports teams debate there is the usurpation of their names and language.
I'm wondering how the Stars and Stripes looks to a relative of the AmeriKan Holocaust™.
NDUs:
"Deputy shot during New Orleans drug raid; suspect arrested" Associated Press January 26, 2016
NEW ORLEANS — A deputy who was part of a wide-ranging federal crackdown on drugs across New Orleans was shot five times as he and a team tried to serve a warrant at a home Tuesday, police said.
Jefferson Parish sheriff’s deputy Stephen Arnold, 35, was part of a sweeping investigation across the Crescent City, designed to crack down on the city’s drug trade and the violence associated with it.
Eight drug task force teams had gone out to conduct raids Tuesday morning, said Special Agent Debbie Webber, a spokeswoman for the Drug Enforcement Administration’s New Orleans division.
The raids were part of a seven-month investigation into drugs, heroin and violent offenses. New Orleans has long been one of America’s most violent cities. There were signs of hope when the homicide rate fell to a 43-year-low in 2014 but it jumped last year by 10 percent. To combat street crime, local and federal law enforcement agencies have teamed up in recent years to target neighborhood gangs.
Tuesday’s shooting happened in the Lower 9th Ward neighborhood of New Orleans, along a street that abuts the levee protecting the neighborhood from the Mississippi River. The Lower 9th Ward saw some of the worst devastation from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The neighborhood has a number of boarded-up houses, but the historic architecture of some homes and the proximity to the levee has attracted new residents who’ve made some renovations. Residents are often seen jogging or walking their dogs on the levee or visiting the nearby cafe that opened in 2012, a rare sit-down restaurant among mostly corner stores and takeout shops.
Betty Magee lives one street over from where the shooting occurred. She’s been in the area since 2001, with the exception of two years when she left after Hurricane Katrina. She said the neighborhood is quiet and nobody bothers her.
‘‘I come and go any time of the day and night,’’ she said.
Albert Greenleaf said he heard about the shooting on the news Tuesday, recognizing the street where his sister lived. He and his wife rushed over and learned she was OK.
‘‘It’s normally quiet and peaceful,’’ he said of the area, where he also owns a house.
Gentrified after Katrina?
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"Those involved said the costumes were not meant as a racial provocation but rather an attempt to dress up as ‘‘ghosts of Christmas past,’’ a reference to the Charles Dickens tale ‘‘A Christmas Carol,’’ while cadets were singing holiday songs."
I like the 1951 version best.
