Lauren Boebert is the 34 year old Congresswoman from Rifle, Colorado who got her claim to fame when she was featured on Nightline in 2014.

When the newly minted Congresswoman entered the House this month she wanted to bring her Glock onto the floor of the Chamber. Predictably, Boebert is one of the 140 Republicans who would not certify President Biden as the winner following the aborted Coup D’Etat on January 6.

The attached video is mind boggling, disturbing and, in a perverse way Entertaining

Waitresses at Shooters Grill in Rifle, Colorado, open carry while serving.

Nightline – 7.21.2014

— — Every morning, Lauren Boebert starts the day by getting ready for work. She puts on her make-up, fixes her near-perfect hair, and puts on a sparkly belt.

But the 27-year-old mother of four isn’t fully dressed until she straps on her loaded 9 mm semiautomatic handgun.

Boebert and her husband run a restaurant called the Shooters Grill. When they opened it a year ago in their hometown of Rifle, Colorado, going with a “gun theme” seemed natural. But Boebert took it one step further and began carrying a loaded weapon on her hip in public.

“I wanted to start carrying just for my protection. This is my establishment, so I didn’t see anything wrong with that,” she said. “[So] I began to open carry.”

It’s legal in Colorado to open carry handguns and Boebert isn’t the only one packing heat inside her restaurant. Most of the restaurant’s wait staff also open carry. The restaurant is so popular, Boebert said they sometimes sell out of food. She denies the armed staff is a gimmick for Shooters Grill, saying it’s about expressing their right to defend themselves.

“My firearms have nothing to do with the amazing hamburgers we cook,” Boebert said. “Actually, the food that we cook is what started all this.”

But at Shooter’s Grill, it’s not the patrons, but most of the waitresses who are armed.

Patrons come from hundreds of miles around, but not just for the burgers, which have names like “Guac 9” and “Swiss and Wesson,” but to see the waitresses packing heat. Over the past few weeks, the Boeberts’ restaurant has gotten so much attention, a man who said he was a U.S. Marine called with an offer to buy a gun for any waitress that didn’t own one.

“He called in from California and asked our owner if there was a girl that he could buy a gun for, and so I got it three days ago,” said Carsyn Copeland, one of Shooter Grill’s waitresses. “It’s a Kimber 45.”

Of course, not everyone in town is thrilled. Boebert said she and her staff have gotten angry posts on Facebook and other social media, random phone calls to the restaurant and even actual letters in the mail.

“‘Hope God punishes you for what you are doing. Hope that you and all of your patrons will kill yourself,'” said Boebert, reading from one of the letters. “That is pretty harsh.”

The state of Colorado has seen its share of gun violence, including the massacres at Columbine High School and the Aurora movie theater, and there are others who feel Shooters Grill glorifies gun culture.

One of those people is Dave Hoover of Lakeview, Colorado, whose nephew A.J. Boik was killed in the Aurora theater shooting.

“This is America, they’re allowed to [open carry], but you can’t glamorize the gun,” Hoover said. “The gun will never be a glamorous thing. It’s just an object. What we need to worry about is keeping the guns out of those who shouldn’t have firearms.”

Hoover has been in law enforcement for three decades. In a shooting situation, he said, more guns on scene create more confusion for police trying to secure the shooter. “I don’t know which one is the bad guy, which one is the good guy,” Hoover said.

Even the police chief in Rifle says things are different in his town. “I understand why some people from the outside may see this as a little bit odd,” said Chief John Dyer, referring to Shooters Grill. “And the burgers are great.”

Boebert insists that her employees and her customers are safe, saying, “I’m more worried about my cooks getting burnt in the kitchen than a firearm going off in the restaurant.”

And when people do call to tell her they have concerns, she said she remains polite.

“People call in all the time and tell me that this is not normal where they are, and they would never patronize a restaurant like this,” Boebert said. “I say, ‘thank you for your opinion. God bless you.’”

https://abcnews.go.com/US/colorado-restaurant-serves-big-helping-amendment/story?id=24652271

 

It’s about time these nihilist Neo Nazi insurrectionists are brought to heel.

This subversion of the rule of law began with the Klan after the Civil War.

These extreme Neo Nazis have run amok for decades with no legal consequences 

The ex President actively encouraged and abetted the Neo Nazi mobs for years culminating in the foiled Coup D’etat.

The real threat comes from the Neo Nazis and their chief enabler. Trump

Excerpted from The New  York Times 1.22.2021

WASHINGTON — President Biden on Friday ordered the director of national intelligence to work with the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the threat from domestic violent extremism, a sign of how seriously the new administration is taking the issue in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

The new order on domestic extremism, and growing interest on Capitol Hill, could also push the intelligence agencies and law enforcement to look for ways to work more closely on tracking and countering extremist groups in the country.

The growing concern about these groups is also reflected in the tough stances judges have taken with those arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 riot.

“Far-right, white supremacist extremism, nurtured on online platforms, has become one of the most dangerous threats to our nation,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

The request comes only days after Avril D. Haines, the newly installed director of national intelligence, pledged to members of Congress during her confirmation hearing that she would help with just such an assessment.

The new intelligence work began as people charged in the mob attack on the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald J. Trump continued to appear in court. On Friday, a federal magistrate judge in Dayton, Ohio ordered Donovan Crowl, an accused rioter linked to the far-right group the Oath Keepers, detained until his trial, citing the safety of the community.

Mr. Crowl, the suspect denied bail in Ohio, was part of a group dressed in paramilitary equipment that approached the Capitol “in an organized and practiced fashion” to move their way to the front of the crowd, according to court papers.

In a New Yorker article about the riot, Mr. Crowl, a 50-year-old Ohio resident, acknowledged that he had entered the Capitol but claimed that he had traveled to Washington to “do security” for “V.I.P.s” whom he did not name and that his intentions had been peaceful. But court filings made clear that prosecutors did not believe that.

“This defendant, through force and violence, attempted to disrupt the process that our country’s been engaged in for over 200 years,” said the prosecutor, Nicholas Dingeldein, during the hearing on Friday. “He’s been preparing for literal war because that’s what this organization, the Oath Keepers, has told him he has to do.”

The judge, Sharon L. Ovington, noted that Mr. Crowl had a criminal record and said she saw “clear and convincing evidence” that there were no conditions that would reasonably assure Mr. Crowl’s appearance in court or the safety of the community.

Domestic terrorism and violent groups are a thorny issue for intelligence agencies like the C.I.A., which are limited to tracking attempts by foreign governments or organizations to influence extremist groups in America. The F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security have more leeway to investigate domestic groups and homegrown terrorism.

The New York congresswoman put the inane Texas blowhard Ted Cruz in his place.

This is the guy who had the nerve to show up at the inaugural after spinning the lies which proceeded the failed January 6 Coup D’Etat. After the Coup was smashed he still voted to deny President Biden his election victory.

Daily Beast 1.21.2021

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote: “Nice tweet Sen. Cruz! Quick question: do you also believe the Geneva Convention was about the views of the citizens of Geneva?”

After months of vomiting up falsehoods about election fraud to please Donald Trump, it might have been a good idea for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to just quieten down for a little while. But, true to form, he’s bumbled into the Biden era with some fresh nonsense. In a clueless attack on President Joe Biden’s decision to re-enter the Paris Climate Agreement—the flagship international treaty to tackle the climate crisis—Cruz failed to wrap his head around why Biden backs a deal signed in France. Paraphrasing an old Trump line, he wrote: “By rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, President Biden indicates he’s more interested in the views of the citizens of Paris than in the jobs of the citizens of Pittsburgh.” His misunderstanding, whether it was wilful or not, has been treated with the derision it deserves.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz

https://www.thedailybeast.com/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-brutally-mocks-ted-cruz-for-searingly-dumb-paris-climate-agreement-tweet?ref=home?ref=home

Now that Trump is gone in disgrace serious attention will be given to the vicious mindless insurrectionists who led the aborted January 6, 2021 Coup D’Etat. For decades these Fascist Neo Nazi type groups have been permitted to grow and prosper.

Either out of ignorance or fear of conservative blowback the Feds have tended to look the other way.  The aborted Coup has finally shown what these dead ender nihilists true goal has been all along. Destroy Democracy.

Aided and abetted by Trump these deplorable people reached the point where they were able to mount a serious assault on the American government.

It is time to crush them all. The scores of arrests by the FBI since January 6 are a step in the right direction. The pursuit and smashing of these insurrectionists must continue aggressively by any means necessary.

Daily Beast 1.20.2021

President Joe Biden’s new Director of National Intelligence who now oversees 18 U.S. intelligence agencies anticipates producing a public assessment of the threat from QAnon, she testified at her confirmation hearing on Tuesday.

Avril Haines, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avril_Haines whom Biden tapped as the next director of national intelligence, told Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) that she would provide him with such an assessment, which Heinrich requested last month in a letter.

In one of the indications of how the Jan. 6 insurrection is shaping the context of Biden’s impending presidency, Haines seemed to reject putting the intelligence agencies in the lead on “an issue such as solely domestic terrorism.” She instead told the Senate intelligence committee that she wanted to provide “critical support” to the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, which will play that leading role. But she did not specify what such support would precisely be.

Instead, Haines indicated she views the intelligence agency’s work with regard to far-right terror—Haines used the phrase “white nationalism”—as a matter of identifying connections to foreign actors and disinformation. The coalescing of globalizing white nationalist and far-right violence is increasingly a focus of the incoming Biden team. Russ Travers, a former acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center who was recently tapped as Biden’s deputy homeland-security adviser at the White House, has written that the U.S. is increasingly an exporter of such violence and drew connections to the 2019 mosque murders in Christchurch, New Zealand.

But an intelligence focus on QAnon will inevitably stoke controversy. Even after the FBI warned in 2019 that QAnon posed a domestic-terror threat, at least two QAnon boosters, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO), have been elected to Congress. Efforts a decade ago to study far-right terror resulted in the Obama administration ending a DHS analytic entity that did so following a conservative outcry.

Speaking to the veteran presence at the Capitol insurrection, Biden’s nominee for secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, pledged on Tuesday to “rid our ranks of racists and extremists” at his own confirmation hearing.

Notably, Haines did not during testimony request any additional authorities for the intelligence agencies with regard to right-wing extremism, an effort that has some support from liberals.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/bidens-intelligence-nominee-pledges-threat-assessment-on-qanon

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAe02qarUFkThe new era in Washington is best exemplified by three women.  Oakland born Kamala Harris is the first woman to be sworn in as Vice President.

Lady Gaga whose musical fame is known worldwide gave a stirring rendition of the Star Spangled Banner to those assembled at the Capitol and a worldwide audience.

Amanda Gorman, 22, is the first Youth Poet Laureate in American history. Her presentation at the inaugural was stunning.

Following are three clips.

Kamala Harris being sworn in as Vice President

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/01/20/kamala-harris-inauguration-swearing-in-vpx.cnn

Excerpted from Billboard Magzine 1.20.2021

Former senator and two-term vice president Joe Biden stepped into history on Wednesday (Jan. 20) alongside his historic Vice President Sen. Kamala Harris as they were inaugurated on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. And while some of the usual pomp and circumstance — not to mention the typically huge crowds — were curtailed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and security concerns in the age of the violent assault on the Capitol by supporters of former president Donald Trump on Jan. 6, Lady Gaga was on hand to ensure that the event felt like a proper celebration.

The singer took center stage just before noon to sing The National Anthem in a striking, billowing floor-length red skirt and long-sleeved black top accented with an oversized gold peace dove brooch and black leather gloves, accompanied by the President’s United States Marine Band. After greeting Biden and Harris, Gaga composed herself, grabbed a gold-colored microphone and belted out a powerful rendition of the notoriously difficult “Star-Spangled Banner” with her typical theatrical panache, ending with her hand over her heart and nods to Biden, Harris and former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama on her way back to hear seat.

The stirring performance came one day after Gaga sent her Little Monsters a message of hope to usher in the new administration. “I pray tomorrow will be a day of peace for all Americans,” Gaga tweeted. “A day for love, not hatred. A day for acceptance not fear. A day for dreaming of our future joy as a country. A dream that is non-violent, a dream that provides safety for our souls. Love, from the Capitol.”

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/20/politics/trump-presidency-ends/index.html

 

 

Amanda Gorman – Youth Poet Laureate Delivers at Presidential Inaugural

https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2021/jan/20/youth-poet-laureate-amanda-gorman-recital-at-biden-inauguration-video

 

I am shocked. You never know who is going to step up and do the right thing.

Wall Street Journal 1.19.2021

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said that President Trump provoked the mob that attacked the Capitol earlier this month.

“The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like,” Mr. McConnell said on the Senate floor Tuesday.

On this the 92nd anniversary of Martin Luther King’s birth it is well to remember  he was more than a civil rights leader. Dr. King had sound ideas about the distribution of wealth in America.

Wall Street has done very well during four years of Trump while the rest of the country has grappled to keep afloat. 

America is in the depths of a Pandemic and an economic crisis. The economic, physical and psychological health of the country is at risk. Four years of Trump and his Give it to the Rich and culminating with a Pandemic during which he has been missing in action.

Finally, Trump’s is a failed administration which will forever live with the stain of an aborted Coup D’Etat.  In short, Trump has been a disaster from Day One.

Radical action by President Biden is required beginning on January 20.

Excerpted from The Nation 1.18.2021 – John Nichols

Dr. King taught us that direct cash payments are a smart response to poverty and mass unemployment. In this crisis, we need to heed that call.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s posthumous message to America came in a Look magazine article published shortly after the civil rights leader’s assassination, on April 4, 1968. In it, King wrote, “We need an economic bill of rights. This would guarantee a job to all people who want to work and are able to work. It would also guarantee an income for all who are not able to work. Some people are too young, some are too old, some are physically disabled, and yet in order to live, they need income.”

King was not the first to propose an economic bill of rights—President Franklin Roosevelt had done so almost a quarter-century earlier in his 1944 State of the Union Address.

Nor was he the first to speak of the role guaranteed basic income might play in addressing poverty, inequality, and mass unemployment. But the pastor’s merging of these proposals as part of a call to “end poverty, to extirpate prejudice, to free a tormented conscience, to make a tomorrow of justice, fair play and creativity” was a vital contribution to the national debate, as was his recognition that the United States of more than 50 years ago had an “opportunity to avoid a national disaster and create a new spirit of class and racial harmony.”

Unfortunately, it did not happen. Political leaders of the late 1960s and early 1970s, from Richard Nixon to George McGovern, explored the prospect of using direct cash payments and guaranteed income initiatives to alleviate economic pain and address the often devastating consequences of social and technological change.

President-elect Biden has recognized that insufficiency and responded with a $1.9 trillion stimulus plan that includes a proposal for a workaround that gets the payment figure up to $2,000 —by adding an additional $1,400 to the already agreed-upon $600 figure.

Biden’s American Rescue Plan is reasonably ambitious. In addition to providing needed funding for health care and building a robust vaccination program, it promises extended unemployment benefits, rent relief, food assistance, aid to small businesses, support for schools and state and local government, and a federal minimum wage increase to $15 an hour. At the heart of the plan is an understanding on the part of the president-elect that “$600 is simply not enough when you have to choose between paying rent or putting food on the table. We need $2,000 stimulus checks.”

Nor, however, should there be any question that more $2,000 checks will be needed in the months to come—as the pandemic continues, unemployment remains high, millions go hungry, and families are losing their homes.

Bernie Sanders, the incoming chair of the Senate Budget Committee, calls Biden’s proposal “a very strong first installment of an emergency relief plan that will begin to provide desperately needed assistance to tens of millions of working families facing economic hardship during the pandemic.” But additional installments will be required.

That’s why Representative Ro Khanna of California, is right when he says, “Let’s not just give ordinary Americans a one-time $2,000 check. With our new majority and a worsening crisis, let’s meet the need: $2,000/month, every month, until this crisis is over.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/mlk-covid-biden-plan/

Top photo – Dr. King speaks at March on Washington – August 28, 1963

“I grew up thinking America is a beacon of light.  Not realizing it is a very hypocritcal nation,” Sam Pollard Director MLK/FBI

On the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s 92nd birthday a documentary recounting the vicious political and personal assault by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI has been released.

In painstaking detail the film shows the extreme measures the FBI used in its attempt to discredit Dr. King.  The documentary provides an easy to understand look at how and why Federal law enforcement attacked the leader of the American Civil Rights movement.

Dr. King speaks at March on Washington – August 28, 1963.

The FBI assault on Dr. King reached its conclusion when he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968.

Following are two links.

First –  Christine Amanpour’s interview with the Director.

Second –  Trailer for the film MLK/FBI which is now available on streaming services.

https://theindependent.com/news/world/why-the-fbi-tried-to-take-down-martin-luther-king-jr/video_e7c7c390-58cf-56d5-84b9-10f703ff2a22.html

Top photo – Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy in Memphis shortly before Dr. King’s assassination.

 

I pay attention to the Wall Street Journal. 

It gives me an intelligent perspective on “conservative” thought.  In juxtaposition to Fox News, et al. The past year WSJ forecast what Biden would do as President very accurately.  Now he is President. I am looking forward to implementation of the policies decried by the WSJ.

This week begins a new day in Washington on so many fronts. One of which is the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline. President Biden claims he is going to REVOKE the permit as one of his first actions as Chief Executive.

Excerpted from Wall Street Journal 1.21.2021

WASHINGTON—The Keystone oil pipeline’s developer plans to announce a series of overhauls—including a pledge to use only renewable energy—in a bid to win President-elect Joe Biden’s support for the controversial project.

 Aides to Mr. Biden have previously said he plans to revoke the permit, and Canada’s CBC News reported late Sunday that Mr. Biden plans to do so in one of his first actions after taking office this week.

Mr. Biden’s team declined to discuss that report, but has said his position on the pipeline hasn’t changed.

In a bid to save the project, Canada’s TC Energy Corp. TRP 0.29% is committing to spend $1.7 billion on solar, wind and battery power to operate the partially completed 2,000-mile pipeline system between Alberta, in western Canada, and Texas, company officials say. They also are pledging to hire a union workforce and eliminate all greenhouse-gas emissions from operations by 2030.

 Keystone XL is a 1,210-mile expansion to a larger pipeline network. It must connect to the power grid to run pump stations that help push oil through the line. Those stations sit about every 50 miles along the pipelines, driven by electric motors.

The company’s plans reflect new realities at a time when Democrats are taking commanding positions in Washington, and in an era of growing environmental and social concerns.

“In our view, this is the most sustainable and environmentally friendly pipeline project that is ever been built,” Richard Prior, president of TC Energy’s Keystone XL expansion project, said in an interview. “This is groundbreaking stuff for an energy infrastructure project of the size and scale of Keystone XL.”

A company spokesman said Keystone will announce the new measures this week.

Construction of the expansion, long delayed by legal and permitting challenges, started last year under a permit President Trump awarded to sidestep an order by a federal judge blocking construction in the U.S., pending a supplemental environmental review.

Keystone executives hope to keep the $8 billion project alive by making it a showcase for how fossil-fuel projects can still be environmentally friendly and generate good-paying union jobs.

In August, the company struck a deal with four labor unions to build the line itself. And it followed that up in mid-November with a deal for five indigenous tribes to take a roughly $785 million ownership stake. A new labor deal led by North America’s Building Trades Unions gives priority to union workers for the renewable power buildout, too.

Canadian government officials continue to press the case for Keystone with Mr. Biden’s team. They want to get more bottlenecked Canadian crude to the U.S. Gulf Coast, one of the world’s biggest centers for refining oil. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mentioned the pipeline among his top priorities during his first call with Mr. Biden after the election.

Keystone’s initial proposal became a flashpoint for climate activists. It led many to fight pipelines as a way to combat growing oil production and instead push investment to alternative energy projects that wouldn’t contribute to climate change.

They especially object to the Keystone pipeline because the Canadian crude it carries comes from oil sands, which generate more pollution than other types of oil.

 

To address those concerns, Keystone is promising to fund new renewable energy infrastructure to generate 1.6 gigawatts of power. That amount would rival the country’s biggest corporate renewables purchases by companies such as Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google that have become common in recent years, and further boost a burgeoning wind and solar market.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/keystone-xl-oil-project-pledges-zero-carbon-emissions-11610930642

Following is a special contribution by associate Blog mistress Liz.

Dear Archbishop Cordileone, Publisher:

It is alarming that the Catholic Church, which sanctifies life, racial inclusiveness, integrity, compassion, accepts money in the form of political ads from the San Francisco Police Officers Association (POA).

The POA is a group which advocates for SFPD with its long history of abusing and harassing people of color, the homeless, the poor, and the disabled.

I was appalled when I saw the POA ad in the 12.17.2020 issue of Catholic San Francisco. 

Catholic San Francisco has a prominent influence in shaping cultural attitudes and moral values.

In 2019 the POA spent nearly 1 MM to destroy the candidacy of District Attorney aspirant Chesa Boudin. 

Chesa was victorious in the DA election.

Since Chesa took office a year ago, the POA has never let up on its line of attack on Chesa’s integrity, reforms to our broken criminal justice system, or reforms to the brotherhood of cops who cover up police misconduct deeds.

It is scandalous that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese allows money from the POA to help the POA retain power and position within the faith community, 

Sincerely, 

Liz Heidhues – a Catholic advocating for criminal justice reform

Page one. The Catholic 12.17.2020 edition

POA Ad in The Catholic 12.17.2020

POA Attack ad – page one 2019

POA attack ad – page two 2019